The Brazilian House of Representatives has voted to impeach President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party. Ironically, some of her loudest accusers, who are pro-business conservatives, are under strong suspicion of corruption. The current crisis reminds many of the right wing military coup d’état of 1964.
That coup is my most vivid childhood memory. My late father, John Keppel, a U.S. Foreign Service Officer, was Political Counselor of the U.S. Embassy in Rio de Janeiro. The President of Brazil was leftist Joao Goulart, and a debate raged among North Americans whether he was drifting toward communism. A recently declassified cable of March 27, 1964 from Ambassador Lincoln Gordon to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, and CIA Director John McCone asks for an unmarked U.S. submarine to deliver weapons by night to right wing rebels in the Brazilian military, who overthrew Goulart and imposed twenty-one years of brutal dictatorship. Dilma Rousseff, a dissident at the time, was tortured by the regime. It would be a bitter irony if those forces regained power today in a quasi-constitutional maneuver.
For my father, it was the beginning of a long personal transformation. His first conclusion was that Washington had no business picking so-called friendly – that is, pro-corporate — leaders in other countries. Instead, he thought we should focus on issues such as food, clean water, public health, and access to family planning.
Source:
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB118/bz02.pdf
