"From Zero to Hero: Brazil and the World Bank Before and after the Military Coup of 1964"

Between 1959 and 1964, the democratic government of Brazil did not receive any support from the World Bank, not a single project was funded and not a dime entered the country. The Bank insisted that the lack of project funding was due to the country’s inability to keep inflation at bay, to devise credible projects and to stabilise the exchange rate.
In 1964, the democratic government of President Joao Goulart was replaced by a right-wing military government that would stay in power for 20 years.
Despite the supposed neutrality of the World Bank, the attitude towards the new regime was markedly different. The President of the World Bank and several officials started paying regular visits to the country and established a friendly and collaborative relationship with the economic team of the regime. Money entered the country at a fast pace and by 1970 Brazil was the biggest receiver of capital from the World Bank.
This paper relies on a wide set of recently disclosed material from the archives of the World Bank and large multinational commercial banks to illustrate the changing relationship between the World Bank and Brazil in the years preceding the military coup and after the military takeover.
The article will question the supposed economic neutrality of the World Bank by showing that the Bank saw the military regime through its own ideological lens superimposing its own narratives on the country and ignoring conflicting evidence. Although the Bank did nothing to hide its ideological preferences, it never clearly supported the regime either. Nonetheless, it required a set of economic measures in order to unlock its credits that could only be implemented by an authoritarian regime.