Does experiencing an interruption of self-governance shape attitudes towards democracy later in life? We examine this question by studying the consequences of targeted authoritarian interventions during the military government in Brazil (1964-1985). The interventions replaced popularly elected mayors with appointees in certain municipalities, while allowing others to continue directly electing their mayors. Using a dataset that combines more than twenty years of public opinion data on attitudes towards democracy with spatial variation on the sites of intervention (21,099 individuals located in 662 distinct municipalities), we identify the impact of intervention by comparing the attitudes of individuals who experienced intervention during the key period of political socialization (late childhood to early adulthood) to individuals living in the same municipalities who did not experience intervention during this period. We find that experiencing intervention during these impressionable years leads to a small but statistically significant reduction in the valorization of democracy later in life.