In the Senate in 1964 JK’s speech after the military coup d'etat in 1964, in response to rumors about a revocation of his mandate as senator under the military government. Senator Juscelino Kubitscheck will use part of his speaking time to provide a personal explanation. In accordance with congressional bylaws, the Senator must not be interrupted. Senator Juscelino Kubistscheck has the word. Mr. Chairman, In anticipation of the revocation of my political rights, which would also imply the revocation of my civil rights, I consider it my duty to direct some words to the Brazilian nation from this speaker’s desk. I do this now so that, if this violent act were to be executed, I will not find myself prevented from fulfilling my duty to denounce this attack on free institutions in my person. It would not be right to forego this opportunity, which offers itself to me because of everything I represent at this moment. I am not boasting when saying that I consider this moment one of the highest moments in my public life. I compare this moment to the one when I received the presidential sash, after a struggle without truce against forces of every order, even against slanders that tried to prevent the implementation of the Brazilian people’s will. At that time I turned to my conscience in order not to allow resentment or sorrow to guide me, no matter how appropriate these feelings might have been. Before God, before the people, before this house, I affirm that as the President of the Republic during my five-year term, I strived for peace in Brazil. I did not authorize, permit, or enter a pact with anyone or against anyone’s freedom. I always acted with administrative dignity. At this moment, I realize a perfect relationship between my actions as President and the iniquitous persecution that I am suffering. The same cause persists, the same cause to defend free institutions, for which I struggled so much. It is this cause that makes me now the victim of a raging suffocation of liberty [“libertycide”], which in turn marks and stains a revolution to save us from alleged communist tyranny. I am still the same citizen, who yesterday held the office of President and was the constitutional commander-in-chief, who aided and promoted his strongest opponents. Today I am an unarmed man, without a material chance to react but willing to react with the energy, the resolve and the courage of those who fall in combat standing. There is nothing to defend myself against for according to the mechanisms of the planned institutional act, defendants have no access to their accusations. This way Brazil’s revolutionaries turn themselves against the most sacred conquests of the law. I don’t know exactly of what I am being accused. I only heard rumors of old stories already refuted and demoralized with unquestionable arguments. The nation now lives under the effects of terror. I express here my solidarity with all those who suffer from interrogations that resemble the most dramatic moments in the history of humankind. If I will be stripped of my political rights, as is announced everywhere, I won't be frightened, I won't stop fighting. From the viewpoint of my biography, I can just be proud of this act. I only lament that the nation suffers this vile insult through the party that recently indicated me as a candidate for the 1965 elections. But this very insult will surely be made up for at the ballots when the first opportunity arises in the name of a different candidate of the communist party. Why, Mr. Chairman, is it that, although there is every reason for me to be proud of the great privilege to be the main target of the anti-democratic battle, why is it that a terrible sadness invades me, the most terrible sadness that I ever experienced in my turbulent public life? No doubt this sadness stems from the fact that, while they offer a glorious opportunity to me on one hand, on the other hand they hurt our country by humiliating our civilization in my person, by degrading us in the view of other free nations and by making the revolution something all democrats of the world must reject. And with this terrible feeling of mourning, I am waiting for the execution of the injustice announced to happen in the near future. My vote once served to elect the current President in whose democratic spirit I used to trust. The sacrifices that my opponents’ hatred and incomprehension demanded from me will help me in a new battle for the peace and the dignity of the Brazilian people. Once again, I hold in my hands the flag of democracy. At this moment, while I will continue the fight for Brazil with or without my political rights, I know that tyrannies do not persist in Brazil, that we are a humane nation filled with the spirit of justice. As a man of the people, having been elevated to power repeatedly through the people’s will, I foresee the suffering that the people will face in the hours of darkness that start surrounding us. But we will escape this darkness and reemerge on a new day when respect and justice to the human being will be reestablished. The steel of the tyrannical forces that threaten to dominate the revolution, that threaten to banish me from political life, will draw consequences that can hardly be foreseen. God knows I do not want them because He did not make me to desire evil for anyone, least of all for my country; He did not create me to destroy but to build. Irrespective of my intentions, however, the seed of injustice, of arbitrary rule, of cruelty, of violation of human rights, of disrespect will thrive, grow, give fruits and then, as it has invariably happened, punishment will come and remove it all. Unfortunately, not only those who sow with malice will collect bad fruits, this poor people too will be the victim of its leaders’ mistakes. I repeat that this ‘coup’ against my person as the former head of state will impact democratic life and the free will of the people. Not only am I personally hurt, all those are hurt who feel that they have a right to choose the rulers who guide their destiny. This is an act of usurpation, and not of punishment. This is to become a betrayal of the promises of the revolution that offered to all Brazilians an opportunity to collaborate in the common project of Brazil’s reconstruction. They persecute more than me, they persecute Brazil’s political rights. I now turn particularly to foreign countries, to our friends abroad, to the international public, and ask you not to judge my country by this hate-inspired action. I want to ask you to trust not only in Brazil’s capacity of recovery and its economic plan, but also in our country’s deep moral values. Do not judge us by this act of deplorable political weakness, which is committed by a faction of our citizens in uniform for national defense, who turn against their own public representatives, and which offers an as unjust as barbarian image of Brazil to the external world. We Brazilians are not those beheaders, who are avid to expose and degrade people’s lives, statesmen’s lives, in their most inviolable rights and who present these lives for public degradation, lives of people who fought for the advance of their country. We are just living through a difficult phase. But this is a democratic country that repels any nature of extremisms. I beg all who observe us as outsiders not to judge us by this act of discrimination, by this hate and this criminal blindness. Before the Brazilian people I declare that I claim new and exceptional powers for the long journey to freedom and to national advance.