João Goulart

João Belchior Marques Goulart (March 1, 1918 – December 6, 1976) was a Brazilian politician who served as the 24th President of Brazil until a military coup d'état deposed him on April 1, 1964. He is considered the last left-wing President of Brazil until Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office in 2003.

Early life
Goulart was born at Yguariaçá Farm, in Itacurubi, São Borja, Rio Grande do Sul, on March 1, 1918. His parents were Vicentina Marques Goulart, housewife, and Vicente Rodrigues Goulart, estancieiro (a rancher who owned large rural properties) and a colonel of the National Guard during the 1923 Revolution who fought on the side of Governor Borges de Medeiros. Most sources indicate that João was born in 1918, but his birth year is actually 1919; his father ordered a second birth certificate adding a year to his son's age so that he could attend the law school at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul.

Yguariaçá Farm was an isolated and his mother had no medical care at his birth, only her mother, Maria Thomaz Vasquez Marques. According to João's sister Yolanda, "my grandmother was the one able to revive little João who, at birth, already looked like dying". Like most Azorean descendants, Maria Thomaz was a devout Catholic. While trying to revive her grandson, warming him, she prayed to John the Baptist, promising that if the newborn survived, he would be his namesake and would not cut his hair until the age of 3, when he would march in the procession of June 24 dressed as the saint.

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. Rivadávia (born 1920) died six months after birth, and Ivan (born 1925), to whom he was deeply attached, died of leukemia at 33.

João left for the nearby town of Itaqui to study, the decision of his father Vicente to form a partnership with Protásio Vargas, brother of Getúlio, after both leased a small refrigerator house in that town from an English businessman. While Vicente ran the business for the following couple of years, João attended the School of the Teresian Sisters of Mary, along with his sisters. Although it was a mixed-sex school during the day, he could not stay the night at the boarding school with his sisters but had to sleep at the house of a friend of his father. It was in Itaqui that João developed a taste for both soccer and swimming.

Upon his return to São Borja, ending his experience as a partner in the refrigerator house, Vicente decided to send João to attend the Ginásio Santana, run by the Marist Brothers in Uruguaiana. 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 the state capital, João lived at a pension with friends Almir Palmeiro and Abadé dos Santos Ayub, the latter very attached to him.

Aware of João's skills in soccer at school, where he played in the right back position, Almir and Abadé convinced him to take a test for Sport Club Internacional. João was selected for the club's juvenile team. In 1932, he became a juvenile state champion. That same year he finished the third grade of the ginásio (high school) at Colégio Anchieta, with an irregular academic achievement, which would be repeated when he attended the Law School at Rio Grande do Sul Federal University. João graduated from high school at Ginásio Santana after being sent back to Uruguaiana.

Political career
Sent back to Porto Alegre after graduating from high school, Jango attended law school to satisfy his father, who desired to see him earn a degree. While there Jango restored contact with his youth friends Abadé Ayub and Salvador Arísio, and made new friends and explored the state capital's nightlife. It was during that time of a bohemian lifestyle that Jango acquired a venereal disease, which paralyzed his left knee almost entirely. His family paid for expensive medical treatment, including a trip to São Paulo, but he expected that he would never walk normally again. Because of the paralysis of his knee, Jango graduated separately from the rest of his class in 1939. He would never really practice law.

After graduating, Jango returned to São Borja. He isolated himself at Yguariaçá Farm. According to his sister Yolanda, his depression did not last long. In the early 1940s he decided to make fun of his own walking disability in the Carnival, participating in the parade of the block Comigo Ninguém Pode (With me no one can).

Death
On December 6, 1976 João Goulart died in his apartment La Villa, in the Argentine municipality of Mercedes, province of Corrientes, supposedly of a heart attack. Since Goulart's body was not submitted to an autopsy, the cause of his death is unconfirmed. Around 30,000 people attended his funeral service, which was censored from press coverage by the military dictatorship.

On April 26, 2000, the former governor of Rio Grande do Sul and Rio de Janeiro, Leonel Brizola, said that the former presidents João Goulart and Juscelino Kubitschek were assassinated in the frame of Operation Condor and requested the opening of investigations of their deaths. They were said to have died of a heart attack and a car accident, respectively.

On 27 January 2008, the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo printed a story with a statement from Mario Neira Barreiro, a former intelligence service member under Uruguay's dictatorship. Barreiro said that Goulart was poisoned, confirming Brizola's allegations. Barreiro also said that the order to assassinate Goulart came from Sérgio Paranhos Fleury, head of the Departamento de Ordem Política e Social (Department of Political and Social Order) and the licence to kill came from president Ernesto Geisel. In July 2008, a special commission of the Legislative Assembly of Rio Grande do Sul, Goulart's home state, concluded that "the evidence that Jango was willfully assassinated, with knowledge of the Geisel government, is strong."

In March 2009, the magazine CartaCapital published previously unreleased documents of the National Intelligence Service created by an undercover agent who was present at Jango's properties in Uruguay. This revelation reinforces the theory that the former president was poisoned. The Goulart family has not yet identified who could be the "B Agent," as he is referred in the documents. The agent acted as a close friend to Jango, and described in detail an argument during the former president's 56th birthday party with his son because of a fight between two employees. As a result of the story, the Human Rights Commission of the Chamber of Deputies decided to investigate Jango's death.

Later, CartaCapital published an interview with Jango's widow, Maria Teresa Fontela Goulart, who revealed documents from the Uruguayan government that documented her complaints that her family was being monitored. The Uruguayan government was monitoring Jango's travel, his business, and his political activities. These files were from 1965, a year after the coup in Brazil, and suggest that he could have been deliberately attacked. – say that he could have been the victim of an attack. The Movement for Justice and Human Rights and the President João Goulart Institute have requested a document referring to the Uruguayan Interior Ministry saying that "serious and responsible Brazilian sources" talked about an "alleged plot against the former Brazilian president."