The CIA overthrew João Goulart

In 1964, Brazil had a government elected by its people. Then the United States destroyed it.

The military coup that overthrew President João Goulart wasn’t a spontaneous uprising. It was a coordinated operation backed by the CIA, U.S. corporations, and the Pentagon. Why? Because Goulart wanted land reform. Because he raised wages. Because he refused to be a puppet.

Washington called him a threat to democracy. So they installed a dictatorship.

For 21 years, Brazil was ruled by generals—torture, censorship, and state terror became policy. The U.S. trained the torturers. Companies like Ford and IBM profited from the repression. And the media, both in Brazil and abroad, stayed quiet. To this day, no U.S. president has apologized. No reparations have been paid. But the legacy of that coup never ended.

We see it in Lula da Silva’s imprisonment in 2018, engineered by corrupt judges and amplified by U.S.-linked lawfare. We see it in the 2016 impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s first female president and a former torture survivor. And we saw it in the rise of Jair Bolsonaro—a fascist who openly celebrated the dictatorship, welcomed foreign capital, and opened the Amazon to destruction. Through it all, U.S. policy stayed the same: back whoever serves the market, crush whoever serves the people.

Brazil is not unique. From Guatemala to Chile, from Haiti to Argentina, the U.S. has waged war on Latin American democracy for over a century. Not in spite of democracy, but because of it. Every time the people choose justice, the empire intervenes.

And yet—Brazil resists. Lula is back. The workers are organizing. Indigenous communities are defending their land. The struggle is not over. But we must name the enemy clearly.

The United States does not bring democracy to Latin America. It burns it down.