João Goulart’s daughter reopens the story of her father’s death

The father was motionless in the coffin. Denize Goulart had not said goodbye to him. The news of the death of former president João Goulart, aged 57, on one of his farms in Argentina, reached his daughter, who lived in London, by telephone. She flew with her brother, João Vicente, to São Borja, where the wake was taking place. The terrible pain did not immobilize her. On the contrary, she made it clear that the revolt was not something private and that Brazil could no longer support the dictatorship of the military. Denize was 17 years old, it was December 1976. Jango had been cowardly deposed in the 1964 coup and was trying to break his exile and return to the nation days before he died. Over the urn, Denize placed a banner with the word “amnesty”, written in red, and cried.

Throughout his life, he saw growing evidence of his father’s murder by Operation Condor – an alliance that exterminated any threat to the dictatorships of the Southern Cone. Only in March of this year did the Brazilian government admit that Jango may indeed have been the victim of a perfect crime. The fatal blow: a poison capsule placed among the heart pills that the former president was taking. One of the theses is that delegate Sérgio Fleury, from the São Paulo Dops, ordered the death with the acquiescence of the Geisel government. After 36 years, the body is considered to be exhumed for investigation – a victory for the family. “The country needs to know history and correct the injustice done to my father”says Denize, 54, among photos that recall the glamor of Jango and Maria Thereza Goulart, the youngest and most beautiful first lady the country has ever seen, now 72 years old.

Have you always believed in crime?

I always suspected. No autopsy was performed in Argentina or Brazil, where he was elected president – ​​and he is the only president who died in exile. We were impacted. My father was taking care of himself, he had lost weight at the request of the cardiologist, he had a check-up in France twice a year. The death certificate, signed by an Argentine pediatrician, states the reason for death: “illness”. What illness? The official version of the military government was total silence🇧🇷 We didn’t know where to start the investigation. After the dictatorship ended, documents appeared, including from the United States, showing that my father was watched every day. In 1976, Operation Condor killed – or died in poorly explained conditions – several opposition leaders and former heads of state in South America. Jango and Juscelino Kubitschek among them. Neira Barreiro, a former Uruguayan agent arrested in Rio Grande do Sul (in 2003), ended up confessing that he was the one who followed my father and revealed the version of the poisoning.

What did you feel with the confession of this former agent?

Terrible pain. Running into someone who confesses to having been part of the plan that killed João Goulart? It is hard. The Federal Government’s Truth Commission wants to hear from you. But he was released recently.

Did Jango and his family suffer other persecutions?

In Montevideo, where we went after the coup, João Vicente was arrested, still a teenager, had his head shaved, and was incommunicado for four days. My mother was detained three times on dubious grounds. Once – during the period when meat was rationed – she was taking meat home from our farm. I saw my father’s anguish. He endured any attacks that hit him, but despaired of aggressions against his family.🇧🇷 With the military coup in Uruguay, pressures grew and we moved to Argentina. A bomb exploded in my father’s office in Buenos Aires; he had just left. A paramilitary group was eventually arrested and confessed plans to kidnap Jango’s children. So, not by our will, in early 1976, João Vicente and I went to live in London.

What memory do you have of the coup that knocked Jango out?

I was 5 years old, I remember little. My father had gone to Porto Alegre to discuss whether or not he would resist with Leonel Brizola (Jango’s brother-in-law and former governor of Rio Grande do Sul) and with the army commander, who supported him. My mother took some of our clothes, put them in a small suitcase. She left behind, at Granja do Torto, paintings, gifts, a car, horses. Then someone said he saw her jewelry with other women, probably officers’ wives. Only one Dener dress, which underwent fitting, was returned to her years later. We left there in a hurry on a plane with Maneco Leães (the president’s pilot). My mom was tense, but she held it together. I wanted to know where we were going. I’ll never forget Maneco’s answer: “We’re going to visit Uruguay”. As a teenager I reflected: “A little jump that lasted 12 difficult years”. Still on the flight, my brother, aged 6, asked what color Uruguay was. Not knowing what to say, my mother looked up at the blue sky and said, “It’s blue.” She says that I questioned: “And are there bananas there?” We didn’t hear from my father for four days on Atlântida beach, in a borrowed house, small and without security.

Is there not a good memory of life in exile?

My dad had time to pick us up from school, and that was nice. He listened to Brazilian music with nostalgia, felt the country from afar. I remember him listening to the World Cup in Mexico in 1970 on the radio. He suffered and vibrated with the goals. I was angry: “How can you support Brazil after everything Brazil has done to you?” He never lied, explained why he couldn’t take us back to our country🇧🇷 He was a bold politician, he wanted equal rights, he outlined social and grassroots reforms. Even though he was a rich farmer, he knew what the life of the poor was like. He conceived a government plan with progressive people, such as Darcy Ribeiro, Almino Affonso, Evandro Lins e Silva, Waldir Pires and Paulo Freire – with whom he made a plan to end illiteracy. His government was short and suffered a lot of pressure. The right thought he was a communist, the left that he made too many alliances and was hesitant. He divided, it wasn’t unanimity like Juscelino.

Why did João Goulart say that exile was an invention of the devil?

He was hopeful that the dictatorship would not be sustained for long and that he would be able to return to Brazil, express his opinion and participate in political life. Time passed, he could not return, he felt lonely, he was silent. I remember Vinicius de Moraes, Toquinho and Raul Riff (press secretary) at home. There were other visitors, but few. From a distance, my father had responded to more than 80 lawsuits – some, of embezzlement of public money, were a farce, an absurdity. Nothing has been proven. He had his business initially confiscated by the Brazilian government, the duplicate of the RG and passport denied. He traveled with a Paraguayan passport.

Did Jango regret not having resisted the blow?

Never. He was aware that there would be a bloodbath if he insisted on staying in the Presidency. In addition to the Beloved Forces, American soldiers were on the Brazilian coast ready to attack. Fifteen days before Brizola died (in 2004), I went to his house. We had a glass of wine, and he told me: “I criticized your father, I was against the decision to give up, but he was right, it would have been a disaster”.

There are many legends about his parents. They say he started to abuse whiskey, she got sick and unbalanced…

None of that, my father drank whiskey and liked it, but he knew how to stop. My mother had problems like everyone else. She married at 17, went into exile at 24. She was never seriously ill. It was and is a rock. She is a friend of her children and eight grandchildren (two daughters of Denize and six sons of João).

They were a charming couple, icons of bossa nova Brazil. But they said they had extramarital affairs.

She was courted, yes, because she was pretty. Problems, they even had. Even today, my mother says: “I got married even though I knew that Jango was a womanizer and harassed. He was the man of my life”. And he could flirt with others, but he wanted my mother. Sometimes they fought. My father would go away, he wouldn’t show up for a week. Then he returned to her. They lived together very well. She was by his side when he died.

Was the gossip an attempt to denigrate his image, to show that Jango lacked ethical and family values?

Certainly. It was part of a plan to destroy the image of the politician and the man.

Was the former president very jealous of you?

Much. It was terrible. A liberal out. Inside the house, something else (laughs). He was affectionate, although he had a hard time accepting me dating. Things from the education of the macho gaucho. Then he accepted.

Have you reconciled with Brazil?

I went back to bury my father and stayed. It hurt to be without him in an unknown country. I spent a year lost, without studying. She had been literate in Spanish, she didn’t write well in Portuguese. And I didn’t like living in Porto Alegre. The newspapers reported that Jango’s children had gone to such and such a place, done such and such a thing. I came to Rio alone and felt at ease. Life was effervescent, there were many parties. I decided to study history at PUC. I got irritated when a colleague said: “Your father fled Brazil”. I replied that it wasn’t true, that he wanted to avoid a war.

Were you able to lead a normal life?

I got married twice and separated, I had my daughters, but I feel that there is something pending. I have to put an end to it, end the darkness. The exhumation of my father’s body isn’t going to define everything, it’s a start towards restoring the truth. Jango deserves the place in history it doesn’t have.

What do you intend to do at Memorial João Goulart?

We got land in front of the JK Memorial, in Brasilia; let’s raise money to build. The project, from 2011, is Niemeyer’s last. We have a lot of documents to take there, photos, films, objects. There are things with my mother, boxes with unpublished texts that the government, from Lula to here, has sent. I don’t want it to be a beautiful, empty museum. I’m thinking of something alive, that has a social function and makes sense to people.