Taking Stock (with discomfort) of the Military Dictatorship Fifty Years after the 1964 Coup: a Bibliographical Essay

Abstract

This essay reviews the main analyses produced for publication in 2014 alluding to the 50th anniversary of the 1964 coup and the dictatorship that followed (1964-85). It is noteworthy that most of these analyses, authored by historians and journalists, relativize several Manichaean concepts and versions; chiefly, they enhance society's responsibility for this authoritarian experiment. The coup, they claim, was not an atypical event in the country's political history; it simply expanded conservative and authoritarian values. In daring fashion, they point out the precarious or absent democratic vocation of the forces of the Left, as well as the advances in terms of the country's economic and social modernization under the military governments. The duration of the dictatorship is also questioned. In the eyes of some, it lasted only from 1964 to 1979, and arguments to this end are exhaustively presented. The fact that the report of the National Truth Commission (NTC) was released also in 2014 raised an intense debate in the press and in academia about repression and the crimes of the dictatorship, especially against urban guerrilla organizations, which are also examined in instigating fashion in this bibliography.