Joao Goulart

Joao Belchior Marques Goulart (March 1, 1918, Sao Borja, Rio Grande do Sul - December 6, 1976, Mercedes, Corrientes, Argentina), known universally as "Jango," was the president of Brazil from 1961 to 1964, when a military coup coordinated with the Johnson administration and Nelson Rockefeller's network deposited him from power. A moderate nationalist and protege of Getulio Vargas (his father-in-law figure and mentor), Goulart was not a communist. His proposed "basic reforms" (land redistribution, limits on profit remittances by foreign corporations, extension of the vote to illiterates, and nationalization of private oil refineries) were broadly in line with the kind of social democratic programs common in Western Europe at the time. They were unacceptable to the US corporate and intelligence establishment embedded in Brazil.¹

Rise to Power

Goulart rose through Brazilian politics as Vargas's labor minister, organizing the Brazilian trade union movement and cultivating a mass political base among urban workers. The son of a wealthy rancher in Rio Grande do Sul, he graduated from the law school of Porto Alegre University in 1939 before entering state politics. He was elected to the Rio Grande do Sul state legislature in 1946, then served as that state's secretary of justice and interior, before becoming minister of labour, industry, and commerce under Vargas in 1953 and 1954. He was elected vice president in 1955 under President Juscelino Kubitschek and re-elected in 1961 under President Janio Quadros. When Quadros resigned abruptly in August 1961 (in a still-mysterious episode), Goulart, then on a state visit to China, became president, triggering an immediate military veto attempt that was overcome only by a constitutional amendment reducing the president's powers.²

His presidency was thus politically weakened from the start. He governed under a parliamentary system imposed to limit his authority until a January 1963 referendum restored full presidential powers, by which point his US opponents had two years of preparation.³

Kennedy Administration Planning

The Kennedy administration's covert planning against Goulart began almost two years before the April 1964 coup, documented in presidential recordings and declassified NSC papers now collected in the National Security Archive's Electronic Briefing Book No. 465.

On July 30, 1962, the first secretly-taped Oval Office meeting addressing Brazil took place. Ambassador Lincoln Gordon attended alongside presidential aide Richard Goodwin. Gordon stated "We may very well want them to take over" by year's end, referring to the Brazilian military. At that same meeting, officials agreed to appoint Lt. Col. Vernon Walters as military attache in Brazil to strengthen US ties with the Brazilian military establishment.⁴

On December 11, 1962, the NSC drafted "U.S. Short-Term Policy Toward Brazil," presenting three options: do nothing; collaborate to overthrow Goulart; or seek to change his orientation while keeping coup planning in reserve. The NSC Executive Committee (meeting as Meeting No. 35) recommended Option C as "the only feasible present approach" while directing that the option of a coup be kept "under active and continuous consideration."⁵

On December 17, 1962, Robert F. Kennedy, then Attorney General, met with Goulart at the Palacio do Alvorada in Brasilia. The meeting lasted approximately three hours. An Embassy memorandum of conversation, dated December 19, 1962, records Kennedy confronting Goulart over communist infiltration, economic mismanagement, and anti-American foreign policy positions. During the meeting Kennedy scribbled a note to Gordon: "We seem to be getting no place." He later characterized Goulart as "a Brazilian Jimmy Hoffa," and wrote that Goulart believed "he's got us by the --- and that he can play it both ways."⁶

On March 8, 1963, Kennedy met again with Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Ambassador Gordon, and Robert Kennedy to review US-Brazil relations. The strategy was described internally as "applying the screws" through economic aid pressure. At that same meeting, a CIA memorandum titled "Plotting Against Goulart" was circulated, tracking various coup plots; it identified Marshal Odylio Denys's network as "the best-developed plan," while warning that premature coup attempts would strengthen Goulart and alienate pro-US military officers.⁷

On October 7, 1963, a White House tape records Kennedy asking Gordon directly: "Do you see a situation where we might be --- find it desirable to intervene militarily ourselves?" Gordon estimated 50-50 odds that Goulart would leave power by early 1964, discussed providing fuel and ammunition to pro-US military factions, and stated: "I would not want us to close our minds to the possibility of some kind of discreet intervention...which would help see the right side win."⁸

On November 22, 1963, the State Department issued an Embassy contingency plan with, in the words of the cover memo, "heavy emphasis on U.S. armed intervention." The date was the day of Kennedy's assassination. His death removed whatever personal restraints his approach had imposed on the embassy and CIA station in Rio.⁹

The Destabilization Campaign

The destabilization of Goulart's government was a multi-front operation:

AIFLD (American Institute for Free Labor Development), operating through its Brazil representative Andrew McLellan, organized anticommunist parallel unions and trained labor operatives at its Front Royal, Virginia facility. AIFLD trained over thirty Brazilian trade unions in the year before the coup. When the coup succeeded, AIFLD graduates participated in purging Brazilian unions of leftists and in organizing the employer lockouts and worker demonstrations that had destabilized the government in early 1964.¹⁰

USAID (Agency for International Development), under Ambassador Gordon's direction, used development funds to build economic leverage over Brazilian states governed by US-friendly politicians (notably Carlos Lacerda of Guanabara and Magalhaes Pinto of Minas Gerais), who became the civilian front for the coup.¹¹

CIA covert action, coordinated in part by J.C. King (chief of the CIA's Western Hemisphere Division) and the CIA station in Rio, funded opposition organizations, media, and political campaigns. On September 10, 1963, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence for Plans Richard Helms briefed the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), stating that CIA "is carrying out covert action in the labor movement and CIA believes that Communist control can be weakened." Lincoln Gordon's secret cables to Washington, declassified in later decades, requested and received authorization for covert support to coup-planning military officers.¹²

Rockefeller commercial pressure operated through Chase Manhattan Bank (his brother David Rockefeller's institution) withholding and manipulating credit to Brazilian businesses in ways that heightened the economic instability the coup required.¹³

Immediate Coup Preparations

In the final days before the coup, US coordination with the plotters was direct. Lt. Col. Vernon Walters, the military attache, was in close contact with General Humberto Castello Branco, the coup's military leader and Walters's personal friend. Walters had predicted the precise day of the coup one week in advance. On March 30, 1964, he filed a telegram (FRUS 1964-68, Vol. XXXI, Document 186) based on conspirators' own plans, listing seven agreed trigger conditions and reporting that action was expected "this week," adding that he "expects to be aware beforehand of go signal."¹⁴

On March 27-29, 1964, Ambassador Gordon sent a five-part top-secret cable to CIA Director John McCone, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk (NSAEBB465, Document 12), urging clandestine delivery of arms, petroleum shipments, and CIA covert operations to support Castello Branco's forces. A follow-up cable on March 29 requested arms "pre-positioned prior any outbreak of violence" for paramilitary units loyal to the coup.¹⁵

On March 28, 1964, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy circulated a top-secret NSC memcon describing coup support options including covert armaments, gasoline delivery, and naval positioning. Bundy stated: "we should not be worrying that the military will react; we should be worrying that the military will not react."¹⁶

On March 31, 1964, a White House tape records President Lyndon B. Johnson approving active US support for the coup, telling Undersecretary of State George Ball: "I think we ought to take every step that we can, be prepared to do everything that we need to do," and "we just can't take this one." He instructed Ball to "get right on top of it and stick my neck out a little."¹⁷

The Coup

On the night of March 31 - April 1, 1964, the military moved. Army commander General Olimpio Mourao Filho marched from Minas Gerais; other commands followed. Goulart fled Rio for Brasilia, then for Porto Alegre, then crossed into Uruguay. A CIA cable (NSAEBB465, Document 16) dated April 2, 1964 confirms: "Joao Goulart, deposed president of Brazil, left Porto Alegre about 1pm local time for Montevideo." The Johnson administration recognized the new military government within twelve hours, while Goulart was still on Brazilian soil.

A White House memorandum of April 1, 1964 (FRUS 1964-68, Vol. XXXI, Document 206) reported the coup "95% over" by 3:30 PM. Castello Branco declined US material assistance; it was not needed.¹⁸

Operation Brother Sam, the code name assigned by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on March 31, 1964, designated the US naval task force dispatched to Brazilian waters. Task Force 135 comprised the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal, a helicopter carrier, six destroyers from the Second Fleet, and four petroleum tankers. The task force was never deployed operationally; the coup succeeded before it arrived. Its positioning in Brazilian waters had signaled to the coup plotters that US military support was available if resistance materialized, particularly in Rio Grande do Sul and Pernambuco.¹⁹

Exile and Death

Goulart lived in exile in Uruguay and later on his ranch in northern Argentina in Corrientes province. He died in Mercedes, Corrientes, Argentina, on December 6, 1976, of what was reported as a heart attack. No autopsy was performed at the time.

In January 2008, Mario Neira Barreiro, a former intelligence officer under Uruguay's dictatorship, stated while imprisoned in Brazil that agents of the Brazilian military government had switched Goulart's heart medication for pills designed to trigger cardiac arrest, describing the operation under the name "Operation Scorpion." In March 2009, previously unreleased documents from Brazil's National Information Service (SNI) reinforced the poisoning theory.

In 2013, Goulart's body was exhumed in Brazil after nearly four decades, with Brazilian, Argentine, and Uruguayan forensic experts participating. The forensic analysis produced inconclusive results: tests found no definitive evidence of poison, and the autopsy concluded that death was most likely due to natural causes, though the absence of a contemporaneous autopsy left the question formally open.

Brazil's National Truth Commission (Comissao Nacional da Verdade, CNV), which delivered its final report in December 2014, included investigation of Goulart's death in its broader examination of Operation Condor. The CNV report, covering human rights violations from 1964 to 1985, identified over 375 perpetrators of atrocities by name and found over 400 individuals killed by the military dictatorship. The chapter titled "International Connections: From Repressive Alliances in the Southern Cone to Operation Condor" documented Brazil's coordination with other Southern Cone military governments in the elimination of exiled opposition figures. The forensic inconclusion meant the CNV stopped short of formally declaring Goulart's death a murder, though it treated the circumstances as consistent with Operation Condor targeting practices.²⁰

Military Dictatorship and the Amazon

The military government's 21-year rule (1964-1985) facilitated the construction of Amazonian highways, dams, and mining operations on a scale that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of indigenous people and the destruction of vast stretches of Amazonian forest. The dictatorship immediately contracted the Summer Institute of Linguistics to survey "potentially hostile tribes" in the interior, opened Amazon land to foreign corporate investment, and placed the FUNAI under military supervision.²¹

Castello Branco, after declining US material assistance during the coup itself, became the dictatorship's first president. Walters was promoted to general following the coup's success and went on to become Deputy Director of the CIA under Richard Nixon in the 1970s and US Ambassador to the United Nations under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.²²