Brazilian Military Government - Divisions Within The Officer Corps

Divisions Within The Officer Corps

The Army could not find a civilian politician acceptable to all of the factions that supported the ouster of João Goulart. On April 15, 1964 fifteen days after the coup, the Army Chief of Staff, Marshal Humberto de Alencar Castello Branco became the appointed president with the intention of overseeing a reform of the political-economic system. He refused to remain in power beyond the remainder of Goulart's term or to institutionalize the military in power. However, competing demands radicalized the situation. Military hard-liners wanted a complete purge of left-wing and populist influences while civilian politicians obstructed Castello Branco's reforms. The latter accused him of hard-line actions to achieve his objectives, and the former accused him of leniency. He recessed and purged Congress to satisfy military hard-liners, removing objectionable state governors and decreeing the expansion of the president's, and by extension the military's, arbitrary powers at the expense of the legislative and judiciary branches. His gamble succeeded in giving him the latitude to repress the populist left but provided the follow-on governments of Artur da Costa e Silva (1967–69) and Emílio Garrastazu Médici (1969–74) with a legal basis for authoritarian rule.

Castello Branco in his own right tried to maintain a degree of democracy. His economic reforms are credited with paving the way for the Brazilian economic "miracle" of the next decade. His restructuring of the party system that had existed since 1945 shaped the bipartisan system of government-opposition relations for the next two decades. Through extra-constitutional decrees dubbed "Institutional Acts" (Portuguese: "Ato Institucional" or "AI"), Castello Branco gave the executive the unchecked ability to change the constitution and remove anyone from office ("AI-1") as well as to have the presidency elected indirectly through a bipartisan system of a government-backed National Renewal Alliance Party (ARENA) and an opposition Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) party ("AI-2").

As in earlier regime changes, the armed forces' officer corps was divided between those who believed that they should confine themselves to their barracks, and the hard-liners who regarded politicians as willing to turn Brazil to communism. The victory of the hard-liners dragged Brazil into what political scientist Juan J. Linz called "an authoritarian situation." However, because the hard-liners could not ignore the counterweight opinions of their colleagues or the resistance of society, they were unable to institutionalize their agenda politically. In addition, they did not attempt to eliminate the trappings of liberal constitutionalism because they feared disapproval of international opinion and damage to their alignment with the United States. As the pole of anticommunism during the Cold War, the United States provided the ideology that the authoritarians used to justify their hold on power. But Washington also preached liberal democracy, which forced the authoritarians to assume the contradictory position of defending democracy by destroying it. Their concern for appearances caused them to abstain from personal dictatorship by requiring each successive general-president to hand over power to his replacement.