Document of the week! Analysis by the United States Embassy of the most influential figures in the Goulart government at the beginning of 1964

Check out the full document in our collection: Air telegram from John Keppel to the State Department listing the personalities closest to João Goulart

Analysis by the United States Embassy of the most influential figures in the Goulart government at the beginning of 1964

One of the longest-running debates on the Brazil-USA relationship during the Goulart government It has to do with the interpretation that Washington constructed about the Brazilian president. Would the United States have assumed that Goulart would he be a communist and that is why they concluded that the only solution would be to remove him from power by force?

In this week's document from Nace Cnv-Brasil, one can see how complex it is for a foreign government, no matter how powerful it may be – as the USA was at the time – to have a precise notion of the aims and objectives of a local ruler, and the way in which policy formulation and implementation is carried out by that government.

This is an analysis by the North American Embassy in Rio of who were the most influential people surrounding Goulart at the beginning of 1964, and what the Brazilian president's ultimate intentions would be.

The answers are ambiguous. Although the Embassy has listed 17 people as the most influential people around Jango, the one the Embassy considers to be the most influential – businessman Jorge Serpa Filho, director of Cia Siderúrgica Mannesmann – there is not much information about (until today, in fact, the Serpa's role in the twilight of the Jango administration is one of the unknowns that literature has not yet been able to decipher).

Likewise, despite not claiming that Goulart is a communist or that he is surrounded by communists (pay attention to the numbers next to Goulart's advisors; they refer to the ideological categories created in 1962 and on which we have already exposed it here as document of the week), or which aims to radically alter the structure of Brazilian society, the Embassy recognizes that it cannot bet with certainty which direction Goulart will take in his government.

This shows that, even with the North American government already acting to contain and destabilize Goulart, things were not yet determined in the sense of a policy to remove Goulart from power at all costs, at least not in January 1964.

Prof. Dr. Felipe Loureiro,

Deputy coordinator of NACE CNV-Brazil,

Institute of International Relations at the University of São Paulo