For Getúlio Vargas, politics had always been a question of calculation and opportunity. In March he formally declared he would not be a candidate for the presidency, and – with remarkably little enthusiasm – announced the government’s support for the candidacy of the War Minister, General Eurico Gaspar Dutra. Although the government’s support appeared to be half-hearted, in reality General Dutra’s candidacy suited the political strategy. The idea was to divide the armed forces, reducing the support for Eduardo Gomes, and divert attention away from any government moves to maintain President Vargas in power. Eduardo Gomes, or simply ‘the Brigadier’, as he was known, had fought in the uprisings of the tenentes – he was one of the survivors of the Copacabana fort eighteen revolt. He was extremely self-confident, with an heroic demeanour, and had solid democratic credentials. Some of Brazil’s women voters were especially enthusiastic, and bandied the slogan: ‘Vote for the Brigadier. He’s handsome and he’s single.’2 General Dutra, on the other hand, was short, dull and utterly predictable. He had been a member of Getúlio Vargas’s inner circle since the days when they were both cadets at the war college in Porto Alegre and had a reputation for being a legalist. He had been close to the integralistas and a notorious admirer of Nazi Germany.3
Both General Dutra and Brigadier Eduardo Gomes were devout Catholics – which was (and still is) a great help in getting elected – as well as being pompous, pretentious, and total disasters as candidates, above all when it came to asking for votes. On one occasion General Dutra attended a rally at the transport federation in Rio de Janeiro, where he gave an interminable speech on the great figures of Brazilian military history and left without having made a single mention of the workers who had come to hear him. Eduardo Gomes was little better. He managed the feat of bringing together all the main trade union directors of Rio de Janeiro purportedly to explain his electoral platform, and then uttered just four words: ‘a pleasure’ and ‘thank you’.4
Neither of the candidates behaved like politicians, but like serving military officers. With the public focusing on each of their personal attributes – or lack of them – an important fact went virtually unnoticed: for the first time an air force brigadier and an army general were competing for the presidency. This was a novelty that did not bode well for Brazilian democracy. The armed forces, especially the army, were no longer playing a subordinate role.5 On the contrary, the army had been President Vargas’s most reliable ally throughout the dictatorship, as well as his main instrument of control. By 1945 the armed forces – especially the army – had become a dynamic element of the state, operating as a kind of executive power. The army no longer considered itself subordinate to civilian power, nor as an instrument of the will of the people. This was a different vision from that of the founders of the Republic in 1889, and of the tenentes in the 1920s revolts. Getúlio Vargas opened the door and the generals came right in. In 1945 the army was not only a modern institution, with weapons, equipment and troops; it had been transformed into an institution that was qualitatively different and, in political terms, far more lethal than before. It had become an autonomous, interventionist force, whose members were convinced the army was the only institution capable of forming a well-trained elite, with a national vision and prepared to lead the country. And, over the course of the next forty years of Brazilian republican history, the military were to act on this conviction. General Góes Monteiro, a competent officer who had worked with General Dutra on the modernization of the army, was very proud of his accomplishments and had an incorrigibly loose tongue. He would tell anyone who cared to listen that he ‘had put an end to politics6 in the army, so the military was now free to conduct army policy’.7
President Vargas was quick to discover what kind of politics the brigadiers and generals intended to practice: he was removed from power by the armed forces in October 1945, in the first coup conducted by all three military institutions – the army, the navy and the air force. This was the embryo of what was later to become more formally the joint chiefs of staffs of the armed forces (Emfa). It had been necessary for the three institutions to join forces in order to carry out the coup.8 At the beginning of the same year, however, the situation had been very different. President Vargas was still convinced the brigadiers and generals were legalists, government supporters. He believed in his alliance with General Dutra and, above all, in his own capacity to exploit the internal divisions in the armed forces and to control the troops to protect his own political interests. He would simply manipulate the generals by using the ambitions of one group against another. In reality, he underestimated the scale of change in the institution that he himself had helped create. His plan to keep himself in power had concentrated on the political class and the urban workers. He had ignored the changes that had come about within the army – an error that was now too late to remedy.
The next important step was to grant amnesty to the hundreds of political prisoners who had been arrested during the Estado Novo. This included the communist leader Luís Carlos Prestes, who by this time had become a near mythical figure in Brazilian politics, surrounded with the mystical aura of half-martyr, half-hero, and whose personal popularity was at times far greater than that of his party. People paraded through the streets to celebrate the amnesty. The press hailed the release of the political prisoners and all over the country thousands of people signed manifestos calling for the return of the exiles. The public also clamoured for the right to organize political parties – including the Communist Party (PC).9 On 18 April 1945, after the amnesty had been signed, a huge crowd gathered to greet Luís Carlos Prestes in front of the main entrance of the central penitentiary, located in Rio de Janeiro, on Rua Frei Caneca. Of the eighteen years between the end of his long march with his legendary column and the end of the war, he had spent eight in exile and nine in prison. When he appeared he was rapidly put into a car and driven away. But the public had got a glimpse of his thin pallor. He had aged a great deal. He knew very little about what had happened to his common-law wife Olga Benário and had never met their daughter, Anita, whose grandmother, thanks to a formidable international campaign, had rescued her from a Nazi prison when she was fourteen months old. At the time, Anita lived with her aunts in Moscow.
But Luís Carlos Prestes was anxious to renew his political career. A month after he left prison he addressed a rally organized by the communists in Rio de Janeiro, where he received an unforgettable ovation. Around 10,000 people squeezed into the São Januário stadium in the drizzle to hear him speak. No effort was too great to see and hear Luís Carlos Prestes, to wonder at the gigantic portrait of him planted on the grass, illuminated in neon lights beneath six gigantic letters that spelt the word ‘Brazil’, and to see the Brazilian and Soviet flags flying side by side in the centre of the stadium.10 To everyone’s surprise, Luís Carlos Prestes announced a complete reversal of the communist position: he declared unconditional support for the Vargas government, called for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly, and defended the deferral of the presidential elections. In theory, he could have been following instructions from Moscow, which recommended that the communists make alliances with their national governments, as long as these had fought in the war on the same side as the USSR, which was the case of Brazil. But by supporting a dictator who had extradited his wife to Nazi Germany, Luís Carlos Prestes had abandoned his principles. His intended alliance with Getúlio Vargas was excessively pragmatic and highly opportunistic: the communists were few, the party had been implacably repressed during the Estado Novo, its political force was close to zero, and its members still acted clandestinely. On the other hand, supporting Getúlio Vargas brought enormous advantages. Luís Carlos Prestes would have access to the trade union movement, be able to bring the party closer to the workers, ensure the democratic legitimacy of the communists – and become a candidate in the presidential elections.
Luís Carlos Prestes’s reversal of policy did not convince some of the militants, such as the histori
an Caio Prado Jr, who wanted the communists to maintain a coherent platform. Yet, it was a highly successful move in terms of promoting the party’s image. In May 1945, at the time of the São Januário rally, the party’s leaders calculated there were around 6,800 party members in Brazil; two years later this number was somewhere between 180,000 and 220,000.11 There were also large numbers of sympathizers who followed the directives of the party’s central committee, and a group of prestigious artists and intellectuals who helped the party develop an alternative programme for the modernization of Brazilian society. Several of these artists were to abandon their political militancy, as was the case of the poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade, whereas others, like the writer Jorge Amado, were to remain committed for many years. Be that as it may, in 1945 a cast of stars gravitated to the communists: painters, including Candido Portinari, Carlos Scliar, Di Cavalcanti and José Pancetti; musicians like the famous conductor and composer Francisco Mignone; talented architects like Vilanova Artigas and Oscar Niemeyer; leading writers such as Graciliano Ramos and Monteiro Lobato; young filmmakers like Nelson Pereira dos Santos; songwriters, including Dorival Caymmi, Mário Lago and Wilson Batista; and popular singers like Nora Ney and Jorge Goulart.
For Getúlio Vargas, communist support, particularly that of Luís Carlo Prestes – the only political leader who could rival his popularity – was a triumph, but it was by no means the most important political card he held. As always, President Vargas kept his views to himself, and no one knew whether he was actually preparing the transition to democracy or whether he was manoeuvring to stay in power. But about one thing there could be no doubt: Getúlio Vargas had not arrived at the Catete presidential palace to be caught unawares. While the Estado Novo was disintegrating, he invested heavily in gaining the support of an unexpected group of people – the urban workers.
As was to be expected, the wind began to change direction in São Paulo. In early March 1945 members of the Centro Acadêmico Onze de Agosto – the oldest university student organization in the country – decided, at their own risk, to organize workers to fight for democracy and for the overthrow of the Estado Novo.12 These students supported the candidacy of Eduardo Gomes and had close ties with São Paulo’s Largo de São Francisco School of Law. President Vargas may have defeated the Paulistas in 1932, but they had never accepted it; nor did they let any opportunity for revenge pass them by. On this occasion the students organized the protest march, which made its way to the Praça da Sé,13 at the heart of the city centre. They occupied the cathedral steps, improvised a political rally during rush hour when the number of pedestrians was at its height and, with microphone in hand, started to criticize President Vargas. But no one was prepared for what happened next. Suddenly, groups of workers meandering peacefully through the square reacted. They advanced on the speakers furiously, beating tins, brandishing pieces of wood, and grabbing anything they could find to throw at the people on the steps. In no time the infuriated crowd had the students on the run. They began to shout ‘Long live Getúlio!’, ‘Long live the workers!’, and ‘We want Getúlio!’, while smashing everything they saw around them, including the windows of the law school. Two days later the episode was repeated in Recife, causing the death of a student, and two further episodes were to follow, the first in Belo Horizonte and the second in Rio de Janeiro. The opposition was astonished. The Estado Novo had been overthrown, and yet President Vargas’s prestige and popularity were greater than ever.14 The urban poor and the urban workers supported Getúlio Vargas and wanted him to stay in power.
What started in São Paulo rapidly turned into a major protest movement, nicknamed queremismo, after the slogan ‘Nós queremos Getúlio’ (‘We want Getúlio’). This type of participation was new for the Republic. Up until then, people had been kept at a safe distance from the mechanisms of power.15 The movement’s almost obsessive demand to keep Getúlio Vargas as president was clearly political: the workers wanted to guarantee the social and labour rights that they had obtained since the 1930s. When they realized the Estado Novo was drawing towards an end, and that Getúlio Vargas’s days as president were numbered, they took to the streets. Without him, the workers suspected they would lose their recently earned rights.
True to his style of saying one thing, insinuating another, and finally doing a third, completely different, Getúlio Vargas insisted he was not running for a renewed term as president. He claimed he would preside over the elections and then withdraw from public life – to the peace and quiet of his home, he would add with a modest smile.16 His real intentions were only revealed by his increasingly open support of the queremismo movement. He authorized the live transmission of their rallies and protests on national radio, granted them the discreet support of the press and propaganda department and the labour ministry, and facilitated access to private funding from his supporters among the entrepreneurs. By the second half of 1945 the queremismo movement had dozens of committees in towns throughout Brazil and queremismo militants were involved in feverish political activity: collecting signatures, publishing pamphlets, declaring support and solidarity, and promoting rallies. The movement grew and became increasingly organized. It was eventually joined by the communists and Luís Carlos Prestes – with his ever-opportunistic eye to which way the wind was blowing. When the queremistas realized President Vargas had not left office in time to be eligible to stand as a candidate for his own succession, they changed their demand and invented a new slogan: ‘Constituent Assembly with Getúlio!’
The queremismo movement was a novelty not easily understood. It emerged as part of the transition to democracy, an authentically popular movement that took to the streets – and an important demonstration of Getúlio Vargas’s continued popularity. But this movement alone, with its limited ideological scope, was not capable of taking over the country. It was no more than the spontaneous organization of people who had only recently gained access to the political process. In October 1945, however, to the astonishment of the opposition, President Vargas showed his hand, revealing a little more of his way of doing politics. Taking advantage of an event that attracted a great deal of public attention – the inauguration of the electricity network for the suburban trains in Rio de Janeiro – he mounted the stage and summoned the workers to join the recently created Brazilian Labour Party (PTB). He claimed the party would guarantee the workers a share in the administration of public businesses, and would prevent them from becoming ‘a mass manipulated by politicians, of all times and ideologies, who, after getting elected by the workers, forgot their promises’. It was an affirmation perhaps difficult to prove, but then again, it was even harder to refute. ‘The workers should go to the ballot box and choose the representatives who dwell in their hearts and understand their aspirations,’17 he concluded.
It had been eight years since all legislative assemblies had been shut down, and associations, groups and popular fronts extinguished. Brazilians had finally recovered their right to form associations based on a wide variety of ideas, interests and values, to participate in the electoral process, and to propose their own laws. The same amendment to the 1937 Constitution that fixed the date for the elections also established new rules for the organization of political parties. Two of these, however, restricted the full exercise of democracy. The first, a nationwide requirement, prevented the resurgence of regional organizations such as those that had characterized the First Republic. The total number of political parties in the country was restricted to twenty – a figure that was maintained between 1945 and 1964 – a considerable improvement on the dozens of regional associations that participated in the legislative elections of 1933 and 1934. The second restriction gave power to the judges of the Supreme Electoral Court to interpret the difference between freedom of expression and the activities of any political association whose programme ‘counters the democratic regime, based on the plurality of parties and the guarantee of the fundamental rights of man’.18
The transition was under way, and once ag
ain political parties were essential for the process. Opposition forces had been working since 1943 to create an anti-Vargas coalition. There were several different ways to be a part of the opposition: fight against the Estado Novo, plead the democratic cause, or simply espouse liberal beliefs. Opposition politicians made themselves especially significant when they attempted to remove people and institutions related to President Vargas from Brazilian public life. This ferocious anti-getulismo brought together politicians of widely differing interests in parties such as the National Democratic Union (UDN) – or the ‘Brigadier’s party’ as it was called at the time. Founded in April 1945 with a broad base of support,19 it provided a political vehicle for the remainder of the regional elites, rich entrepreneurs, industrialists and coffee planters from São Paulo. Its members were from the middle-class establishment, previous supporters of the liberal alliance and the Estado Novo, but who had been asked to leave or had become disillusioned. The National Democratic Union also included democratic socialists and dissidents from the Communist Party. This last group was the first to break away. In 1947 they abandoned the anti-Vargas coalition, focusing their energies instead on publishing the newspaper Orientação Socialista, which advocated the return of a National Constituent Assembly in order to put an end to the Estado Novo. The following year, the socialists broke off and founded their own party – the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) – which supported a left-wing democratic programme.
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