By FLAVIO AGUIAR*
In retrospect it can be seen that there was not just one coup being planned. There were at least three.
Some time ago I published a series of articles on the website the earth is round on the history of coups d'état in Brazil. There were six articles gathered under the name “Of coups and counter-coups in the Brazilian tradition”, covering the period between Independence and the early coup that, based on the tainted Lava-Jato operation, prevented Lula's candidacy in 2018, paving the way for Jair Bolsonaro's victory.
The series was complemented by another article, called “Messiah candidate's bizarre self-coup”, published on 14/12/2022, two days after the riots in Brasília that aimed to disrupt/prevent the inauguration of the president-elect, Lula.
Now, in light of the evidence presented by the Federal Police investigation, I am willing to analyze the attempted self-coup engineered in the offices of the Planalto Palace and the reasons that led to its failure and the troubled fiasco of January 8, 2023, which celebrates its second anniversary.
Interestingly, I begin by referring to an article that defends the coup plotters, repeating their argument that electronic voting machines and the Brazilian electoral system are not trustworthy, denouncing the initiative of Judge Alexandre de Moraes and the Federal Police report as fraudulent, motivated above all by the political animosity of the Supreme Court judge against those accused, in particular the former president. This is the article “The Impossible Coup”, by JR Guzzo, published in Revista Oeste on line, edition 245, on 24/11/2024, in English as “The autopsy of a farce”, published on 07/12/2024.
The article says that the investigation and the report are false because it is “unbelievable” that only 37 people in closed offices would have intended to plan a coup. Well, the article is right on one point: such a plot, as described, is unbelievable; although, I would say, not impossible, given the eagerness of the palace group to remain palace-like. This plot was followed by similar designs in previous years, when a relatively small group of people tried to plan and execute a coup d’état, as, to cite a few examples, in the episodes of Aragarças and Jacareacanga, in the 50s, or in the case of Sílvio Frota vs. Ernesto Geisel, in the 1970s.
The columnist highlights the fact that the nearly four dozen coup plotters from the previous government tried to gather support throughout the country, starting in the former president's encirclement, then, in the midst of the pre- and post-2022 election climate, with pressure from their followers at the barracks gates and the riots to prevent the inauguration of the president-elect, Lula, all culminating in the blunder of January 8, 2023. But it is true that the plotted coup had everything to not happen, as in fact it did not. Which does not mean that there was no danger to democracy, nor that its purposes were of the most threatening.
One of the factors that prevented the coup was the behavior of the core conspirators themselves. A self-coup, as today we conventionally call a coup d'état carried out by those already in power, must start from the principle that something puts the government at risk or prevents it from governing, whether it be an alleged conspiracy external to or internal to the government itself. In other words, some very consistent argument is needed, at least on the surface, to justify a government breaking the institutional order that it relied on to get to where it is today.
The first obstacle in this journey was the palace group itself that was plotting the coup. It seems that, starting with their leader, the president, they did everything except govern. They formed a group of idlers who only conspired, organized jet ski or motorcycle rides, and clumsy interventions in the country's small enclosures. They simply delegated the task of governing to Paulo Guedes, who did what he could and could not, also what he should and should not have done. The social fabric and credibility of the country sank, despite the efforts of the corporate media to demonstrate otherwise.
The president himself seemed to be the head of the vagrancy, making speeches that oscillated between threat and ridicule, making endless gaffes, from eating pizza on the street in New York because he did not want to publicly acknowledge that he had been vaccinated, even though he had secretly forged a vaccination certificate in order to enter the United States, to stepping on Angela Merkel's toes, hearing in return a "it could only be you".
Secondly, it can be seen in retrospect that there was not just one coup being planned. There were at least three. One, the most obvious, was that of the royal family, that is, the presidential one. Another, in addition to preventing Lula from being elected and, if elected, from taking office, envisaged that a military junta would take over the government, dethroning the president himself. Yet another coup plan, the most obscure, opened the door for a league of militiamen, organized crime leaders, radical right-wing evangelicals, second-ranking officials and Lava Jato supporters thirsty for power and/or money to assault federal institutions. I imagine that even members of Opus Dei must have been frightened.
In short, there was no unity in the coup plot. Who would be the leader of the coup after the coup? The president? Braga Neto? A military junta that did not include the command of the Armed Forces itself? Someone else?
At the same time, the alleged motive for the self-coup, namely, the existence of fraud in the electoral system, lacked credibility. It attracted – rather than “convinced” – groups of fanatics, opportunists in journalism and politics who, although numerous, never showed or saw a single piece of consistent evidence. They even faced international discredit for their denunciations. European and US governments reaffirmed their confidence in our electoral system.
At this point, it is worth noting the change in behavior of the country’s highest judicial authorities. The Supreme Court covered up the parliamentary coup against Dilma Rousseff and the exclusion of Lula from the 2018 election. Something – we don’t know exactly what – caused its leaders to change their position during the last government. Perhaps the awareness that the militia flooding the Planalto Palace threatened them as well.
If conceptually the coup's articulation was not sustainable, except for groups of obstinate “believers”, its articulation demonstrated evident limitations.
None of the military leaders of the palace coup had significant command of troops, armored vehicles, much less air bases. They managed to cause riots in the capital and elsewhere; they gathered groups of “believers” to pressure the barracks, sometimes exposing themselves to ridicule, as in the case of the attempt to contact extraterrestrials in front of the Army Command in Porto Alegre. They showed that they sought support from the lower and middle clergy of the Armed Forces, the state military police, and the command of the Federal Highway Police. It was with these “weapons” in tow that they defined the fragmented articulation of the coup within the walls of the Planalto Palace.
And only then did they seek the support of the Armed Forces Command. This Command, which had already received several messages from the US government that it would not support the coup, found itself faced with what could be considered a confusing breakdown of the military hierarchy, which sealed the fate of the disjointed organization. They managed to obtain a vague possibility of support through “Navy armored vehicles”. But the Air Force and Army commands rejected the coup and it even seems that they sent the coup plotters back home, that is, to the Planalto Palace.
To complete the already compromised picture, in a contradictory gesture, on the eve of the inauguration of the president-elect, the president-leader of the attempted coup left the country. What did he expect? To be triumphantly called back to resume command of the country? To run away from responsibility for what could happen? The ambiguity of his gesture revealed an alliance between fantasy and cowardice that must not have excited even his closest accomplices.
Thus, all that was left for the coup plotters to do was to promote the final riot of January 2023, XNUMX. Despite the risks involved, the destruction caused, and the protective support found in the barracks in front of which they gathered before advancing to Praça dos Três Poderes, they were defeated by the capital's Military Police, providentially placed under new command and with the supervision of the then newly sworn-in Minister of Justice. At the same time, the new president had already obtained broad international recognition of the legality and legitimacy of his inauguration.
This analysis of the weaknesses of the plotted coup should not contribute to underestimating the risks that democracy has faced in the country, nor the risks that it may still face. The snake is not dead. The international scenario, which is more adverse to democracy today than it was two years ago, continues to feed it. The same goes for the nervousness of the market and corporate media, which continue to invest in the delegitimization of the legally and legitimately elected and sworn-in government, and its social outreach program. The objective of these initiatives is to weaken it for the 2026 election. If this objective is not achieved, there will certainly be those who think of releasing the snake once again, which is currently contained, but always with a bow and arrow.
* Flavio Aguiar, journalist and writer, is a retired professor of Brazilian literature at USP. Author, among other books, of Chronicles of the World Upside Down (boitempo). [https://amzn.to/48UDikx]
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