"We need to bring Brazilian society and the armed forces closer, not treat each other as if we were enemies," the leftist president told reporters in late February.
On March 31, 1964, the Brazilian military ousted then-president Joao Goulart and went on to hold dictatorial power for 21 years.
The era, long a flashpoint in Brazilian politics, still counts among its defenders the far-right Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain who served as president from 2019 to 2022.
The anniversary had seemed a natural one for Lula -- a former union official who once led an historic workers' strike against the military regime -- to remember the 434 people who were killed or disappeared during military rule, according to the findings of a 2014 National Truth Commission.
In contrast to neighboring Argentina, which tried state agents for crimes committed during the 1976-1983 dictatorship there, in Brazil that dark chapter ended with the 1979 passage of an amnesty law.
- 'Political calculation' -
But the 78-year-old Lula told reporters the 1964 coup was "already part of history," adding that his government "will not dwell on the matter."
"I am more concerned with the coup of January 8, 2023 than the one in 1964," he added.
That day in January, thousands of Bolsonaro supporters invaded the seat of power in Brasilia -- the Congress, Supreme Court and presidential offices -- calling on the military to depose Lula a week after his inauguration.
Police are investigating Bolsonaro for allegedly taking part in plotting a "coup d'etat" to remain in power after his election defeat in 2022.
Several of his close allies have been linked to the plot, including government ministers and high-ranking army officers. Police have detained a major and a colonel.
"There has never been a time as propitious to discuss the place of the armed forces in Brazilian society as there was after the Bolsonaro government and January 8," historian Lucas Pedretti told AFP.
But Lula "made a political calculation placing a strategic accommodation with the armed forces in the foreground, to the detriment... of the historic needs of Brazilian society to review its past," said Pedretti, a political scientist with the Rio de Janeiro State University.
- Protests -
Lula's decision meant the cancellation of events planned by his own government, including the Human Rights Ministry.
Silvio Almeida, who heads that ministry, had planned to deliver a speech at a Brasilia museum honoring those who were killed or persecuted by the former military regime, local media reported.
While Lula last year had reversed a Bolsonaro policy that allowed the military to hold celebrations of the 1964 coup, there will be no official reflections this year on the role of the armed forces then or since.
"It's history; we don't need to be stirring things up," one army source told AFP.
Rights groups have insisted that Lula reinstate the Special Commission on Deaths and Political Disappearances, which was established in 1995 to investigate political crimes during the dictatorship years, then canceled by Bolsonaro in his final year in government.
The Brazilian Coalition for Memory, Truth and Justice -- which groups more than 150 associations -- sharply criticized the president's decision not to commemorate the coup anniversary.
"Vigorously repudiating the 1964 coup is a way of reaffirming the commitment to punish current and possible future coup attempts," the group said in a statement.
"We will not accept that governments again negotiate or abandon the rights of victims in order to be able to compromise with the military," the statement added.
Murder probe exposes Rio's dirty web of politics and crime
Rio De Janeiro (AFP) Mar 29, 2024 -
Six years after the killing of outspoken Rio de Janeiro politician, Marielle Franco, the arrests of the alleged masterminds have laid bare nefarious links between politics and organized crime in the city.
The charismatic, black, lesbian city councilor was a vocal critic of police brutality and corruption, and her murder in a drive-by-shooting stunned Brazil.
The federal police's nearly 500-page investigation report is packed with astonishing revelations about a decades-old problem in a city plagued by violence.
It recounts in minute detail the functioning of the militia squads that sow terror in Rio's working-class neighborhoods, with the complicity of police officers and high-ranking political figures.
The militias -- which gained notoriety in Brazil's popular "Elite Squad" movies -- first formed around four decades ago when former police officers and soldiers banded together to offer protection from violent drug cartels.
They then transformed into powerful criminal organizations that control large swathes of the city.
Franco often spoke out against the militias, before she was gunned down in her car, at the age of 38, along with her driver, in 2018.
Former leftist lawmaker Marcelo Freixo, who was a mentor to Franco, said the investigation was "fundamental... to understand the depth of the abyss in which Rio finds itself."
The probe "shows that the militias retain a strong influence in the highest echelons of the police and that political power plays an active role in favoring their influence", Carolina Grillo, a sociologist with the Fluminense Federal University (UFF), told AFP.
- 'Ensure impunity' -
Two of the alleged masterminds of Franco's murder -- the brothers Domingos and Chiquinho Brazao -- are veterans of Rio politics whom the investigation links directly to the militia.
Chiquinho had been a city councilor and is currently a national congressman while Domingos served as a municipal congressman and is currently an advisor with the state auditor.
The third suspect arrested on Sunday was none other than the former head of Rio's civil police, Rivaldo Barbosa, who was initially in charge of the investigation.
All three men proclaim their innocence.
Two former police officers -- the gunman and getaway driver -- were arrested a year after the crime.
Investigators say the Brazao brothers roped Barbosa into their scheme to "ensure impunity beforehand."
Barbosa, who was appointed to the role of civil police chief the day before the murder, was to ensure "that the investigation was stillborn" by covering the killers' tracks.
It was he who spoke to and comforted Franco's family in the wake of her death, and his alleged involvement came as a shock to her loved ones.
"He told me that it was a matter of honor for him to solve this crime," Franco's mother, Marinete da Silva, told the Globo news channel.
The investigation dragged on for five years, before being taken over by the federal police after President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva returned to office in January 2023.
- Land grabbing -
Beyond the rampant extortion of residents, the militias have seized public land to illegally build housing or commercial buildings.
Grillo explains that real estate has become their "main source of income."
The investigation report also mentions "numerous clues" to their involvement "in the criminal activities of militias linked to the illegal appropriation of land."
Franco fought hard against land-grabbing in communities controlled by the militia.
The federal police believe that the Brazao brothers had Franco killed because she "threatened their interests."
This investigation "showed the key importance of the land question" in the influence that the militias have in neighborhoods under their control, including "on the political level," said David Marques, of the NGO Brazilian Public Security Forum.
Areas dominated by these criminal groups have become electoral strongholds for politicians like the Brazao brothers.
In 2008, the lawmaker Marcelo Freixo established a parliamentary commission of inquiry in Rio's Legislative Assembly that dealt a heavy blow to the militias.
Dozens of people were arrested, including local elected officials.
But these criminal groups "quickly reformed and resumed their growth," said Grillo.
Human Rights Minister Silvio Almeida said that the turmoil unfurled by the revelations within the Franco investigation presented an opportunity to take back control of territory controlled by the militias.
"To do this, we need public policies, because it is by taking advantage of this vacuum that the militias move in and sow terror," he said Tuesday during a tribute to Franco.
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