During his 28 years as a congressman, Jair Bolsonaro had a ritual: every March 31, he would take the stand in the House and celebrate what he once called “Brazil’s second independence.” He was, however, celebrating the 1964 military coup, which ushered in a 21-year dictatorship. The regime arrested, tortured, and killed hundreds of Brazilian citizens, censored the press, and left the country’s economy in a state of near-bankruptcy in 1985.
For the first time since the return to democracy, Brazil will experience the coup’s anniversary having a president who contests testimonies and evidence about the regime’s most sordid face. President Jair Bolsonaro not only denies it was a coup (he says the military were defending democratic values threatened by communists), but he also glorifies the man who is the very symbol of the tortures carried out in political prisons, Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra.
The effort to rewrite history is flagrant at every turn. Even the date of the coup is apparently up for debate. While troops began mobilizing on March 31, 1964, it was only on the following day, April 1, that the coup mongers took the Copacabana Fort, forcing then-president João Goulart out of Rio de Janeiro—and essentially, out of power. But the Armed Forces don’t want their day to be confused with April Fool’s Day, which in Brazil is called “The Day of the Lie.”
This past week, the hashtag #NãoFoiGolpe (“it wasn’t a coup”) gained traction on social media. Many “intellectuals” on the military’s side have pointed out that the Armed Forces were moving against...
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