Ricardo Vélez accused of ‘historical revisionism’ after saying school history books will be rewritten to give ‘a fuller version’

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Brazil’s education minister has been accused of “historical revisionism” after saying school history books will be rewritten to give a positive spin to the country’s 1964 coup and 21-year military dictatorship.

Brazil: tortured dissidents appalled by Bolsonaro's praise for dictatorship Read more

His comments came a day after the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, described the Nazi regime as “leftwing” during a visit to Israel and added to concerns that his new administration is set on rewriting history.

“It is historical revisionism of the worst quality,” said Lilia Schwarcz, a historian, columnist and co-author of a bestselling history of Brazil.

Education minister Ricardo Vélez made the comments to the Valor Econômico business daily, days after Bolsonaro broke with precedent and ordered the military to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the coup that installed the military dictatorship.

“There will be gradual changes so a fuller version of history can be redeemed,” said Vélez.

Brazilian conservatives argue the military regime saved the country from becoming a communist state at a time of cold war tension.

Quick guide Brazil's dictatorship 1964-1985 Show Hide How did it began? Brazil’s leftist president, João Goulart, was toppled in a coup in April 1964. General Humberto Castelo Branco became leader, political parties were banned, and the country was plunged into 21 years of military rule. The repression intensified under Castelo Branco’s hardline successor, Artur da Costa e Silva, who took power in 1967. He was responsible for a notorious decree called AI-5 that gave him wide ranging dictatorial powers and kicked off the so-called “anos de chumbo” (years of lead), a bleak period of tyranny and violence which would last until 1974. What happened during the dictatorship? Supporters of Brazil’s 1964-1985 military regime - including Jair Bolsonaro - credit it with bringing security and stability to the South American country and masterminding a decade-long economic “miracle”. It also pushed ahead with several pharaonic infrastructure projects including the still unfinished Trans-Amazonian highway and the eight-mile bridge across Rio’s Guanabara bay. But the regime, while less notoriously violent than those in Argentina and Chile, was also responsible for murdering or killing hundreds of its opponents and imprisoning thousands more. Among those jailed and tortured were Brazil’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff, then a leftwing rebel. It was also a period of severe censorship. Some of Brazil’s best-loved musicians - including Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque and Caetano Veloso - went into exile in Europe, writing songs about their enforced departures. How did it end? Political exiles began returning to Brazil in 1979 after an amnesty law was passed that began to pave the way for the return of democracy. But the pro-democracy “Diretas Já” (Direct elections now!) movement only hit its stride in 1984 with a series of vast and historic street rallies in cities such as Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Belo Horizonte. Civilian rule returned the following year and a new constitution was introduced in 1988. The following year Brazil held its first direct presidential election in nearly three decades.

History shows that the presidency of João Goulart was forced out in a secret congress session with support from the military; army marshal Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco was voted in as president only after leftist lawmakers lost their political rights.

Under the military governments which followed, leftist politicians, unionists, journalists and dissidents were exiled, tortured and murdered, along with members of armed Marxist groups.

Newspapers, theatre, film and music were censored and thousands of indigenous people killed as military rulers forcibly colonised the Amazon.

A CIA telegram from 1974, revealed last year, showed the dictator Ernesto Geisel personally approved summary executions against “dangerous subversives”.

“It was a democratic regime of force, because it was necessary at that moment,” Veléz said.

Schwarcz called this argument a “contradiction”.

“It is an assault on our history and a profound disrespect to the thousands of Brazilians who were tortured and exiled, to those who disappeared at the hands of the military,” she said.

She said Brazil’s foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo, has previously “sought to revise history” by arguing that the Nazi regime was left wing – an argument widely contradicted by historians.

Bolsonaro's pledge to return Brazil to past alarms survivors of dictatorship Read more

On Tuesday, during a visit to Israel, Bolsonaro said there was “no doubt” that Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime was leftwing because of its name – the National Socialist German Workers party.

He spoke after visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, whose website describes the Nazi party as a “radical rightwing” group.

Under the Nazis, communists and socialists were deemed enemies of the state and sent to concentration camps. Hitler himself said in a 1923 interview that “Bolshevism” was Germany’s “greatest menace” and vowed: “I shall take socialism away from the socialists.”

On Thursday, BBC Brasil reported that Bolsonaro’s government had sent a telegram to the United Nations insisting there was no coup and that military governments were “necessary to remove the growing threats of a communist takeover of Brazil”.

The telegram was sent by the foreign ministry to Fabián Salvioli, special rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, after he criticised government plans to commemorate the 1964 coup, the BBC said.