page_title: History of Brazil
section_title: Military response
hierarchical_section_title: History of Brazil / Republic / Military response
caption_attribution_description: Português: Em 4 de abril de 1968, no Rio de Janeiro, tanques do Exército ocupam a Av. Presidente Vargas, entre outras ruas cariocas. Naquele dia, haveria a missa de sétimo dia do secundarista Edson Luís, assassinado por policiais militares no dia 28 de março. Essa série de eventos culminaria, naquele ano, na Passeata dos Cem Mil e na decretação do AI-5. Foto produzida pelo Correio da Manhã e publicada pelo Arquivo Nacional. English: April 4, 1968, Rio de Janeiro: Brazilian troops occupy Presidente Vargas Ave for a requiem mass in memory of Edson Luís, murdered by gendarmes seven days earlier. These events were part of a series of building-up tensions between the people against the regime that led to a further toughening of repressive polices by December. Produced by the Correio da Manhã journal and published by the Brazilian National Archives.
context_page_description: The history of Brazil begins with indigenous people in Brazil. Europeans arrived in Brazil at the opening of the 16th century. The first European to claim sovereignty over Indigenous lands part of what is now the territory of the Federative Republic of Brazil on the continent of South America was Pedro Álvares Cabral on April 22, 1500 under the sponsorship of the Kingdom of Portugal. From the 16th to the early 19th century, Brazil was a colony and a part of the Portuguese Empire. The country expanded south along the coast and west along the Amazon and other inland rivers from the original 15 donatary captaincy colonies established on the northeast Atlantic coast east of the Tordesillas Line of 1494 that divided the Portuguese domain to the east from the Spanish domain to the west, although Brazil was at one time a colony of Spain. The country's borders were only finalized in the early 20th century.
  On September 7, 1822, the country declared its independence from Portugal and it became the Empire of Brazil. A military coup in 1889 established the First Brazilian Republic.
context_section_description: By early 1964 important sections of the military had developed a consensus that intervention in the political process was necessary. Important civilian politicians, such as José de Magalhães Pinto, governor of Minas Gerais, and the United States government, likely aided in the development of this consensus. Though many in the right of the political spectrum claim the coup was "revolutionary," most historians agree that is not so, since there was no real transition of power; military dictatorship was the fastest way to implement economic policies in the country while suppressing growing popular discontent, and the coup was thus a way for Brazil's already-ruling elite to secure its power.
  At first, there was intense economic growth, due to economic reforms, but in the later years of the dictatorship, the reforms had left the economy in shambles, with soaring inequality and national debt, and thousands of Brazilians were deported, imprisoned, tortured, or murdered.  Politically motivated deaths numbered in the hundreds, mostly related to the guerrilla-antiguerrilla warfare in the 1968–73 period; official censorship also led many artists into exile. Thousands of Indians were forcibly displaced or killed (intentionally or through diseases) amid an effort to build roads or hydroelectric dams on their lands.
caption: A column of M41 Walker Bulldog tanks along the streets of Rio de Janeiro in April 1968.
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