1969–74: From Retreat to Rebuilding

Abstract

The promulgation of Institutional Act Number 5 inaugurated the third political cycle of the ‘1964 revolution’. It started a period in which the resort to repression in all its dimensions and the exercise of arbitrary powers would reach the highest level ever seen in Brazilian political history. In contrast to earlier Institutional Acts issued by the regime to block and purge the ‘adverse forces of the revolution’, the new Act indicated (by the absence of an expiry date) that the so-called ‘Revolution’ had become permanent. If the AI-1 decreed in 1964 and the AI-2 of 1966 limited the President’s exercise of arbitrary power to a definite period of time, the AI-5 meant that exceptional powers were to be used, not only as a corrective measure but also as a preventive instrument to retain the ‘revolutionary process’ along its course. Thus the AI-5 provided clear indications that from then on the power of the ‘revolution’ was to last until the revolutionary command decided that the country was prepared for a return to democracy. The ‘ideals of the revolution’ would again be recalled to justify repression. As the prologue of the AI-5 restated, the ‘revolutionary process’ aimed at

giving the country a regime which, taking into consideration the requirements of a juridical and political system, would assure an authentic democratic order based on freedom, on the respect for human dignity, on the fight against subversion and ideologies contrary to the traditions of our people, on the fight against corruption, thereby searching for the indispensable means for the economic, financial, political and moral reconstruction of Brazil.¹