At Ernesto Geisel’s inauguration, on March 15, 1974, the Brazilian military regime was only weeks away from celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the coup d’état—or, according to Geisel’s preferred terminology, “the revolution of 1964.” The regime’s first three general-presidents had successfully countered numerous waves of peaceful and violent resistance with democratic manipulation and repression, and they had restored economic stability and growth—even if the majority of Brazilians remained segregated from the benefits of prosperity.

Facing a thoroughly controlled political environment and a carefully restricted civil society, the new president could continue to consolidate the military’s authoritarian power or he could attempt to diminish the military’s interference in Brazil’s political institutions and public life. As a Castelista, Geisel repeatedly claimed that democracy was his preferred form of government. However, like other generals associated with the “legalist” Castelistas, he found it difficult to actually defend democracy when elections revealed that most Brazilians’ opinions did not correlate with the military’s vision for the nation’s future. In the end, the Geisel administration proved indecisive, wavering between support for liberalization and a reliance on dictatorial powers.

Early Career

A member of the “Sorbonne Group,” Geisel was deeply involved in the Higher War College and, like Castelo Branco and Costa e Silva, he graduated at the top of his class in military college and received additional training in the United States. Following the coup d’état, he became chief of the president’s military staff under Castelo Branco, and served as a minister in the Supreme Military Tribunal during Costa e Silva’s presidency.

In addition to holding prestigious positions in the armed forces, Geisel had more experience participating in Brazil’s civilian political culture than any of the three generals who preceded him in the presidency. Before the coup d’état, he served as secretary of finance and public works in Pariaba, a Northeastern state, and as a top aide during the Dutra presidency. Then, immediately prior to assuming the presidency, from 1968–1973, Geisel occupied another civilian post—president of Petrobras, Brazil’s giant national oil company. Providing a stark contrast with Médici, Geisel was known for his autocratic management style and his personal interest in all major policy decisions.

On and Off Liberalization

At the start of his presidency, Geisel promised to liberalize the government and place Brazil back on the path to representative democracy. But, somewhat predictably, the general’s commitment to reform wavered throughout his presidential term. In the early months of Geisel’s administration, two realities—unfavorable election results and ongoing torture—weakened the general’s resolve to enact concrete democratic reforms, reduced the public’s belief that the new president was serious about liberalization, and diminished Geisel’s ability to withstand radical sectors in the armed forces that wanted the military to hold power indefinitely and without civilian interference.

In November 1974, confident that the military regime had finally endeared itself to the Brazilian populace after the “economic miracle,” the Geisel administration allowed for the most open elections since 1965 and was shocked by the outcome. Geisel provided opposition Senate candidates the previously prohibited opportunity to campaign on television and radio and also permitted newspapers to report on contenders’ political agendas. Granted the opportunity to disseminate a party platform, opposition candidates wisely transformed the election into a symbolic plebiscite about military rule. On election day, most military endorsed candidates lost and Geisel was reminded of his disdain for the Brazilian public’s voting tendencies.

Faced with the unexpected electoral defeat, Geisel realized that the military would have trouble maintaining power under his planned liberalization and quickly reverted to electoral manipulation. Initially, the Lei Falção merely rescinded opposition candidates’ right to campaign on TV and radio. However, another round of elections disappointed the military in 1976. In response, the president used AI-5, which he had promised to rescind, to close Congress and issue a flurry of unilateral decrees known as the April Package.

Adding to the president’s frustration, the regime’s extensive security apparatus resisted Geisel’s oversight. Unsatisfied by the liquidation of the guerrilla threat and eager to prove their continuing relevance as paid professionals, security officials continued to torture and were completely unaccountable—even to the president. On several occasions throughout Geisel’s presidency, overzealous torturers accidentally murdered their victims, made unconvincing attempts to cover up the cause of death, and provoked widespread national outrage. The administration’s inability to prevent torture paired with the continuation of strict censorship led moderate members of the opposition to question their initial willingness to collaborate with Geisel and to lose confidence in his promises for reform.

Despite reverting to campaign manipulation, governing by decree, and failing to stop torture, before passing power to his successor, Geisel rediscovered his passion for reform and made a significant contribution to liberalizing the Brazilian political system. In December 1978, nearly a decade after its conception, Geisel abolished AI-5, thereby restoring habeas corpus, limiting press censorship, and rescinding the military’s right to close Congress or revoke individuals’ political rights.

Economics

Geisel attempted to detract from Delfim Neto’s bothersome cult of personality by sending him abroad as Brazil’s ambassador to France and appointing Mario Henrique Simonsen as the new finance minister. At the start of the administration, Geisel and Simonsen believed they could reinstate orthodox economic policies and maintain 10 percent annual growth. However, because of a global recession, neither goal was achieved. The worldwide financial crisis that followed the OPEC strike hit Brazil, which imported 80 percent of its oil, especially hard and forced the administration to reassess its economic strategy.

Unwilling to limit growth or allow for the return of accelerated inflation, Geisel pursued copious short-term foreign loans to maintain a high volume of imports and manipulated Brazil’s currency to avoid drastic price fluctuations. Throughout his four-year presidency, GDP continued to expand at a respectable rate of 7 percent and inflation remained surprisingly constant, increasing at an annual rate of 37.9 percent. But even though Geisel’s response to the OPEC crisis delayed the arrival of a national recession, his policies left the Brazilian economy in a precarious position. The large foreign debt, which doubled under Geisel, demanded that Brazil enter into frequent debt renegotiations with uncompromising international lenders and the skewed balance of payments made private businesses wary of continuing to invest in Brazil. Foreshadowing economic turmoil on the horizon, in the final months of the Geisel presidency, 500,000 workers on the outskirts of São Paulo participated in a wildcat strike led by a charismatic young labor leader Luis Inacio da Silva—or, as he’s better known, Lula. In the first successful labor strike since 1968, a new generation of labor leaders, epitomized by Lula, were greeted with support from other sectors of the civilian opposition and with sympathetic coverage from the national press.

Brazil-U.S. Relations

During the Geisel administration, which overlapped with United States’ presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter, Washington and Brasilia consistently disagreed about whether Brazil should be allowed to develop a nuclear program.

Geisel, along with a diverse coalition of Brazilian nationalists, viewed the acquisition of nuclear technology as an important symbol of Brazil’s growing global profile, and argued that in order to meet the nation’s rising energy demand—particularly in light of the OPEC strike—Brazil needed nuclear power. Although the United States admitted Brazil’s need for increased energy capacity, Washington countered that the ability to generate nuclear power would violate the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and allow the military regime to produce nuclear weapons, which the United States could not permit.

Eventually, frustrated by Washington’s opposition to Brazil’s nuclear program, the Geisel administration collaborated with the United States’ close ally, Western Germany. Geisel’s courtship of Western Germany only minimally compromised Brazil-U.S. relations under President Ford, who, in agreement with his predecessor Nixon, viewed Brazil as an indispensable regional ally. However, U.S.-Brazilian relations degenerated considerably after Jimmy Carter won the 1976 presidential election. President Carter’s campaign had pledged to restore transparency and morality to Washington in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal and to rebuild the United States’ global commitment to democracy and human rights after the national trauma of the Vietnam War. Considering the military regime’s continuing human rights abuses, the ongoing manipulation of Brazil’s electoral process, and the government’s newfound desire to become a nuclear power, it seemed inevitable that Geisel and Carter would butt heads.

First, in the months before Carter’s inauguration, U.S. legislators added the Harkin amendment to the 1976 foreign aid bill. The new amendment required the State Department to prepare a dossier about human rights conditions in each nation receiving military aid from the United States. Not surprisingly, the revelations about Brazil created undesirable publicity for the military regime. Rather than answer to the State Department’s evidence of ongoing torture, Geisel relied on nationalist sentiment in Brazil, portrayed the report as an incursion on Brazilian sovereignty, and rejected further military aid from the United States. Adding to Geisel’s displeasure about the Harkin Amendment, upon entering the White House, President Carter singled out Brazil and West Germany for detracting from international cooperation and global security by refusing to cancel their nuclear technology agreement.

In an attempt at reconciliation, First Lady Rosalyn Carter visited Brazil in 1978. However, her arrival coincided with a wave of nationwide protests against the regime’s use of torture and her behavior, which delicately expressed solidarity with the protesters and with human rights activists, only exacerbated tensions between the two nations. From the generals’ perspective, these disagreements between the United States and Brazil strengthened the military regime’s appeal among Brazilian nationalists but complicated the government’s relationship with foreign lenders from the West.

Legacy

Like Castelo Branco and Costa e Silva, Geisel’s initial enthusiasm for democratic reform withered once he was confronted with the authoritarian regime’s unpopularity and with radical generals’ persistent demands for prolonged military rule. Throughout the first three years of his presidency, rather than liberalize, the general frequently reverted to the regime’s various mechanisms for political and social control. But together, Geisel’s public endorsement of democratic reform, the continuation of repression without the presence of a discernible enemy, and the weakening of Brazil’s economic boom encouraged civil society to remobilize. Over the course of Geisel’s presidency, politically influential but previously inactive civil organizations, like the Brazilian BAR Association and the Brazilian Press Association, joined church leaders, student groups, and union organizers in demanding democratic reform.

Faced with such a diverse, widespread, and committed opposition, Geisel needed to embrace the inevitability of liberalization, revert to the high levels of repression that characterized the Médici presidency, or risk losing control of the democratization process. Differentiating himself from his predecessors, who strengthened authoritarian structures before leaving office, Geisel abolished AI-5—the military regime’s most notorious and derided decree. The next general-president could still call upon the National Security Law to manage the opposition. But by eliminating AI-5, Geisel suggested that, unlike extremist officers, he understood the armed forces could not control Brazilian society indefinitely.

Sources

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