ABSTRACT
In 1964 a military coup ended the Brazilian democratic experience of the postwar period. In the transitional government that followed, anchored in an alliance between the military and the liberal right, emerged the first attempt to recognize the existence of systematic racial discrimination in the country and to implement affirmative action measures to correct it. This happened in November 1968, shortly before the military broke their liberal commitment and institutionalized an authoritarian military regime. Using mainly epochal documents, this paper analyzes the political conjuncture that allowed affirmative action to be proposed and its posterior rejection by the military, crystalizing "racial democracy" into the ideology and politics of the regime. It mainly analyzes the social forces that anchored the proposal of affirmative action, and those who reacted and aborted its discussion.
KEYWORDS:
quotas; authoritarianism; liberalism; military regime