Artur da Costa e Silva
Artur da Costa e Silva signed the decree that turned an authoritarian government into a dictatorship, and a stroke removed him ten months later. He was war minister under Castelo Branco and the candidate of the hardliners, chosen by the officer corps and ratified by a Congress with no other name to vote on. He came in talking of relaxation. He met the opposite. 1968 was the year Brazilian students filled the streets, a hundred thousand of them marching in Rio in June, and the year strikes returned to the industrial towns of Minas Gerais and Sao Paulo for the first time since the coup. The break came in December. A deputy made a speech inviting Brazilians to boycott the independence day parade, and Congress refused to lift his immunity so that he could be prosecuted. Costa e Silva answered with Institutional Act Number Five. It closed Congress indefinitely, suspended habeas corpus for political offences, allowed the president to remove any official and legislate alone, and imposed prior censorship on the press. No court could review any of it. What followed is what the act was for. Torture became systematic in the army's interrogation centres rather than occasional. Hundreds of academics were forced out of the universities. The armed left, which had been marginal, turned to bank robberies and kidnappings, and the security apparatus grew to meet it. He suffered a stroke in August 1969 and was incapacitated. The constitution named the civilian vice-president as successor, and the service ministers simply refused to allow it, governing as a junta for two months until they had chosen a general instead. Costa e Silva died in December. The act he signed stayed in force for a decade.
- Lived: 1899 CE – 1969 CE
- Nationality: Brazilian
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
