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Jango on the Attack: The Base Reforms the Elite Tried to Burn Into the Ground
- Paulo Pereira de Araujo
- há 7 dias
- 3 min de leitura
In March 1964, João Goulart entered the field like someone inheriting a dismantled team, a torn-up pitch, and a divided crowd. But he decided to play offensively. His plan? A set of Reformas de Base (Basic Reforms) that, if they were a tactical scheme, would look somewhere between a bold 4–3–3 and total Dutch football. They called them Reformas de Base. I would call them “a preseason tactical drill the board is terrified of.”
Electoral Reform: Opening the Stadium Gates
The 1946 Constitution kept illiterate citizens and low-ranking soldiers outside, like turning away fans without tickets. Goulart wanted to open the gates. More people in the stands, more voices in the match. The elite looked at that like seeing the supporters’ group arriving here trouble.
Administrative Reform: New Coach, New Conditioning
The State was a team playing with a system from the previous decade. Industrialization, Juscelino Kubitschek, and everything else had changed the pace of the match, but the squad kept defending in a straight line. Jango said: “let’s hire people who understand the game.” Coach, physiologist, performance analyst. The opposition screamed that it was too much modernity for such a small field.
Tax Reform: A Yellow Card for the Rich
Jango chose to referee the game with firmness: those who earn more pay more; those who earn less, pay less. As simple as a well-marked offside. But the country’s elite class did not enjoy being scolded by the referee. They complained at the microphone, ran to Congress, to the media, to any locker room that would take them.
Banking Reform: Giving Small Players Room to Pass
Credit for rural areas, a Central Bank as a defensive midfielder holding the line, organizing the match, and containing inflation—an out-of-control striker. The financial elite disliked it: they preferred a game without a referee or rules.
Exchange Reform: Strengthening the Defense
Brazil was constantly taking counterattacks from foreign currencies. Goulart wanted to place two tough defenders at the edge of the box: control the exchange rate, curb luxury imports. The common people found it reasonable; the elite called it a socialist bunker.
University Reform: An Open Tryout
Jango wanted universities for more people, more freedom for professors, more autonomy. Like opening trials for every aspiring player, not just the sons of the club owners. And with Paulo Freire’s method, which taught students to think about the game. The conservative crowd went wild: “They’ll turn every student into a conscious number 10!”
Urban Reform: Offside Against Speculation
Limit how many properties a single person could own. Expropriate the excess. Sell them to workers. Jango crossed the ball into the box and shouted: “Who’s taking it?” The real estate market replied: “No one touches my assets.” They ran straight to the referee.
Agrarian Reform: The Goal That Would Shake the Stadium
This was the decisive penalty in stoppage time. Unproductive land would lose its spot on the roster. The government could expropriate it. Payment would come in public bonds, not bags of cash. Rural workers would gain rights worthy of professional players. The landowners smelled a scoreboard reversal and called half the world to pressure the refereeing crew.
Before even stepping onto the stage at Central do Brazil, Goulart made moves like someone sliding in without apologizing he nationalized private oil refineries and expropriated land around highways and railways. The referee did not even have time to blow the whistle. The stadium polarized. Half cheered; half demanded his immediate expulsion.
It was there, in that chaotic match, that allies became rivals, rivals became conspirators, and conspirators began rehearsing the 1964 Coup. The match went on, but the referee—never neutral—was already blowing the whistle with a crooked mouth.
And so began the authoritarian substitution that would soon take João Goulart off the field. In the locker rooms of Brazilian history, they still argue whether those reforms were the pass that could have changed the championship or just the first punch in a brutal brawl in the stands.
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