By Lise Alves, Senior Contributing Reporter
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Protestors for and against the celebrating March 31, 1964, as the day when Brazil’s military government was installed, took to the streets on Sunday to voice their opinion about what is known to be one of the country’s darkest periods.
Demonstrations, both for and against the date, were called after President Jair Bolsonaro approved a celebration speech of the military intervention to be read to the troops in military outposts and armed forces bases throughout the country.
In Rio de Janeiro, protesters gathered in downtown Cinelandia region with demonstrators carrying posters, showing photographs of victims of the military regime and singing protest songs of the period.
In Sao Paulo, Attorney General and President of the Special Commission on the Dead and Disappeared During the Dictatorship, Eugênia Augusta Gonzaga, said that there is a lack of awareness about what happened in Brazil.
“These silent marches are already happening in other countries. I think Brazil has not done its homework,” she told reporters.
Mariluce Moura, who lost her husband during the military period and said she was tortured during her pregnancy told reporters that “We have to double our democratic resistance, the call for justice, truth and memory. If we already protested in previous years, we will do it now more than ever.”
But not all the demonstrations were against the military takeover. Sunday night, in the Ministries Mall (Esplanada dos Ministérios), in Brasilia, a group favoring the celebration displayed videos on a 24-square-meter screen, showing the performance of the Armed Forces from 1964 to 1985.
Journalist Felipe Porto, 58, organizer of the event called the military action in 1964 a ‘civic-military intervention’, and said abuses and crimes were committed on both sides.
“It is not to celebrate excesses, which happened on both sides,” he said referring to what he called a “war” between military forces and guerrilla movements in cities and rural areas.
The military take over of the government in 1964, with some calling it a coup d’etat and others an intervention, was followed by a twenty-year period of military dictatorship in which there were no free, direct elections for President in Brazil.
The National Congress was closed, mandates were annulled and censorship was reported to the press.
According to the Truth Commission, 434 people were killed by the regime or disappeared.