Presidential Palace releases video praising the military coup.

By Camilo Vannuchi, in House of Democracy - The 1964 coup saved the country. This is the message the Federal Government seeks to convey in a video released this Sunday, March 31st, on its official WhatsApp channel. The 1 minute and 55 second video reiterates the narrative, so often rejected in history books, that a communist revolution was about to break out in the country, and that it was contained thanks to the bravery of the Brazilian Army, always ready to defend the homeland with sovereignty and selflessness.

"If you're the same age as me, a little older, a little younger, you know there was a time when our sky suddenly had no more stars than others," says a septuagenarian narrator. "It was like that, a time of fear and threats. Threats of what the communists did wherever it was imposed, without exception. They imprisoned and killed their compatriots."

Check out the video:

The piece also seeks to criminalize union activity and freedom of expression in the country. "There was, indeed, a lot of fear in the air. Strikes in factories, insecurity everywhere," the text says.

According to the script, this scenario would justify the military intervention of March 31st: a coup that lasted 21 years and caused the death of more than 430 opponents of the dictatorship listed by the National Truth Commission, the genocide of 8 indigenous people, and the imprisonment and torture of at least 50 people according to estimates by the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office. "It was then, called upon by newspapers, radio, TV, and especially by the people in the streets—the real people, fathers, mothers, the Church—that Brazil remembered it had a national army and appealed to it. Only then, thank God, did the darkness begin to fade, and light appeared."

"The Army saved us, there's no denying it," the narrator states. Then, a deep, male voiceover echoes over the image of the national flag: "The Army doesn't want applause or tributes. The Army simply fulfilled its role."

The announcement comes six days after President Jair Bolsonaro called on the Ministry of Defense to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the coup, which he called a "revolution." The statement sparked immediate reactions from jurists, historians, and human rights organizations, including those abroad.

"In light of everything that is now known about the military regime, it is deeply problematic that the President of the Republic is directing the commemoration of an authoritarian regime that lasted 21 years," stated UN rapporteur Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, who was Minister of Human Rights in the Fernando Henrique Cardoso government and a member of the National Truth Commission, established during the Dilma Rousseff government, to Casa da Democracia. In an article published this Saturday in the Washington Post, writer Paulo Coelho recounts the torture he suffered in 1974 at the DOPS in Rio de Janeiro.

"It is these dark decades that President Jair Bolsonaro, after mentioning one of the worst torturers as his idol in Congress, wants to celebrate on this March 31st," wrote Paulo Coelho.

In protest against the coup and Bolsonaro's statement, demonstrations were organized throughout the country.