Presidents Medici and Richard Nixon in a press conference at the White House. Medici met with Nixon on several occasions to discuss the overthrow of leftist Latin American presidents. Photograph by Byron E. Shumaker, courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.
Compared with his predecessors, particularly Castelo Branco, Garrastazu Médici is noteworthy for his attempt to nurture a cult of personality and for his willingness to allow the technocrats in his cabinet to implement their policies without substantial interference. The general represented hard-line factions within the military. Throughout his tenure, at the same time that some national and international observers celebrated Brazil’s double-digit growth in GDP, others criticized Médici for his government’s willingness to detain and torture civilian dissidents. As a result, his four-year presidency is best remembered for two national trends?Brazil’s “economic miracle” and widespread human rights violations.
Early Career and Path to the Presidency
Médici was born in Rio Grande do Sul, attended military academy in the state’s capital, Porto Alegre, and gradually ascended Brazil’s military hierarchy without becoming one of the military’s prominent public figures. Following the 1964 coup d’état, Médici served as military attaché in Washington during Castelo Branco’s presidency and as the head of the SNI (National Information Service) during Costa e Silva’s truncated term in office.
Although he was not among the favorites to succeed Costa e Silva and did not personally covet the presidency, Médici emerged as a candidate after Costa e Silva’s debilitating stroke, when the military appeared incapable of resolving its internal disputes to choose a successor. Fearful that rivalries and quarrels might consume the military regime, Médici stepped forward to restore the armed forces’ disrupted unity and ensure that the military maintained political hegemony in Brazil.
On October 25, 1969, the triumvirate of generals that had ruled Brazil for the two weeks since Costa e Silva’s unexpected stroke reconvened the national Congress for the first time since AI-5 so that Brazil’s legislators could vote for Médici and endow his “election” with a degree of democratic legitimacy.
Economics
Not wanting to impede Brazil’s accelerating economic growth, Médici retained Costa e Silva’s finance minister, Delfim Neto, who continued his economic policies from the previous administration. Throughout Médici’s presidency, from 1969 to 1974, GDP grew at an average of 10.9 percent per year, and Delfim Neto reveled in his classification as the man responsible for the “economic miracle.”
As economic growth accelerated, foreign private investment skyrocketed. Whereas Brazil’s reputation for high inflation had dissuaded many foreign businesses from investing in Brazil during Castelo Branco’s presidency and kept them cautious during Costa e Silva’s abridged tenure, by Médici’s presidency, investors worried that they might miss out on Brazil’s unexpected economic boom. As a result, foreign investment, which totaled $994 million in 1964 and $1.326 billion in 1967, jumped to $3.76 billion by the end of Médici’s presidency in 1974. Not surprisingly, U.S. businesses led the way, investing almost three times as much as Brazil’s second and third largest sources of private financing, West Germany and Japan.
Brazilians at the top of the economic pyramid profited the most, but urban workers also benefited from increased job security and slightly higher wages. Importantly for the military, members of Brazil’s middle-class delighted in the ability to purchase previously unaffordable consumer goods like televisions and automobiles.
Repression
In an attempt to eliminate urban and rural guerrilla movements and to intimidate all sectors of the opposition, the military’s national security apparatus committed the majority of torture, murders, and disappearances during Médici’s presidency. Members of guerrilla groups were the stated targets of repression, but even vague involvement with the organized left could easily lead to harassment, detention, torture, and, at times, murder. Members of Brazil’s Soviet-line communist party, which specifically stated its opposition to the armed resistance in Brazil and, at least by virtue of association, included much of the Brazilian intelligentsia, were frequent targets. In addition, former members of left-wing student and church groups, such as UNE and Ação Popular, who chose not to take up arms and join guerrilla movements, were often harassed and tortured so that the military could find out information about their comrades who did join the armed resistance.
The censored press was forbidden to report on human rights violations, but knowledge of their frequency was well-known. Because torture was so widespread, and at times seemingly indiscriminate, a culture of fear proliferated among a broad range of Brazilians.
Security forces’ carte blanche to detain any suspect soon decimated most urban and rural guerrilla groups, which had organized quickly and lacked the training or resources to compete with the military’s rapidly expanding and well-funded national security apparatus. However, the hurried development of the nation’s repressive infrastructure made it difficult to reign in the forces’ autonomy after 1972, when all guerrilla groups were in a state of disarray. Despite the end of the guerrilla threat, routine detention, intimidation, and torture continued through and beyond the end of Médici’s presidential term in 1974.
Hoping to deflect criticism over human rights violations and anti-democratic procedures coming from sectors of the international media, human rights organizations, and grassroots activists, the Médici administration amplified the nationalist and anti-imperialist language that had emerged during Costa e Silva’s presidency. Rather than respond to frequent and credible allegations about the military’s use of torture, Médici attempted to discredit the regime’s detractors as cultural imperialists threatening Brazil’s political sovereignty.
Beyond committing routine human rights violations and enacting strict censorship, the Médici administration continued to carefully control and manipulate the electoral process in Brazil. In October 1970, during the first elections of his administration, Médici essentially handpicked the gubernatorial candidates who were indirectly elected by manipulated state legislators. For public congressional elections one month later, security forces intimidated voters and opposition candidates by arresting over 5,000 civilians, including activists and candidates, in the weeks leading up to the election. Four years later, faced with the disagreeable reality that the military’s own constitution permitted direct congressional elections in 1974, Médici simply pushed through a constitutional amendment that made the elections indirect and spared the regime from the possibility of an embarrassing electoral defeat.
Brazil-United States Relations
The increasing reports of illegal detentions, widespread torture, and occasional disappearances failed to deter President Nixon from pursuing closer relations with the Médici administration or from continuing to provide substantial military funding to Brazil.
From Nixon’s perspective, the threat from leftist leaders like Castro in Cuba and Allende in Chile justified and demanded White House support for conservative political forces throughout the hemisphere. And according to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s realpolitik?a political ideology completely and admittedly devoid of ethical or moral concerns?the reality that Latin America’s right-wing governments struggled to maintain power without resorting to violence and authoritarianism was little more than an inconvenient truth of the Cold War era. Considering the economic and political instability plaguing so many Latin American nations during Nixon’s presidency, Brazil, with a rapidly expanding economy and a well-established right-wing government, represented Washington’s most reliable regional ally.
Despite congressional pressure to cut aid to Brazil from distinguished U.S. legislators including Ted Kennedy, and editorials condemning the regime’s use of torture in The Washington Post and The New York Times, Nixon invited Médici for a state visit to the White House in November 1971. Declassified documents from the National Security Archive reveal that, during their meeting in the Oval Office, Nixon and Médici coordinated an attempt to block Cuba from re-entering the OAS and discussed their shared desire and mutual efforts to help the Chilean military overthrow the nation’s democratically elected president, Salvador Allende. In addition, they agreed to set up a way for the U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, and the Brazilian Foreign Minister, Gibson Barbosa, to “maintain close contact and have a means of communicating directly outside of normal diplomatic channels,” as Kissinger described it. The need for covert correspondence presumably resulted from the unsavory topics and plans the two diplomats expected to discuss off the record.
Legacy
Because of the rapid economic growth that persisted between 1969–1974, the World Cup victory in 1970, and Brazil’s renewed belief—not seen since Kubitschek’s presidency—that the nation would soon achieve its long coveted status as a major world power, aspects of Médici’s tenure provoke fond recollections among some Brazilians, journalists, and scholars. However, for the victims of torture and for their families, friends, and loved ones, repression endures as the defining characteristic of Médici’s administration and invalidates short-lived achievements like the “economic miracle.”
Although he valued and cultivated the attention that accompanied his term in the Planalto, Médici quickly retreated from the public spotlight after passing the presidency to the next general-president. He passed away in October 1985, in the midst of Brazil’s complex transition from a military dictatorship to a participative democracy.
Sources:
- Green, James N. We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010.
- Kissinger, Henry. “Meeting with President Emílio Garrastazú Médici of Brazil on Thursday, December 9, 1971, at 10:00 a.m., in the President’s Office, the White House.” Memorandum fromThe President’s File. National Security Archive, September 2008.
- 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.