The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World

by Vincent Bevins

And Goulart backed land reform, despite the fact that he—like much of Brazil’s political class—was actually a latifundista, or large landowner, himself. Even he knew this was a gamble. Sustaining this kind of a program meant relying on support from grassroots movements, unions, and the organized left.25 Goulart also alienated the military high command with reforms that would affect them more directly. He wasn’t just proposing to extend the vote to illiterates—he also wanted to allow lower-ranking soldiers to cast ballots. Current law dictated that they could not do so while serving. The idea that he was appealing directly to the lower ranks made the high-ranking officers, who tended to be more conservative than their left-leaning subordinates, very suspicious. If he was ignoring their authority over the lower orders, they could convince themselves, perhaps he wanted to overturn their authority entirely. In Brazil, the threat of rebellion from below had terrified elites for five centuries, and they always responded—successfully—with violence. It didn’t take Kennedy’s White House long to respond, either. Jango went to visit Washington in early 1962, and it seemed to go OK, though he failed to get any concessions on aid or trade. On July 30, however, Kennedy had a meeting with Ambassador Gordon, which was recorded. The two men agreed to spend millions on anti-Goulart plans for elections that year, and to prepare the ground for a military coup to, as Gordon put it, “push him o...