This article analyzes the development, apogee and rapid decline of Brazil's Independent Foreign Policy (1961-64), a period when it is possible to observe close and profound interactions between public opinion and the country's foreign policy. Back then, Brazilian politics on every sphere - domestic and international - was marked by populism which, allied to the fact that mass media and other resonance boxes of public opinion were arising and being strengthened in the country, helped create and develop the fundamental relations between public opinion trends and the directions taken by the government in the international arena. The gradual polarization of opinion trends in relation to the country's international insertion eventually led to the 1964 Coup d'État.
Brazilian Independent Foreign Policy; Public Opinion; Polarization; 1964 Coup d'État