He met growing opposition among the elite, the urban middle class, a large portion of the officer corps of the armed forces, the Catholic Church and the press, who accused him of threatening the legal order of the country, of colluding with communists, causing social chaos and weakening the military hierarchy.

Goulart lost the support of the center, failed to approve the base reforms in Congress and in the final stage of his government relied on pressure from reformist movements to overcome the resistance of the Legislature, leading to the height of the political crisis in March 1964.

In three moments — Getúlio Vargas' suicide in 1954, Marshal Lott's counter-coup in 1955 and Jânio Quadros' resignation in 1961 — some military personnel and politicians from the liberal-conservative bloc attempted coups, creating serious crises that neared civil war, but they did not have enough support in society and in the Armed Forces.

[25] The Peasant Leagues, concentrated in the Northeast, reached their peak and radicalized, calling for "land reform by law or by force" in place of the moderate path proposed by the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB).

To do so, Goulart would need to pressure Congress to overthrow the parliamentary Additional Act, possibly with a constituent assembly, or bring forward the plebiscite scheduled for 1965 in which the system of government would be submitted to popular consultation.

[62] The Federal Information and Counterinformation Service (SFICI) intercepted messages from the conspirators, but little was done, as it was not directly subordinated to the president but to Argemiro de Assis Brasil, head of the Military Cabinet from 1963 to 1964, who had an overly confident attitude.

[72] According to authors such as Ianni and Francisco Weffort, the populism that existed since the Vargas Era collapsed as workers began to act autonomously, while businessmen linked to international capital abandoned the populist system.

[86] Several authors agree that the objective was to prevent the reforms,[87][88] as they benefited and harmed certain sectors of society,[89] were associated with the radical left[90] and even branded as revolutionary proposals, although they were part of a national-developmentalist project of capitalist progress.

[93] The failure of the proposals is attributed to Goulart's lack of negotiation skills (an existing and also contested assessment),[94] or, among authors with conjunctural explanations of the coup, to the "decision-making paralysis" of the political system, as described by Wanderley Guilherme dos Santos, and the radicalization and mutual disrespect for democracy, according to Jorge Ferreira and Argelina Figueiredo.

[127] From this respective, illegality would be the CGT's actions,[135] the breakdown of hierarchy in the Armed Forces,[126] the generalized chaos and disorder, the approval of base reforms by unconstitutional means[136] and the president's intentions to prolong his rule and attempt a self-coup.

[137] Goulart was considered a potential or present caudilho by Carlos Lacerda,[138] by several newspapers, pointing to opportunism, paternalism and dictatorial tendencies,[139] and by Afonso Arinos, for whom the president practiced both caudillism, which he inherited from Vargas, and Bonapartism, by pitting the people against the institutions.

[173] In a telegram of March 28, 1964, Gordon mentioned how "secret operations of pro-democracy street demonstrations ... and encouragement [of] democratic and anti-Communist sentiment in Congress, the Armed Forces, student groups and pro-American workers, church, and business" were ongoing in Brazil.

[176] The December 1963 contingency plan mentions secret contacts with the Brazilian conspirators and, out of four hypotheses, it has two improbable ones, one similar to what actually happened (the removal of Goulart and takeover by Ranieri Mazzilli, president of the Chamber of Deputies) and one with a conflict in Brazil.

[180][j] Codenamed "Brother Sam", the operation launched during the coup consisted of loading oil tankers in the Caribbean and munitions at air bases and sending a naval task force led by the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal, docked in Virginia.

They had a state project[183] — "to restrict the organization of the working classes; to consolidate economic growth in a model of late capitalism, dependent, with a high degree of industrial concentration integrated to the banking system and to promote the development of multinational and associated interests in the formation of a techno-entrepreneurial regime".

[191] The conspiracy of the "IPES/IBAD complex" and the Superior School of War (ESG), the "Sorbonne", included generals Castelo Branco, Golbery do Couto e Silva, Antônio Carlos Muricy and Osvaldo Cordeiro de Farias, known as the "modernizers".

The latter represented the less dynamic elites, party groups, governors and officers without ESG training, such as Artur da Costa e Silva, Olímpio Mourão Filho, Amaury Kruel and Joaquim Justino Alves Bastos.

[213] In the midst of the Sailors' Revolt, on March 25, Magalhães Pinto sounded out Castelo Branco and Kruel about their participation and summoned Guedes, Mourão and marshal Odílio Denys to a meeting at the Juiz de Fora airport on the 28th.

[231] On March 30, the CIA reported that the "revolution by anti-Goulart forces" would begin in Minas Gerais and São Paulo in the coming days and that "last minute negotiations" were underway involving the states under control of the democratic governors.

[242] As reported in Os idos de março e a queda em abril, published shortly after the coup, the Minas Gerais front had everything in place for a civil war, and "the opposing troops physically confronted each other, loaded their weapons and were ready to fire the first shot", but there was no combat.

[165] Elio Gaspari accounted for 20 deaths in 1964, seven of them during the coup, all of them civilians: three in Rio de Janeiro,[s] two in Recife and two in Governador Valadares, Minas Gerais; for Latin American standards, the number was low, but for Brazil, it was intermediate.

During this period, the government's military apparatus was standing by inertia, Mourão Filho had not received any relevant support from other commanders and would not have been able to resist first-rate units from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

[255] Colonel-aviator Rui Moreira Lima, commander of the Santa Cruz Air Force Base, made a reconnaissance flight over the Minas Gerais column on the 1st and left four F-8 (Gloster Meteor) jets ready for an attack, which could have interrupted the offensive.

Information was not used properly, and the ideological indoctrination by the conspirators was ignored: the Revolutionary War Doctrine was disseminated through official channels in publications, courses and lectures,[263] as the Army General Staff and military schools were used as an "archive" for right-wing officers.

Auro de Moura Andrade, the president of the Senate who'd already broken his ties with the government, wanted exactly the opposite and feared the invasion of Congress by a militia assembled by Darcy Ribeiro at the Teatro Experimental.

[345] In Porto Alegre Ildo Meneghetti, governor of Rio Grande do Sul, was preparing to join the coup with general Galhardo, who promised to arrest Ladário when he arrived, but that was bravado and he handed over command at 02:50 at dawn.

[352] Ladário organized three tactical groups in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul to march with the 5th RM/DI under the command of Silvino, but that too was refused — at 10:00 am general Mário Poppe de Figueiredo, of the 3rd DI, had joined the coup, as the 2nd and 3rd Cavalry Divisions (DCs), respectively from Uruguaiana and Bagé, had already done earlier.

[356] Adalberto Pereira dos Santos, from the 6th DI, was dismissed but fled to one of his units in Cruz Alta, while colonel Jarbas Ferreira de Souza, considered a PCB sympathizer, took over in the capital.

From the beginning, Minas Gerais coup leaders were sidelined by their counterparts in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo:[422] Magalhães Pinto saw his ambition to become president in 1965 frustrated, while Mourão Filho was appointed to the Superior Military Court, where he had no political relevance.

[428] Economic policy reflected the predominance of IPES associates in the Ministries of Finance and Planning,[37] the DSN's ideal of Brazil as a great power,[429] the pre-coup debate between structuralist and liberal economists, and the political needs of the moment— "legitimacy by effectiveness".