Brazil
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This left the hardliners in the National Democratic Union to establish the party profile: conservative, moralist, anti-democratic, and with a vocation for plotting coups. The National Democratic Union claimed they were pro-democracy, but meanwhile they were planning a coup d’état. The members’ political vision was restricted to morality in public life, with a rigid focus on the behaviour of those in power. The party had a number of competent orators who were radical and who worked closely together – this group was dubbed the Musical Band. They never let a day go by without tormenting their adversaries: Adauto Lúcio Cardoso, Oscar Dias Correia, Afonso Arinos, Bilac Pinto and Aliomar Baleeiro. The head of the National Democratic Union was Carlos Lacerda,20 the same student who, ten years earlier, had so courageously (and impulsively) nominated Luís Carlos Prestes as the honorary president of the National Alliance for Freedom. He had renounced the Communist Party, become a devoted Roman Catholic and an ultraconservative. Despite this, he was as daring and opportunistic as ever. He had verve, erudition, exceptional intelligence, and was extremely competent. Carlos Lacerda knew how to choose his words and was an unbeatable master in the art of political intrigue. He would systematically surprise his adversaries with suspicions, accuse them with or without proof, ridicule them and scoff at them. As Afonso Arinos, a fellow member of the party, used to say – revealing both fear and admiration – Carlos Lacerda was a crisis creator, who was particularly dangerous during crises he himself had provoked, precisely because he melded his own destiny with that of the republican institutions.21
Getúlio Vargas was the éminence grise behind the creation of two political parties. The first, the Social Democratic Party (PSD),22 was founded in 1945 to take advantage of his fifteen-year control of every single state in Brazil through the interventores whom he had appointed. The idea was to use the state administrative machine to get the votes from the municipalities throughout each state. The Social Democratic Party nominated General Dutra as candidate for president and maintained stability in Brazil until the 1964 coup d’état. The members of the Social Democratic Party were professional politicians who loved power and, to keep it, combined meticulous vote-counting with a carefully calculated distribution of government posts and resources. In terms of reading material, as Tancredo Neves (one of the great party leaders) humorously described them, ‘Given the choice between the Bible and Das Kapital, Social Democratic Party members opt for the Official Gazette.’23 The party had the support of voters, regional prestige, and they understood that the mayors were essential for guaranteeing governors’ power. They never questioned election results and were masterful in the art of building alliances. The party was ‘to the left of the right and to the right of the left’,24 as Ernâni do Amaral Peixoto, Getúlio Vargas’s son-in-law and founder of the PSD, used to say. The great pessedistas25 were masters of political conspiracy: Tancredo Neves, Juscelino Kubitschek (JK), Amaral Peixoto, José Maria Alkmin and Ulysses Guimarães. But the Social Democratic Party also represented the old style of politics, based on the exchange of favours. The cunning regional leaders, sustained by the local ‘coronéis’, used their power to control their deputies: Vitorino Freire in Maranhão; Benedito Valadares in Minas Gerais; and Pedro Ludovico in Goiás.
However, it was the second party – the Brazilian Labour Party (PTB), also founded in 1945 – in which the fundamentals of President Vargas’s project for the country were enshrined.26 The party’s base was made up of the trade unions affiliated to the Estado Novo and from the bureaucrats who worked in the Ministry of Labour. This was a novelty in the sense that the Brazilian Labour Party was not conceived to be a party of the workers, but a party for the workers.
The biggest novelty of all, however, was the party’s political project. The labour movement considered the situation of the working masses as the most important social question. They understood it could not be solved without government intervention, and believed the 1930s social legislation provided an ample programme of reforms for the legal protection for the workers.27 Getúlio Vargas personified the party programme: his capacity to recognize the workers’ lot and his government’s concern with the welfare of the Brazilian people. He had always supported wage earners and the poorest segments of the population. And the political militants of queremismo, who by then were spread all over the country, provided additional support for the Brazilian Labour Party. Although Getúlio Vargas remained a mythical figure throughout the party’s existence, by the early 1960s party leaders had expanded the labour movement beyond its initial dependence on his legacy. They cultivated nationalism, developed a programme of reform, and reached out to various social sectors, especially rural workers.28
Between 1945 and 1964 the Brazilian Labour Party espoused democratic socialism and combated, wherever possible, communist influence in the labour movement. With these policies the number of the party’s deputies in the National Congress increased to the point where it rivalled the Social Democratic Party (PSD) as the country’s largest political party. It had started out with 22 federal deputies in 1945, then increased that number to 51 in 1950, 56 in 1954, 66 in 1958 and 116 in 1962.29 Among the party leaders, two were especially adept in promoting the socialist cause: João Goulart, President Vargas’s chosen successor, and Leonel Brizola, the populist leader who inherited and radicalized Getúlio Vargas’s legacy. Both were to play a major role in Brazilian politics in the years to come.
President Vargas had got it right once again. The alliance between the Social Democratic Party and the Brazilian Labour Party proved unbeatable. In a period of just nineteen years they elected three presidents of Brazil, and maintained democratic administrations. However, by the end of 1945, it seemed the situation could hardly get worse. People believed Getúlio Vargas’s famed political ability had finally abandoned him. Many viewed the victory of Brigadier Eduardo Gomes as a foregone conclusion. On 29 October, President Vargas was deposed by his military ministers – with General Dutra’s consent. General Dutra had been the Minister of War until he left the position in order to run in the elections. Less than forty-eight hours later the former dictator was packed off to his family ranch in São Borja, in Rio Grande do Sul, leaving him no time to organize a resistance movement. With Getúlio Vargas out of the arena, and just prior to the presidential elections set for 2 December, the Brazilian Labour Party seemed to have lost direction, and the Social Democratic Party had little confidence they would be able to elect the prosaic General Dutra unaided. The National Democratic Union (UDN), on the other hand, considered its victory a certainty. Their confidence, however, was to be short lived. In mid-November, Brigadier Eduardo Gomes gave a speech in Rio de Janeiro’s imposing opera house, before an invited audience. Overconfident, he unwisely declared he did not need the votes of Getúlio Vargas’s supporters, whom he disdainfully referred to as a ‘rabble of loiterers’.30 After almost a year of campaigning the Brigadier still did not seem to realize that for a candidate every vote counts. The queremista leaders seized the opportunity and bombarded shortwave radio stations across the country with the message that, for Eduardo Gomes, the workers were ‘a rabble’.
To clarify whose votes Brigadier Eduardo Gomes considered expendable, the queremistas made it plain: the vote of the poor worker, who gets up at dawn in the suburbs, commutes great distances to work all day, makes very little money, and carries a marmita (lunch box) packed with rice, beans and a fried egg. Thousands of people related to this figure, and assumed proudly the identity of ‘marmiteiros’ (lunch-box carriers). They enthusiastically wanted to bring down a candidate who disdained the poor, even during elections. So they flocked en masse to the last Brazilian Labour Party rallies, banging furiously on their marmitas, pots and pans, and proclaiming themselves enemies of the ‘posh’, that is, of the elite who were voting for Brigadeiro Eduardo Gomes. Unfortunately for the National Democratic Union, there were a lot of people toting marmitas – voters, one and all.
The workers turned against Brigadier Eduardo Gomes and the cam
paign concluded with Getúlio Vargas calling on the workers to vote for the Social Democratic Party’s candidate, General Dutra. Just half an hour before the end of the last Social Democratic Party political rally in Rio de Janeiro, an emissary arrived with a message from Getúlio Vargas’s farm, São Borja. His message went some way towards healing the resentment within the Social Democratic Party at his failure to support his own candidate, General Dutra. The message emphasized that a victory for the National Democratic Union (UDN) would mean the dismantling of his political project, and he finally declared his formal support for General Dutra: ‘The candidate of the PSD, in innumerable speeches, and in his latest declarations, has clearly identified himself with the ideas of the Labour movement […] He thus deserves our votes!’ But he had not forgotten how General Dutra had betrayed him, and sent him a warning: ‘If the promises of the campaign are not kept, I will be at the side of the people against the president.’
During the five days of the campaign that remained, militants from the Brazilian Labour Party (PTB) and the Social Democratic Party (PSD) flooded the country with photos of Getúlio Vargas, below which appeared a message that was simple and direct: ‘He said: Vote for Dutra!’ The photograph was hardly necessary; everyone knew who the ‘he’, with a capital H, referred to. On 2 December, 6,200,000 Brazilians – 13.4 per cent of the population – joined the queues outside the voting booths to vote for the first time after eight years of dictatorship. The Electoral Tribunal had to struggle to control the process and count the votes. But victory was secured, with General Dutra winning in every state except Ceará, Piauí and the Federal District, receiving 52.39 per cent of the votes cast, as against 34.74 per cent for Eduardo Gomes. General Dutra also won by a comfortable margin in the country’s three most influential states: São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio Grande do Sul.31 Even though the alliance between the PSD and the PTB had to be renegotiated at every election, the team had shown its political muscle.
But, as the country was soon to discover, although it had been possible to overthrow the dictator, removing the political strategist and his legacy was quite another matter. In the words of a popular song of the time, if it had depended on the will of the Brazilian people, the portrait of the Old Man would be back on the wall, at the same place.
HE WILL RETURN!
Combined, the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the Brazilian Labour Party (PTB) formed a majority in Congress. The PSD received 42 per cent of the votes and the PTB 10 per cent. The National Democratic Union (UDN) received 26 per cent, and the recently legalized Communist Party (PC), 9 per cent – the remaining 13 per cent were distributed between candidates from smaller parties. The new deputies took office in January 1946, when the Congress assumed its parallel role of Constituent Assembly. Eight months later, on 18 September 1946, the members delivered the new constitution.
The new 1946 Constitution maintained all the social advances that had been achieved since the 1930s and restored democracy and political rights as irrevocable.32 The text included democratic procedures for the republican institutions, with direct elections for Executive and Legislative posts in all three spheres of the Federation: the federal, state and municipal governments. It also guaranteed freedom of the press and opinion, recognized the importance of political parties, and moved towards universal suffrage, granting the vote to more than a quarter of the population aged over eighteen years. For the next twenty years the 1946 Constitution provided the basis for the return to democracy in Brazil. The constitution established Parliament as a key political player – above all in moments of serious institutional crisis – consolidated the role of political parties, strengthened the independence of the trade unions, and guaranteed regular elections, whose outcomes were only marginally affected by fraud.
Even so, there is still controversy surrounding the 1946 Constitution. Despite its unequivocal support for democracy, it did not reach traditionally excluded segments of the population. For example, illiterate people – a very high proportion of the adults – were still denied the vote. The right to strike was restricted and rural workers did not have the same rights to labour benefits as did the urban workers. Yet another cause of concern was the increasing interference of the military in government affairs. Nevertheless, even with these limitations, respect for democratic institutions and procedures during this period was as solid as it would ever be. There is a simple reason for this: no political regime is entirely democratic.33 In the case of Brazil, the democratic procedures established by the 1946 Constitution became increasingly evident toward the late 1950s and early 1960s, as the rural workers became a more independent political force, and with the ever-growing popular pressure for a more inclusive society.
While Brazil was becoming more democratic, in the post-war world many countries were becoming more intolerant and polarized. The years following the Second World War tore down empires, redrew the map of the world, and introduced the Cold War.34 During the Cold War, geographical location was an all-important factor, and the United States saw the republics of Latin America as uncomfortably close to their terrain. From the perspective of the Pentagon, any political change in one of these countries could substantially alter the balance of power between the two superpowers, and leave the United States more vulnerable to attack by the Soviets. As the largest country in Latin America, Brazil attracted by far the greatest interest. The United States’ worst fear was that a government would come into power in Brazil that might potentially facilitate the rise of the communists. They did not want to see Brazil transformed into a ‘satellite of Moscow’ – an expression used in both Washington and Rio de Janeiro.
Once installed in the presidential palace, the Catete, President Dutra did all he could to pacify the White House: he adopted a policy that was subservient to the North Americans, broke off diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union, and made a priority of pursuing the communists. Jokes went around mocking the president’s subservience to the Americans. It was said that when he met President Truman his host greeted him with the words ‘How do you do, Dutra?’, to which he supposedly replied ‘How tru you tru, Truman?’ But the situation was not a joke. The Brazilian Communist Party (PC) was the largest and strongest in Latin America; it had seventeen deputies and one senator in Congress, forty-six deputies in fifteen state Legislative Assemblies, and a majority in the Municipal Chamber of the Federal District.35 Whatever its ideological stance, the party was already an established political force. Enthusiastically sharing the radically anti-communist views that had spread among the armed forces after the 1935 uprising of the tenentes – views that had been exacerbated by the Cold War – President Dutra decided to act as quickly as he could, preferably upon taking office.
At the beginning of 1946, a wave of bank strikes started in São Paulo and rapidly spread to other states, including Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo, Santa Catarina, Bahia and Pará. The strike served as a pretext for President Dutra to implement his policy of repression of the communists and of workers in general. The Brazilian Workers’ Confederation was outlawed, the Ministry of Labour ordered government intervention in 143 trade unions – out of a total of 944 – and the president issued a decree regulating the right to strike, aimed at preventing a complete paralysis of the country. After a thorough reading of the new decree, Antônio Ferreira Cesarino, a well-known legal expert, protested: ‘With this decree, only perfume sellers can go on strike.’36
In March 1946, Luís Carlos Prestes gave President Dutra the pretext he needed to unleash his anti-communist campaign and send the party back underground. In a debate in Rio de Janeiro, Luís Carlos Prestes was asked what his position would be if Brazil went to war with the Soviet Union. His reply was immediate. In his professorial tone, he explained that the Brazilian government would be committing a criminal act, this would be an imperialist war, and the Brazilian communists would stand against it. A childish question and a stupid answer, but it was more than enough for President Dutra.37 In May 1947, by a margin of th
ree votes to two, the judges of the Supreme Electoral Court annulled the registration of the Communist Party. The court gave two reasons for its decision: it accused the Communist Party of not being a Brazilian party, but rather a section of the Communist International, which was based in Moscow, and defined it as anti-democratic, according to the 1946 Constitution. The document accused the party of ‘inciting class warfare and encouraging strikes, with an aim to creating an atmosphere of confusion and disorder’.38 In January 1948 the National Congress decided to repeal the mandates of all the deputies elected by the Communist Party. Deprived of their democratic rights and isolated in the party system, the communists once again found themselves faced with the risk of government persecution and were forced to return to the harsh reality of underground militancy.
General Dutra’s presidency was politically inept and economically disastrous. To fight the inflation of the war years, the government not only allowed an indiscriminate amount of imports but also subsidized them through an overvalued exchange rate. The medicine almost killed the patient. The inflation rate slowed down, but at the cost of using up the sterling and dollar reserves the country had accumulated during the war. President Dutra burnt the nation’s reserves with an import policy that inundated the domestic market with superfluous items and leftovers from the war – plastic goods, Cadillacs, yo-yos and hula hoops – while he took no measures to expand the country’s industrial capacity. The government tried to repair the damage in 1948 by announcing a plan to concentrate investments in key segments – health, food, transport and energy; but the plan made little progress and some of it was not even implemented.39
President Dutra considered himself austere; he was a man of few words and regular habits. But he was also a moralist with limited vision. In April 1946, shortly after he took office, he signed a decree banning gambling throughout the country and closed all the casinos. The measure was supposedly taken under pressure from his wife, a devout Catholic, who had earned the soubriquet Dona Santinha (‘the little saint’). The government’s justification was that it had a duty to preserve the morality of national customs.40 Brazil had more than seventy officially registered casinos located in Rio de Janeiro, Niterói and Petrópolis, and in the spas where people took the waters in Minas Gerais and São Paulo. Some of them were magnificent. Rio de Janeiro’s three main casinos – the Atlântico, the Copacabana Palace and the Urca Casino – were extremely glamorous. The Atlântico was located in a beautiful art deco building with an unforgettable view of Copacabana beach. The casino in the Copacabana Palace hotel was the most sumptuous: all the furniture – and the croupiers – came from France, the grill could fit six hundred people, there was a fresh orchid on every table, the dance floor was made of glass that was all lit up, and no one was allowed in if they were not in full evening dress. The casino in Urca had three orchestras which came up and down to the stage on moving platforms originating in the basement, a dazzling curtain of mirrors, and the greatest musical attractions in town – including Carmen Miranda.