Can We Trust Kubitschek?
JAMES, DANIEL
Can We Trust Kubitschek? Brazil's President-elect owes victory to Communists By Daniel James Visiting this country last week was a man the State Department invited here on the assumption he will...
...Brazilian Navy chief, as the "well-known Bolshevik" who engineered the "Communist-military" coup of last November...
...Did he do or say anything to indicate that he was uncomfortable with his Red allies...
...With Goulart slated to control the Labor and Agriculture Ministries, the Reds could expect jobs and favors there...
...At his side were Vargas's two children and son-in-law...
...The terms included payment to the Reds of 10.000.000 cruzeiros...
...Actually, it is not a national party but a collection of local rural machines bound by no political philosophy...
...The plain fact is, however, that they are growing stronger and Kubitschek's indebtedness to them is glowing in the same proportion...
...The Labor party's Secretary General, Frota Moreira...
...When he announced his candidacy for President in December 195k Kubitschek realized that he would need an urban following in order to win...
...Relations between the Communist and Labor parties—the latter Kubitschek's indispensable partner—are closer than ever...
...Accordingly, the Social Democratic chairman, Amaral Peixoto, the late President Vargas's son-in-law, made a deal with Vargas's big Labor party...
...They formed the National Popular Labor Movement as an electoral front, poured out propaganda through their 20 dailies and 40 weeklies, and sent countless paid organizers into working-class districts...
...It is said that, as President...
...Kubitschek was endorsed and the Vice Presidential nomination given to Vargas's godson and political heir, Joao Goulart...
...It is even more difficult to understand what the State Department hoped to achieve by lending the prestige of the U. S. Government to a political leader who is...
...He espoused a program no different from that of Goulart and the Communists...
...He had scarcely been received by President Hoover when a man named Getulio Vargas seized power back home...
...Thus, on December 12 it ran a big page-one interview with the Labor party's leader in the Chamber of Deputies, Fernando Ferrari...
...The deal with the Reds is alleged to have been made in the home of former Finance Minister Oswaldo Aranha, representing the Labor party land Kubitschek), who met with such Communist chiefs as ex-Deputy Roberto Morena...
...They were also promised places on Labor-party state tickets (for example, 12 in Sao Paulo), which was vital since the Communist party is illegal...
...is in Moscow with the Brazilian Red novelist Jorge Amado after attending a "peace congress" in Vienna...
...Goulart, and several Reds...
...Such being the position of the Communists, it is difficult to see how Kubitschek—who never repudiated or criticized them before—can now extricate himself from their tightening grip...
...Overnight, the Communists switched from opposition to loud support of Kubitschek...
...The main Red daily, Imprensa Popular, is filled with laudatory references to Labor-party leaders...
...He permitted the leftist Goulart to speak for him...
...He spoke from Red platforms (in Sao Paulo...
...at best, a trick) operator...
...Without the 500,000 votes they mustered...
...Oest is a leader of the Constitutional Military Movement, the secret Red society inside the Brazilian Army...
...He is called conservative because his Social Democratic party is run by businessmen and farmers...
...Kubitschek will cut loose from the Communists...
...To begin with, if Kubitschek takes power at all he will owe thanks to Colonel Henrique Oest, who has been openly denounced by Admiral Carlos Penna Botto...
...Santos and other cities...
...In Rio de Janeiro, 24 hours before the balloting, Kubitschek made a speech pledging to continue Vargas's left-nationalist policies...
...Since these facts are known to the State Department, why has it chanced a repetition of the embarrassing Prestes incident...
...Brazil's President-elect owes victory to Communists By Daniel James Visiting this country last week was a man the State Department invited here on the assumption he will be President of Brazil on January 31...
...Kubitschek would not have been a State Department guest last week...
...The last Brazilian President-elect to visit this country was Julio Prestes, in 1930...
...With the Labor party heavily infiltrated by Communists, and its chairman Goulart an old Red favorite, an alliance with the powerful Brazilian Communist party was almost inevitable...
...Did Kubitschek reject Communist support...
...If Kubitschek is lucky enough to be inaugurated, that will not be a lucky day for us, because he is likely to head a regime unfriendly to the United Stales...
...He was never inaugurated...
...At least $150,000 was earmarked for a campaign to portray him here as a moderate who likes us, but the fact is that he is actually the leader of a dangerous nationalist-Communist front...
...On a more or less overt level, relations between the Communists and the present regime, whose real power is War Minister Henrique Texeira Lott, grow increasingly cordial...
...But even though Brazil is in the hands of a military group which seized power November 11 on his behalf, the shifting tides of Brazilian politics make it by no means certain that President-elect Juscelino Kubitschek will take office...
...The answer is no...
Vol. 39 • January 1956 • No. 3
