Brazil's new Defense Minister opens exalting the 1964 coup

Supporters of Bolsonaro's president at a rally in support of his government this Wednesday in Rio de Janeiro.Antonio Lacerda / EFE

The first act of the new Brazilian Defense Minister was to receive the three chiefs of the Armed Forces, who presented their resignations to him.

The next, which coincides with the 57th anniversary of the 1964 coup d'état this Wednesday, has been to broadcast a note in which he exalts the constitutional bankruptcy.

"Pacifying the country" was the goal, writes General Walter Braga Netto.

"The 1964 movement is part of the historical trajectory of Brazil," he adds.

Added to the political upheaval due to the abrupt departure of the Armed Forces commanders that followed a major ministerial reform, is the coronavirus catastrophe.

This Tuesday Brazil reached a new maximum of deaths.

The nth.

3,780 people died in 24 hours.

Meanwhile, President Jair Bolsonaro is still in his thirteen.

This Wednesday he insisted that the priority is to go to work.

And, according to him, for authoritarians, mayors and governors, who adopt restrictions to curb the virus that involve "extrapolating a state of siege," as he declared after meeting the pandemic crisis cabinet.

He has not referred to the coup.

And it has not allowed questions.

The note from the Minister of Defense, appointed on Monday, affirms that "the events of 57 years ago" should be interpreted as a response to "the expansion of totalitarian ideologies", referring to communism, although it does not make it explicit, in the context of "The Cold War that engulfed Latin America."

That narrative is the one vehemently defended for years by the current president, Jair Bolsonaro.

Nothing says the communiqué of the repression of the two following decades.

Upon coming to power, Bolsonaro brought commemorations of the coup into the public sphere.

Until then it was a date discreetly celebrated in the barracks and that retired soldiers remembered with meals in uniformed clubs.

The Bolsonaro government has sued in recent months to organize events to commemorate the coup.

A court in Brasilia authorized it by four votes to one two weeks ago.

Beyond the dissemination of the order of business of the Ministry of Defense, there has been no government act.

Other events have been suspended due to the pandemic.

For example, the traditional meal organized by the Military Club of Rio de Janeiro to remember what it calls "the democratic revolution of 1964".

Bolsonaro created a crisis cabinet to manage the pandemic when Brazil exceeded 300,000 deaths.

After the meeting on Tuesday, he announced that next week the payment of the coronavirus will resume.

This time it will be for fewer beneficiaries and for a smaller amount.

The avalanche of cases is such that several cemeteries in the metropolis of São Paulo have also begun to bury at night in the light of powerful floodlights.

Hospitals continue to receive thousands of infected people who need to be treated in ICUs.

They are younger and arrive more serious than in the first wave.

• A military man tried in Italy, close to being the first convicted of crimes of the dictatorship in Brazil

In addition to alleviating the damage of the economic crisis, he hopes that the aid will slow down its political wear.

The heads of the Army, Navy and Air Force presented their resignations on Tuesday in protest against pressure from Bolsonaro to politicize the barracks.

The president wants the military on his side in the hard fight he maintains with other authorities on account of the pandemic.

The governor of São Paulo, João Doria, who in the health crisis has emerged as one of the president's main antagonists, has criticized the Defense note: “As the son of a dismissed deputy who lived 10 years in exile, I consider this letter an affront that proposes the celebration of a military coup that victimized thousands of Brazilians, not only in politics, people silenced, mistreated and badly damaged.

Bolsonaro always celebrated the coup.

Often alone as on March 31, 2014 when he was a deputy and posed before a gigantic banner that read: "Congratulations, military, thanks to you Brazil is not Cuba."

His open defense of the military regime is what most distinguished him from the rest of the parliamentarians during his three decades as a deputy.

President Dilma Rousseff, of the leftist Workers Party (PT), took some measures that many soldiers do not forgive her.

He promoted the Truth Commission, which determined that 434 people were murdered and pointed to 377 perpetrators.

The president, who was dismissed years later, eliminated the anniversary from the holiday calendar of the Armed Forces.

The president was a teenager when he entered the military academy a few years after the coup.

He was formed, like the current high command, during the dictatorship that ended in 1985. He entered politics after leaving the Army.

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