Several brief interim governments

Several brief interim governments followed Vargas’s suicide.[140] Juscelino Kubitschek became president in 1956 and assumed a conciliatory posture towards the political opposition that allowed him to govern without major crises.[141] The economy and industrial sector grew remarkably,[142] but his greatest achievement was the construction of the new capital city of Brasília, inaugurated in 1960.[143]

Kubitschek’s successor, Jânio Quadros, resigned in 1961 less than a year after taking office.[144] His vice-president, João Goulart, assumed the presidency, but aroused strong political opposition[145] and was deposed in April 1964 by a coup that resulted in a military regime.[146]

The new regime was intended to be transitory[147] but gradually closed in on itself and became a full dictatorship with the promulgation of the Fifth Institutional Act in 1968.[148] Oppression was not limited to those who resorted to guerrilla tactics to fight the regime, but also reached institutional opponents, artists, journalists and other members of civil society,[149][150] inside and outside the country through the infamous “Operation Condor”.[151][152] Despite its brutality, like other authoritarian regimes, due to an economic boom, known as an “economic miracle”, the regime reached a peak in popularity in the early 1970s.[153]