In a gesture towards the military, Lula da Silva canceled official events due to the coup d’état that took place 60 years ago in Brazil

On the 60th anniversary of the last military coup against the government of Joao Goulart, commemorated this Sunday in Brazil, President Lula da Silva they vetoed official acts in memory of the victims, in an attempt to defuse relations with the army, when some of its high-ranking officers are targeted by an alleged coup plot seeking to prevent the PT leader from taking office in the first week of January 2023.

Lula’s gesture is a clear change of position for a president who has historically been associated with positions critical of the military. “We need to bring Brazilian society and the Armed Forces closer together: they cannot be treated as if they were enemies,” he said at the end of February in an interview with the local press, before Sunday’s measure.

On March 31, 1964, The Brazilian army rebelled against President Joao Goulart (1961–1964) and remained for 21 years at the head of a dictatorship, admired by the former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022), former army captain, today under judicial investigation together with other high officials for an attempted coup against his successor.

The anniversary seemed propitious for Lula, a former trade unionist who led a historic strike against the de facto government, to remember his victims, among whom 434 were murdered or disappeared, according to the 2014 conclusions of the National Truth Commission, an official body.

Unlike neighboring Argentina, which tried those accused of committing crimes during its dictatorship (1976-1983), In Brazil the chapter ended with an amnesty law in 1979.

But Lula, 78, said the 1964 coup “is already part of history” and his government “will not dwell on the issue.”

“I am more worried about the January 8, 2023 coup than the 1964 coup,” he said recently.. That day, thousands of Bolsonaro’s followers invaded the three-power headquarters in Brasilia, demanding the military depose Lula, a week after he took office.

At the same time, the police are investigating the former president on charges of having participated in a “coup plan” to stay in power after his defeat in the 2022 elections. Many of his closest associates are involved in the plot allies, including ministers and high-ranking military figures. As part of that investigation, a major and an army colonel were arrested.

“There has never been a situation so favorable to the discussion on the place of the Armed Forces in Brazilian society as after the Bolsonaro government and after January 8,” explains historian Lucas Pedretti.

But Lula has made “a political calculation that foregrounds a strategy of accommodation with the Armed Forces, to the detriment of the historical need of Brazilian society to review its past”, this academic from the University of Rio told AFP. Janeiro.

Lula’s decision meant the cancellation of events prepared by his own government, such as those of the Ministry of Human Rights. Its owner, Silvio Almeida, intended to remember the activists and those persecuted by the military regime in a speech at the Museum of the Republic, in Brasilia, according to local media.

And although Lula banned celebrating the coup in the barracks last year, as during the Bolsonaro years (2019-2022), there will also be no reflection on the role of the Armed Forces in the dictatorship or today.

But human rights groups are calling on President Lula to reactivate the Commission on the Dead and Missinginstalled in 1995 to investigate political crimes between 1961 and 1979, and suppressed by Bolsonaro in his last year of government.

The Brazilian Coalition for Memory, Truth and Justice, which brings together more than 150 associations, criticized the president’s “wrong” decision not to commemorate the anniversary. “Vehemently repudiating the 1964 coup is a way to reaffirm the commitment to punish even the blows of the present and possible future attempts,” we read in a note