Brazilians nostalgic for military rule
Once hailed as one of the world’s rising economies, Brazil has slid backwards. Now, as Stephen Gibbs reports, ordinary people speak of their desire for a return to the decency that came when the country was ruled by a junta – a period notable for torture and disappearances.
Saudades is a Portuguese word, for which there is no real equivalent in English. It describes a sad feeling of nostalgia, of incompleteness, that can be applied to an absent lover, a missing relative, or a cold beer on the beach.
Some Brazilians are now openly admitting saudades for something far more controversial: the country’s period of military rule, which ended in the mid-1980s.
‘‘I sorely miss the decency of that era,’’ a pensioner confided to me last month in Sao Paulo.
She did not mention the brutality. The generals seized power through a coup against the left-wing president, Joao Goulart, in 1964, replacing him with Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco.
The rule of the generals ended in 1985: they were not the most violent of Latin America’s military juntas, but ruthless nonetheless with anyone they considered an enemy. At least 470 people either ‘‘disappeared’’ or were murdered.
Those details have faded from most memories. Unlike many of its neighbours, Brazil never put the military leaders – some of whom were accused of torture – on trial.
An amnesty law, passed in 1979 by the junta itself, helped to protect those responsible. To this day, Brazil’s army remains the most respected institution in the country.
That is in contrast to the reputation of Brazil’s political class. Over the past four years, its popularity has slumped to historic lows amid the biggest corruption scandal the region has seen.
What began in 2014 as a low-key money laundering inquiry revealed an entrenched culture of corruption whereby politicians were routinely demanding bribes, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, from some of Brazil’s biggest companies. In return, the firms were awarded lucrative contracts for state projects.
To date, the inquiry has implicated half the Brazilian senate and a third of the congress. President Michel Temer is being investigated. In April, former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, once one of the most popular political leaders in the world, began a 12-year prison sentence for receiving a bribe from a construction company in the form of an upgraded penthouse apartment.
One man has been a key beneficiary of this implosion of the status quo in Brazilian politics: far-right congressman and presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro. The former army captain, who appears to have a clean record when it comes to corruption, is also a prominent supporter of Brazil’s former military rulers.
‘‘What the population wants is the return of the values of that time,’’ he said last year.
‘‘If any military man comes to power, which may happen, it will be through the ballot box.’’ Jair Bolsonaro, presidential candidate and former army captain
‘‘We didn’t have a dictatorship here, we had a military regime, with authority and discipline, which made Brazil grow in all aspects, including economically. We went from being the 49th to the 8th economy in the world.’’
Bolsonaro, a charismatic figure sometimes referred to as ‘‘the Brazilian Donald Trump’’, is selective in his recollection.
Brazil’s military rule did lead to a spectacular boom in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but it was brief, and soon dissipated following the crash in oil prices in 1973.
The congressman, an evangelical Christian, supports restoration of the death penalty, gun rights, and a clampdown on immigration. He also openly courts controversy: in 2016, when he was voting in favour of the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, he dedicated his vote to Carlos Brilhante Ustra, a colonel who headed an interrogation unit during the dictatorship, which tortured Rousseff, a former guerrilla.
Helena Celestino, a Brazilian journalist, describes the spectacle of Bolsonaro’s rise as ‘‘shameful’’ for Brazil.
She points out that many of his supporters are young, and have no understanding of life under military rule. His popularity, she says, is ‘‘a failure for all of us who haven’t taught them recent history’’.
Bolsonaro – whose main challenger in the presidential election in October (assuming the jailed Lula cannot run) is expected to be Marina Silva, an environmentalist – argues that he alone can restore the ‘‘order’’ that Brazilians once enjoyed under an authoritarian government. It is a message that resonates with voters exasperated by the country’s rising crime.
Two-thirds of Brazilians are scared of walking the streets at night. The number of homicides is at a record rate, with seven people murdered every hour. Television news bulletins are full of reports of the latest shootout: last weekend, six bodies were discovered close to the beach in one of the most upmarket areas of Rio de Janeiro – victims of a gun battle between drug gangs.
Bolsonaro insists that he would not, as a committed democrat, support a military coup. ‘‘Nobody wants a dictatorship,’’ he said. ‘‘If any military man comes to power, which may happen, it will be through the ballot box.’’
However, a national poll last year revealed an extraordinary willingness among Brazilians to accept a non-democratic change of government: 43 per cent favoured ‘‘a temporary revival of military con- trol’’. The highest amount of support, close to 50 per cent, was from those in the 16-24 age group.
Another poll revealed a marked erosion in support for democracy itself. In 2010, 62 per cent of Brazilians said they believed democracy was the best form of government. Six years later, that figure had fallen to barely 30 per cent.
Temer, who has been trying to push through unpopular austerity measures while facing his own corruption allegations, has only 3 per cent support, the lowest of any president in Brazil’s post-dictatorship period.
He has twice deployed the army on to the streets this year: in February to quell a crime wave in Rio de Janeiro, and last month to clear the streets of Sao Paulo, after a prolonged truck drivers’ strike.
Celestino warns that a creeping return to military rule remains a risk, and she fears that the public would accept it.
‘‘Brazilians hate all politicians. Anything can happen,’’ she said.