This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 BRASILIA 000784 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PINR PREL SOCI BR
SUBJECT: BRAZIL: FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF MILITARY COUP 
 
REF: BUENOS AIRES 961 
 
¶1.  (SBU) Introduction and Summary.  Unlike the 
civil-military contretemps surrounding the 28th anniversary 
of Argentina's military coup (reftel), Brazil has marked the 
40th anniversary (March 31) of its coup in a more circumspect 
fashion.  The monumental transition to full democracy during 
the last two decades seems almost taken for granted in much 
of the coverage, as the Brazilian media has focused on 
unresolved human rights cases, rehashed the conditions that 
led to the military action, and opined on other long-term 
effects of the military's nineteen-year regime.  While 
steadily receding, the military regime era still casts some 
shadows on Brazil-U.S. relations. End introduction and 
summary 
 
Forty Years Ago 
---------------- 
 
¶2.  (SBU)  Mainstream Brazilian news outlets have detailed 
the circumstances and legacy of the 1964 military coup that 
ousted President Goulart and ushered in two decades of 
"General-Presidents."  While bemoaning the military's human 
and civil rights violations, misguided pharaonic projects in 
the Amazon, and ultimately failed economic policies, some 
pundits credit the military presidents for modernizing 
Brazil, and occasionally standing up to the United States. 
This "on the other hand" praise recalls comments by 
then-candidate Lula da Silva in 2002, who credited the same 
military government that jailed him with pursuing strategic 
planning that benefited the country.  Other legacies of that 
era have received less media attention.  These include the 
unwieldy, novel-sized 1988 Constitution -- an over-reaction 
to the dictatorship that hobbled effective governance by 
minutely detailing a vast range of states' and citizens' 
rights -- and the inordinate influence of the regime-endorsed 
opposition party, the PMDB, which evolved into a patronage 
machine that still frustrates presidents today. 
 
The Military Today 
----------------- 
 
¶3.  (SBU)  Not surprisingly, the Brazilian military is 
perhaps the single Brazilian institution most changed since 
the dictatorship era.  The military's experience in 
governance was in large measure controversial and 
frustrating, and today's soldiers want no part in politics. 
The Brazilian armed forces are now securely under civilian 
authority, and willingly play a diminished role in national 
decisionmaking.  Although Brazil's constitution gives the 
military an internal order role in crises, officers no longer 
see themselves as the nation's bulwark against incompetent 
politicians.  Instead, they are keenly focused on 
professionalism, seeking to protect national borders, prepare 
for peacekeeping missions and provide assistance to remote 
populations. The change is widely perceived and public 
opinion polls consistently show the military among the 
country's most trusted institutions, even though its funding 
has plummeted through the years. 
 
¶4. (SBU) There remains some negative residue. There is a 
feeling among some older and retired officers that the steps 
the military took to move the country back toward democracy 
are not appreciated today.  And there remains a subtle degree 
of rancor toward the USG, owing to a sense among some older 
officers that the U.S. switched abruptly from supporting the 
military government to condemning it for human rights 
violations.  In addition, the Brazilian military's reluctance 
to take on some counterdrug and crime control missions which 
could involve violent engagement with civilians is reinforced 
by lingering questions about unresolved 1970s 
counterinsurgency-related disappearances. 
 
Economic Legacy 
--------------- 
 
¶5.  (SBU) The most trumpeted positive aspect of the 
dictatorship was its supposed "economic miracle," commonly 
attributed to the direction of state industrial development 
by skilled teams of non-ideological technocrats.  Brazil's 
GDP growth was said to be the world's highest from the late 
1960s until halted by the world oil crisis in the 1970s.  The 
dictatorship completed monster energy and infrastructure 
projects.  The generals also nurtured and protected (with 
rigid market reserves) some key heavy industries (e.g. 
automobiles) and "strategic" production, most notably 
informatics.  (Ironically, it was in part the emphasis on 
protected heavy industries that made the labor movement's 
strikes in the 1970s such effective platforms for the growing 
democratic opposition.) 
 
¶6. (SBU)  At the same time, it eventually became recognized 
that the "miracle" did little to lessen Brazil's historic 
curse of poverty and income disparities -- wealth accrued 
mostly to the elite and a slowly broadening middle class in 
the south and also brought benefits to industrial workers, 
but the country's poor grew poorer.  Even the statistics upon 
which the regime based its claims of overall growth 
transpired toward the end to be debatable.  In the context of 
official economic policies and attitudes, Brazil's 
dictatorship left few discernible marks.  Everyone in both 
public and the private sectors here acknowledges that the 
state can never again dispose of the resources to launch a 
broad-based development design. 
 
Some Lingering Repercussions for U.S. Interests 
--------------------------------------------- -- 
 
¶7. (SBU)  Some journalists and academics portray the U.S. as 
directly encouraging the coup plotters, or at least having 
foreknowledge of the planning.  Some of the more 
sensationalist publications draw labored parallels between 
1964 and the level of U.S. influence in Brazil today.  But 
other Brazilian reporters note that the USG has provided 
greater access to documents and tape recordings of official 
conversations from that era than are available in Brazilian 
archives, and "O Estado de Sao Paulo's" 31 March edition 
featured an essay by former U.S. Ambassador Lincoln Gordon 
(1961-65)  debunking accusations of USG collusion with the 
coup makers.  Most informed observers have concluded that the 
Brazilian civilian political leadership of that era bears a 
significant measure of responsibility, and that the generals 
and admirals who mounted the coup were prepared to move 
regardless of U.S. signals. 
 
¶8. (SBU) Weekly newsmagazine VEJA has pointed out that an 
important legacy of the military regime is the state of 
Brazil's nuclear program.  The dictatorship's failed attempts 
to fabricate a nuclear weapon and its cooperation with Iraq 
and others still color Brazilian policy decisions.  The 
militarization of that program contributed to Brazil's not 
signing the NPT until 1998 and for a time slowed Brazil's 
evolution into a regional non-proliferation success story. 
 
¶9.  (SBU)  The coup also indirectly built up the prestige 
Fidel Castro still holds among Brazil's left.  Goulart's 
flirtation with Castro and Che had rankled the Brazilian 
military even before the coup.  Castro's support for the 
failed Brazilian insurgents of the early 1970s and opposition 
political and union movements still endear him to key members 
of the current government, some of whom sought refuge in Cuba 
during the military era, including Presidential Chief of 
Staff Jose Dirceu. 
 
Water Under the Bridge 
---------------------- 
 
¶10. (SBU) Comment. Two of Brasilia's three bridges are named 
after military presidents.  The third and newest commemorates 
a popular civilian president who lost his political rights 
under the military regime and whose death some blame on the 
dictatorship. Brazil's culture, economy, and political life 
still contain many such ironies (e.g., Brazil's 
privately-owned aviation giant EMBRAER began as a parastatal 
sinecure for ex-Air Force officers in 1969, and Foreign 
Minister Amorim and his left-leaning Deputy Minister worked 
for a film parastatal during the dictatorship.).  The harsher 
aspects of the dictatorship and the long return to democracy 
are not forgotten.  However, 40 years since the coup and 19 
years since the return to civilian rule, the military era is 
of less and less relevance to a forward-looking society in 
which a third of the population was born after the 
restoration of democracy.  Brazil's civil and political 
institutions are now fully democratic, the military is a 
respected (if underfunded) professional force, and some of 
the opposition figures of the military era are now running 
the country. 
 
HRINAK