Brazil on the Move

by John Dos Passos

  The Crime on Toneleros Street

  When Vargas’ police appeared on the scene they tried to make it appear that it was Lacerda, while firing at an imaginary gunman, who had killed Major Vaz.

  Major Vaz had a wife and children. He was a popular young officer. His murder infuriated his comrades in the Air Force. Brushing the police aside, a group of senior officers decided to hold their own inquest. It became clear that the murder was instigated by a Negro named Fortunato Gregório who was known as the “black angel” of Vargas’ personal bodyguard. He eventually confessed to having hired the gunman to do the job and was sent to jail for twenty years, there being no death penalty in Brazil.

  The press, the houses of Congress, the military clubs rang with denunciations of the crime on Toneleros Street. Demands for President Vargas’ resignation were heard on every hand. The old man was terribly shaken by Gregório’s confession and by definite proof which was placed on his desk that his own children were trading on his name in all sorts of financial deals. At a meeting of his Cabinet the night of August 23 he spoke despairingly of “the sea of mud” under the presidential palace and consented, after much urging, if not to resign, at least to retire from the government.

  After the cabinet meeting President Vargas went to his room in the early hours of August 24 and there shot himself through the heart.

  “The odd thing about it,” said my friend when he broke off the story, “is that Vargas’ suicide made him a national hero … the Brazilians are a sentimental people.”

  “But how can they blame Lacerda for it?” cried his wife impatiently. “It was Lacerda who was the hero.”

  Sunday Lunch in Petrópolis

  We had driven out beyond the cobbled treeshaded avenues of Petrópolis into a broad rimrocked valley. Brilliantly green vegetation sprouting with all kinds of flowers overflowed the stone garden walls on either side of the road.

  When we reached Lacerda’s country place my friend parked his little car in an embrasure in one of the walls and led the way up some stone steps through a tunnel of bougainvillaea into a flagged patio. Everything was so full of flowering plants you couldn’t tell which was the garden and which was the house.

  Lacerda set down a flowerpot as he came out to greet us. He was tanned, very much the sunburned Apollo in shell-rimmed spectacles. He was completely preoccupied with his gardening operations. As we walked about his orchard and vegetable garden he introduced each plant and tree as if it were a person.

  He had reason to be proud of his plantings. The valleys in the mountains around Petrópolis are one of those marvelous regions where plants from the tropical and temperate zones flourish with equal profusion. There are orchids along with nasturtiums. Cabbages grow next to pineapples. Beside mangoes grow guavas, oranges, and apricots, and even occasionally an apple tree. Lacerda was particularly proud of his apple tree.

  Somebody said the place was like the Garden of Eden. “Naturally. We are in my native state of Rio de Janeiro,” Lacerda answered dreamily in English. “It is truly a paradise”—he laughed—“where only man is vile … Maybe not so vile. Let’s give him a chance.”

  We met his wife, who looked much too young to be the mother of two wellgrown boys and a girl. Lacerda himself looked younger than I had remembered. There was an air of youthfulness and closeknit intimacy about the whole family. You felt they were all in it together.

  Dona Lota’s house, built by Sérgio Bernardes of glass and steel beside a cascading brook, was something to see, though one skeptic did mutter into another skeptic’s ear that it did look a little like the model of an oldfashioned railroad station. There was a pleasant gathering at lunch: the architect Bernardes, an eminent historian, a number of people interested primarily in painting and sculpture. The talk, half in English, half in Portuguese, was about Picasso and Léger and books and St. John Perse and the new museum for modern art which was going up in Rio. Lacerda was at home in all this. He showed a flair for painting. He expressed the reasoned likes and dislikes of a man who did his own reading and used his own eyes and his own ears. His remarks had a humorous tone that kept us all laughing. Not a word about contemporary politics.

  On the way back down the mountain my friend’s wife said she was a little let down. It was as if we had been lunching in Paris, instead of Brazil. She had expected Lacerda to be more forceful. “It’s a Sunday,” said her husband soothingly, “a man can’t be forceful every day of the week.”

  The Cruise of the Tamandaré

  A few nights later at the apartment on Toneleros Street, where he still lived, Lacerda himself described the scramble of events so unfortunate for his Democratic Union that followed Vargas’ death. He didn’t spare himself. He gave a comical cast to the recital of his political misadventures.

  After Vargas’ death Vice-President Café Filho, a wellmeaning gentleman from one of the small northeastern states, took over the presidency in due form. He had been on good terms with the old man and took the attitude that as interim President his only business was to see that the elections were peacefully conducted.

  The country was preoccupied with the funeral eulogies of the great Getúlio. The industrial workers felt that they had lost their best friend. Even among the growing middle class, who tended to sympathize with the Democratic Union, it was admitted that Vargas had broadened the base of participation in political life. Every Brazilian now felt himself a citizen. The crimes and corruptions of the dictatorship were forgotten in the general mourning.

  Lacerda, in speeches and editorials, was driving for a complete cleanup of the remnants of the Vargas regime. In his Tribune of the Press he called for an end of machine politics. He was piling up votes for his candidacy for the Chamber of Deputies.

  Party labels have little meaning in Brazil. With the relaxation of Vargas’ heavy centralizing hand the national parties fell under the command of local leaders in the different states. The state governors became powerful figures. Groupings of local politicians resulted in splinterings and coalitions. Dozens of minor parties came into being. In São Paulo, for example, a pokerfaced politico named Adhemar de Barros used his patronage as governor to build up a Social Progressive Party of his own. In Minas Gerais the governor, Dr. Juscelino Kubitschek, was being groomed for the presidency by his local Social Democratic machine. From their stronghold in Rio Grande do Sul, under the banner of a testament supposedly written out by Vargas before his death, João Goulart and his brotherinlaw Leonel Brizola kept Vargas’ Labor Party intact, though its greatest strength still lay in the labor unions of the city of Rio.

  In the 1955 election, through a deal with the Labor Party which resulted in João Goulart’s being chosen Vice-President, Kubitschek carried the presidency. The Communists claimed that it was their backing that clinched his election.

  Reform was in the air all the same. A brash young man whose emblem was a new broom and whose motto was a clean sweep had defeated Adhemar de Barros in São Paulo the year before. Honesty in office and efficient administration were Jânio Quadros’ warcries. His first act was to have his predecessor indicted for peculation. The same reform movement carried Carlos Lacerda to the Chamber of Deputies by a very large vote.

  The Democratic Union, to which Lacerda belonged, questioned Kubitschek’s election as having been put through with the support of the illegal Communist party and by the discredited methods of the Vargas machine. There was a head-on confrontation of forces.

  In such moments in Brazil the armed services tend to be the decisive factor. A large part of the Army went along with Café Filho’s Minister of War, General Teixeira Lott, in endorsing Kubitschek’s election. On the other hand there were groups of officers, particularly in the Navy and Air Force, who wanted a general housecleaning under the auspices of Brigadier Gomes. All Rio whispered of a coup d’état. The tension reached such a point that President Café Filho collapsed from a heart attack and was placed by his doctors in an oxygen tent in a hospital, incommunicado.

  Congress forth
with declared the presidency vacant and installed Carlos Luz, the Speaker of the House, as constitutional President. Carlos Luz was a Social Democrat with reformist sympathies. It seemed the Godgiven moment for the reformers to take power. Luz demanded General Lott’s resignation and appointed another general in his place as Minister of War.

  General Lott resigned all right, but immediately he sent troops he could trust to occupy key points in Rio. A coup to forestall a coup, he called it. Labor and some Social Democrat factions in the congress declared Luz deposed, and appointed their adherent, Nereu Ramos, who, as presiding officer of the Senate, was next in order of succession, President in his stead.

  For a few hours it looked like civil war. Café Filho lay helpless in his oxygen tent. Brigadier Gomes, still the hope of the Democratic Union, started for São Paulo where he hoped to recruit adherents. Claiming he was still constitutional President, Carlos Luz gathered his supporters about him and they all trouped aboard an old American cruiser renamed the Tamandaré. The commander, a sympathizer, received him with full honors. Carlos Lacerda, still only deputy elect, went along.

  The cruise of the Tamandaré proved a fizzle. Orders were issued to proceed at full steam to Santos, where the harbor forts were in the hands of officers favorable to Carlos Luz, but there was very little coal in the bunkers and part of the crew was on shore leave. During the hours that went by before the cruiser could put to sea General Lott had Gomes intercepted and sent emissaries to win over the garrisons of São Paulo and Santos.

  Lott’s orders were for the Tamandaré to stay in port. When the cruiser, with barely enough steam for half speed, did manage to weigh anchor and to head out across the bar for the open sea, the Ministry of War sent word to the forts to stop her, by gunfire if necessary. When the shells came shrieking across the water the group on the bridge of the Tamandaré decided not to return the fire. They were afraid of missing the forts and hitting the civilian buildings behind. Most of them had families in Copacabana. Several shells came perilously close until a freighter got between the cruiser and the forts. The skipper didn’t seem to notice that a battle was in progress. That caused the forts to cease firing, for fear of hitting the freighter.

  The cruiser continued down the coast until the radio announced that the Santos forts had gone over to General Lott. Then the Tamandaré ignominiously turned tail and steamed back to her berth in the navy yard.

  The deposed President and his entourage were branded as mutineers by the new government. They scattered through the city to seek political asylum. Carlos Lacerda took refuge in the Cuban embassy. He’ll tell you laughingly that politically speaking this was the lowest moment of his life. A few days later he was allowed to leave with his family for the United States in voluntary exile.

  Nereu Ramos turned over the presidency to Juscelino Kubitschek in due course.

  The Lacerda family remained in the United States for several months. The boys went to school in Norwalk, Connecticut, and Carlos worked as a translator for subtitles for motion pictures, and as foreign correspondent for the Estado de São Paulo. He set himself with his usual feverish energy to improve his knowledge of English. Money ran low so the Lacerdas went to Lisbon, where living was cheaper than in Norwalk. When Carlos got word that the Chamber of Deputies had refused to declare his seat vacant he took his family home. As a deputy he would be immune to arrest.

  He was re-elected to congress by an even larger majority in 1958. Reformist sentiment was strong. This was the year when in scornful protest a hundred thousand people in a state election in São Paulo wrote in on their ballots the name of Cacareco, a rhinoceros in the city zoo that was a great favorite with the schoolchildren.

  The Politics of the Broom

  Kubitschek proved an energetic President. He had the knack of getting cooperation out of the most diverse factions. Political bitterness diminished during his sixyear term. Industrial growth was immense.

  As a native of an inland state he was convinced of the need to move the federal capital to the central plateau. Brasília was a colossal achievement, but it proved a colossally expensive achievement.

  All the economic ills which resulted from the narrow views of the nationalists, and from the highhanded neglect of fiscal problems that had been the rule for years, began to come home to roost. The loss of value of the cruzeiro and the daily rise in the cost of living became the dominant facts in Brazilian life.

  Jânio Quadros, with the assistance of sound economic advisors and, particularly, of Carvalho Pinto, the hardworking fiscal expert who was to succeed him as governor, had made good his promise to put the finances of the wealthy state of São Paulo back in order. When he announced his presidential candidacy to succeed Juscelino Kubitschek, the voters believed he would do the same thing for the federal government. His emblem was still the new broom. As a mass meeting orator he had no rival. No one paid any attention to stories of his drinking, of his emotional instability, of the passes he made at nubile young women who found themselves alone in his office. He aroused overwhelming enthusiasm. He was elected President by six million votes.

  By a quirk in the constitution the Vice-President could seek re-election, though the President could not. In spite of a split in the labor vote João Goulart marshaled enough of Vargas’ old following to become Vice-President once more.

  The same hopes for a thoroughgoing reform of the government that carried Jânio Quadros into the Palace of the Dawn at Brasília, carried Carlos Lacerda into the governorship of the new state of Guanabara. Next to the presidency, being governor of Guanabara was the toughest political assignment in Brazil.

  The preceding administration had been so taken up with Brasília that the beautiful old capital was left in the doldrums. The city kept growing. New quarters were springing up in every nook of the difficult terrain between the bay of Guanabara on one side and the lagoon on the other. The close-packed buildings were hemmed in everywhere by the tooth-shaped basalt peaks that form the chief beauty of the city’s landscape. Transportation was in a snarl. A complete new highway system was needed. Electric light, power, water were insufficient. The telephone service was years behind the times. The sewers mostly dated from the mid-nineteenth century when Rio was rated as having one of the best systems in the world. Even the handsomest residential quarters were flanked by hillside slums, the famous favelas. By this time almost a million squatters lived in these shantytowns without policing or public services of any kind. The condition of Rio would have been a challenge to a man who had spent his life in public administration.

  To the amazement of friend and foe, Governor Lacerda, after a little preliminary fumbling, developed one of the most efficient administrations the city had ever seen. He collected about him a group of townplanners and architects and engineers and laid plans for new electric light plants, for a new water supply, for renovating the sewerage system and for dealing with a long list of what he called skeletons, projects started by previous administrations that had been halted for lack of funds. When the Alliance for Progress came along he eagerly took advantage of American money. He announced his administration’s aim to “make Rio once more the Marvelous City.”

  “Oh, marvelous city,” went a popular song. “By day we lack water, and by night we lack light.”

  The President Breaker

  It was at Jânio Quadros’ suggestion that Carlos Lacerda ran for the governorship of Guanabara. During the early months of Quadros’ presidency the two men continued to see eye to eye. Quadros’ first administrative reforms had Lacerda’s hearty approval. The governor’s plan was to keep pace in his local administration with the President’s reform of the federal government.

  The trouble that began to develop between them stemmed from the fact that the problems Quadros had to meet at Brasília were much tougher than the problems he had coped with in São Paulo. There he had the advantage of able collaborators, since the city and state of São Paulo had for years enjoyed the most competent administration in Brazil. In São Paulo t
he new broom could be placed in the hands of men who knew how to use it.

  In Brasília everything was chaotic. The capital city had been only recently inaugurated. More than half the government offices were still in Rio. Politicians, and particularly their wives and families, balked at exchanging the familiar amenities of the old capital for the windswept immensities of bare red clay and the dust of construction work of the fantastic new city on the plateau five hundred miles inland. Nie-meyer’s new congress building was striking to behold but inconvenient to operate. Even when the President could coax enough senators and deputies out to Brasília for a quorum he found it hard to keep their minds on constructive legislation. He was confronted by the fact that running a vast sprawling nation, where the problems of government were different in each different region, was a far more exacting task than acting the spellbinder as figurehead for that nation’s best organized state. Failure stared him in the face.

  Lacerda now says that Jânio was a charlatan all along. He points out his slovenly working habits, his lack of education, that his only reading had been some Shakespeare and a little Zola. His taste in art Lacerda found atrocious. Though immensely clever at picking ideas out of other men’s mouths, Jânio, says Lacerda, always lacked the inner cohesion needed to face adversity. Still he can’t help admitting that at the time of Jânio’s inauguration, like millions of other Brazilians, he expected a miracle.

  Unable to cope with the complications of reforming the federal government, Quadros began to listen to advisers who brought up the parallel of Fidel Castro in Cuba. Castro wasn’t plagued with a recalcitrant congress, with a faultfinding press or with powerful financial interests all tugging in different directions. Castro was having it all his own way. Instead of piecemeal reform, maybe Brazil needed a Castro-type revolution. Jânio’s gift for swaying the crowd was equal to Fidel’s. With dictatorial powers he could really use his new broom.