How did Brazil’s military dictatorship end?

An exit on the regime’s terms

Brazil’s military regime, in power since the coup of 1964, did not fall in a day. From 1974 on, the generals loosened their own grip at a pace they chose. The AI-5, the harshest of the decrees they ruled by, stopped applying on January 1, 1979, and an amnesty law that August let the exiles come home. Those years are told in What was the military dictatorship in Brazil?.

Then the ballot box began to bite. In 1982 Brazilians elected their state governors by direct vote, and the opposition took the three most populous states, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais. The presidency, though, was still decided indirectly, by an Electoral College that had never failed to deliver the regime’s candidate.

Beaten by its own rules

In 1984 the Diretas Já campaign filled the squares, and on April 25 the amendment for direct elections fell 22 votes short. The regime won that vote, but the tally hid a warning: dozens of deputies from its own party, the PDS, had broken with the government and voted yes.

The break widened over who would succeed General Figueiredo. The PDS chose Paulo Maluf. The members who refused him formed the Liberal Front and made a deal with the opposition PMDB. The ticket that came out of it joined the two camps: Tancredo Neves, governor of Minas Gerais, for president, and José Sarney, a former president of the PDS, for vice-president. On January 15, 1985, the 686 members of the College gave Tancredo 480 votes to Maluf’s 180. The opposition had beaten the regime inside a system the regime had built.

The night before the handover

The ceremony was set for 10 a.m. on March 15, 1985. Twelve hours earlier, Tancredo was taken to hospital for emergency surgery. Before dawn, Congress argued over whether a vice-president could be sworn in when the president had not been. Ulysses Guimarães, president of the Chamber and next in the line of succession, argued that Sarney should take office instead of himself.

At ten in the morning, Sarney took the oath and assumed the presidency, the first civilian to govern Brazil since 1964. General Figueiredo would not hand over the presidential sash; he left the Planalto palace by a back door. The new government inherited inflation of more than 200% a year and a promise to call a Constituent Assembly. Tancredo died on April 21 without ever taking office.

When did it really end?

March 15, 1985 is the date most often given: 21 years after the coup, five generals had ruled, and now a civilian did. Historians do not all agree on the marker. Some point to 1979, when the AI-5 was gone and the amnesty came; others to October 5, 1988, when a new constitution replaced the one written under the generals, or to 1989, when Brazilians voted for president again for the first time since 1960.

Each date captures part of the truth. There was no single blow and no storming of a palace. The regime was taken apart in stages, through the rules it had written itself, and the last stage was a general walking out by the back door.