Is the US behind the Brazilian coup?

Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff, recently suspended as president of Brazil in an impeachment process that smells of a coup for permanently removing her from power in a few months, seems to be the work of the US, which hates to see large and powerful countries independently running their own policies, determined to derail Washington’s vested political and economic interests in Latin America.

Rouseff, who succeeded Lula da Silva in 2011says she has been the victim of a coup d’etat.The impeachment process resulted in her temporary removal from power following a vote in the Senate, and only a two-thirds majority vote will be able to permanently remove her. The suspended president is right that it was her vice president, Michel Temer, who has since taken over, who betrayed her, as did various organizations, with links to the US. There was also an element of political vendetta as many opposition politicians who are themselves under investigation helped remove her from power with sanctimonious speeches that rang hollow. Stay with us for an analytical review in this regard.

Former Brazilian president, Lula da Silva, has charged the media conglomerate Globo, the country’s largest, of censoring suspended president, DilmaRousseff, adding that the interim government of Michel Temer is seeking to take away social rights and is “delivering” the nation’s oil for exploitation by foreign interests.He said: “After the coup, Globo simply took Dilma off the air as if she did not exist or had never existed. As if she were not struggling daily with the PMBD (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party) to restore her mandate and the democratic rule of law.” He further said the interim government of Michel Temer, in a coalition with the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), “exposes the methods and interests of the alliance between the parties defeated at the polls and the most corrupt Brazilian politicians.”

In his message, Lula said Temer’s government “is trying to hide the word ‘coup’ by censoring protests and the acts of President DilmaRousseff.” He pointed out that Temer’s administration “acts like a definitive government, which it is not, and legitimate, which it will never be.”

In related news, Ted Snider who writes on analyzing patterns in US foreign policy and history, raised the question: “Is the US behind the Brazilian Coup?”

He added: The political maneuvering by the opposition PSDB has been uncloaked and revealed for what it clearly was all along: a quiet coup dressed in the disguise of democracy.

According to Ted Snider the recent release of a recording of a phone call has done for Brazil what US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs Victoria Nuland’s phone call to American ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt did for Ukraine. In other words, it has provided incontrovertible proof that the removal of the elected President was a coup.

The published transcript of the call between Romero Juca, who was a senator at the time of the call and is currently the planning minister in the new Michael Temer government, and former oil executive, Sergio Machado, lays bare "a national pact" to remove Dilma and install Temer as President. Juca reveals that, not only opposition politicians, but also the military and the Supreme Court are conspirators in the coup. Regarding the military’s role, Juca says, "I am talking to the generals, the military commanders. They are fine with this, they said they will guarantee it." And, as for the Supreme Court, Glenn Greenwald reports that Juca admits that he "spoke with and secured the involvement of numerous justices on Brazil’s Supreme Court." Juca further boasted that "there are only a small number" of Supreme Court justices that he had not spoken to.

What the Romero Juca phone call does not do, unlike the Victoria Nuland phone call, is reveal US involvement in the coup. The Juca transcript does not name the US, and neither did President Rousseff when reporter Glenn Greenwald interviewed her. Instead Dilma pinned the blame securely on the lapel of lower house president Eduardo Cunha.However, there are three lines of evidence suggestive of US involvement. In chronological order, there is suggestive historical evidence, there is a suggestive pattern of evidence in other Latin American countries, and there is current suggestive evidence in Brazil.

As regards the Historical Evidence, there have been several well noted American coups in Latin America. The most well-known and discussed are the 1954 CIA overthrow of Guatemala’s JacoboArbenz and the 1973 overthrow of Chile’s Salvador Allende. But the little known 1964 Brazilian coup was significant and deserves more discussion.

Professor Noam Chomsky, the prominent US philosopher, cognitive scientist, and political activist, who teaches linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explains that in 1962, US president John Kennedy made the policy decision to transform the militaries of Latin America from defending against external forces to "internal security". Chomsky calls it "war against the domestic population, if they raised their heads." In view of this, the Brazilian coup is significant because it may have been the first major manifestation of this shift in America’s Latin American policy. The Kennedy administration prepared the 1964 coup, and it was carried out shortly after the US president’s assassination. Chomsky says that the "mildly social democratic" Goulart government was taken out for a "murderous and brutal" military dictatorship.

Though not often included in the list of significant US coups, the evidence that it was a US coup is solid. The CIA station in Brazil’s field report shows clear US foreknowledge of the coup, as is evident by its statement: “a revolution by anti-Goulart forces will definitely get under way this week, probably in the next few days." President Johnson gave Undersecretary of State George Ball and Assistant Secretary for Latin America Thomas Mann the green light to participate in the 1964 coup in Brazil by saying: “I think we ought to take every step that we can, be prepared to do everything that we need to do”.

And the steps were substantial those days in 1964. Ambassador Lincoln Gordon told CIA director John McCone, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk that those steps should include “a clandestine delivery of arms . . . pre-positioned prior any outbreak of violence” to the coup forces as well as shipments of gas and oil. Gordon also told them to “prepare without delay against the contingency of needed overt intervention at a second stage" after the covert involvement. Rusk would then send Gordon a list of the steps that would be taken "in order [to] be in a position to render assistance at appropriate time to anti-Goulart forces if it is decided this should be done.”

The list, sent in a telegram on March 31, 1964, included dispatching US Navy tankers with petroleum and oil, an aircraft carrier, two guided missile destroyers, four destroyers and task force tankers for "overt exercises off Brazil." The telegram also lists as a step to "assemble shipment of about 11 tons of ammunition."

The significance of this historical record is the demonstration that the last time Brazil had a "mildly social democratic" government, the US cooperated in its removal. The next social democratic government would be the now removed independent governments of Presidents Lula da Silva and DilmaRousseff.

Another important indicator of US involvement in removing Rousseff is the pattern of evidence in Latin America. A chronological order of Washington’s efforts to reassert control of Latin America is the powerful swing to left wing governments in many Latin American countries. The US has started efforts for the return swing of the pendulum. Washington has long seen Central and South America as its own backyard, and it means, it is a rule that you get to play with the things that are in your backyard: like natural resources. Beyond control of America’s backyard, the policy has broader implications. Key to the reclamation of Latin America is the repossession of the post-Chavez Venezuela. With the death of Chavez, the US saw the possibility of, once again, exerting its influence in its backyard.

But when Chavez’ successor, Nicolas Maduro, continued the run of Bolivarian Revolution victories, the dream of an easy repossession was shattered. But the US has been the only country to refuse to recognize the election results despite the fact that Maduro’s opponent and Washington’s own choice, Henrique Capriles, never actually filed his legal challenge when an independent audit – as per his demand – found no fault with the voting machines. Moreover, 150 electoral monitors from around the world monitored Venezuela’s election, including monitors from the Carter Center.President Madurohas charged the US of conspiring with right wing groups in Venezuela to overthrow his government. Maduro says that "Washington is activating measures at the request of Venezuela’s fascist right."

On June 28, 2009, in what was really an extraordinary rendition, Honduras’ democratically elected President, Manuel Zelaya, was seized at gunpoint by hooded soldiers and forced onto a plane that, after refueling at the US military base of Palmerola, took him to Costa Rica.Zelaya says that, that morning, he was the victim of a coup. Almost all of the international community and the Organization of American States (OAS) agree with him. The American position was more noncommittal. The White House never did officially call what happened a coup.

But it was, and they cooperated with it. Most US aid was never fully suspended. Zelaya even says that "after the coup d’état . . . the US has increased its military support to Honduras". The US never withdrew its ambassador. And the US refused to call for Zelaya’s return, despite that call being made by the OAS and the United Nations.

Though the OAS refused to recognize the new coup installed president, the Clinton State Department refused to follow it on that course.Later, the US would insist on recognizing the coup leaders as the winners of an election that the OAS, the Latin American Mercosur trade bloc and the twenty-three Latin American and Caribbean nation strong Rio Group refused to recognize.

So illegitimate was the election that the UN refused to even bother monitoring it.Latin American expert Mark Weisbrot points out that "the Obama administration acknowledged that they were talking to the [Honduran] military right up to the day of the coup, allegedly to convince them not to do it". But, he added, "I find it hard to believe that they couldn’t convince them not to do it if they really wanted to: the Honduran military is pretty dependent on the US".

Yet despite the refusal to call it a coup and the insistence on recognizing the new government as legitimate, the US knew it was a coup. By July 24, 2009, less than a month after the coup, the White House, Clinton and many others were in receipt of a cable sent from the US embassy in Honduras. In an almost comic lack of subtlety that was clearly never meant to be public, the cable is called "Open and Shut: the Case of the Honduran Coup". In it, the embassy says "There is no doubt that the military, Supreme Court and National Congress conspired on June 28 in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup.”

Their conclusions could not be clearer. Unlike the conclusions that were provided to the American people, the embassy explicitly called it a "coup" and said there was no doubt about it. And just in case there were any objections, the cable adds that "none of the arguments of the coup defenders has any substantive validity under the Honduran constitution".

So, the US had foreknowledge of the coup in Honduras; it cooperated in the coup – at least by helping the rendition plane to refuel – and provided cover for the coup.

The repossession is also at work in Bolivia where WikiLeaks cables reveal that America had approved one hundred and one grants worth over $4 million to help regional governments "operate more strategically" to push a shift in power from the national government of Evo Morales to regional governments. The idea was to rebalance power and weaken the Morales government.

Meanwhile, on the day that Paraguay’s democratically elected Fernando Lugo was removed in their right wing coup, the US was negotiating a new military base in Paraguay. The US refused to call it a coup. But it was. As early as 2009, US embassy cables say that Lugo’s political opposition has as its goal to "Capitalize on any Lugo missteps" and "impeach Lugo and assure their own political supremacy". The cable notes that to achieve their goal, they are willing to "legally" impeach Lugo "even if on spurious grounds". The US knew it was a coup: they had been tipped off about the strategy and told what it would look like.

In view of these factors, Brazil was going to be a part of this Latin American pattern was clear as early as 2005 when, Mark Weisbrot says, the US intervened in Brazilian politics to undermine the elected government of Lula da Silva.

Another proof in this regard, is the current suggestive evidence in Brazil. Weisbrot says that "there is no doubt that the biggest players in this coup attempt – people like former presidential candidates Jose Serra and AecioNeves – are US government allies.

Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Professor of Sociology at the University of Coimbra in Portugal and Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison says that Brazil is awash in financing from American sources, including "CIA-related organizations."

Perhaps the most direct implication is that the very day after the impeachment vote, Senator AloysioNunes of the new PSDB government began a three day visit to Washington. Nunes is no small player in the coup government; he was the vice-presidential candidate on the 2014 ticket that lost to President Rousseff and a key player in the effort to impeach President Rousseff in the senate.

Nunes scheduled meetings with, amongst others, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corkerand Ben Cardin, as well as with Undersecretary of State and former Ambassador to Brazil Thomas Shannon. Though Nunes denies it, there are reports that his trip to Washington was ordered by Michael Temer.The willingness to go ahead with the planned meetings with Nunes right after the impeachment vote suggests at least tacit acceptance or approval on the part of Washington.

In view of these development, President Evo Morales of Bolivia has called on the remaining left wing governments of South America to counter American plans to retake control of the region. Morales said, “It is the plan of the American empire that wants to regain control of Latin America and the Caribbean, and especially in South America, and there surely is an ambition to establish a United States presence in these countries and recover subservient governments as a model, as a system.”

So far, America has been conspicuously silent about the coup in Brazil.

AS/SS