Fury as far-right President Jair Bolsonaro orders Brazil’s army to mark 55th anniversary of military coup that led to the killing of hundreds
- Bolsonaro’s order coincides with a growing campaign to present the coup as a ‘democratic revolution’, rather than the start of a brutal far-right regime
Victims of Brazil’s dictatorship have responded with fury after far-right president Jair Bolsonaro ordered the country’s armed forces to commemorate the anniversary of a 1964 coup which unleashed 21 years of military rule.
Bolsonaro, a former army captain, has frequently praised the regime under which hundreds of people were killed or forcibly disappeared. But his instructions that the military should mark the coup’s 55th anniversary this Sunday has prompted widespread fury.
“Brazil celebrating the anniversary of the ‘64 coup is like Germany instituting Hitler Day,” tweeted journalist Hildegard Angel, whose brother Stuart was tortured and killed in custody, and whose mother Zuzu died in a traffic accident staged by military agents.
“This makes me enormously sad,” Angel told The Guardian. “It makes me want to leave Brazil.” She noted that the coup actually took place in the early hours of April 1 – known as “Liar’s Day” in Brazil – and said Bolsonaro’s supporters want to rewrite history. “They want to sell a lie to the children of Brazil,” she said.
James Green, a professor of Brazilian history at Brown University in the US, Bolsonaro’s position on the dictatorship made him “the equivalent of a Holocaust denier”.
Bolsonaro’s spokesman said on Monday that the president had told the defence ministry to hold “appropriate commemorations” this weekend, although he left it up to military commanders to decide how such events should be staged.
Official commemorations of the military coup disappeared from the army’s calendar of events during the government of leftist president Dilma Rousseff, a former Marxist guerilla who was imprisoned and tortured during the dictatorship. Her government launched a truth commission which published an exhaustive report of dictatorship abuses in 2014.
