Промышленный лизинг Промышленный лизинг  Методички 

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To Lincoln Gordon and other American officials, civil war appeared a real possibility as the result of a coup attempt. As the scheduled day approached, contingency plans were set up.

A large quantity of petroleum would be sent to Brazil and made available to the insurgent officers, an especially vital commodity if Goulart supporters in the state oil union were to blow up or control the refineries.41

A US Navy task force would be dispatched to Brazilian coastal waters, the presence of which would deliver an obvious message to opponents of the coup.42

Arms and ammunition would be sent to Brancos forces to meet their fighting needs.43

Concerned that the coup attempt might be met by a general strike, Washington discussed with Gordon the possible need for the U.S. to mount a large material program to assure the success of the takeover. 44 The conspirators had already requested economic aid from the United States, in the event of their success, to get the government and economy moving again, and had received a generally favorable response.45

At the same time, Gordon sent word to some anti-Goulart state governors emphasizing the necessity, from the American point of view, that the new regime has a claim to legitimacy. The ambassador also met with former president Juscelino Kubitschek to urge him to take a stronger position against Goulart and to use his considerable influence to swing a large congressional group and thereby influence the legitimacy issue .46

Of the American contingency measures, indications are that it was the naval show of force-which, it turned out, included an aircraft carrier, destroyers, and guided missiles- which most encouraged the Brazilian military plotters or convinced those still wavering in their commitment.47

Another actor in the unfolding drama was the American Institute for Free Labor Development. The AIFLD came formally into being in 1961 and was technically under the direction of the American labor movement (AFL-CIO), but was soon being funded almost exclusively by the US government (AID) and serving consistently as a CIA instrument in most countries of Latin America. In May 1963, the AIFLD founded the Instituto Cultural Trabalho in Brazil which, over the next few years, gave courses to more than 7,000 union leaders and members.48 Other Brazilians went to the United States for training. When they returned to Brazil, said AIFLD executive William Doherty, Jr., some of them:

became intimately involved in some of the clandestine operations of the revolution before it took place on April 1. What happened in Brazil on April 1 did not just happen-it was planned-and planned months in advance. Many of the trade union leaders-some of whom were actually trained in our institute-were involved in the revolution, and in the overthrow of the Goularr regime.49

Doherty did not spell out any details of the AIFLD role in the coup (or revolution as he called it), although Readers Digest later reported that one of the AIFLD-trained labor leaders set up courses for communication workers in combatting communism in the labor movement in Brazil, and After every- class he quietly warned key workers of coming trouble and urged them to keep communications going no matter what happened. 50 Additionally, Richard Martinez, an unwitting CIA contract employee who was sent to Brazil to work with the Agencys Post, Telegraph and Telephone Workers International (formerly Dohertys domain), has revealed that his field workers in Brazil burned down Communist Party headquarters at the time of the coup.51



The coup began on 31 March 1964 with the advance upon Rio of troops and tanks. Officers obtained the support of some units of enlisted men by telling them they were heading for the city to secure it against Goularts enemies. But at the main air force base pro-Goulart enlisted men, hearing of the move toward Rio, seized the base and put their officers under arrest. Indecision and cold feet intervened, however, and what might have reversed the course of events instead came to nought. Other military units loyal to Goulart took actions elsewhere, but these too fizzled out.52

Here and there a scattering of workers went, out on strike; several short-lived, impotent demonstrations took place, but there was little else. A number of labor leaders and radicals were rounded up on the orders of certain state governors; those who were opposed to what was happening were not prepared for violent resistance; in one incident a group of students staged a protest-some charged up the stairs of an Army organization, but the guard fired into their midst, killing two of them and forcing the others to fall back.53

Most people counted on loyal armed forces to do their duty, or waited for the word from Goulart. Goulart, however, was unwilling to give the call for a civil war; he did not want to be responsible, he said, for bloodshed amongst Brazilians, and fled to Uruguay.54

Lincoln Gordon cabled Washington the good news, suggesting the avoidance of a jubilant posture . He described the coup as a great victory for the free world , adding, in a remark that might have had difficulty getting past the lips of even John Foster Dulles, that without the coup there could have been a total loss to the West of all South American Republics . Following a victory parade in Rio on 2 April by those pleased with the coup-a March of Family with God for Liberty-Gordon informed the State Department that the only unfortunate note was the obviously limited participation in the march of the lower classes. 55

His cable work done, the former Harvard professor turned his attention back to trying to persuade the Brazilian Congress to bestow a seal of legitimacy upon the new government56

Two years later, Gordon was to be questioned by a senator during hearings to consider his nomination as Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. I am particularly concerned, said the senator, with the part you may have played, if any, in encouraging, promoting, or causing that overthrow.

Said Lincoln Gordon: The answer to that, senator, is very simple. The movement which overthrew President Goulart was a purely, 100 percent-not 99.44-but 100 percent purely Brazilian movement. Neither the American Embassy nor I personally played any part in the process whatsoever. 57

Gordons boss, Dean Rusk, was not any more forthright. When asked about Cuban charges that the United States was behind the coup, the Secretary of State responded: Well, there is just not one iota of truth in this. Its just not so in any way, shape, or form. 58 While Attorney General Robert Kennedys view of the affair, stated to Gordon, was: Well, Goulart got what was coming to him. Too bad he didnt follow the advice we gave him when I was there. 59

Gordon artfully combined fast talk with omission of certain key facts about Brazilian politics-his summary of Goularts rise and fall made no mention at all of the militarys move to keep him from taking office in 1961-to convince the assembled senators that Goulart was indeed seeking to set up a personal dictatorship.60

Depending on the setting, either saving Brazil from dictatorship or saving Brazil from communism was advanced as the rationale for what took place in 1964. (General Andrew OMeara, head of the US Southern [Latin America] Command, had it



both ways. He told a House committee that The coming to power of the Castelo Branco government in Brazil last April saved that country from an immediate dictatorship which could only have been followed by Communist domination. )61

The rescue-from-communism position was especially difficult to support, the problem being that the communists in Brazil did not, after all, do anything which the United States could point to. Moreover, the Soviet Union was scarcely in the picture. Early in 1964, reported a Brazilian newspaper, Russian leader Khrushchev told the Brazilian Communist Party that the Soviet government did not wish either to give financial aid to the Goulart regime or to tangle with the United States over the country.62 In his reminiscences-albeit, as mentioned earlier, not meant to be a serious work of history-Khrushchev does not give an index reference to Brazil.

A year after the coup, trade between Brazil and the USSR was running at $120 million per year and a Brazilian mission was planning to go to Moscow to explore Soviet willingness to provide a major industrial plant.63 The following year, the Russians invited the new Brazilian president-to-be, General Costa e Silva, to visit the Soviet Union.64

During the entire life of the military dictatorship, extending into the 1980s, Brazil and the Soviet bloc engaged in extensive trade and economic cooperation, reaching billions of dollars per year and including the building of several large hydroelectric plants in Brazil. A similar economic relationship existed between the Soviet bloc and the Argentine military dictatorship of 1976-83, so much so that in 1982, when Soviet leader Brezhnev died, the Argentine government declared a national day of mourning.65

It was only by ignoring facts like these during the cold war that the anti-communist propaganda machine of the United States could preach about the International Communist Conspiracy and claim that the coup in Brazil had saved the country from communism. For a typical example of this propaganda, one must read The Country That Saved Itself, which appeared in Readers Digest several months after the coup. The innumerable lies about what occurred in Brazil, fed by the magazine to its millions of readers, undoubtedly played a role in preparing the American public for the great anti-communist crusade in Vietnam just picking up steam at the time. The article began:

Seldom has a major nation come closer to the brink of disaster and yet recovered than did Brazil in its recent triumph over Red subversion. The communist drive for domination-marked by propaganda, infiltration, terror-was moving in high gear. Total surrender seemed imminent- and then the people said No!66

The type of independence shown by the Brazilian military government in its economic relations with the Soviet Union was something Washington could accept from a conservative government, even the occasional nationalization of American property, when it knew that the government could be relied upon to keep the left suppressed at home and to help in the vital cold-war, anti-communist campaigns abroad. In 1965, Brazil sent 1,100 troops to the Dominican Republic in support of the US invasion, the only country in Latin America to send more than a token force. And in 1971 and 1973, the Brazilian military and intelligence apparatuses contributed to the American efforts in overthrowing the governments of Bolivia and Chile.

The United States did not rest on its laurels. CIA headquarters immediately began to generate hemisphere-wide propaganda, as only the Agencys far-flung press-asset network could, in support of the new Brazilian government and to discredit Goulart.67 Dean Rusk, concerned that Goulart might be received in Uruguay as if he were still



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