TheUSRole in the 1964 Coup inBrazil: A Reassessment

Abstract

The role of the US in the 1964 coup in Brazil is controversial. When did US policymakers decide to support the coup conspirators, and why? This article reviews some recent works on the 1964 coup and makes two arguments. First, recently declassified documents show that the US joined the coup conspiracy only in 1963 not, as some claim, in 1961 or 1962. Second, many scholars do not explain the actions of US policymakers, or see their decisions as the inevitable consequence of US imperialism. This article argues that shifts in US domestic politics during the Cold War, as well as the pattern of post‐war foreign policy in Latin America, help explain US support for the coup.

United States Intervention in Latin America: Effects on Democracy During the Cold War

“…US intervention was not only present in the Dominican Republic during the 1960s, as the CIA worked to quell any possible leftist influence, motivated by paranoia of "another Cuba." The US led efforts to legitimize the new military government in El Salvador after a 1961 coup, financed the 1963 labor strikes in British Guiana that led to suspected Communist Cheddi Jagan's defeat in 1964 elections, supported a 1963 coup in Guatemala that spiraled the country further into civil war, backed a successful military coup against the Brazilian government in 1964, and ousted a military junta that had taken power in Panama during a 1968 coup (El Salvador, n.d.;CIA Covert, 2020;Geyer, 2007;Pereira, 2016;Breve Análisis, 2006). This frequency of intervention was new, and largely a result of fears the US was not being proactive enough to prevent leftist movements from gaining any sort of prominence in Latin America.…”

Conspiracy Theory and the Foreign Policy of the Far Right: The Case of Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil (2019-2021)

“…If successful conspiracies which are not the primary cause of events tend to take place more often that those that occupy a centre stage in explaining social reality, the latter has also happened quite a lot throughout History. In the case of Brazil, for instance, the US involvement in the country's 1964 military coup was definitely part of a conspiracy whose successful outcome depended, in a large extent, on US support (Pereira 2018;Loureiro 2023). In fact, the US involvement in Latin America, particularly during the Cold War, is full of examples of conspiracy theories that later have been proved to be true, such were the cases of the pro-US coups in Guatemala in 1954 and in Chile in 1973; the several secret subversion attempts against Cuba after the 1959 Revolution; the support for the anti-Sandinistas in Nicaragua after the 1979 Revolution; and the more recent underground destabilizing attempts against Hugo Chavez's and Nicolás Maduro's Venezuela (Rabe 2015;Smilde 2020).…”

Wielding the human rights weapon against the American empire: the second Russell Tribunal and human rights in transatlantic relations

“…While historians still debate the timing of US policymakers' decision to support the coup, by the end of the 1960s, many in Latin America and Europe had reached the conclusion that the American role in the coup was not limited to the almost immediate diplomatic recognition of the new regime, but that it also encompassed clandestine operations, funding, and training. 42 It was precisely within this growing awareness of human rights violations in Brazil and US influence over the Brazilian regime that the idea of convening an opinion Tribunal to investigate Brazilian repression began to make headway. In October 1971, during a conference in Santiago in Chile, some Brazilian émigrés belonging to the Comité de denuncia da repressão no Brasil proposed to Lelio Basso convening a new Tribunal to denounce the systematic violation of human rights in Brazil.…”