What if the Brazilian Military Dictatorship never happened?

I'm not asking about how this could be avoided but imagine a scenario where Brazil never experienced the coup of 1964. How would the country have progressed if Goulart never gave the impression that he was associated with communism or socialism?
 
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kernals12

Banned
You're going to have to be specific. How the coup is avoided matters greatly. If Goulart chooses to purge all the communists from the government, it would probably be good for Brazil's progress. If the coup is stopped by say, a general strike, we can assume Goulart would double down on far left policies, like Hugo Chavez did IOTL after 2002, leading to disaster.
 
I'm not asking about how this could be avoided but imagine a scenario where Brazil never experienced the coup of 1964. How would the country have progressed if Goulart never gave the impression that he was associated with communism or socialism?

There was not a real association between Goulart and communism/socialism, it was well known at the time:

Here you can see his predecessor, Juscelino Kubitschek (of the same coalition and the same ideological school) saying to the american media that he's not a communist, in fact he's a good christian.

The "casus belli" for the coup was the fear that he was turning into some Peron-like figure and that he would reform the constitution to create a syndicalist republic, like Peronist argentina. This casus belli of course was completely fake and the real cause of the coup were his base reforms, the failure of the opposition to win elections and a disfaction of the pro american faction of the army (read, "Escola superior de guerra", a army organ that until the 70s only had american instructors) with the continuation of the national developmentalist plans that began with Vargas revolution in 1930.

Now, to the coup. For the first decades there was a myth that the dictatorship was very popular and that Jango had lost control, however as modern historiography shows, Jango had 70% approval before the coup. The majority of the army was also pro Goulart and more military authorities had to be arrested than civilian ones after the coup, because the miitary men in general is a nationalist and he is a random civilian in uniform, so if the president is going to pass reforms that is going to put food on his table, he is going to support that.

So why in the hell the coup worked then? The answer is: The USA. The american fleet stationed on the Guanabara bay during the coup and menaced to land to support the putsch if there was resistence, There is a historian... I already quoted him here before, but I cannot remember his name now, but he said "If the army that reduced Germany and Japan to ashes was coming against Brazil, what could Goulart do?".

"I see this plan as having been entirely separate from Operation Brother Sam, the naval task force sent in support of the coup in early April 1964.) Gordon said that a US invasion would require six divisions, many ships and a ‘massive military operation’. He then declared that ‘it all depends on what the Brazilian military do’ but he feared that a coup attempt could lead to an ‘internal clash’ and ‘the beginnings of what would amount to a civil war’. (From White House, Excerpts from John F. Kennedy's conversation regarding Brazil with US Ambassador to Brazil Lincoln Gordon on Monday, 7 October 1963, Tape 114/A50, President's Office Files, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Boston, pp. 7–8)"
The tape mentioned on the quote can be heard here. The article with the whole information about the US support for the coup can be found here.

During the coup Goulart went for the region of Rio Grande do Sul were he confirmed that most of the army was on his side, and also that due the lack of support of the coup per se it could die fast with a reaction, but due the american support for the putschists the risk of a american invasion was too great and the risk of human losses was too high, and so he wouldn't risk it. Goulart wasn't a radical, he was not a Brizola or a Vargas, and so he prefered to not react... we all know what happened later.

Edit: Just to know how heavy was the pressure that the american government was putting on Goulart:

"Bobby Kennedy spoke with Goulart for 3 hours in that meeting. Bobby Kennedy mentioned many problems from the US point of view: the presence of Communists, ultranationalists (read nationalists), extreme leftists (read leftists) and anti-Americans in Goulart's government. He also spoke of the expulsion of the Peace Corps from a Brazilian state and Goulart's alleged lack of support for the Alliance for Progress...""...He brought up the expropriation of an ITT subsidiary in Rio Grande do Sul (by Governor Leonel Brizola) and the possibility of Brazil exchanging one hundred helicopters from Poland for coffee.""...Later, Bobby compared Goulart to Jimmy Hoffa, the powerful leader of the Teamsters Union in the US, with whom he had clashed in a Congressional hearing in 1957, and whom he accused of corruption."

And it went worse:

"In a White House meeting on 8 March 1963, Bobby Kennedy was the advisor toughest on the Goulart government. He insisted, as he had when he met Goulart three months before, that Goulart had to make adjustments to the economy being demanded by the US, and remove anti-US and leftist politicians from his cabinet. He said, ‘they're going to have to do something down there … this is not something that Congress will tolerate, the American people will tolerate, or that you [President Kennedy] can tolerate’."
 

raharris1973

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So why in the hell the coup worked then? The answer is: The USA. The american fleet stationed on the Guanabara bay during the coup and menaced to land to support the putsch if there was resistence, There is a historian... I already quoted him here before, but I cannot remember his name now, but he said "If the army that reduced Germany and Japan to ashes was coming against Brazil, what could Goulart do?".

The same United States that could not dispose of Castro’s Cuba, or win in Korea?


At the very least this is a symptom of a guy who was looking for an excuse to back down rather than fight.
 
The same United States that could not dispose of Castro’s Cuba, or win in Korea?


At the very least this is a symptom of a guy who was looking for an excuse to back down rather than fight.

Both were communist nations under the protection of the USSR. Brazil was a centrist populist Republic that had no one to come and help.
 
Well....guess that a dictatorship or at least a very "military hand" on the government would be on the cards for almost any Latin American country during the 1960s and 1970s....if, somehow, Goulart manages to avoid (or survive) 1964, the next potential crisis could be the 1965 presidential elections, which could turn very sour in most of the cases: the candidates would be, by the right, Carlos Lacerda (governor of Guanabara state), former president Juscelino Kubitschek ("JK") by a kind of "center" and by the left, either Goulart (in 1963-1964 there was discussions if Goulart could run for reelection due to its "abnormal" rise to power) or Brizola.

A last poll before the 1964 coup showed that, despite all internal crisis, electors were somewhat split between such three forces: Juscelino being the front-runner, with something between 20 to 50% of the votes depending of the city where the poll was held, followed by Lacerda between 15 to 20%. A specific question was made about the voting intentions on Goulart (if reelection was possible to him) resulting in a surprisingly 50% of positive answers. So, in a gross approximation, we could say the the 1965 could end in a trifecta between the three candidates, each one polarizing a part of the total electorate, without a clear majority.

As at that time, there was no ballotage or second run, odds are that a President would be elected in a close race without a clear margin and, to make things even more confuse, a great probability of the Vice-President (which was also directly elected) being from a distinct political matrix than the elected President.

From this, my guesses are, according to the elected president:

Juscelino elected: Being a centrist and a kind of eldery stateman, his election helps to stabilize somehow the country in the immediate period. However, there is no money or energy (in OTL JK discovered a protaste cancer in 1970 and records of heart issues since his first administration) to invest in new large projects. The result is a tepid government which, to end of the 1960s, seems old fashioned and disconnected with times, with previous electors moving either to more leftist approaches or, as a reaction to that, claiming for "law and order" by the right / military. In this scenario, where the left wing is more entrenched in the Brazilian society, a coup is averted until the 1970s, but probably would happen in a more drastic versions, more like OTL Argentina or Chile, in order to "clean" society from leftist ideas.

Lacerda elected: The "dream" candidate of the military, so no coup. The issue would be how to deal with the left and leftist populist movements, specially in a time where the idea of armed movements and guerrilas was gaining traction in the continent. So, a coup doesn't happens, but a kind of autoritarian administration, with exercise of exceptional powers could arise during Lacerda's tenure. By the end, could see something like OTL Bordaberry's Uruguay or even the early days of the civic-military dictatorship in this same country.

Goulart / Brizola: Coup before of just after the elections....

Basically LATAM was a hot bed for military coups during all the 1960s until (very) late 1970s.....very hard to imagine Brazil solving its right-left political dispute without the intervention of the military at some point during that period.
 
The same United States that could not dispose of Castro’s Cuba, or win in Korea?
That’s the US for you, always tougher in democratic socialism than actual communism :p
More seriously though, there is usually going to be a big difference between the “acceptable price to stay in power” defined by a full-on dictator vs some sort of democrat. It’s not at all surprising that a democratic leader chooses to duck out of an all-consuming conflict that they might maybe win. I certainly doubt Brazil would be in better shape than OTL if they fought off a US intervention, then put down a us-backed insurgency, and then weathered the 50 years of bitter US hostility which would likely ensue.
 
Hey, hey, hey, if those Democratic Socialists are white and ruling all-white countries, the US can get along with them OK. ;)
That or they are just closer to the decisive theatre of the cold war ie Western Europe and therefore have to be kept on side lest they have the real option of going Finland/Neutral with not much that US could do about it?
 
That or they are just closer to the decisive theatre of the cold war ie Western Europe and therefore have to be kept on side lest they have the real option of going Finland/Neutral with not much that US could do about it?

We could invade, that's always cheap, easy, and reliable.
 
We could invade, that's always cheap, easy, and reliable.
(fighting any of the CW conscript european states even the small ones will not be cheap & easy by South American standards)

And risk,
A) losing all bragging/propaganda rights over Hungary (56) and Czechoslovakia (68)......
B) The rest of Europe getting cold feet about US bases/NATO.....
C) that the Red army would be invited to come and support starting WWIII......

(I don't think its unique to US but all nations behave better when they think they might actually lose something if they don't behave...)
 
My take: the coup is defeated (maybe the putschists screw up or the president doesn't end up alienating most generals), and his Reformas de Base (land reform, tax reform and all that) are implemented. However, there is still stiff resistance by the conservatives, who still have a majority in both houses of Congress and they drag their feet for as long as possible.

In 1965, Jango is succeeded by Juscelino Kubitschek, who isn't as willing to enforce the reforms. With a worsening economic crisis, the left gets angry at the government for its inability to apply the new laws, and some of them (mostly university students) join communist guerrilla groups that count with Cuban support. By the 1970s, the situation gets really bad, and eventually a sizable party of the army is convinced that the only way out of it is through another military coup, one that is actually successful.

We might end up getting our own Proceso de Reorganización Nacional...

This is probably the most pessimistic take, of course. There are so many ways to prevent the OTL dictatorship from rising up that you can create several different scenarios.
 
I hate to make Brazilian history less colorful, but maybe no Janio Quadros could have helped, too.
That would've definitely helped. Maybe Goulart runs for president rather than for reelection as vice-president? He would probably have to contend with Milton Campos (ugh) as his number two, though. You can also have the putschist governors (Carlos Lacerda, Magalhães Pinto, Ademar de Barros and Ildo Meneghetti) lose their elections, since they all won IOTL by very narrow margins.
 
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There was not a real association between Goulart and communism/socialism, it was well known at the time:

So why in the hell the coup worked then? The answer is: The USA. The american fleet stationed on the Guanabara bay during the coup and menaced to land to support the putsch if there was resistance, ...

The US Marines; 'Making Latin America safe for United Fruit'.
 
The US Marines; 'Making Latin America safe for United Fruit'.

I gonna make a good answer for @Vinization as soon I get my pc back, but for now we must understand that Jango was popular and his government had most of the support of the army and the people, there is the awesome documentary "is soldados que disseram não" that tells the history of the armed forces on the coup, so much that the first people shot by the military regime incredibly and surprisingly were not even left wingers, but loyalist members of the army who had helped to put down the previous coups and the 1964 coup.

Heck, the turning point of 1964 was the arrival of the navy, but before that there was a officer, Amaury Kruel, who led the 4th or the 5th army and he had sent by radio a message to the capital Brasília telling them that he was going to stay loyal, that audio is followed by a massive cheering by the Congress who tough that the coup would be terminated. A few hours later he was bribed with 5 cases of dollars and changed sides and this still was not enought to push the putschists to the turning point.

The dictatorship only got some popularity on the late 1960s and early 70s with the economic "miracle" (that was basically they pumping money borrowed from the USA, Europe and the IMF in random projects that hardly resulted in money returning to the economy and also digging our grave. Before this the 1968 legislative elections were a crushing victory for the opposition and it was clear that the dictatorship was unpopular.
 
Speaking of the United States, could we get a different ambassador other than Lincoln Gordon? That guy was scheming against Goulart from day one.

Alternatively, could IBAD (an organization funded by US dollars whose sole purpose was funding opposition to the government) be shut down earlier, before the 1962 elections? That way, Goulart would have more allies in Congress and a couple more friendly governors, like Waldir Pires in Bahia (rather than Lomanto Júnior) and Egídio Michaelsen in Rio Grande do Sul (rather than Ildo Meneghetti).
 
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