Brazil
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Improbable as it may seem, this mixture did have ‘bossa’; in other words, it revealed talent, coherence and style. Carmen Miranda dressed exaggeratedly as a woman from Bahia (baiana), with an immense rainbow-coloured turban that could accommodate one or two baskets decorated with pearls and coloured stones – and overflowing with bananas and other tropical fruits made of wax. She wore huge gold earrings, countless bracelets and necklaces and, as if that were not enough, extremely high platform sandals – essential for someone who was only 1.52 metres tall. She was almost engulfed by her bead chokers and large charm bracelets and necklaces – amulets originally used for requesting grace from the saints. By the end of each presentation Carmen had reinvented Brazil. A Brazil of blacks, whites and Indians that was hybrid, harmonious and happy.
In the early 1940s the tables turned, and the United States began to take a great interest in Brazil. Between 1933 and 1945 – the years of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency – the United States adopted a carefully calculated foreign policy. It used a combination of pressure and caution in the face of developments in Germany and the other countries of the Axis. This policy involved a radical change in the North American strategy in relation to Latin America. The United States government was looking for potential export markets to help the country recover from the catastrophic 1929 crash. Furthermore, policymakers were anxious to block the influence of Germany and Italy. President Roosevelt was determined that the United States be the main partner of Latin America and, instead of making impositions, began to negotiate. The practice of interventionism on the continent was replaced by the rhetoric of solidarity – Pan-Americanism – along with the offer of economic, technological and military cooperation. A project for closer cultural ties was also included in what Roosevelt ambitiously called his Good Neighbor Policy.85 The project invested heavily in cinema, with films promoting pan-Americanism. Not all of them worked. Down Argentine Way, for example, caused outrage in Argentina. Not only was there no tango, but Buenos Aires was apparently full of crooks. The reaction to Week-End in Havana was even worse: the Cubans were indignant at the way they were depicted as little con men and Havana, their beautiful capital, as a casino surrounded by sugar plantations.
Then, in 1941, Disney Studios entered the business. In May of that year, Walt Disney himself flew to Mexico with a team of musicians, screenwriters and cartoonists, and then continued his journey to Brazil and Argentina. When he returned to the United States he brought with him the research and drafts for the future cartoons that were to transform the Good Neighbour Policy into an immense success: Saludos Amigos (Alô amigos), which was first shown in 1943, and The Three Caballeros (Você já foi à Bahia?), first shown in 1945. Saludos Amigos used Ary Barroso’s ‘Aquarela do Brasil’86 as its theme song. The song – a samba – represents Brazilian identity, and has become a sort of alternative national anthem. The Three Caballeros also used compositions by Ary Barroso, sung by Carmen Miranda’s sister, Aurora Miranda. The movie used sensational technological innovation, already employed by Disney Studies in Fantasia (1940). While singing, Aurora Miranda, dressed as a Baiana, appeared on screen alongside cartoon characters. In both films, Brazil was presented to North American audiences via the cartoon character Zé (Joe) Carioca, a livid green, dandyish parrot.87 The character was inspired by the innumerable stories about parrots that the Disney team had heard in Rio de Janeiro. Zé Carioca was conceived of in a Copacabana Palace hotel room, temporarily converted into a studio. The parrot’s features were vaguely similar to those of the popular songwriter Herivelto Martins. Probably unknown to the Americans, the association was an old one: the parrot was the bird used to symbolize Brazil in the accounts of sixteenth-century travellers – when the country was referred to as the Land of Parrots. Zé Carioca was a rare species – a ‘parrot on the sidelines of capitalism’.88 His success was instantaneous and long-lasting. He combined diverse cultural elements by becoming a seductive Carioca malandro, but without any malice – creating a synthesis representative of the Brazilian people. Zé Carioca was mestizo, lived off odd jobs, had no money and was lazy, always waiting for something to come up – the national characteristics that Brazilians today still identify with the malandro.
But he was also irresistible: free, happy, talkative, warm-hearted, easygoing, full of bossa, a great footballer, a great samba dancer and a bit of a rogue – it took him no time to pick up the tricks for reeling in tourists. From his first appearance Zé Carioca projected a positive image of Brazil abroad, and enchanted Brazilians, especially President Vargas’s family. The president considered the film a North American tribute to his country and to his people and sponsored the first screening of Saludos Amigos in Rio de Janeiro. Also, the interest of the Estado Novo for all things Brazilian was wide and varied enough to include the choice for the country’s patron saint. The Lady of the Apparition was caught by fishermen in the Paraíba river, battered by the waters, and was just as mestizo as the Brazilians.
This process of forging a national identity depended upon high levels of denial: the misery of the interior, the poverty of most town dwellers, and the extraordinary lack of commitment to any institutionalized form of public welfare. These too are ‘coisas nossas’ (our things), Noel Rosa commented in a song he wrote in 1932.89 And he went on to list them: the malandros who drank but did not eat, the straw-covered shacks in the countryside, the moneylenders and the con men, the trams that looked like carts – all things that define a country that can joke about its own poverty. And, as the composer continued, all things that were as utterly Brazilian as the mulatta, the tambourine90 or the guitar. Contrary to Noel Rosa’s ironic verses, however, the country was beginning to reject the racial argument, to prioritize cultural traits, and to put the mixed-race characteristic of the population at the forefront in its dealings with the rest of the world.
This was the perfect context for the 1933 publication of Gilberto Freyre’s Casa-Grande & Senzala. The book was an immediate success. Mr Freyre had an innovative interpretation of Brazil’s multiracial society, arguing that the country was the surprising and original result of Portuguese efforts to adapt a European civilization to the tropics. The book presents a view of Brazil as a unique new society, benefiting from and enriched by its mixture of races.91 It celebrated the contribution of Africans in the formation of Brazil and lauded the racial mixing that had previously caused so much anxiety, according to prevalent discourses about racial hierarchy and the dangers of degeneration. But Gilberto Freyre was not the only one to present a new interpretation of Brazil. In 1936, responding to Mr Freyre’s book and to Getúlio Vargas’s modernization programme, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda published Raízes do Brasil,92 which contained a very different argument. He foresaw potential conflicts in Brazil and issued a warning. His book harshly criticizes the authoritarianism systematically adopted throughout Brazil’s history, discusses the main historical figures responsible for the formation of Brazilian society, and predicts various future scenarios. It also criticizes the social tensions brought about by the modernization programmes.93
In 1942 a third iconic book was published: Caio Prado Jr’s Formação do Brasil contemporâneo, which introduces yet another interpretation of the country.94 For Caio Prado, Brazil’s specific characteristics were not the result of its roots, nor of its being a mixed-race society: they resulted from the country’s failure to make a clean break with its political and economic past and from patterns established during the colonial period. Because there had been no radical break, Caio Prado argued, there was no way of overcoming the country’s poverty, subordination and dependence. He reinforces his argument by saying that any society that undergoes reform without a drastic shakeup will fail to eradicate the causes of its backwardness and poverty. These and other authors, including Oliveira Viana, Paulo Prado, Cassiano Ricardo, Alceu Amoroso Lima and Guerreiro Ramos, were responsible for the vogue of great interpretative essays, which ceased to consider the country as a fragmented reality and sought to understand t
he contradictions rooted in Brazilian society. For the first time, Brazilian intellectuals were analysing the country through different lenses, institutions and disciplines.
If intellectual critiques on all sides were increasingly sharp, so too did President Vargas continue his manoeuvres in the realm of culture and in the labour force, where his goal was to mobilize workers. State interference in labour relations always favoured the workers, recognized labour and social rights and increased the workers’ power vis-à-vis their employers.95 Between 1930 and 1945, President Vargas’s government created the foundations for Brazil’s labour laws, trade unions and social benefits, which are still largely in place today. But, as with every political strategy, there was a downside: the price to pay was the restriction of political freedom. The workers had to accept participation in a state-controlled system. Otherwise, they could risk forming their own clandestine organizations; either that, or their last resort: join the underworld of outlaws. That was the marginalized community – foreigners, anarchists, communists, beggars and malandros – forever denigrated in the press and pursued by the police. But malandragem was also a political choice, characterized by a disdain for the world of work.96 The malandro was by no means a new phenomenon in Brazilian society. The word had been used in the nineteenth century to define a person who lived on the borderline between legality and illegality: he worked as little as possible and made his living from gambling, women and swindles.
President Vargas was persistent in his fight against malandragem. He realized it signified a rejection of the political system. Those, like composer Wilson Batista, perhaps the most expressive representative of a generation of sambistas who adopted malandragem as part of their Bohemian identity, knew it was almost impossible to escape the mythology of work that the dictatorship defended. Managing to dupe the censors, Wilson Batista, along with Ataulfo Alves, composed a hit song for the 1941 Carnival, ‘O bonde de São Januário’ (‘The Saint Januário Tram’). Sick and tired of the censorship – and to the delight of the public – he cleverly changed the word operário (worker) to otário (gullible fool). ‘Those who work are right/I say it and I have no fear/The Saint Januário tram/Carries one more worker (fool)/It is me, going to work.’ The composition was a huge hit as sung by Cyro Monteiro and established him in his career.97 After getting past the press and propaganda department, the song circulated from mouth to mouth, but the song narrative changed when the composer made that slight – yet decisive – alteration. Little imagination was required to understand who was supposed to be the fool. To expose the discourse of power and reveal the deceit inherent in wordplay is the strategy of the malandro. It means to draw from both sides of the fence – the worker and the law – to use both to one’s own advantage. This was the strategy Getúlio Vargas could not forgive.
FAREWELL, ESTADO NOVO
The Second World War was decisive for the Estado Novo: while it strengthened the regime’s modernization programme, it also signalled an end to authoritarianism.98 In its foreign policy, the Brazilian government did all it could to maintain the country’s neutrality during the years leading up to the war. But, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, President Vargas came under increasing pressure to take a stand. Nonetheless, it took until 28 January 1942, at the last meeting of the chancellors of the American republics in Rio de Janeiro, for Brazil to sever diplomatic relations with the Axis powers – Germany, Italy and Japan. The reaction was swift: German submarines torpedoed Brazilian merchant ships in Brazil’s territorial waters. People took to the streets, organizing the first major protests since the beginning of the dictatorship, demanding that Brazil enter the war immediately, on the side of the Allies.
While Brazil had remained neutral, President Vargas had sought to make the best he could of the situation without exposing himself too much. He had renewed commercial agreements with Nazi Germany, thereby consolidating Brazil’s position as the Reich’s main trading partner in the Americas. He had acquired submarines from Mussolini’s Italy in exchange for exporting meat and raw materials. To offset these measures, he also investigated closer trade relations with the Allies, in addition to authorizing the purchase of destroyers from the United States and weaponry from Britain to equip the Brazilian navy. At a time when it was unclear who would win the war, when the Nazis had triumphantly invaded France, Getúlio Vargas believed Brazil’s neutrality would allow the country to take full advantage of the circumstances. He traded with both sides, to the exasperation of his ministers, some of whom supported the Allies – like Chancellor Oswaldo Aranha and his own son-in-law, Ernâni do Amaral Peixoto, governor of Rio de Janeiro – and others who were frankly in favour of the Germans, including General Góes Monteiro and General Dutra.
The ideological sympathies of the Estado Novo tended towards fascism: a month before the fall of Madrid and the defeat of the republicans in the Spanish Civil War, Getúlio Vargas put caution aside and officially recognized the fascist government of General Franco. However, he maintained good relations with President Roosevelt, and did all he could to increase trade between the two countries. After all, Brazil’s modernization programme depended on United States support in order to establish an industrial base. But President Vargas also applied pressure: he instructed Itamaraty, the Brazilian Foreign Office, to inform the Americans that he was not prepared to wait for them to support his industrialization project, insinuating that otherwise he might collaborate with Germany. He went so far as to send Adolf Hitler a telegram, including the words ‘I wish you all personal happiness and prosperity for the German nation.’99
After 1942, with Brazil’s entry into the war, an air and naval base near Natal was ceded to the United States to help protect the routes to North Africa. Brazil’s collaboration with the Roosevelt administration changed dramatically, and President Vargas’s industrialization programme was increasingly successful. The question of steel, which was at the heart of the project, had been a key element of the liberal alliance’s plans back in 1930, and was part of the president’s commitment to the armed forces, in exchange for their support of the 1937 coup. In 1942, with long-term loans from the Export-Import Bank, the Estado Novo created a mining company, Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, for the exploitation of iron ore. The government also built an enormous steelworks in Volta Redonda, a planned industrial town near Rio de Janeiro, which became a symbol of the self-sufficient economy that President Vargas had planned for Brazil. He then also created the National Steel Company to control the plant, a joint-stock company of which the state was the majority shareholder. The project then expanded to iron ore, alkali processing, and the production of engines for planes and trucks. A policy was also outlined for the government’s approach to oil exploitation. And, although Getúlio Vargas did not construct the planned state refineries, he laid the groundwork for the creation of Petrobras, the Brazilian state-owned oil company, a decade later.
By 1943 it had become clear to President Vargas that the war was approaching its final stage and that the Axis powers would be defeated. He also realized that the Estado Novo would not survive an Allied victory, even though Brazil had entered the war on the side of the probable winners. In August that same year, in a move that enraged General Dutra and General Góes Monteiro – who had absolutely refused to accept Brazil’s entry into the war on the side of the Allies – Getúlio Vargas created the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, which was sent to fight in Italy in 1944. Approximately 25,000 men were sent to risk their lives, despite the intense cold and very inadequate training. The end of the war was a victory for democracy. The Brazilian people could now no longer deny the contradiction between fighting against fascism abroad and maintaining an authoritarian government at home.
In October 1942 the Manifesto Mineiro was signed by ninety-two public figures from the state of Minas Gerais. It called for the return to a democratic regime and opened the way for opposition forces to join the political struggle. President Vargas may not have thought much of the new opposition
, but he realized circumstances had changed. He decided to pave the way for the transition to a constitutional regime. The transition was supported by large segments of the population that had benefited from the Vargas government’s social and labour legislation. The strategy was a good one, but unfortunately the execution did not go quite as smoothly as planned.
15
Yes, We Have Democracy!
‘WE WANT GETÚLIO!’
Brazil emerged from the Estado Novo with a profoundly mixed-race sense of beliefs and customs. But this sat right alongside ill-disguised internalized racism and a rigid social hierarchy based on friendship and blood ties. The country had also discovered a national rhythm in the beat of the Carioca samba, and had adopted a number of national symbols. By that time, Brazil had modern labour legislation and had laid the foundations of a rapidly expanding modernization and industrialization project. There were high aspirations and President Vargas was increasingly popular. But the political situation was becoming ever more turbulent. Opposition voices managed to find loopholes in censorship laws. The protests were getting out of control in a process that was now irreversible: Brazilians were demanding freedom of expression, a democratically elected president and a new constitution.
President Vargas had no doubt that the repressive apparatus of the Estado Novo was no longer efficient. He realized a change in the political system was inevitable. His first problem was how to proceed with the democratic transition and adapt the structure of the government so that he could remain in power. His second problem was when to initiate the transition. By early 1945 he knew time was running out. On 28 February he signed an amendment to the 1937 Constitution, which established that the date for elections would be defined within three months – both for the president of the Republic and for the National Congress.1 A few days earlier the opposition forces had pre-empted President Vargas’s plans by launching Brigadier Eduardo Gomes, commander of the Brazilian Air Force, as a candidate for president.