Document of the Week — Carlos Lacerda in opposition to the military: the Broad Front for civilian elections

See here the featured document of the week! Carlos Lacerda in opposition to the military: the Broad Front for civilian elections.

Check out the full document in our collection: Memorandum of Conversation written by Richard E. Schwartz to John Wills Tuthill reporting an interview with Carlos Lacerda

Carlos Lacerda was one of the most important politicians in Brazil in the 20th century – and also one of the most difficult to characterize in a few words. After having articulated and supported the 1964 coup, went into opposition once it became clear that his dream of becoming president would not be possible with the military in power. He then set up a non-partisan group called Broad Front between 1966 and 1967, which brought together the greatest civil leaders in Brazil – many of whom had been impeached – around the theme of the need to redemocratize the country.

In this week's document, we have the opportunity, based on a memorandum of conversation between Lacerda himself and a North American congressman, to hear from the former governor of Guanabara his perception of the dictatorship at the time (September 1967, beginning of the Costa e Silva government) and his perspective on the objectives and aims of the Broad Front.

Despite the fact that it is necessary to analyze Lacerda's narrative from a critical perspective – even though it was made in a private setting, it had a clear interlocutor, and this may have influenced the way the former governor of Guanabara expressed himself –, it is noteworthy that Lacerda predicted an explosion of guerrilla activities if the military regime did not open up and allow civilians to return to power by 1970. And, in fact, left-wing guerrilla activities would intensify exactly from 1968 onwards, being used as justification for the adoption of the AI-5 in December of that year.

Lacerda also presents a rare self-criticism regarding his political actions before the 1964 coup. The former governor of Guanabara claims, for example, that he was one of those responsible for inciting the military to intervene in national politics, having called on the military to intervene whenever obstacles appeared. Now, Lacerda concluded, the military has developed a taste for power and does not want to give it up. Lacerda did not imagine, at that time, that this taste for power would result in a 21-year dictatorship.

Prof. Dr. Felipe Loureiro,

Deputy coordinator of NACE CNV-Brazil,

Institute of International Relations at the University of São Paulo