Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco

Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco was born in Fortaleza, Ceará, served with the Brazilian Expeditionary Force in Italy in 1944-1945 and later commanded the Fourth Army in the Northeast. As army chief of staff he coordinated military opposition to João Goulart, and after the coup of 31 March and 1 April 1964 Congress elected him president. He promised a return to civilian rule but governed through institutional acts that removed hundreds of politicians, officers and officials from office, abolished the old parties and ended direct presidential elections. His planning minister Roberto Campos ran an anti-inflation and modernization program. He handed power to Artur da Costa e Silva in March 1967 and died months later in a plane collision near Fortaleza.

Castelo Branco is often described as the most moderate of the military presidents, a legalist officer who saw military rule as temporary and resisted some hard-line demands. Admirers credit his government with lowering inflation and building lasting institutions, including the Central Bank, the FGTS and a national housing finance system. Critics stress that he presided over the destruction of the 1946 democratic order: elected officials were purged, parties dissolved, elections made indirect and his own mandate extended. Reports of torture of political prisoners appeared in the press as early as September 1964. The National Truth Commission, in its 2014 report, documented 434 people killed or disappeared by state agents between 1946 and 1988, most under the military regime his government inaugurated, and named 377 state agents as responsible for grave violations.