Plenty of people remember the dictatorship quite fondly. It was a time when Brazil tried pretty hard to develop its own industry and technology. We even tried making our own computers at some point, that bit of history has even been posted here on HN. The Lua programming language was born in the military dictatorship. Their goal was to replace technology imports with national versions.

Before the economic recession and hyperinflation, Brazil enjoyed an economic boom: the so called "brazilian miracle". Many brazilian industries became successful during those times. Including the steel industry my city is built around.

Today Brazil is just the world's soy farm. To put it mildly. The country of wasted potential.