In 1964, the United States demanded that Goulart impose austerity on his suffering citizens. Goulart instead offered a program of land reform and control of foreign capital. He also recognized Cuba. The United States cut off aid in an attempt to destabilize the economy. Inflation skyrocketed. Goulart seized U.S. properties. U.S. Embassy officials prodded right-wing Brazilian officers to overthrow Goulart. On March 27, Ambassador Lincoln Gordon urged top officials, including McCone, Rusk, and McNamara, to back Army Chief of Staff General Humberto Castelo Branco and “help avert a major disaster… which might make Brazil the China of the 1960s.”55 The CIA went to work behind the scenes.
When the government fell, Gordon cabled Washington reporting that the generals had carried out a “democratic rebellion,”56 which was “a great victory for the free world.”57 It had prevented a “total loss… of all South American Republics” and improved the climate for “private investments.” Johnson wired his “warmest good wishes” to the new head of state and applauded him for solving the problem “within a framework of constitutional democracy and without civil strife.” Mann said to Johnson, “I hope you’re as happy about Brazil as I am.” “I am,” Johnson assured him.58 Later that day, Rusk told the NSC and congressional leaders that the “United States did not engineer the revolt. It was an entirely indigenous effort.”59
Within days, the new government declared a state of siege, limited the National Congress’s powers, and empowered the president to deny citizenship rights to anyone deemed a national security threat. This was quickly applied to three presidents, two Supreme Federal Court justices, six state governors, fifty-five members of the National Congress, and three hundred other politically active individuals. On April 11, General Castelo Branco took power. Johnson told Bundy that he wanted to send Castelo Branco a warm message on his inauguration. Bundy cautioned him about the repressive measures already being implemented. Johnson replied, “I know it. But I don’t give a damn. I think that… some people… need to be locked up here and there too.”60 The new regime arrested more than 50,000 people the first month alone. Over the next few years, enormous sums flowed into Brazil from USAID, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and U.S. corporations. From 1964 to 1966, Brazil received almost half of all USAID funds. A repressive military regime would rule for the next twenty years, backed by U.S. dollars. Brazil would have the largest gap between rich and poor on the earth. But the Brazilian dictators would again be counted among the closest U.S. allies, ever ready to intervene militarily to quash progressive movements in other Latin American nations.
The reverse situation existed in Peru, where the civilian government, wanting to improve the living conditions of that country’s impoverished citizens, attempted to take control of Peru’s biggest oil company, a subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey. The United States cut aid to the government but continued funding the military. Comparing Brazil and Peru, New York Senator Robert Kennedy noted, “What the Alliance for Progress has come down to then is that you can close down newspapers, abolish congress, jail religious opposition… and you’ll get lots of help, but if you fool around with a U.S. oil company, we’ll cut you off without a penny.”61
The Dominican Republic posed a different kind of challenge. Upon assuming office, Johnson recognized the military regime that had recently ousted Juan Bosch, who had come to power in a democratic election in December 1962. In 1965, a popular uprising supported by midlevel officers, liberals, and leftists attempted to restore the constitutional order and return Bosch to power. The uprising began on new CIA Director William “Red” Raborn’s first day on the job. Johnson had handpicked the retired admiral, a fellow Texan, over the objections of his advisors. A former colleague described the swearing-in ceremony: “After the President had said some kind things about him, about how he’d searched the country over and the only man he could find really capable of running it was ‘Red’ Raborn, there he was with tears trickling down his cheeks and coming off his chin in steady little drops.”62
Raborn would last barely a year in the job, but that would be long enough to crush Dominican democracy. He told Johnson, “There is no question in my mind that this is the start of Castro’s expansion.” Johnson asked, “How many Castro terrorists are there?” Eight, Raborn replied, neglecting to mention that the CIA memo reporting that number also stated, “There is no evidence that the Castro regime is directly involved in the current insurrection.” “There ain’t no doubt about this being Castro now,” Johnson told his lawyer Abe Fortas, “…They are moving other places in the hemisphere. It may be part of a whole Communistic pattern tied in with Vietnam.”63
McNamara doubted the report’s veracity, but Johnson’s special assistant, Jack Valenti, warned him, “If the Castro-types take over the Dominican Republic, it will be the worst domestic political disaster any Administration could suffer.”64 Johnson sent in 23,000 U.S. troops, keeping another 10,000 offshore. He addressed the nation: “Communist leaders, many of them trained in Cuba, seeing a chance to increase disorder, to gain a foothold, joined the revolution. They took increasing control, and what began as a popular democratic revolution, committed to democracy and social justice, very shortly… was taken over and really seized and placed into the hands of a band of communist conspirators…. The American nations cannot, must not, and will not permit the establishment of another communist government in the western hemisphere.”65
Before the UN Security Council, the Soviet representative assailed the intervention as a “gross violation” of the UN Charter. He deplored the “dirty and shameless” excuse, which “excels the work of Goebbels and his ilk,” and wondered why the United States sends troops to the Dominican Republic “far more freely” than to Alabama, where “the racists hold sway.”66 One Latin American diplomat charged the United States with reverting to “gunboat diplomacy.”67
Bosch decried the United States’ “dirty propaganda” and declared the intervention as immoral as the Soviet invasion of Hungary. “A democratic revolution,” he said, had been “smashed by the leading democracy of the world.”68 Even after the U.S. military took control of the country, the reformers refused to accept the restoration of the repressive regime. After Bundy’s effort to broker an agreement failed, Johnson sent Fortas to Puerto Rico to pressure Bosch into stepping down. Fortas, a future U.S. Supreme Court justice, complained, “This fellow Bosch is a complete Latin poet-hero type and he’s completely devoted to this damn constitution.”69 It later turned out that among the rebels, fewer than fifty were Communists.
Few nations were more strategically significant than Indonesia. Consisting of a vast archipelago of a half-dozen large and several thousand small islands, it was the most populous Muslim nation and the fifth most populous nation in the world. It also sat astride Southeast Asia’s principal shipping lanes, exporting oil, rubber, tin, and other critical resources. In 1948, George Kennan wrote that “the problem of Indonesia” is “the most crucial issue of the moment in our struggle with the Kremlin. Indonesia is the anchor in that chain of islands stretching from Hokkaido to Sumatra which we should develop as a politico-economic counterforce to communism.” In 1949, Indonesia finally ousted the Dutch colonizers, ending four centuries of Dutch rule, interrupted by Japan’s wartime occupation. Sukarno, a leader of the decolonization movement, assumed the presidency and quickly became a thorn in the United States’ side.70