What happened
The Fourth Republic opened with the constitution promulgated on 18 September 1946 and closed on 9 April 1964, dates recorded by the Chamber of Deputies' official chronology (Câmara dos Deputados). The 1946 Constituent Assembly restored multiparty competition, direct presidential elections, and legislative authority after the Estado Novo (TSE).
Marshal Eurico Gaspar Dutra (1946–51) aligned Brazil with the United States, broke relations with the USSR in October 1947, created the Escola Superior de Guerra in 1949, and launched the Plano SALTE for health, food, transport and energy (Câmara dos Deputados). Getúlio Vargas returned by election in 1951 and shot himself in office in August 1954.
Juscelino Kubitschek (JK) governed from 31 January 1956 to 31 January 1961. On his second day he announced the Programa de Metas, a thirty-goal development plan concentrated on energy and transport, with Brasília as its synthesis goal (CPDOC/FGV). Industrial output rose about 96% over 1955, GDP grew an average 7% a year, and real per-capita income rose 3.9% annually (Atlas Histórico do Brasil – FGV). Brasília was inaugurated on 21 April 1960. In June 1959 JK broke negotiations with the IMF rather than accept its stabilization conditions, against a backdrop of balance-of-payments deficits and rising living costs (academic study citing O Estado de S. Paulo, 1959).
Jânio Quadros won the 1960 election but resigned on 25 August 1961, after about seven months. Senate archives show even his own base was caught off guard; historians treat the resignation as a likely failed self-coup attempt, in which Jânio expected a public clamor that would return him with expanded powers (Senado Federal). Congress accepted the resignation and, after a parliamentary interlude (1961–63) ended by a January 1963 plebiscite restoring presidentialism, Vice-President João Goulart governed with full powers (Atlas Histórico do Brasil – FGV).
Goulart pressed the "reformas de base" (structural reforms) amid mobilization by the General Workers' Command (CGT), the UNE student union, and nationalist-left blocs in Congress (Atlas Histórico do Brasil – FGV). On 31 March 1964 a military movement was launched against him. Resistance collapsed: a general strike failed and legalist officers were not coordinated; Goulart left for exile in Uruguay (CPDOC/FGV). Senate president Auro de Moura Andrade declared the presidency vacant, a military "Supreme Command of the Revolution" took power, and an Institutional Act — with no basis in the 1946 Constitution — opened hundreds of military-police inquiries and stripped the political rights of figures including Goulart, Jânio, Miguel Arraes, Leonel Brizola and Luís Carlos Prestes. On 15 April 1964 Marshal Castelo Branco was elected president by a purged Congress (CPDOC/FGV).
Where the dispute is
The central dispute is how to read 1964. The dominant anglophone and Brazilian-left account frames the period as JK the visionary, the Plano de Metas as a near-miracle, and Goulart as a democratic martyr toppled by a U.S.-backed coup of reactionary elites. There is documented support for the external factor: CPDOC records that Washington followed the conspiracy closely through ambassador Lincoln Gordon and military attaché Vernon Walters, and prepared the covert "Operation Brother Sam" to supply the plotters if Goulart's forces resisted (CPDOC/FGV).
The opposing reading stresses internal destabilization. CPDOC itself describes the coup not as one centralized plot but as "islands of conspiracy" united mainly by rejection of pre-1964 politics (CPDOC/FGV), and notes the U.S. relief that Brazil did not follow Cuba, where Castro had taken power in 1959. Conservative-leaning accounts emphasize the economic crisis Goulart deepened and the role of left sectors that treated liberal democracy as a stage to be overcome (Brasil Paralelo). Both sides agree on the hard facts — high inflation, the IMF break, the failed self-coup of 1961, the parliamentary improvisation, the armed mobilizations around the base reforms — and disagree on weight and intent.
TDIBr's reading
TDIBr's reading: the founding myths run in both directions and the lens applied here is to name achievements and costs together. The left myth — JK as flawless modernizer, Goulart as pure democratic victim of a foreign coup — omits that the developmentalist boom was bought at heavy fiscal cost: persistent deficits, rising living costs, and the 1959 rupture with the IMF that left a debt burden Jânio inherited and tried to correct before resigning (CPDOC/FGV; academic study). The same myth omits that 1961 produced an apparent presidential self-coup attempt by Jânio Quadros, aborted by Congress — destabilization that came from inside the system, not from Washington (Senado Federal).
The right myth — 1964 as a purely defensive "revolution" with no external hand — is equally unsupported: the U.S. tracked and was ready to back the movement through Operation Brother Sam (CPDOC/FGV). The balanced factual reading is that there was real American action and a real civil-military conspiracy, but reducing 1964 to an "imperialist coup" omits deliberate internal destabilization by left sectors — Brizola, Arraes, and later Marighella — who regarded liberal democracy as a stage to be surpassed, in a Cold War context where Cuba's revolution was five years old (CPDOC/FGV; Atlas Histórico do Brasil – FGV). What is not in dispute, and is recorded by the same primary sources, is that the military this time did not return power — the regime lasted 21 years.
Why it matters internationally
For an anglophone reader, the Fourth Republic is the period that produced both modern Brazil's industrial base and the institutional fragility that followed. Brasília, the auto industry, and a planned-development state all date from these years (Atlas Histórico do Brasil – FGV); so does the precedent of a military intervention that this time stayed, shaping Latin America's Cold War map alongside the Cuban Revolution and U.S. regional policy (CPDOC/FGV). The contested memory of 1964 — coup versus counter-revolution — still structures Brazilian political argument today, which is why getting the facts right, rather than importing a single orthodoxy, matters for anyone reading Brazil from abroad.
Further reading
- Câmara dos Deputados — Fourth Republic chronology (1946–1964)
- TSE — 1946 Constituent Assembly (historic rulings)
- Senado Federal — How Congress accepted Jânio Quadros's 1961 resignation
- CPDOC/FGV — The 1964 coup
- CPDOC/FGV — Juscelino Kubitschek (biography)
- Atlas Histórico do Brasil (FGV) — Programa de Metas
- Atlas Histórico do Brasil (FGV) — Reformas de base / Goulart government
- Brasil Paralelo — The military period in Brazil (context)
This article was written with the assistance of AI and reviewed by the TDIBr editorial team.