Ernesto Geisel
Ernesto Geisel began the dismantling of the dictatorship and sacked the generals who tried to stop him. He was the son of German Lutheran immigrants, an artillery officer, and had run the state oil company. He took office in 1974 promising a slow, gradual and safe relaxation. He meant slow. The opposition party was allowed to campaign on television in the 1974 elections and won a large share of the Senate, and Geisel responded to the next round by decreeing restrictions that limited campaigning and guaranteed the government a Senate bloc. The turning point was murder. A journalist died in army custody in Sao Paulo in 1975 and the army called it suicide; a metalworker died in the same building months later. Geisel dismissed the commanding general of the Second Army, which no president of the regime had done. In 1977 he closed Congress to force through judicial changes, and in 1978 he removed his own army minister, the leading hardliner and the man expected to succeed him. He then repealed Institutional Act Number Five, effective from the first day of 1979, restored habeas corpus for political offences and ended prior censorship. He chose his own successor to continue the process. His foreign policy was equally independent of Washington. He recognised the Marxist government of Angola, established relations with China, denounced Zionism as racism at the United Nations, and in 1975 signed a nuclear agreement with West Germany covering the full fuel cycle, over explicit American objection. He also cancelled the military agreement with the United States rather than accept its human rights conditions - the reforms were his to make and not to be demanded of him. He was, by every account, a cold and solitary man who trusted almost no one.
- Lived: 1907 CE – 1996 CE
- Nationality: Brazilian
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
