Brazil rewrites textbooks to change events of 1964 coup

SCHOOL textbooks in Brazil will be rewritten after its education minister denied a 1964 military coup, prompting accusations of historical revisionism.

Ricardo Vélez Rodriguéz told the Valor Económico magazine that “there will be progressive changes [in textbooks] to the extent that a wider version of history is rescued”.

The announcement comes days after a judge in Brazil barred Jair Bolsonaro, the Right-wing president, from publicly celebrating the anniversary of the coup that ousted the democratically elected government of João Goulart.

Mr Vélez Rodriguéz described the following 21 years of military rule as “a democratic regime by force”, and said that students should be taught a “true and real” version of events.

He added: “Brazilian history shows that what occurred on March 31 1964 was a sovereign decision of the Brazilian society.

“The role of the Ministry of Education is to prepare the textbook in such a way that the children can have a true, real idea of what their history was.”

He called the coup d’etat that would mark two decades of military dictatorship “an institutional shift, not a coup against the constitution at the time”.

A national truth commission reported that before democracy was restored in 1985, more than 400 people were killed or disappeared during Brazil’s military rule, with thousands more tortured and detained.

The education plans proposed by Mr Bolsonaro’s government has been criticised by Cândido Grangeiro, the president of the Brazilian Association of Textbooks.

He expressed his opposition to “any type of revisionism based on opinions”.