Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco was the first of five generals to serve as president during Brazil’s 21-year military dictatorship, which lasted from 1964 to 1985. Although he promised to restore Brazilian democracy, the general consistently violated the nation’s constitution, helped to consolidate the military’s political power, and ushered in two decades of authoritarianism in Brazil during his three-year presidency.

Early Life and Career:

Born in the Northeastern state of Ceará in 1897, Castelo Branco grew up in a military family. His father was an army officer, and, following in his footsteps, at age 21, he joined a military academy in Brazil’s southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul.

Castelo Branco’s career in the armed forces progressed well and his reputation as a military intellectual benefited greatly from a period in the late 1930s when he participated in a two-year course at the prestigious “École Superiore de Guerre” in Paris and also took courses at Fort Leavenworth in the United States. During World War II, from 1944–1945, he served in the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, which fought in Italy alongside the United States military.

Upon returning to Brazil after World War II, Castelo Branco furthered his classification as an intellectual as well as his association with Western militaries by becoming intimately involved in Brazil’s Superior War College, which was founded in 1949 “with the help of French and American advisors.” This elite institution, which trained civilian and military personnel, developed hypotheses and doctrines about how Brazil could progress economically, politically, and culturally.

Between the end of World War II and the 1964 coup d’état, Castelo Branco distinguished himself from other high-ranking generals by consistently refusing to participate in military conspiracies to overthrow the constitutional government. However, by 1964 he had experienced a change of heart and helped to plan the March 31 military uprising that deposed President João Goulart.

Given the military’s yearning for legitimacy, it is hardly surprising that Castelo Branco, a well-regarded “legalist,” was chosen to spearhead Brazil’s nascent military regime. In many ways, the general’s middle-class upbringing, professional reputation as an intellectual, and public support for liberalism mirror the ideals the Brazilian military associated with itself and the image the regime hoped public observers would absorb.

Economic Policy:

After assuming the presidency, Castelo Branco imposed austerity measures to counteract inflation, which had already reached 100 percent three months into 1964, and to prevent Brazil from defaulting on its national debt. In addition, he hoped that his administration’s commitment to fiscal conservatism would inspire financial support from powerful foreign lenders, such as the IMF, the United States, and the World Bank. This did, indeed, take place. Former presidents Kubitschek, Quadros, and Goulart had all made similar pledges to curb inflation, but eventually discarded IMF-friendly austerity packages because of the programs’ unpopularity among Brazilians. However, without having to fear direct elections or stand up to meaningful opposition from a purged and illegitimate Congress, Castelo Branco could afford to sacrifice the political capital that evaporated as a result of his administration’s austerity measures.

The majority of Castelo Branco’s economic reforms and budget cuts fell on the shoulders of urban and rural workers. Austerity measures ended subsidies for basic commodities such as wheat and oil, froze wages, and controlled prices in certain sectors. Moreover, the new government immediately attacked workers’ potential to effectively resist the reforms by bringing labor unions under closer federal supervision, purging assertive labor leaders, and suppressing union protests. Wealthy and middle-class Brazilians also grew frustrated with Castelo Branco’s economic strategy after a new commitment to tax collection dug into their savings, drastically diminished access to credit, and made it more difficult to conduct business.

All sectors of Brazilian society suffered or stagnated, while foreign capital benefited from Brazil’s favorable investment climate, which featured low wages and handicapped competition from domestic investors. Inflation came under control, falling from 87.8 percent in 1964 to 28.8 percent in 1967. But this lessening of inflation came at the expense of growth and the military government’s popularity.

Brazil-U.S. Relations:

In addition to amending Brazil’s economic strategy, Castelo Branco implemented a drastic shift in Brazilian foreign policy. Above all, he endeavored to mend Brazil’s relationship with the United States, which had gradually deteriorated since the end of World War II.

The United States’ postwar neglect of Brazil, despite the fact that it was the only Latin American country to contribute military personnel to the Allies’ war effort, was considered a major slight. Brazil’s economic elite was frustrated by the United States’ reluctance to contribute substantially to Brazil’s postwar developmental push. At the same time, the United States refused to endorse an enhanced role for Brazil in international affairs—notably, a seat on the U.N. Security Council. In response, Jânio Quadros and João Goulart, the two presidents who preceded Castelo Branco, pursued independent foreign policies that refused to subordinate Brazilian interests to United States policy goals in the region. However, when upon his inauguration, Castelo Branco made it clear that he opposed non-alignment and was dedicated to restoring the traditional intimacy between the United States and Brazil, Washington immediately put its support behind the new military government.

The United States’ participation in planning the coup d’état likely eased the rapid return to the “special relationship.” Castelo Branco did his part to restore friendly relations by breaking diplomatic ties with Cuba in July 1964, supporting the United States in the 1965 invasion of the Dominican Republic, and making public statements that celebrated the United States’ economic and political achievements. The immediate financial and political support from the United States encouraged other international lending institutions, such as the IMF and the World Bank, to renew loans to Brazil and helped convince other powerful Western nations, such as France and West Germany, to acknowledge the government’s legitimacy and to increase investment in Brazil.

It is possible that Castelo Branco’s ties to high-level U.S. military and diplomatic officials, training at Fort Leavenworth, and participation in the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, increased his appeal to Washington’s Cold Warriors. Throughout the early years of the dictatorship, U.S. Ambassador to Brazil Lincoln Gordon voiced frequent public support for Castelo Branco and defended the General’s commitment to legality against occasional protests from sectors of the United States press.

Constitutional Manipulation:

Despite declaring respect for Brazil’s constitution and a firm commitment to maintaining democratic processes, Castelo Branco repeatedly violated the Constitution and progressively guided Brazil further away from representative democracy during his three years in the presidency. Fearing a return to populist leadership if the military observed democratic processes and allowed for direct elections, the shrewd general recognized public dissatisfaction with his economic leadership and circumvented the tenets of Brazil’s constitution to ensure that officials true to his vision for the nation (i.e., the military officer corps) remained in power.

First, after assuming the presidency under the arbitrary auspices of the Institutional Act, in July 1964, Castelo Branco encouraged the purged and illegitimate Congress to approve a constitutional amendment that would extend his presidential mandate by 14 months, until March 1967. Then, a little over a year later, military-endorsed candidates’ defeats in gubernatorial elections prompted Castelo Branco to deal another blow to Brazilian democracy. Civilians and military officials alike viewed the elections as a referendum on military rule, and, once the results were tallied, several officers wanted to prohibit the elected governors from taking office. Castelo Branco convinced these “hard-line” forces to accept the election results, but in the process he agreed to announce Institutional Act No. 2. Released on October 27, 1965, the act unilaterally amended the Constitution by allowing “the government to abolish the existing parties and to make all future elections of president, vice-president, and governor indirect.” In addition, it increased executive power at Congress’ expense and altered the judiciary so that the military exerted heavier influence over the nation’s Supreme Court. Hard-liners’ desire to ignore the Brazilian voters would have provided a more obvious and direct assault on democratic processes, but Institutional Act No. 2 included long-term manipulations that compromised Brazilian democracy through a subtler method.

Finally, at the end of his extended presidential mandate, after indirect elections ensured that another veteran general would assume the presidency, Castelo Branco endorsed a new constitution that placed the content from both Institutional Acts in a constitutional framework. The military’s arbitrary powers, which were supposed to expire at the end of Castelo Branco’s presidency, would now exist indefinitely.

Legacy:

In spite of his failure to restore democracy in Brazil, Castelo Branco often maintains a surprisingly complimentary reputation as a “legalist” in literature on the dictatorship.

One school of interpretation of the dictatorship, which defines it in terms of a contrast between moderate and hard-line forces, associates allegedly “moderate,” “legalist,” and “liberal” officers with the “Castelista” (derived from Castelo) faction of the military.

“Castelistas,” who are occasionally referred to as the “Sorbonne group” for their intellectualism, are placed in opposition to military “hard-liners,” whose political identity is more commonly linked to the regime’s human rights violations and the anti-democratic procedures that proliferated during the years of military rule. Prominent Castelistas include the fifth general-president Ernesto Geisel and the architect of the military regime’s National Security Doctrine, Ernesto Golbery do Couto e Silva.

Whether or not Castelo Branco held a firm personal commitment to democratic processes, his gradual manipulation of the Brazilian Constitution and the nation’s political institutions contradict his classification as a moderate legalist. Because of his untimely and unexpected death—in a plane crash six months after passing the presidency to his successor—Castelo Branco never had the chance to reflect on his decisions and clarify how his non-democratic actions strengthened Brazilian democracy.

Sources

• Moreira Alves, Maria Helena. State and Opposition in Military Brazil. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1985.
• Skidmore, Thomas. The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.