Brazil
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16
The 1950s and 1960s: Bossa Nova, Democracy and Underdevelopment
COUP AND COUNTER-COUP
The early morning of carnival Saturday, 1956, two air force officers, Major Haroldo Veloso and Captain José Chaves Lameirão, arrived at the Afonsos Airbase in Rio de Janeiro, walked past the guards, overpowered the officer on duty, and broke into the munitions deposit. They forced their way into the hangar, stole a combat plane laden with arms and explosives, and took off for the landing strip at Jacareacanga, a tiny air force garrison in the middle of the Atlantic Forest, on the border of Pará and Mato Grosso. The two officers were fanatical supporters of the National Democratic Union (udenistas), who venerated Carlos Lacerda and were indignant at the victory of Getúlio Vargas and his supporters (getulistas) in the October 1955 elections. Their intention was nothing less than to ignite a rebellion in central Brazil and to start a civil war.1
The uprising of Jacareacanga lasted fewer than twenty days – by the end of February it had been crushed. However, the episode was a grave indication of the country’s political instability. The president whom the air force officers were so determined to overthrow had taken office less than a month prior: Juscelino Kubitschek. ‘JK’, as he became fondly known, was a politician of considerable prestige who had risen through the ranks of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) in Minas Gerais. He had been federal deputy, mayor of Belo Horizonte and governor of the state. But despite his experience and the fact that he had won the election, he faced a considerable struggle ahead before he could actually take office. After the commotion caused by Getúlio Vargas’s suicide and the ensuing public uproar, the National Democratic Union was determined to stop the presidential elections set to take place on 3 October 1955 – which they had very little chance of winning.2 However, they were outmanoeuvred by the Social Democratic Party and the Brazilian Labour Party (PTB), which quickly formed an alliance to defend Getúlio Vargas’s legacy by presenting two remarkable candidates: Juscelino Kubitschek for president and, as his vice-president, João Goulart.
João Goulart’s candidacy was anathema to members of the National Democratic Union. Nonetheless, since they failed to dig up any scandals about him, their only alternative was to put up a rival candidate. Once again, the party relied on moralistic discourse, choosing a candidate from the armed forces – this time from the army, General Juarez Távora. The general was one of the leaders of the 1930 revolution and had broken with Getúlio Vargas before the Estado Novo. As was their wont, the party chose a slogan that was so bad it was hard to believe: ‘Vote for General Juarez Távora, the white-haired lieutenant’. Even so, the election was close. Juscelino Kubitschek won with 36 per cent of the votes, as compared to 30 per cent for Juarez Távora, 26 per cent for Ademar de Barros and 8 per cent for Plínio Salgado, the former leader of the integralistas. There was a separate election for the vice-president in which João Goulart won hands down, receiving more votes than Juscelino Kubitschek: 3,591,409 compared to 3,077,411.
Carlos Lacerda, who knew his party had lost the elections even before the first votes were counted, had no intention of standing by and watching yet another victory for Getúlio Vargas’s political successors. Instead, he launched a campaign to prevent the winning candidates from taking office and, with the support of the armed forces, tried to impose an emergency government on the country, preferably a parliamentary one.3 He wanted a government capable of ‘reforming democracy and freeing Brazil of political bandits’.4 The National Democratic Union’s justification for contesting the election result was brazenly opportunistic. They claimed Juscelino Kubitschek’s victory was invalid since he had not received an overall majority of the votes, although neither the 1946 Constitution nor the electoral legislation of the time demanded an absolute majority. The National Democratic Union wanted to move the goalposts after the game had already begun. Nevertheless, their arguments received a lot of attention in the press and had the army’s support. Before long the political temperature was approaching boiling point. It is still not known whether the National Democratic Union or the military started the conspiracy, but one thing is certain: a coup d’état was being planned. It had the discreet support of the current vice-president, Mr Café Filho – who had taken over the presidency after Getúlio Vargas’s suicide – and of a group of powerful ministers, including Prado Kelly, Minister of Justice, Amorim do Vale, Minister of the Navy, and Eduardo Gomes, Minister of the Air Force. But they had one formidable opponent: General Henrique Batista Duffles Teixeira Lott, the Minister of War.5 The thorn in their side was an impeccable legalist who was obsessed with discipline and had the unswerving loyalty of the troops. As long as General Lott was in command there was no chance that a coup d’état planned from inside the army would succeed.
In early November the political situation suddenly changed. Mr Café Filho claimed to have fallen ill and his doctors prescribed complete rest. Although leaders of the Social Democratic Party, including Tancredo Neves and José Maria Alkmin, did not believe the vice-president was truly ill, a situation that favoured the conspirators, the constitution had to be followed, and the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Carlos Luz, became interim president.6
Carlos Luz did not conceal his support for the conspirators. He was certain he would be able to dismiss General Lott without creating a backlash from the army. As soon as Carlos Luz had taken office he summoned his Minister of War to the presidential palace. He kept General Lott waiting for almost two hours. When Carlos Luz finally received General Lott, it was with the news that he had overturned one of the general’s recent decisions, thereby forcing the general to submit his resignation. In the early hours of 11 November thirty generals and a group of sergeants from the garrisons in Rio de Janeiro arrived at General Lott’s house, where they found him still in his pyjamas. They had come to offer him their support, and General Lott must have thought, let’s fight fire with fire. He went straight to his office, confirmed over the radio that the barracks in Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais, Paraná, Mato Grosso and São Paulo were all behind him, summoned the president of the Senate and the majority leader of the Chamber and told them his plans. He then ordered the tanks to occupy the streets. General Lott’s counterattack was devastating. The civilian leaders were in a state of uproar, and there were even deputies who whispered in the general’s ear that he should take power himself. But General Lott, the exemplary legalist, provided Congress with a way out. An extraordinary session was convoked and Carlos Luz was deposed. During his mere three days as president, he had brought the country to the verge of civil war. The deputies appointed the president of the Senate, Nereu Ramos, as the new interim president. No one was arrested and the conspirators suffered no consequences.
No sooner had the political situation been normalized than Mr Café Filho was released from hospital and declared he was ready to assume the presidency again. Things were back to square one. The National Democratic Union started conspiring, the army sent the tanks back onto the streets of Rio de Janeiro, and a special emergency session of Congress was convoked. This time the deputies realized that they could no longer collude with the conspirators. They refused to reappoint Mr Café Filho, reaffirmed Nereu Ramos as interim president, and confirmed that the president-elect would take office on 31 January 1956. They extended the state of siege until that date. Both Juscelino Kubitschek and João Goulart were able to breathe a sigh of relief. For his part, General Lott never accepted the idea that he had been the leader of a counter-coup. He had, rather, been the leader of a ‘movement to return to the established constitutional order’. His argument made absolute sense. Yet there is no denying that he had rebelled against a legitimately constituted authority, however ill-intentioned that authority may have been. And it was not only a question of a break in the chain of command. The military intervention of November 1955 – the ‘Novembrada’ – revealed to the country that within the armed forces there was support for a whole range of political beliefs, including nationalism and e
ven democracy.7
The sergeants were the first to form ties with the labour movement, and they were later followed by the navy and the marines. It was here that the Brazilian Labour Party made its greatest mistake. Instead of insisting on strictly apolitical, professional military institutions, subordinated to a civilian government, the labour movement took the same path that had already been trodden by the National Democratic Union. Their ideal army was interventionist, reformist, and able to represent the interests of the people – like the tenentes’ movement during the First Republic. The political parties of the period, on both the left and the right, made the same mistake: they encouraged the involvement of the armed forces in politics, accepted their interference in a democratic regime, and gave them a place on the public stage. They only realized the gravity of their error when it was too late to be rectified – in March 1964.
THE HAWKER OF DREAMS
When Juscelino Kubitschek took office as determined by the constitution, his first act was to confirm General Lott as Minister of War. For his part, although the general was not wholly successful in preventing political debate inside the barracks, he was at least able to keep the armed forces under control. He integrated the activists in the military into its hierarchy, which was decisive in ensuring political stability. After all, the legitimacy of his government had been questioned from the outset, having been established in an atmosphere of crisis. Nonetheless, Juscelino Kubitschek consolidated his position. He treated the armed forces with kid gloves.8 He granted amnesty to all officers who had been involved in insurrections, including Jacareacanga – for which he reaped political rewards, without perhaps reflecting on the dangers of a culture of impunity. He was persuasive with the military, explaining to the high command the advantage to the military of his economic development programme. It would allow them to continue building a weapons industry and would meet their demands for modernization, reorganization and rearmament. President Kubitschek was good with words and even better at winning people over. For the exclusive use by the air force, he bought a modern Vickers Viscount aircraft, fully equipped with comfortable seats, not to mention the pressurized cabin and 600-mph cruising speed. To keep the peace with the admirals, he purchased an aircraft carrier from the British navy, which they rebaptized the Minas Gerais in tribute to the president. But, perhaps most significantly, President Kubitschek appointed military officers to an increasing number of strategic posts in the federal administration and planning areas, notably in the oil and public safety sectors.
There is no doubt the president knew how to make the best of every situation, and to make it work to his advantage. But he also had an unbeatable card up his sleeve: the Targets Plan.9 It was thanks to this plan that President Kubitschek, in his first year of office, built a successful alliance between social groups with widely differing interests, all of whom were keen to participate in his major economic plan. The Targets Plan was revealed at a ministerial meeting on 1 February 1956, his second day in office, and was published in the Official Gazette the following day. It was the most ambitious modernization programme ever introduced in Brazil. The plan allowed Juscelino Kubitschek to transform his campaign slogan – should he be elected, Brazil would grow ‘fifty years in five’ – into reality, and to alter the structure of the country’s productive capacity. The Targets Plan made President Kubitschek’s government a success. With the plan, states were made responsible for implementing rapid economic growth programmes. The process of industrialization with emphasis on consumer durables was broadened, which transformed the habits and daily routine of the Brazilian people, who were thrilled with the latest household appliances – washing machines, electric grills, portable radios, electric fans, electric cookers, floor polishers, stereos and televisions. These were accompanied by equally wonderful household items such as soap flakes, insect spray and batteries, and by a whole range of utensils and articles of clothing mass produced from cheap, brightly coloured synthetic materials with fascinating names: nappa, polymer, nylon, rayon, acrylic, Formica, vinyl and linoleum.10
The Targets Plan defined thirty-one objectives distributed in four special priorities. The first of these was to invest in transportation, especially highways, and boost the car industry – the other three were to channel resources into energy, heavy industry and food. In 1958 two novelties appeared on the streets of Brazil: the DKW-Vemag which, although noisy, was the first vehicle to leave the assembly line with 50 per cent of its parts made in Brazil; and the Rural Willys, the first four-wheel drive vehicle to be produced in Brazil. Perhaps the plan’s greatest achievement was the expansion of the road network. Between 1956 and 1960 the Kubitschek government paved 6,000 kilometres of new highway, in a country that until then had had a road network of just 4,000 kilometres. This improved the circulation of merchandise between the rural areas and the industrialized cities and created new markets.11 In January 1958, with the international price of oil relatively low and Brazil’s new automobile industry taking hold, President Kubitschek decided it would be a worthwhile challenge to carve out new highways in the red earth of the central plateau. He summoned the agronomist Bernardo Sayão, an engineer from the Ministry of Agriculture – a man with film-star looks and a spirit of adventure – and suggested they ‘cut down the forest and unite the country from north to south’.12 During the construction of the highway from Brasília to Belém, Mr Sayão was crushed to death by an enormous falling tree. But the road he had engineered linked the states of Goiás, Maranhão and Pará, incorporating Amazônia into the Brazilian market. There was now a new alternative for offsetting regional inequalities.13
Mr Sayão was not the only one who collaborated with Juscelino Kubitschek on projects that to many seemed crazy. This was the president’s style: a talented negotiator, an astute politician and a man with entrepreneurial vision who recognized the capacity of others and had an irresistible smile.14 In his own time and on his own ground the president seduced, insisted, persuaded. Even Carlos Lacerda, his main opponent, could not entirely conceal his admiration: Juscelino Kubitschek was ‘an extremely astute politician and the nicest person in the world,’15 he conceded.
Juscelino Kubitschek’s inimitable style made all the difference when dealing with problems and engaging the sympathy of different social groups, but it only partially explains his success. The other important aspect of his success was most likely the Targets Plan itself, which became symbolic of Brazil reaching its full potential. The government programme was emblematic of a new optimism, an enthusiasm about being Brazilian. It was a programme that could heal the injustices of the past – Brazil’s historical heritage of poverty and social inequality – and open the doors to modernity. The key to constructing this new country was called ‘developmentalism’, which implied an understanding that Brazilian society – lagging behind and dependent on more advanced countries – had split into two: one part of the country had remained backward and traditional while the other was rapidly developing and becoming modern. Both of these, the centre and the periphery, formed part of the same country. It was a duality that could only be addressed by industrialization and urbanization.16 President Kubitschek’s confidence in his project for Brazil was contagious, and it is not hard to understand why. The JK project was based on the belief that the construction of a new society depended on the will of the state and on the collective will of the people who, through its implementation, could finally meet their destiny.
WANTED: A BRAZILIAN PEOPLE
A project of such scope had great potential for bringing people together – and many intellectuals were attracted to it. The Kubitschek government maintained close ties with a range of intellectuals of different origins and specialities, all of whom believed in a modern Brazil, a country not based on the North American model. One of these groups was the Brazilian Institute for Further Studies (Iseb). Based in Rio de Janeiro, it was subordinated to the office of the Presidential Chief of Staff.17 The Institute provided a venue where politicians, intellectuals, st
udents and artists could socialize. Members included many of the leading thinkers of the day: Álvaro Vieira, Alberto Guerreiro Ramos, Nelson Werneck Sodré and Hélio Jaguaribe. This group provided the theoretical basis for high-level government projects and contributed to a more global approach to Brazil and the industrialization process. The group also argued in favour of an unorthodox form of nationalism that was not anti-American but rather based on an objective definition of Brazil’s national interests.
The Brazilian Institute for Further Studies was not the only think tank affiliated with the Kubitschek government. In 1954 the economist Celso Furtado, who was just over thirty, had recently published his first book, The Brazilian Economy. The book was the result of his study of the formulas drawn up by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). This United Nations body was established in Chile in 1949, and Mr Furtado himself was a member until 1957. The ECLAC analyses contributed to the Targets Plan, but Celso Furtado’s book went further. It introduced new ways of thinking about the country and provided government technicians with a keyword – ‘underdevelopment’ – to describe the dilemmas of Brazilian society.18 Underdevelopment was characteristic of societies like Brazil, whose economy had historically served to support the wider colonial system and had therefore not developed an economy that adequately supported its own population. Despite the advance of the industrialization process, the fundamental problems still remained: the archaic agrarian structure, the subservience of monoculture exports to international capitalism, the duality of Brazil’s production structure, and the profound inequality in the ownership of the means of production. According to Mr Furtado, moving beyond such a situation could only be achieved by a series of state-implemented ‘core reforms’ (reformas de base) in the areas of agriculture, finance, banking, urbanization, taxation, administration and university education. These core reforms were supported by Brazil’s left-wing nationalist parties. By 1962, during the João Goulart administration, they became a central element of their political platform. The word ‘underdevelopment’ thus found its way into popular vocabulary. More importantly, it continued to be used in the context Celso Furtado had intended: in order to confront underdevelopment it must first be identified.