Brazil education minister accused of whitewashing 1964 coup and dictatorship

Ricardo Vélez accused of ‘historical revisionism’ after saying school history books will be rewritten to give ‘a fuller version’
 Brazilian army tanks stand in Rio de Janeiro on 1 April 1964 during the military push that led to the overthrow of President João Goulart. Photograph: -/AFP/Getty Images

Dom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro-Thu 4 Apr 2019

Brazil’s education minister has been accused of “historical revisionism” after saying school history books will be rewritten to give a positive spin to the country’s 1964 coup and 21-year military dictatorship.

His comments came a day after the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, described the Nazi regime as “leftwing” during a visit to Israel and added to concerns that his new administration is set on rewriting history.

“It is historical revisionism of the worst quality,” said Lilia Schwarcz, a historian, columnist and co-author of a bestselling history of Brazil.

Education minister Ricardo Vélez made the comments to the Valor Econômico business daily, days after Bolsonaro broke with precedent and ordered the military to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the coup that installed the military dictatorship.

“There will be gradual changes so a fuller version of history can be redeemed,” said Vélez.
Brazilian conservatives argue the military regime saved the country from becoming a communist state at a time of cold war tension.

History shows that the presidency of João Goulart was forced out in a secret congress session with support from the military; army marshal Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco was voted in as president only after leftist lawmakers lost their political rights.

Under the military governments which followed, leftist politicians, unionists, journalists and dissidents were exiled, tortured and murdered, along with members of armed Marxist groups.

Newspapers, theatre, film and music were censored and thousands of indigenous people killed as military rulers forcibly colonised the Amazon.

A CIA telegram from 1974, revealedlast year, showed the dictator Ernesto Geisel personally approved summary executions against “dangerous subversives”.

“It was a democratic regime of force, because it was necessary at that moment,” Veléz said.
Schwarcz called this argument a “contradiction”.

“It is an assault on our history and a profound disrespect to the thousands of Brazilians who were tortured and exiled, to those who disappeared at the hands of the military,” she said.

She said Brazil’s foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo, has previously “sought to revise history”
by arguing that the Nazi regime was left wing – an argument widely contradicted by historians.

On Tuesday, during a visit to Israel, Bolsonaro said there was “no doubt” that Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime was leftwing because of its name – the National Socialist German Workers party.

He spoke after visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, whose websitedescribes the Nazi party as a “radical rightwing” group.

Under the Nazis, communists and socialists were deemed enemies of the state and sent to 
concentration camps. Hitler himself said in a 1923 interviewthat “Bolshevism” was Germany’s “greatest menace” and vowed: “I shall take socialism away from the socialists.”

On Thursday, BBC Brasil reported that Bolsonaro’s government had sent a telegram to the United Nations insisting there was no coup and that military governments were “necessary to remove the growing threats of a communist takeover of Brazil”.

The telegram was sent by the foreign ministry to Fabián Salvioli, special rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, after he criticised government plans to commemorate the 1964 coup, the BBC said.