Senhor Prestes of Brazil
Mattos, Xavier de
July 2, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL 259 Places and Persons SENHOR PRESTES OF BRAZIL By XAVIER DE MATTOS THE first of March saw the outcome of one of Brazil's most stirring presidential campaigns...
...Starting at the time when Brazil was seriously contemplating the wholesale abolition of her slave labor, which in fact materialized in 1888, it served as an opportune means of averting the financial havoc following the abolition...
...These two incidents of hot-headed passion and individual fanaticism met with nation-wide disapproval and won for the conservative party heavy landslides...
...Along with this financial problem, another issue lent special tension to this campaign...
...The federal government was forced to inaugurate a policy of protective tariff...
...morally the cause of the revolutionists had triumphed...
...the construction of schools, railways and highways was greatly intensified...
...I am a Catholic by family tradition, by education and by conviction...
...the Church cannot refrain from working actively to ward off the radical dangers that lurk in the present social unrest...
...as a compensation, however, the rich market of the United States of America has lately offered greater opportunities for her products...
...Nevertheless, the exploitation of Brazil's vast natural resources cannot, within the span of a short decade, cover the financial burden it created and become a source of national revenue and prosperity...
...it thus secured a steady level of trade and while sufficiently supplying the demand of foreign markets it prevented the cheapening of national products...
...In the same year new amendments were inserted in the original Republican constitution of February 24, 1891...
...The aged Emperor Pedro II had been deposed and the country declared a republic by the "revolution" of November 15, 1889, if we may so call a 260 THE COMMONWEAL July 2, 1930 pacific march of the troops through the streets of imperial Rio on a sunny tropical morning...
...this, as is well known, was freely supplied by the United States and Great Britain...
...The press informed us that the chosen candidate of the nation was Senhor Julio Prestes who carried seventeen out of the twenty states which form the United States of Brazil...
...The whole nation has been in the last decade in a frenzy of reform with the risk of going too far in repudiating not only what is bad in the national traditions but also what is good...
...Fortunately there was no specifically religious issue in this campaign...
...Brazil has grown very rapidly, too rapidly indeed, almost beyond its own capacity for immediate readjustment...
...A counter-reaction was recently formed limiting the freedom of the press and outlawing any party or organization of radical tendencies that might aggravate the present situation of the country...
...These fears were unfounded, for by a chain of apparently insignificant mistakes, the empire had alienated the support of even the conservative classes—the clergy, the nobility and the slaveholding and landed proprietors...
...The people began to exercise their democratic rights and to insist on the inviolability of the same...
...This vast majority might give the false impression that there was hardly any opposition...
...it was the political situation in itself...
...It proceeded to an inner reorganization of its own machinery and undertook more honest and enlightened policies...
...New parties of extreme political views were formed...
...Deficit followed deficit...
...But with the apprehensions of the world war and the stirring of national patriotism by Brazil's declaration of war against Germany on October 26, 1917, there came a civic consciousness and political concern which spread throughout the entire nation...
...These tragico-dramatic incidents of the campaign are, however, far from explaining everything it implies...
...Thus when Pedro was deposed the whole imperial machinery fell without either sympathy or protest...
...Up to the present, then, Brazil has depended entirely for her revenues on her agricultural exports...
...Meanwhile, however, it was creating a racial problem that had not hitherto existed...
...Brazil has but lately entered into one of those crucial periods observable in the history of every nation, when it undergoes the process of great changes in its inner structure and function...
...with a few honorable exceptions, politics gradually sank into administrative neglect and dishonest gain...
...a more adequate electoral mechanism was provided...
...To this growth European immigration has, to a very large extent, contributed...
...A middle class was non-existent...
...The religious peace which we have long enjoyed is fully warranted by our constitution...
...The world war once over, the steady flow of immigrants tended to surpass all previous records...
...The successive administrations were left to act freely, without organized check or competition, before a nation civically uneducated and politically unconcerned...
...The thirty-three years of exclusive Republican administration that followed proved almost fatal to the welfare of the nation...
...more recently still, the attempt against the life of Vicepresident Mello Vianna when on a touring campaign through his own state of Minas...
...The native industries are still in the formation stage and not only cannot compete in foreign markets but have to fight hard to hold the home market against foreign competition...
...The Republican party, however, seemed to pay little heed to their revindications...
...Since then, relations between Church and state in Brazil have kept a perfect level of cordiality and mutual prestige...
...Politics ceased to be the esoteric malabarism of a restricted group of professional politicians that it had been up to that time...
...but this will not prevent me from respecting other creeds, and I pledge myself to maintain intact the guarantees of our constitution [which guarantees freedom of conscience and worship...
...but it was opposition of such a nature that its own excesses lost the sympathies of the nation and precluded what was otherwise an even chance of victory...
...There is, nevertheless, a religious problem intimately connected with the social conditions actually present in Brazil...
...The National Plenary Council of the Brazilian hierarchy in 1890 welcomed and applauded the new government, declaring itself satisfied with the religious freedom which it did not enjoy under the oppressive protection of the empire...
...We do not say that there is no religious problem in Brazil...
...This explains why Brazil, which in 1900 had a population of 18,000,000, has at the present day a little over 40,000,000...
...Since then the Catholic Church has kept aloof from political considerations...
...There is a great religious problem, but it refers to society and not to the political situation as such...
...discontent soon created agitation and at last the popular feeling culminated in the revolution of July, 1924, which originated in the state of Sao Paulo...
...But the democratic reactionaries were not satisfied and their claims were going beyond reasonable terms, falling into the extremes of liberalism...
...Again the federal government was forced to intervene, placing definite restrictions on the agricultural exports...
...Early in 1925, as soon as the state of siege was withdrawn, a Democratic party was organized in Sao Paulo and this party soon enlisted millions of adherents in every state of the federation...
...The President-elect embodies these aspirations of the counter-reaction, while the defeated candidate stood for the abrogation of what his party termed "repressive laws...
...This protective policy together with a thorough reorganization of the nation's financial and fiscal systems, undertaken by the retiring administration under the firm hand of President Washington Louis, has strongly checked the chronic fluctuation of Brazilian trade and the no less chronic depreciation of the national coinage...
...The revolutionary government that overthrew the empire effected the complete separation of Church and state while maintaining an ambassador at the Vatican...
...and this during the declining years of the empire, when the Catholic religion was the official religion of the state...
...As governor of the state of Sao Paulo, which is the state most vitally concerned in this affair, he had been from the beginning closely identified with this financial reform, which could not have been carried through without his support...
...The revolution was finally overcome, but the government's victory was only a material one...
...But here again unavoidable circumstances have restrained the expansion of Brazilian trade...
...in the last eight years this was aggravated by the restrictive immigration laws of the United States of America, which diverted the current of immigration to the two leading nations of South America, namely, Argentina and Brazil...
...It is not decadence that has caused it, but a fresh impetus of vitality that is forcing itself into the old social frame and narrow molds inherited from the fallen empire of Pedro II...
...The events surpassed the most optimistic hopes of the pacific revolutionists who, in order to face a probable reaction of the Monarchical party, had united in a single Republican party all the elements of the Liberal, Abolitionist and Republican party proper that had occupied the political arena during the declining years of the empire...
...To understand it in all its implications one must go back to the origins of the Brazilian republic...
...One was the killing of a Republican representative by a liberal Democrat after an embittered discussion in the Federal Chamber, last December...
...In this connection it would be well to point out that since 1875 the clergy, as a class, has withdrawn itself from the political arena...
...And thus far it lends its full support to the present regime which is seeking to solve the problem by more Christian and less radical means...
...foreign loans were not applied to their specific purposes...
...Though it was now obvious that their fears had been unfounded, yet the coalition of the parties was preserved and the Republican party now had for itself the whole country without fear of competition...
...The vital issue then entailed in the election was to secure the steadfast continuation of the constructive policy of economic amelioration and stabilization...
...Fortunately it is not a crisis of despair but rather one of great hopes...
...Two incidents in the campaign contributed especially to the overwhelming victory of the conservative Republican party...
...a new body of social and fiscal legislation was promulgated...
...This time the Republican party was forced to adapt itself to the new situation and to acknowledge the legal standing of its new powerful competitor in the political arena...
...July 2, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL 259 Places and Persons SENHOR PRESTES OF BRAZIL By XAVIER DE MATTOS THE first of March saw the outcome of one of Brazil's most stirring presidential campaigns in the forty years of her Republican regime...
...Such rapid growth created an imperious demand and opportunity for the investment of foreign capital...
...A countercheck was needed to preserve the nation from losing her own identifications with her past, while fostering her necessary readjustment to the conditions that are shaping anew the life of the country...
...With the turmoil of the world war and subsequent financial crises of the belligerent nations, Brazil lost the best of her European markets for her chief products, and even now, after over a decade, she has not been able to recover entirely her former position in those markets...
...the fact is that there was opposition and plenty of it...
...Brazil's farm problem shifted from one extreme to the other, from lack of production to over-production...
...In this regard the words of President-elect Julio Prestes in his platform of December 17, are characteristic and true: The Catholic Church, separated from the state [since 1889] recovered its spiritual independence and attained the full scope of its development, becoming today most imposing by its strength and splendid achievements...
...There remains the investigation of the religious aspect of the situation...
...To this the victorious candidate had solemnly pledged himself in his platform of December 17...
Vol. 12 • July 1930 • No. 9
