BRAZIL: Brazil to test exhumed remains of former President Goulart for traces of poison

Record ID: 351581

  • Title: BRAZIL: Brazil to test exhumed remains of former President Goulart for traces of poison
  • Date: 11th November 2013
  • Summary: SLATE INFORMATION
  • Embargoed: 26th November 2013 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Uruguay, Brazil
  • City:
  • Country: Brazil
  • Topics: Crime,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA6YYC87ET6MLDE6C4I3537MNYV
  • Story Text: Brazilian authorities prepare to exhume the remains of former President Joao Goulart to determine if the exiled president was poisoned.


    Thirty seven years after former Brazilian President Joao Goulart was laid to rest, authorities are planning to exhume the remains of the former head of state to conduct a new autopsy amid allegations he may have been poisoned.
    The exhumation will take place on Wednesday (November 13) ata cemetery located in the city of Sao Borja, in Rio Grande do Sul state.
    Goulart - elected president in 1961 - was deposed from office in 1964 by a military coup. Goulart fled to Uruguay and then Argentina where in 1976 he died in his sleep of an apparent heart attack.
    But rumours persisted that he had in fact been murdered in his sleep.
    In 2006, an ex-intelligence agent for Uruguay's own dictatorship stated in a documentary that the exiled former president had been poisoned on orders from Brazil.
    Two of Goulart's children, still alive today, support the plan to exhume the remains and discover the truth.
    Daughter Denize Gouart said the results of the investigations would have ramifications beyond discovering how their father died.
    "This is not only about Joao Goulart, my father. This has to do with the history of Brazil that was hidden for many years, that was silenced by the dictatorship with the support of the American government, with the American State Department. And now, what we have these days is the beginning of trying to rescue this history," Denize Goulart said.
    Son of the former president, Joao Vicente Goulart said that Brazilians deserved to know the truth.
    "We cannot withhold from these new generations of Brazil, possessing knowledge of what happened, that which was disguised, or omitted by the dictators of Latin America, who swept all their lies under the carpet and do not want the Truth Commission to clarify the facts," Joao Vicente Goulart said.
    Both Goulart's family and Brazil's Truth Commission have pushed the process to exhume and examine the former president's remains.
    Also supporting the investigation is Joao Costa, a political activist with the group No More Torture, which supports the preservation of human rights through the memory of the lives lost during Brazil's military dictatorship.
    Costa said he hoped the truth would be revealed.
    "We will do everything so that it (the belief that Goulart was poisoned) comes to the surface. However, we are very worried by the fact that they might keep secrets, or create new secrets, or conduct investigations in secrecy. What I mean to say is, a country feels the need to produce secrets. We are in a democracy that is at a sufficient age of political maturity, of hope in society, that things are beginning to become more and more equal for the Brazilian people," Costa said.
    After the remains are exhumed on Wednesday they will then be transported to Brasilia with the help of the Brazil's Air Force.
    In the nation's capital, the National Institute of Criminology will examine the remains in the hope of determining Goulart's cause of death.
    Military governments ruled Brazil from 1964 until 1985. Hundreds of political activists died in Brazil during the time.
    Brazil set up a Truth Commission in 2012 to investigate abuses committed during the military dictatorship.
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