‘We are not a colony, and we will not be anyone’s colony’

In the run-up to October’s election, the US president has been using diplomatic pressure to undermine Brazilian sovereignty and bolster Flávio Bolsonaro. This continues a long history of US interference.

On 2 April 1964, two days after the coup that overthrew Brazil’s leftwing president João Goulart, US president Lyndon B Johnson was the first foreign head of state to recognise the change of government. ‘Please accept my warmest good wishes on your installation as President of the United States of Brazil’. he wrote to Pascoal Ranieri Mazzilli, speaker of the Chamber of Deputies. Under pressure from the Brazilian military, the Congress had handed Mazzilli the presidency. Fifteen days after the coup Mazzilli was replaced by Field Marshal Humberto Castelo Branco, who installed a military dictatorship at the Planalto Palace in Brasília. With Washington’s blessing, it would last until 1985.

João Goulart had come to power in 1961 with plans to implement agrarian reform and nationalise strategic enterprises in several sectors (oil, energy, mining and telecommunications) that required the expropriation of US companies. He also pursued an independent foreign policy, opening trade with Maoist China in late 1961 and re-establishing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union (Brazil had severed ties in 1947). The final straw for the US came when Goulart refused to support US policy towards Cuba.

The success of the 1964 coup owed much to the CIA and US Agency for International Development (USAID). During Brazil’s 1962 legislative election, they financed opposition politicians and political organisations, paving the way for military intervention. US ambassador Lincoln Gordon and his military attaché Colonel Vernon A Walters (a personal friend of Branco’s), were also key, monitoring preparations for months before the coup.

All that is now in the past, and since the beginning of the 21st century Brazil has been an emerging power. Already Latin America’s economic leader, it could soon become the world’s biggest agricultural exporter, ahead of the US. With its vast natural resources – the biggest global reserves of freshwater and the second-largest (…)

Full article: 1 748 words.