Is there any hard evidence that the USA has secretly influenced Brazilian politics to put a "puppet" president in power?

by TheSirion

I know this has happened in several countries of Latin America and around the world, but I've never heard of it happening in Brazil from a reliable source.

QuickSpore

It depends on how you'd define such things.

The best candidate is the 1964 coup against João Goulart. The coup was not engineered in the US. But the coup plotters involved the US early on. The US provided money and CIA resources to support the plotters. President Johnson also sent the carrier USS Forrestal along with a number of destroyers, and supply ships to the area to help out. A supply depot of fuel and ammo was set up in New Jersey ready to be airlifted to an airbase the coup was supposed to take in the early hours.

One of the plotters jumped the gun. The planned "go" date was supposed to be around April 10th, when the US ships were due to arrive in the area. But on March 31st General Olímpio Mourão Filho roused his men and began to move toward Rio. It took the better part of the day for most of the plotters to decide to support the move, but by April 1st they had largely succeeded. Goulart fled to his farm and then left the country on the 4th. On the 11th the plotters' candidate, Castello Branco was sworn in. So outside some of the prep work and intelligence the CIA had provided, the US resources weren't used.

It should be again emphasized that this was an internal coup. The primary actors were all Brazilian, and they were motivated by internal politics. Nonetheless they sought and received help from the US government. Plus the US hated Goulart and may have already been working on a plan when they were approached; we won't know that for certain until the CIA files are declassified. Post coup they strongly associated and allied themselves with the US. So depending on your point of view, it may or may not meet your definition of a US intervention, and the plotters may or may not have been puppets.

For a much more thorough treatment I'd recommend Brazil and the Quiet Intervention, 1964 by Phyllis Parker