How could he square professions of self-determination—a central principle of the Alliance—with the reality of secret American interventions in Cuba, Brazil, British Guiana, Peru, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and every country that seemed vulnerable to left-wing subversion? (And that was just the beginning: A June National Security directive approved by the president had listed four additional Latin American countries “sufficiently threatened by Communist-inspired insurgency”—Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala, and Venezuela.…)32
In Brazil, Goulart’s most controversial proposal was land reform, as had been the case in Guatemala under Árbenz. Brazil’s landed gentry were horrified by the policy; they withdrew from negotiations and put all their energy into taking down Jango instead. Inflation was already out of control, but things got much worse for the economy when all US aid dried up, and Brazil’s international creditors stopped all further loans while Washington instead funneled cash to state governors committed to a golpe de estado, or coup, in Brazil.33 Brazil’s Congress caught one US-backed front channeling millions to opposition politicians, and Jango shut them down, but that didn’t stop the ongoing, effective destabilization of his government.34 With the US now effectively leading an international capital strike, Jango struggled to finance basic state functions. He certainly had no help from the men in Moscow; after the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviets did not want to cause any trouble in Washington’s backyard.35
Then, Carlos Lacerda, the man who had played a role in the end of both the Vargas and Quadros presidencies, acted again. In October 1963 he gave an interview to Julian Hart, the Brazil correspondent for the Los Angeles Times (and therefore my own predecessor), in which he accused Jango of plotting a coup himself, calling him a golpista (Portuguese for putschist), and asked Washington to intervene.
Washington officials knew, as did everyone else, that if Jango was going down, it would be the military that would depose him. Just as in Indonesia, the Armed Forces in Brazil were the country’s most reliably anticommunist force. But their allegiance to this ideology went far deeper than was the case in Indonesia. It was even deeper than the Cold War. In some ways the Americans could not hope for a better ally, and this perfect anticommunist partnership grew out of a powerful legend going back to 1935, when a younger President Vargas had used a sputtering left-wing revolt to crack down on communists and build a dictatorship.
The Legend of the Intentona
The Brazilian Communist Party was founded in 1922, largely by immigrants and former anarchists.36 When they immediately joined Lenin’s recently established Communist International, Moscow had little idea what to do with them. The Comintern classified Brazil as a large “semicolonial” country, in the same category as China, and put it on the back burner. At the time, the directive the Brazilians got from the Soviets was to form a united front with the national “bourgeoisie” against imperialism, without Communist leadership—in the same way that Mao was ordered to work with Chiang Kai-shek, with very mixed results.37
Brazil’s Communist Party was mostly committed to that line. But it also operated in a country where military plotting was routine for every political tendency. Getúlio Vargas first took power in a military coup in 1930, and after he began taking cues from the fascist movements in Italy and Spain, a man named Luis Carlos Prestes, a charismatic communist lieutenant who had once attempted a failed left-populist revolt, founded the Aliança Nacional Libertadora (ANL).38 The ANL was opposed to fascism and integralismo, which in Brazil was a rabidly anticommunist, kind of Catholic, local variant of fascism. The Aliança included many moderate supporters of Vargas who wanted to pull him back from the right, and also gained the backing of the Communist Party itself.
Moscow did not set up the ANL, nor did it order the National Liberation Alliance to act; indeed, the Soviets were worried the Brazilians were being reckless and adventurist. However, when Communist leaders in Moscow realized that Prestes might launch another rebellion, they didn’t want to be left out. They sent a small advisory staff, including a German explosives specialist and Victor Allen Barron, a US citizen and communications expert who was tasked with communicating with Communist leadership back in Russia.39
Most of the civilians in the Communist Party and the ANL didn’t know any preparations were underway for a rebellion. And it started on accident, up in Natal, in poor northeastern Brazil, after soldiers there became enraged by the dismissal of some colleagues. The Communist Party there asked the soldiers to wait, but to no avail. The rebellion exploded, and rebels actually took control of the city for a time, commandeering cars and robbing the banks. When the uprising reached Recife, also in the northeast, the government’s response was a slaughter, as the military put down the uprising and executed the leftist rebels.
“It was brutal, tremendous repression! They killed left and right, crooked and straight. The life of a communist wasn’t worth ten bits of raw honey,” said Lieutenant Lamartine Coutinho, using an old Portuguese expression we might translate as “wasn’t worth shit.”
Then the final act came, on a small beach just around the bend from Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro. The attack began in the wee hours of the morning on November 27, 1935. Military troops launched a grenade toward the barracks, which blew up in front of a pillar. Then they opened fire.
“It was an ugly, horrible battle!” said one of the soldiers under attack that morning. “Shots all over the place!” But in the end, only two soldiers died in combat.
The ANL had recklessly wasted human lives, probably dozens across the country, and only succeeded in handing themselves over to the government, to be used as they pleased.40
As it happened, the story of a failed communist coup perfectly served the interests of the elites that were pushing for a rightward shift at the time. The powerful newspaper O Globo had already published an entirely false report, signed in June by owner Roberto Marinho, that communists had received orders to take over the country by “shooting all non-communist officials, preferably at the doors of their homes or even after invading their domiciles.”41
The Vargas government used the real event, from then on somewhat incorrectly referred to as “Intentona Comunista,” or Communist Uprising, to crack down on the left and his critics in general, and then as an excuse to consolidate dictatorial powers. Vargas declared a state of emergency, created the “Committee for the Repression of Communism,” suspended individual liberties, and began to round up the country’s leftists. Many of the Intentona’s leaders were executed, though the popular Prestes remained in jail. Authorities banned left-wing books.42
The tale of violent communist subversion served the needs of the right-wing elements in the military and government so effectively that they created another one. In 1937, a general “found” a document outlining the “Plano Cohen,” a Jewish-communist plot (capitalizing on antisemitism on the fascist right) that included directives to invade the houses of wealthy Brazilians and rape them.43 Vargas used this entirely fabricated plan to authorize a new military coup, promulgate a new constitution, and take control of a full-fledged dictatorship.44
The 1935 Intentona served as a foundational legend for the Armed Forces, and for the increasingly virulent anticommunist movement that overtook the military and society in general. Every year, on November 27, the military gathered in front of a memorial structure on Praia Vermelha, or “Red Beach,” to commemorate the defense against the communist rebellion. And a powerful myth took shape. The military came to tell the story that November 1935 was not a conventional attack on military barracks. The tale became that communists snuck into the chambers of officers, and stabbed them to death while they slept.
This parable of unique communist evil was disproved many decades later by careful historical investigation. As historian Rodrigo Patto Sá Motta affirms, citing autopsy reports: “No one died from a stab wound that morning… after all, it would be curious to imagine professionals from the Brazilian Armed Forces—no matter what their political convictions—carryin
g out a military uprising using daggers!”45
Communists with knives drawn, ready to stab you in your sleep, became a common trope in Brazil’s voluminous anticommunist material over the next few decades. In the press, you could also find illustrations indicating that communists were insects that could only be “exterminated” with liberty, the family, and morality. Communism was called a plague, a virus, or cancer, terms that were also hurled at communists at the time in nearby Argentina.46 More often than not, communism was associated with pure evil or witchcraft, drawn with the use of demons or Satanic beasts, such as dragons, snakes, and goats. There was often the implication, or outright depiction, of sexual perversion and deviancy.47
Launching false accusations of communism could also be profitable. Police, soldiers, and low-level politicians would “find” evidence that a certain citizen was communist, earning more resources for their departments or, very often, generating direct bribes. The fascist political party, Ação Integralista Brasileira (AIB), reportedly used classic extortion tactics on small businesses, but with an anticommunist twist. In the dark of night, party members would cover the walls of shops and homes with seemingly communist graffiti. Then they’d show up a few days later, asking the owners to make donations to the AIB, to prove to the concerned citizens in the neighborhood that they weren’t actually communists.48
In the 1950s and early 1960s, Brazil’s military deepened its ties with Washington. The US maintained its largest service missions in Brazil, and Brazilian officers received extra appointments to train at Fort Leavenworth’s command school, alongside all those soldiers from Indonesia.49
For Brazil’s many right-wing elements, especially in the military, Jango’s entire presidency was a mistake. But in 1961, Jango made a blunder that upset the military further. The announcement that Brazil would reopen relations with the Soviet Union came just days before the annual commemoration of the Intentona, and was seen as a provocation. Not long after, one of the country’s armed far-right groups, Movimento Anticomunista (MAC), covered Rio de Janeiro in graffiti, with slogans like “Death to the traitors,” “Let us shoot, fellow Brazilians, Moscow’s secular forces,” and “War to the death for the PCB,” the country’s still-illegal Communist Party.50 It is widely believed the MAC received funding from the CIA and carried out several bombings, as well as shooting up the National Student Union.51
Another anticommunist group, the Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property (TFP), founded in 1960 in São Paulo, sought to counter the decadent threat of international communism by forcing its youth brigades to cut their hair short, wear modest clothing, refrain from watching TV, and learn to fight karate.52 TFP was international in its vision, and soon established chapters across Latin America, in South Africa, and in the United States.
As for the actual Brazilian Communist Party, it split in 1962. Under the leadership of Luis Carlos Prestes, still influential decades later, the PCB had gone along with Khrushchev’s decision to move away from Stalinism, and remained committed to working peacefully within the boundaries of Brazilian democracy. A splinter group, more inspired by Mao and convinced of the need for outright revolution, rejected this “revisionism” and formed the almost-identically named Partido Comunista do Brasil (PCdoB). Under Jango’s government, the PCB was actually much more moderate than other actors on the left at the time, since they didn’t even support updating the constitution.53
All this anticommunist fire and brimstone was directed at opposing a president who was, at most, a liberal reformist. But Jango looked very likely to win re-election in 1965. If he had eventually succeeded in enabling more people to vote, the country would have changed in very noticeable ways for the elites. And these changes were supported by the country’s small number of communists, who really did exist. If you were opposed to anything that communists approved of, and terrified of the consequences that social reform would have had in a country like Brazil, you could find many reasons to oppose Jango. If you accepted all the tenets of fanatical anticommunism as J. Edgar Hoover laid them out back in the 1940s—and the Brazilian elite and US government did—their opposition made sense.
The association between Jango and clandestine communism did not just lurk on the dark, right-wing fringes of Brazilian society. A January 1964 cartoon in O Globo, the newspaper published by what is still Brazil’s most important media group, ran with the headline “The Literacy Campaign,” referring to Jango’s plan to teach more people to learn to read and write. On the right sat a dirty man in ragged clothes, his face the picture of ignorance. On the left, his teacher, pointing at him and cackling. Behind the instructor, protruding from his suit, is a long devil’s tail, with a hammer and sickle stamped on its pointy tip.54
Three Down
In the fall of 1963, President John F. Kennedy ordered his ambassador in South Vietnam to facilitate the removal of President Diem. As an ally, Diem was now causing Washington more trouble than he was worth. The CIA passed the word along to a local general, and on November 1, 1963, Diem was kidnapped along with his brother, and they were both shot and stabbed in the back of an armored personnel carrier. Kennedy hadn’t actually wanted Diem killed, but he knew that he was responsible for his death, and the assassination shook and badly depressed the young president.55
A few weeks later, Kennedy himself was murdered, while driving through Dallas. The men closest to him, knowing they had been actively trying to get rid of Castro, and were using methods that were far from innocent all over the world, scrambled to guess who had done it. Bobby Kennedy himself suspected the killing might have been the work of the CIA, the mob, or Castro, all of which would have meant he himself was partly responsible. Vice President Lyndon Johnson’s first suspicion was that it was retaliation for Diem’s murder.56 Johnson did not even know the administration had been trying to kill Castro, and as he took over the presidency, he struggled to wrap his mind around the network of covert operations he would inherit.57
Lyndon Baines Johnson was a hardworking, all-American Christian from Texas. LBJ was liberal, probably more so than Kennedy, and regarded as the “Master of the Senate,” where he had served as its incredibly powerful leader for six years.58 But when it came to foreign policy, he was less experienced. He had none of Kennedy’s appreciation for the historical battles between imperialism and national revolution in the Third World. According to biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin, who knew him well, Johnson held an all-too-common American belief that the rest of the world was basically just like the USA, but a bit behind. He held a “belief in the universal applicability of American values, the existence of a global consensus,” she wrote. But LBJ didn’t have the confidence in his own mastery of foreign policy to challenge the men left behind by Kennedy.59 So he often neglected foreign affairs, deferring to the wisdom of these advisers.
In Brazil, covert operations were well underway. CIA agent Tim Hogan and military attaché Vernon Walters were already in the country and active. They were using both the military and economy against the president. The screws were tightening around Jango.
The influential daily Jornal do Brasil published an editorial, “Basta!,” which would serve as the rallying cry for the country’s golpistas. “Before we arrive at Revolution, we say ENOUGH! We say that as long as there are organized, cohesive and disciplined Brazilian Armed Forces… ENOUGH! The time has come… we register the death of the false politics of class reconciliation carried out by the President’s witchcraft and spells… national patience has its limits.”60 In late November, just days after Kennedy was killed, Jango attended the country’s annual celebration of the defeat of that fabled Intentona Comunista on the Red Beach in Rio de Janeiro. His presence only served to annoy many of the country’s most committed conservatives, who went as far as to boycott the ceremony and organize other anticommunist events nearby.
At that commemoration on November 27, 1963, Army General Jair Dantas Ribeiro gave a terse, ominous speech. “In the quiet of the night, driven by princi
ples never understood, extremist groups took off on an inglorious endeavor,” he began. “Without flag and without cause, without ideals and without a destination, the action of these adventurers found no echo in the heart of the nation, whose Christian structure is entirely immune to hate and extremism.” Speaking with Jango in the audience, he continued:
Those hateful terrorists of 1935, raising the communist shield that means only ruin and rancor, propagating humanitarian popular sentiments that, in reality, served only to hide subaltern proposals and thirst for power, murdering treacherously in the shadow of night, our armed brothers, wrote a black page in the History of Brazil.… We should not, however, suppress this story: that attempt remains an example for these pests, who want to install an anti-democratic regime.…
For now and forever, the example of the Army and its vigilance will remain, and serve as a warning.61
For Ribeiro, the “pests” were communists. And military officers were already formulating their own theories as to Jango’s intentions. Many were now convinced that in addition to giving low-level soldiers the vote, he would appeal directly to them, subverting the authority of the superior officers.
Brazil’s right-wing forces began to spread the idea that it was actually Jango who planned his own, left-wing, coup. They charged that to get his reforms implemented, he would shut down the government, abolish Congress, or declare a new constitution. The country’s major newspapers helped to disseminate this story. If this was true, the thinking went, a coup that removed him from power would actually save democracy. US Ambassador Lincoln Gordon shared this view. And since Jango was a weak president, Gordon speculated, he might be supplanted by even more radical—maybe communist—forces later if he wasn’t stopped now.62
Behind the scenes, the Americans were coordinating with the military. In March, Gordon sent a cable back to Washington. He wrote: “My considered conclusion is that Goulart is now definitely engaged on campaign to seize dictatorial power, accepting the active collaboration of the Brazilian Communist Party, and of other radical left revolutionaries to this end. If he were to succeed it is more than likely that Brazil would come under full Communist control…”
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