The election results had little effect on the Social Democratic Party, strengthened the Brazilian Labour Party, and confirmed the popularity of the ‘Jan-Jan’ duo. Jânio Quadros received a record-breaking number of votes, 5,636,623, compared to 3,846,825 for Marshal Lott.59 João Goulart was re-elected with a total of 4,547,010 votes – in fact, more than those received by Marshal Lott. The result also produced a few novelties. The first was that the vice-president was from the opposition. The second was the boost that Jânio Quadros’s candidacy gave to the National Democratic Union, whose candidates for governor won in six out of the eleven states where elections for governor were held. These included Magalhães Pinto, who was elected governor of Minas Gerais, and Carlos Lacerda, who became the first governor of the newly created state of Guanabara – of which Rio de Janeiro was the capital. The state had been created by President Kubitschek to replace what had been the federal district, in an attempt to compensate the Cariocas for the transference of the capital to Brasília.
Those who had voted for Jânio Quadros, however, were soon to discover that he was far better equipped to get votes than he was to run the country. It is true that he was successful in renegotiating international debts. He also implemented the most extensive plan to combat inflation since President Vargas. He was also effective in conducting an independent foreign policy, which he did in collaboration with Afonso Arinos de Melo Franco, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, from the National Democratic Union Party in Minas Gerais. Brazil modified its alignment with the interests of North America, established diplomatic and commercial ties with socialist countries, renegotiated its debts with Europe, the United States and the Soviet bloc, and created closer ties with countries of the Third World.60
But Jânio Quadros was a provincial politician. He had few connections with the national political parties and disdained any opportunity to create his own parliamentary base, even though the government had a minority in Congress.61 He showed equal disregard for negotiating with the opposition; instead, he was a master at exacerbating conflicts. He set himself on a collision course with Congress, with the press, with the civil service and with the vice-president of the country. And he ended up breaking with the National Democratic Union, who were indignant at his foreign policy which, at the height of the Cold War, they saw as leaning dangerously far to the left. Within a few months Jânio Quadros managed to create a generalized sense of confusion, underestimate his allies, and isolate himself in the presidency. With no long-term plan, a limited understanding of and vision for the country, a narrowly moralistic outlook on public life, an authoritarian profile and the soul of a bureaucrat, he administered Brazil as though it were some minor government department. He centralized decisions, controlled the minutest of details, and scribbled an endless stream of notes to ministers and advisers, unable to differentiate between insignificant issues and matters of great import. As soon as he had taken office he launched his witch-hunt against corrupt officials, establishing investigative committees with instructions to comb through the finances of public bodies. Then, without proof, he released the so-called results to the press, where they made glaring headlines. His scribbled notes disappeared into the immensity of the administrative machine, and government policy oscillated every which way. Nonetheless Jânio Quadros continued to interfere in everything. He abolished the requirement for wearing ties in the presidential palace and created a khaki uniform for civil servants, based on the ‘safari’-style outfits used by the British in their empire – in his opinion far more appropriate for a tropical country. To eliminate any doubts, he published details in the Official Gazette of how the new uniforms were to be made – ‘Fabric: Brazilian linen. Colour: Beige.’62 In fewer than seven months of government President Quadros signed an astonishing number of decrees: banning horse races on working days, outlawing cockfighting, forbidding the use of poppers during carnival balls, banning the use of bikinis on the beaches, and specifying the length for swimming costumes used in televised beauty contests. To top it all off, he brought two donkeys from the northeast to eat the grass in the immense gardens of the Palácio da Alvorada,63 providing the creatures with straw hats to protect them from the scorching sun of the Central Plateau and surrounding the gardens with railings to prevent them from wandering off.64
Jânio Quadros was a political intruder at the head of a government that had no clear definition, yet he still intended to govern on his own terms. And in his opinion, he was constrained by the 1946 Constitution and a Congress that was suspicious and uncooperative. This was not true; or, at least, it was not entirely true. He had no commitment to democratic institutions and felt that his hands were tied by the limitations imposed on him by the constitution. He created an artificial situation that led to an impasse between the powers, increasing the hostility of Congress and isolating himself even further. Opposition to his government increased, especially from the labour movement. This opposition was creating closer ties with the communists and had the backing of the unions. They repudiated President Quadros’s economic policy, which devalued the currency, doubled the price of bread, increased the price of public transport, restricted credit and froze wages. Nevertheless, there were apparently no insurmountable obstacles – nothing that could not be solved by negotiation.
In late July 1961, Jânio Quadros invited Vice-President João Goulart to head the first Brazilian trade mission to the People’s Republic of China. Relations between the two men were on the brink of rupture and João Goulart, who had been one of the first targets of Jânio Quadros’s investigative committees, viewed the invitation with suspicion. Since it was impossible for the vice-president to refuse, he ended up agreeing to head the mission to China. While he was negotiating trade agreements in Beijing, in Brasília Jânio Quadros was awarding the Grand Cross of the Order of the Southern Cross, Brazil’s highest decoration, to the Cuban Minister for the Economy, Ernesto Che Guevara. There was outrage. Opinions were divided over the Cuban Revolution. The president’s gesture increased the fears of the United States that Brazil’s foreign policy was becoming pro-Cuban. The National Democratic Union reacted with indignation and military officers who had been decorated threatened to return their medals.65 President Quadros had good reasons for wanting to create closer ties with Cuba; there was a possibility that the island country could act as an intermediary for the trade of goods and machinery between Brazil and the Soviet bloc. But in the opinion of Carlos Lacerda, this time the government had gone too far, so he took a plane to Brasília to confront the president. There are numerous versions of what was actually said when they met. But there was no reconciliation: Carlos Lacerda returned to Rio de Janeiro, denounced the government on radio and television, called the president irresponsible, and accused the Minister of Justice, Oscar Pedroso Horta, of planning a coup d’état and of having invited him to take part. The political temperature rose to boiling point.
On the morning of Friday, 25 August 1961, Soldier’s Day, Jânio Quadros attended the military parade in the Esplanade of Ministries, reviewed the troops, listened to the reading of the order of the day, saluted the flag – everything according to the book. Then he returned to the palace, summoned the military ministers and officially communicated that he was resigning the presidency. When the astonished officers asked him for his reason, he replied: ‘I can’t govern with this Congress. Organize a junta and govern the country.’66 He signed his letter of resignation and gave instructions to the Minister of Justice to send it to Congress at 3 p.m. At 11 a.m. he boarded the presidential plane for the Cumbica Airbase in São Paulo. As he left Brasília, he instructed the adjutant who was travelling with him to bring the presidential sash.
IN THE BASEMENT OF THE PIRATINI PALACE
Jânio Quadros never gave a clear explanation for why he resigned. But there is consensus among historians. His gesture was intended to cause a national commotion and to bring about his triumphant return to office with greater presidential powers – preferably without Congress to get in his way.
Resigning was a way of exiting the stage without losing face. He had used the threat of renunciation in the past, and it had always succeeded. And it could work again now: Jaõa Goulart was not popular with the military, and anyway, he was too far away in China to negotiate taking office. President Quadros’s resignation would only be examined by Congress after the weekend, and before that the people would be on the streets defending his mandate, perhaps – who knew? – forming a new type of queremismo, the movement that had earlier clamoured for a permanent Vargas presidency. ‘There is no one left, after me,’ Jânio Quadros is reported to have said at the Cumbica Airbase. And he added: ‘I shan’t do anything to return, but I consider my return inevitable.’67
If that was his plan, it all went wrong. The people did not rise up, the state governors said nothing, Congress accepted his resignation two hours after receiving the letter, considering it a unilateral act. The deputies were fed up with a government they accused of trying to demoralize the legislature. No one in the chamber supported him. Ranieri Mazzilli, the president of the Chamber of Deputies, was appointed as interim president until João Goulart arrived back from China. On 28 August, Jânio Quadros ordered the presidential sash to be returned and embarked for Europe from the port of Santos in the state of São Paulo. But there was still one obstacle to a smooth transition: the ministers of the armed forces.68 The resignation was one thing; they had ratified it without discussion. But the succession was quite another. At that point, the military ministers took stock of the situation and decided to intervene. On 28 August, three days after President Quadros’s resignation, Mr Mazzilli informed Congress that the military ministers were not prepared to accept João Goulart’s return to the presidency. And they went further: if he were to disembark in Brazil, he would be arrested. The ministers were not acting according to their role as military officers. Instead, they were playing a political card. They were betting on the success of a sort of constitutional coup, which would come at little cost to the armed forces.69 The plan was to intimidate Congress into declaring João Goulart ineligible. But not even the National Democratic Union agreed. This was a political crisis with unpredictable results and the country was drawing dangerously close to civil war.
But that was not what fate intended. In Rio de Janeiro, Marshal Lott, reflecting the divisions within the armed forces, published a manifesto to the nation in which he defended constitutional order. Then the governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Leonel Brizola, decided it was time to act. His idea was to bring João Goulart to Porto Alegre and to ensure he take office at any cost.70 Mr Brizola was the political leader of forces further to the left than the Brazilian Labour Party. He was also João Goulart’s brother-in-law. Leonel Brizola had been elected governor in 1959 and his fame had begun to spread, especially after an audacious piece of legislation that expropriated the goods and services of the Companhia Telefônica Nacional, a subsidiary of the International Telephone & Telegraph (IT&T). By the end of his government, Leonel Brizola was planning to implement two measures that went even further: the expropriation of farms in order to distribute land to the Agricultores sem Terra (Landless Farmers), and the state government takeover of the Companhia de Energia Elétrica Rio-Grandense, a subsidiary of American & Foreign Power, part of the Electric Bond & Share group.71
Silencing Marshal Lott was relatively easy – the Minister of War ordered his arrest and he was imprisoned on an island in Guanabara Bay between Rio de Janeiro and Niterói. But silencing Governor Brizola was quite another matter. He summoned the powerful Rio Grande do Sul military brigade and ordered that the studios of Rádio Guaíba be transferred to the basement of the governor’s palace – Palácio Piratini. He then posted special-guard soldiers with three heavy machine guns to protect the transmission tower on the Ilha da Pintada, twelve miles outside Porto Alegre. He instructed the announcer to open the transmission with the words: ‘This is Radio Legality [Rede da Legalidade], transmitting from the basement of the Piratini Palace, in the capital of Rio Grande do Sul.’ With microphone in hand, Leonel Brizola incited the state to revolt and mobilized the rest of the country to act in defence of the constitution. Radio Legality transmitted on shortwave twenty-four hours a day, linked to the transmissions of some 150 other radio stations, and was heard all over Brazil and in some of its neighbouring republics.72
Governor Brizola knew all too well the risk he was running. He armed the population for resistance, summoned the people to occupy the Praça da Matriz, the plaza in front of the palace, and simulated a blockade in the Rio Grande port. He installed machine guns on the roof of the palace and in the tower of the Metropolitan Cathedral, which was under still construction. He climbed up onto barricades made from sacks of sand, benches wrenched up from the Praça da Matriz, and cars and trucks, all piled up around the palace. He distributed guns to the civil servants and went everywhere with a machine gun slung over his shoulder. He was right to be prepared: the military ministers sent a navy task force to Rio Grande do Sul and sent planes from the Canoas Airbase with instructions to bombard the palace. But the sergeants at the airbase rebelled, let down tyres, removed weapons, and prevented pilots from taking off. On 28 August the situation began to turn around. The commander of the Third Army, General José Machado Lopes, accompanied by his joint chiefs of staff, entered the Piratini Palace and, to everyone’s surprise, told Governor Brizola that he was in favour of João Goulart taking office. The Third Army was based in Rio Grande do Sul and was the most powerful division of the land forces. From then on, Leonel Brizola could count on the support of 40,000 soldiers, 13,000 men from the military brigade, and approximately 30,000 volunteers. He was the first civilian leader to have openly resisted a military coup d’état, and he could no longer be underestimated.
The military ministers began to realize it would not be as simple as they had thought to prevent João Goulart from taking office. In Goiás the governor, Mauro Borges, decided to join Leonel Brizola in the resistance.73 He declared that the capital had rebelled, ordered the military police to occupy all the strategic points of the city, and instituted an ‘Army of Legality’ made up of volunteers. And he issued a warning: if João Goulart wanted to land in the state, he would be provided with all the security he required to travel from Goiânia to Brasília. Further support came from all around the country. The Brazilian Lawyers’ Association (OAB) and the All National Students’ Union – which had moved its head office to Porto Alegre – demanded that constitutional order be respected. Protests in favour of legality were organized in a number of states. It was only the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper and the governor of Guanabara, Carlos Lacerda, who openly declared themselves to be in favour of the military veto and against the investiture of João Goulart.
The military ministers now knew their options were limited. They would either have to negotiate a way out or be prepared to fight a civil war. However, Congress came up with a solution that would prevent their loss of face: the immediate adoption of a parliamentary regime. It was an artificial solution that would never solve the problem, but it certainly solved the short-term crisis. João Goulart would be allowed to take office, but without full powers. All that was needed was his agreement. The task of bringing him the proposal fell to Tancredo Neves, who had been in Getúlio Vargas’s Cabinet. Mr Goulart had been informed of Jânio Quadros’s resignation when he was in Singapore and had made the long journey back to Montevideo, where he waited for news from Brazil. Tancredo Neves then had the unenviable task of persuading him to accept the proposal, which he finally did. On the night of 1 September, João Goulart disembarked at Porto Alegre. The amendment instituting the parliamentary system was voted by Congress in the early hours of the following day. Leonel Brizola was indignant and refused to accept the agreement. In his opinion João Goulart should proceed to Brasília overland, at the head of the Third Army, and assume the government with no restrictions to his presidential powers.
It is hard to know what Mr Goulart’s reasons were for accepting the formula of a p
arliamentary regime. Civil war was a real possibility; one that, without any doubt, he wanted to avoid. He also had no intention of missing the opportunity of becoming president. It is possible that he planned to assume the government and, in the short term, disarm his adversaries, and expand his political support by winning over the Social Democratic Party. He could then overturn the parliamentary system and regain full presidential powers – which is virtually what occurred in 1963. He knew that he could not march on Brasília. The popular rebellion that had started in Rio Grande do Sul and spread throughout Brazil was in his favour, but not under his command. Even if this battle were fought and won, the person who would emerge victorious would be Leonel Brizola.74 Whatever his reasons, that evening João Goulart went out onto the balcony of the Piratini Palace and waved to the crowd, without saying a word. Three days later he left for Brasília.
He did not know what was waiting for him.
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