In 1961 the the "Operação mosquito" went ahead with four brazilian fighters shooting down the airplane transporting the brazilian president João Goulart from Porto Alegre to Brazilia, as the first move to what was to be a military coup that backfired tremendously. The brutal assassination of Jango caused a even higher public outrage than the suicide of his mentor, President Vargas who killed himself during a similar coup in 1954 and the governor of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, Leonel Brizola, the main responsible for the campaign of the loyalty that had prevented a coup earlier and allowed Jango who was on a diplomatic mission to Singapore to return to Brazil to become the president after the resignation of Jânio Quadros. While it seemed that Brizola would march on Rio and Brazilia and the civil war would be over as a counter coup, the governor of Guanabara, Carlos Lacerda, known political agitator and americanophile asked for US intervention citing the many instances were the american embassy acussed Jango from being a communist, as for example the video above showing his predecessor, Juscelino Kubitschek being asked if Jango was a pro communist:
The US president Kennedy, "kindly" known as the butcher at the time by some members of the Brizola government (a quite exagerated title I must say) accepted and sent a task force that landed in Rio on late 1965, as fighting erupted with São Paulo siding with Lacerda. Soon Brazil was divided with the north and the south under the Loyalists of Leonel Brizola and the southeast and the centerwest under the Lacerda junta. On the following years with the support of american equipment, sponsoring and naval invasions on strategic cities (Heck, Brizola capital, Porto Alegre, was a port city so it was taken during a landing), most of the coast and the brazilian heartland would be under Lacerda government, but resistence would continue until all the way into the mid 1980s when a agreement would be reached as there would be a legitimate election without interference, resulting in Brizola being elected president and the withdraw of the american troops.
The american interference in the brazilian civil war is seen today as one of the most expensive and uneeded political and military blunders in the cold war, as the morale of the pro junta forces were so low that as they retreated from a city, it usually would ends recaptured by the loyalists. The brazilian econom was wrecked and the costs to the american taxpayer was one of the main reasons that led to the end of the war, there was also the troubles with the North-south vietnam war and the USSR supplying Brizola with weapons and equipment.
So I ask you: What if the USA didn't acted and Brizola simple marched on the capital? How would this affect the could war and the USA in general?
The US president Kennedy, "kindly" known as the butcher at the time by some members of the Brizola government (a quite exagerated title I must say) accepted and sent a task force that landed in Rio on late 1965, as fighting erupted with São Paulo siding with Lacerda. Soon Brazil was divided with the north and the south under the Loyalists of Leonel Brizola and the southeast and the centerwest under the Lacerda junta. On the following years with the support of american equipment, sponsoring and naval invasions on strategic cities (Heck, Brizola capital, Porto Alegre, was a port city so it was taken during a landing), most of the coast and the brazilian heartland would be under Lacerda government, but resistence would continue until all the way into the mid 1980s when a agreement would be reached as there would be a legitimate election without interference, resulting in Brizola being elected president and the withdraw of the american troops.
The american interference in the brazilian civil war is seen today as one of the most expensive and uneeded political and military blunders in the cold war, as the morale of the pro junta forces were so low that as they retreated from a city, it usually would ends recaptured by the loyalists. The brazilian econom was wrecked and the costs to the american taxpayer was one of the main reasons that led to the end of the war, there was also the troubles with the North-south vietnam war and the USSR supplying Brizola with weapons and equipment.
So I ask you: What if the USA didn't acted and Brizola simple marched on the capital? How would this affect the could war and the USA in general?