Document of the week! From coup plotter to democrat: Carlos Lacerda and his tireless quest for power 

Check out the full document in our collection: Air telegram from John Wills Tuthill to the United States Department of State regarding Carlos Lacerda and the banning of the Frente Amplio through Ordinance No. 177/1968

From coup plotter to democrat: Carlos Lacerda and his tireless quest for power

One of the political developments that has drawn the most attention in the Brazilian dictatorship is the process of transforming civilian coup politicians into “democrats” from the moment their projects for political ascension are blocked by the regime’s authoritarianism. 

Perhaps no case has been as flagrant in this regard as that of the former governor of Guanabara, Carlos Lacerda, who had been one of the main civil articulators of the 1964 coup, strongly responsible for the coup-like climate that emerged after the general elections of October 1965, and which, from 1966 onwards, especially with the beginning of the Costa e Silva government, would reconcile with former political enemies – in particular former presidents Juscelino Kubitschek It is João Goulart –, and would begin to fight for the redemocratization of the country, focusing on the return of direct elections for the presidency of the Republic. 

The main institutional vehicle used by Lacerda for this purpose was the so-called Broad Front – a supra-partisan group created in 1966 that brought together leaders with suspended political rights, as well as members of the newly created Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB), in favor of the return of democracy.

In today's document of the week, we bring an example of a detailed report from the office of the US Embassy in Brasília explaining how the process of dismantling the Broad Front by the Costa e Silva government took place in April 1968 – the first of many arbitrary actions by the second dictatorial administration that would lead, at the end of the same year, to the decreeing of the feared Institutional Act number 5 (AI-5).

Interestingly, as the Embassy report analyzes in detail, the Costa e Silva administration decided to ban the Frente Ampla not directly, but by prohibiting an organization with similar purposes from existing per se, but, on the contrary, using instruments of the Institutional Acts already decreed (AI-1 It is AI-2 in particular) to justify the prohibition of leaders who had their political rights revoked, as was the case of former presidents Kubitschek and Goulart, from acting in the Front, in addition to prohibiting the use of the name “Broad Front” from then on.

Lacerda, in turn, in theory did not have his right to political participation restricted by the government's edict; in practice, however, the action of Costa e Silva would mark the beginning of the process of dismantling the Broad Front, which, from then on, would cease to exist as a supra-party organization. Lacerda would end up having his political rights suspended for 10 years with AI-5, suffering the same fate as his former political adversaries, JK and Jango.

Prof. Dr. Felipe Loureiro,

Deputy coordinator of NACE CNV-Brazil,

Institute of International Relations at the University of São Paulo