Brazil on the Move

by John Dos Passos

  Quadros wanted Lacerda’s help in this half formulated enterprise. Members of his administration turned up in Rio, suggesting that Lacerda’s own work would be easier if the President and the state governors had more power. Lacerda’s answer was that Quadros had all the power he needed. He had the prestige. He had the backing of the whole population. What he must do was present an itemized program to congress. Popular clamor would do the rest.

  Gradually it dawned on Lacerda that Quadros had no program to offer. He wanted power first. The program could wait. The newspapers were full of the handsome reception the President was giving to Fidel Castro’s mission to Brazil.

  The old watchdog of democracy was aroused. He talked with other state governors and federal senators. He became convinced that something unhealthy was brewing at Brasília.

  Although it was second nature to Lacerda to make his every thought public in his newspaper or on the air, he kept his doubts to himself until at last he could contain himself no longer; he must have it out with President Quadros.

  Quadros was in Brasília. His wife, Dona Elvá de Quadros, whom Lacerda speaks of as a really nice sensible woman, was in Rio. Lacerda went to see her at the presidential residence and explained to her that he had to have a quiet talk with her husband. The answer was an invitation to dine that same night and the appearance of the President’s jet to transport Governor Lacerda to Brasília.

  It was from the President’s military attaché, who met him at the airport, that Lacerda learned that Quadros had just given the most important Brazilian decoration to Castro’s chief assistant, “Ché” Guevara. The President’s household was caught by surprise.

  Sensing that he was in for a rough time Lacerda sent his secretary to engage a room at the hotel and proceeded to the palace. There he was met by someone he described as “a sort of Gregório” who took his little black overnight case and showed him to a suite. The first sour note was that the President had already dined. Governor Lacerda dined alone.

  Then President Quadros suddenly put in an appearance. He greeted Lacerda warmly and gave him a friendly hug. It was obvious that he had had a few drinks. Lacerda immediately started to tell him of his doubts and suspicions. He asked for an explanation. He said he didn’t want to go back to his days of wild attacks but he owed something to his voters and to the country. He explained that he couldn’t go along with Jânio’s pro-Castro foreign policy. Maybe he’d better resign as governor. The country had a right to a little peace and quiet.

  He added that he had personal reasons too. When he took over the governorship he had turned his newspaper over to his son Sérgio. The boy was having a hard time. He didn’t want him to meet failure so young. Jânio gave Lacerda a sharp look and cried out that if it was money he needed for his newspaper he would attend to that.

  Lacerda answered that he didn’t want money. His newspaper could take care of itself. He wanted some assurance that Jânio Quadros wasn’t trying to behave like Fidel Castro.

  Quadros is a smallish man with a Charlie Chaplin mustache. Lacerda, who had always been on good terms with him, tried to kid him: Come now he wasn’t Charles de Gaulle.

  “Let’s go to the movies,” said Jânio.

  Seeing movies every night had become an obsession with him. The big hall in the palace was rigged up with a motion picture screen. There were tables piled with sausages and cold meats, bowls of popcorn, beer and whiskey bottles. Quadros had the reputation of having a good head for liquor, but by this time he was showing it.

  They started with a serious picture but the President shouted that he wanted something funny. He called for Jerry Lewis. He didn’t like Jerry Lewis and switched to a Western. He was a great fan of Westerns.

  In the middle of the reel the President went to the phone. He came back and told Lacerda he wanted him to confer with two of his ministers who were having a private talk in a room at the hotel.

  When Lacerda reached the hotel all the ministers would talk about was some articles Lacerda had written in the period after Vargas’ suicide, suggesting that elections be postponed. Why didn’t he favor direct action now? Lacerda told them that the situation today was very different. He added that he was planning to resign his governorship since he could not go along with the national administration. He would try to keep his opinions to himself to give them a free hand.

  After that, he returned to the palace, under the impression that he’d been invited to spend the night there. At the entrance he was met by the doorman who handed him his little black bag. The doorman intimated he’d better go to the hotel.

  Lacerda tells of the ride back to the hotel as one of the worst moments of his life. He was oppressed by the vast loneliness of the unfinished city, the great buildings with nobody in them, the ghost town look. There was a Nazi atmosphere about the crazy scene at the palace, the incoherence, the drinking, the silly movie. From his hotel room he called up one of the ministers he’d been talking to before. The minister came to his room. They argued until four in the morning. Lacerda insisted that this sort of thing couldn’t go on. It was the Stalin way of running a country. The minister told him the President said to go to hell.

  Lacerda flew back to Rio the next day. A couple of days later he had a date to lecture to university students in São Paulo. He tried to make a figurative speech as a warning to Jânio. An organized group kept interrupting him, shouting, “Jânio sim, Lacerda não.”

  This was for Lacerda a period of terrible indecision. He couldn’t sleep nights. Then on August 24, the anniversary of the downfall of Getúlio Vargas, he made up his mind. That night he spoke to the nation over TV. He told the whole story of the trip to Brasília, his frustration, the efforts to induce him to fall in with Jânio’s plans. “The man we elected doesn’t want to be President, he wants to be dictator.”

  Next day Jânio Quadros resigned. With his resignation he gave out a confused statement that hidden interests at home and abroad were sabotaging his program. He may have thought that a wave of popular outbursts would force the congress to ask him to reconsider his resignation. There was no such outburst. A few months later Adhemar de Barros, who is not lacking in humor, announced on television that he didn’t know about the sinister domestic interests that had ruined Quadros’ program, but he could name the foreign interests. They were Haig & Haig, Teacher’s, Johnnie Walker, and so forth.

  Quadros’ resignation left João Goulart, Vargas’ political heir, the President of Brazil. All parties, except for the left wing of labor and the Communists, were thrown into dismay. Congress, under the influence of the Democratic Union, immediately started tinkering with the constitution. The President was shorn of his powers. The executive power was placed in the hands of a Prime Minister responsible to the Chamber of Deputies.

  Politically the period between Quadros’ resignation in the summer of ’61 and the October elections in the fall of ’62 was the story of a continuous tug of war between the leaders of the Democratic Union, who wanted ministerial government, and the Labor Party men who wanted full presidential powers restored to their leader. National administration was at a stalemate, with the result that no constructive legislation could be passed. Inflation went unchecked. The cost of living soared. In spite of occasional hikes in the minimum wage, the middle classes were pinched and working people’s families went hungry. In the hinterlands the unemployed starved.

  The Reactionary Governor of Guanabara

  After his crucial television speech Lacerda says he was at last able to sleep soundly in his bed. He awoke to a chorus of praise and vituperation. Jânio Quadros’ resignation was as great a shock to the Brazilian electorate as Vargas’ suicide. Men and women of all levels of society had placed their hopes in his hands. The first reaction was of despair.

  The conservative newspapers came around to the view that, shocking as it was, Lacerda’s unmasking of Quadros saved Brazilian democracy. The leftwing press, led by the dashingly edited Ultima Hora with its nationwide circulation, claimed that hav
ing brought about Vargas’ death the reactionary governor of Guanabara had now deprived the country of the services of its most dedicated reformer. The man was a monster. Some people have been called kingmakers. Lacerda was the destroyer of presidents.

  No man loves a fight more. Breathing deep of the dust of battle Lacerda threw himself into an almost nightly vendetta over television with the supporters of President Goulart. As the campaign for the congressional elections of 1962 neared its climax, he seemed to foreign observers to be engaged in a sort of hand to hand combat over the airwaves with Leonel Brizola, the President’s brotherinlaw.

  Brizola was nearing the end of his term as governor of Rio Grande do Sul. In spite of the backing of some of Vargas’ henchmen in the state which had been the center of the old dictator’s political web, his administration had been so unpopular that he was facing a voters’ revolt at home. By following the anti-American line in Guanabara, where there was a compact Communist-inspired vote, he would be sure of election to the Chamber of Deputies. By bearding Lacerda in his own citystate he could hope to win national leadership of the Brazilian Labor Party.

  So long as he was governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Brizola could use other weapons than oratory. A severe drought had resulted in a scarcity of rice and beans throughout the northern and central part of Brazil. Rio Grande do Sul had a surplus. Brizola could use his control of his home state’s export of vital foods to cut off supplies from Guanabara. Beans and rice are basic articles in the diet of all classes in Brazil. The rich can eat other things. If the poor can’t get beans they go hungry. The sight of long queues waiting for beans and rice in markets and foodstores was a more cogent argument against Lacerda’s administration than all the oratory in the world.

  While Brizola, supported by an active political organization which controlled the flow of cash to labor unions and students’ organizations, fought Lacerda over the air, his brotherinlaw’s administration in Brasília made life as hard as possible for the state of Guanabara. Everything the federal government could do was done to sabotage Lacerda’s program.

  It was a mighty struggle. Lacerda’s capacity for work has always been prodigious. While he carried on the debate with Brizola in almost nightly television appearances, he worked all day superintending every detail of his rebuilding of Rio. He wore out secretaries and assistants. He had to prove to himself and to the world that his plans for the “marvelous city” were not just politicians’ talk. He had to show results that the voters could see.

  As governor he lives on the top floor of an old apartment house facing the bay in a somewhat rundown residential section known as Flamengo Beach. First thing in the morning he’s out on the balcony looking down to see how the work is going on one of his favorite projects.

  Early in his governorship he took steps to insure the public use of a large area of made land through which the new four-lane highway runs from the downtown district out along the bay shore to Copacabana and the new seabeach suburbs. He wants to develop this region into a park which will surpass in beauty the old parks that are part of the imperial heritage, and, at the same time furnish playgrounds, small boat harbors, soccerfields and beach facilities for the city’s growing population.

  To superintend the project he appointed a committee under the active management of his old friend Lota de Macedo Soares. As a great hostess Dona Lota numbered among her personal cronies many of the world’s best architects and sculptors and townplanners. A small woman in black striped pants, she drives them with fair words, but she drives them hard. She has Burle Marx, Brazil’s most internationally admired landscape architect, doing the overall design and has dragged in the best talent in the country to help. Many of them work without pay. They’ll tell you that not a tree is planted, nor a stretch of shrubbery set in position which escapes the governor’s early morning gaze. Usually he’s after Dona Lota on the phone before eight o’clock to find out why some part of the work isn’t going along faster.

  Next, after a couple of early morning hours at his administrative office, Governor Lacerda will be out on his rounds to see for himself. He has to see and be seen. The people must be made to know he’s working for them.

  First he’ll turn up at a hilltop favela, climbing the goat-paths with a springy step while a subordinate pants after him with a bundle of documents. The documents are to declare the hill expropriated by right of eminent domain from the original owners. The owners haven’t been getting any profits anyway as they are helpless to evict the squatters and in some cases they are compensated by special privileges as to zoning and building heights in the more accessible sections of their land.

  Lacerda’s program for the squatters is twofold. Where the land must be used for other construction, they are offered cheap substitute housing in rows of small dwellings which, though not luxurious, are at least better than the hovels they will be leaving. In the majority of cases it is not practical to move the people out. Then the city services bring in light and water. Something is done about sewage. Receptacles are set up for garbage where trucks can reach them. The governor furnishes cement, lumber, and technical help for these projects, but the heavy work is done by the faveladwellers themselves.

  Lacerda is delighted by the success in the favelas of the institution of mutirão, mutual help. Since most of the squatters are recent immigrants from the backlands they are used to the old peasant system. If a man is building a house the neighbors pitch in to help. They work the same way in the favelas. The governor’s plan is to give the squatters title to the little plots they have already built their houses on, and gradually to draw them into the benefits and responsibilities of citizenship. “We want them to feel,” he says, “that they are regular people … just like anybody else.”

  Leaving the favela the governor will pick up his chief engineer and visit the excavations where they are laying a new sewer, or check on the work on the tunnels being drilled through the mountains for the new water supply, which is to be chlorinated and treated with fluorine at the source. Then he’ll dedicate a clinic that is part of his program for renovating the obsolete hospitals, or cut the tape on a new thoroughfare designed to alleviate some of Rio’s unending traffic jam. Almost daily he opens a school. There are so many new schools he’s run out of names for them and asks his visitors to make lists of suggestions. Next it’s a viaduct or the beginning of a great traffic tunnel to link an isolated part of the city into the highway system.

  He seems to carry all the details in his head. He gives the impression of knowing more about each project than the men in charge. Though he’s death on incompetence, he keeps the enthusiasm of his staff at a high pitch. Good work is immediately recognized. “I wouldn’t have believed it,” said one of Lacerda’s oldest friends, a lawyer who had helped him set up his newspaper fifteen years before. “We thought of him as the editorial writer, the fearless orator. To have him turn into an administrator is the surprise of the century … Why, he’s actually happy in administration.”

  Brazil is a land of thoroughgoing social democracy. A public man has to be open to anybody who wants to talk to him. On his rounds Lacerda has to be ready with a little speech for every occasion. Humorous hardhitting casual discourses come easy as breathing. Everywhere the crowd presses around him. He seems to have time for everyone, for old women whose sons are in trouble, for a lame man who can’t get into a hospital, for a young man who wants him to start a school for television technicians. Doctors, engineers, hospital nurses, all whisper their problems in his ear. By night the men on his staff are worn out. Governor Lacerda is still ready to talk with a foreign visitor, or to dine with a group of American students.

  Tonight a couple of the students have managed to get lost. At going home time between five and seven in Rio taxis can’t be found. Buses and trolleys are packed tight as sardinetins. We sit waiting on a sofa in the livingroom. In spite of his punishing schedule the governor shows no sign of impatience.

  He does admit to having a bad cold. Though his voice
is hoarse his talk flows on. He has an extraordinary flow of words in Portuguese and in English. He starts to tell about the loneliness of his position. It is the custom in Brazil for a public man to find jobs for all his friends and relatives. Lacerda has kept them at arm’s length. He sees nothing else to do. This has done him more harm than anything. So many people who used to be fond of him now think he’s a terrible fellow.

  There are other things he’d like to do, other things than fighting Communists and fellowtravelers, he’d like to take time off to write a novel. He’d like to be Minister of Education in a federal administration he had confidence in, or ambassador to Washington. He feels he knows Washington well enough to get past the pundits and the knowitall columnists and to explain Brazil to the American people in Brazilian terms.

  The phone rings. A secretary comes in to announce that the lost students are on their way.

  We go down in the elevator. Two uniformed militiamen who guard the front door stiffen to salute. We get into the governor’s old model black car. Still no students. It’s against the traffic rules to park in front of the apartment house so Lacerda tells the chauffeur to drive around the corner. We wait in a dark and solitary street.

  There’s no bodyguard, only the little chauffeur.

  This is at the height of the political war. A few days before, Lacerda read off the list of Moscow-trained Communists in key posts in Goulart’s administration. The answer was a demand that the federal government “intervene” in Guanabara. “Intervention” was Vargas’ way of removing uncooperative state governors. Lacerda replied that he had been legally elected by the people of the state and if they tried to take him out of his office they would take him out dead.