Joao Goulart was born in Sao Borja, Rio Grande do Sul, in March 1918. João Goulart was nicknamed "Jango". João grew up as a skinny boy in Yguariaçá, alongside his five sisters: Eufrides, Maria, Yolanda, Cila, and Neuza. Both his younger brothers died prematurely.
João attended the School of the Teresian Sisters of Mary, along with his sisters. João attended first to the fourth grade in the Santana boarding school, but failed to be approved for the fifth grade in 1931. Angry with his son's poor achievements at school, Vicente decided to send him to attend the Colégio Anchieta in Porto Alegre. In 1939 he graduated from the law school of Pôrto Alegre.
After practicing law for several years, he was elected president of the municipal committee of the Brazilian Labor party (PTB), which had been created by Getulio Vargas in 1945. Two years later, Goulart became a PTB member of the state legislature.
Soon afterward Goulart became state president of the PTB. In 1953 Goulart was appointed minister of labor by President Vargas in order to get control of the ministry away from anti-Vargas factions. Goulart's appointment aroused immediate, extensive, and vocal opposition among the right-wing press and alarm among officers in the military. In early 1954, Goulart offered his proposals for a 100 percent increase in the minimum wage and at the same time offered his resignation because of the political embarrassment his proposals would be for Vargas. Vargas accepted Goulart's resignation, and Goulart returned to the Chamber of Deputies.
With the suicide of Vargas in August 1954, Goulart succeeded to leadership of the Labor party. In the national election of 1955 he was the successful PTB candidate for vice president on a ticket headed by Juscelino Kubitschek of the Social Democratic party. During the Kubitschek administration, Goulart was given extensive patronage, particularly in the social security system, and he continued as head of the Labor party. In the 1960 election Goulart was again candidate for vice president, only this time the electoral system had been changed to separate the election of president and vice president; as it happened, Goulart was chosen vice president in spite of the fact that his running mate, Gen. Henrique Teixeira Lott, was defeated by the conservative National Democratic Union's (UDN) Janio Quadros. During the brief Quadros presidency, Goulart, widely seen as Vargas's protege, was under constant attack.
President Quadros resigned his presidency after only seven months with the hope (given Goulart as the alternative) that he would be invited back and given more power; at the time, Goulart was on a state visit to Communist China at Quadros's request. Rather than take Quadros back, a Congressional committee proposed a constitutional change creating a parliamentary system with reduced presidential powers; when the change was adopted in September, 1961 Goulart was inaugurated as president.
In the beginning of his presidency, Goulart nominated four persons to be Prime Minister, but for a variety of reasons they either resigned quickly or were not approved by Congress. In January 1963 a national referendum restored the full power of the presidency by a margin of nine to one. During the first months after his full powers were restored, Goulart committed himself to a three-year plan of economic development and restraint of inflation, as worked out by the minister of economy, Celso Furtado.
People inside and outside Congress saw Goulart's agrarian reform bill as "an outrageous assault" on the ownership of land and rural property interests very strongly represented in Congress, which rejected the bill. Rhetoric overran reality; outside government, the left's over-inflated claims of growing support and successes provoked and alarmed their enemies on the right. Rumor fed on rumor, and all across the political spectrum confidence in Goulart's ability to hold the system together diminished.
Goulart was by early 1964 more the servant of opposing forces than their leader. Events were running ahead of him. Goulart's Congressional base was gone, and his request of special powers from Congress failed. Goulart decided on a direct appeal to the mass of Brazilian people, articulating a program of basic reforms. His appeals grew more emotional, his rhetoric more heated and in the process, his enemies (especially in the military) more alarmed and more organized. The final blow for the military was a nationally televised speech Goulart made on March 30 to an association of enlisted personnel; in supporting the troops, Goulart incited the officers. The coup was bloodless. It consisted of troop movements towards Goulart in Rio de Janeiro, and generals throughout the country withdrawing their support from him.
Goulart flew to Brasilia, the capital, where there was no good news, then to Pôrto Alegre, and finally into exile in Montevideo, Uruguay. Those who planned the coup knew the move would have the approval of the U. S. embassy. Goulart died in December 1976 at the age of 59, still in exile. The regime in power in Brazil ordered that only a simple note of his death could appear in the press, with no extensive comment on his life or career.
He was the highly popular 24th president of Brazil for a brief but turbulent two-and-a-half years. Goulart's Basic Reforms plan (Reformas de Base) was a group of social and economic measures of nationalist character that predicted a greater state intervention in the economy. Among the reforms were: education, tax, electoral, land reforms. He is considered the last left-wing President of Brazil until Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office in 2003.
On November 15, 2008, Jango and his widow Maria Teresa received political amnesty from the Federal Government at the 20th National Congress of Lawyers in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte. There are at least ten schools all over Brazil named after João Goulart. On December 6, 2007, exactly 31 years after the death of the President, a monument was inaugurated in Balneário Camboriú of Jango sitting on a bench of the Avenida Atlântica (in front to the Atlantic Ocean) with his two children.
During the first 15 months of his administration Goulart concentrated on trying to regain full presidential powers by establishing himself as a moderate, credible and reliable politician. His cabinet was relatively well balanced and moderate.
Goulart's government stood against the United States by refusing to exclude Castro's Cuba from the community of Latin American nations, a move supported by the Brazilian Congress but negatively noted by Washington.
Goulart often spoke of the need for "structural reforms"(especially agrarian reform) as being necessary for development, but he remained loyal to the ideas of economic emancipation and social justice bequeathed by Vargas. He wanted the existing system to work more smoothly and effectively. Later Goulart abandoned the stabilization program and, trying to improvise solutions to meet mounting criticisms, in June 1963 dismissed his entire cabinet. From that point on, politics in Brazil became increasingly polarized.
Quotations: Jango declared: "regarding the communists, they have supported indistinctly candidates of several political affiliations, conservatives or populists. I do not wish to distinguish such support. .. "
Goulart was a wealthy landowner in Sao Borja, with his fazenda ("farm") near that of President Getulio Vargas, the two men became close friends.
Quotes from others about the person
"It will never be enough emphasize the heroic role of Jango to the Brazilian people, given that he represents as few do the ideal of a fairer, more egalitarian, and more democratic Brazil. (. .. ) The government recognizes its mistakes of the past and apologizes to a man who defended the nation and its people; a man whom we could not have done without. "
- Letter by Lula da Silva to the Amnesty Commission.
He had a wife Maria Teresa Fontela and 2 children.
