Brazil's Controlled Purge: The Impeachment of Fernando Collor
Santos, Theotonio dos
The issue of corruption has captured the attention of citizens around the globe.' In Italy and Brazil, the battle against this ancient scourge seems to have assumed a newly effective form....
...Itamar was renowned for taking nationalistic stands...
...The newly elected Collor formed a cabinet composed of unknown personalities and some conservative politicians...
...Allegations of corruption dogged P.C...
...Brazilians, however, thwarted their ambitions, voting overwhelmingly against weakening the presidency by changing to a parliamentary system...
...Vice-President Itamar Franco was named acting president for the remaining two years of Collor's term...
...The media claimed that with the bandits in the president's entourage out of the way, the new team would resolve everything...
...The political upheaval sparked by Vargas' death and his final testament partially deflated Lacerda's morality campaign...
...Few heeded his call...
...Alice WalKer, Author For Sales & Rental Information in Film or Video: CUBA VA VIDEO PROJECT 12 Liberty Street, Sari Francisco, CA 9411o - 415/282-1812 - fax 415/282-1798 VOL XXVII, No 3 Nov/DEC 1993 39 REPORT ON CORRUPTION 4. According to Pedro Collor, the banker said, "As it stands, on the basis of the volume of cash being handled here, people are beginning to say that Farias may be involved in drug trafficking," (Pedro Collor, Passando a Limpo, p. 209...
...The oligarchy, now aware of the enormity of the mistake it had made, was looking for an out...
...Brazilians have not been able to create solid party structures, and are still seeking a president who as a political outsider can stand up to the powerful and the corrupt...
...The vast majority of Congress and governors also cast their lot against the president...
...4 Suspicions were further increased when the Collors bought a $4 million apartment through the services of Guy de Longchamps, a man with ties to international drug trafficking...
...This avenue of inquiry was immediately suspended and forgotten...
...Collor had, by then, lost the unconditional support of the Globo TV network which had brought him to power...
...Farias had a meeting in 1991 in Brazil...
...In an exclusive interview in the news weekly Veja in May, Fernando's brother Pedro accused the president of using P.C...
...It would seem that more important issues are at stake...
...When Quadros suddenly resigned after only seven months in office, Vice-President Jolo Goulart-his political rival and heir to the Vargas legacy-assumed power...
...He is now running second behind Lula in polls asking people who they would prefer as their next president...
...Farias implicated some of Brazil's most important business people, but no formal charges have been laid against them...
...The Brazilian federal police may now seriously investigate the connection between P.C...
...Farias, acquired enormous contributions totaling $100 million, far exceeding what the campaign required...
...Inflation will be a central concern...
...2. After describing his brother's wild youth in Brasilia, Pedro Collor said, "I think these crises of violence were caused by taking hard drugs...
...He is the author of The Political Economy of Brazil, forthcoming from Westview Press...
...Polls in late June indicated 67% of Brazilians wanted Collor to remain in office...
...At first, they appeared not to have thought his candidacy would go far, and aspired to negotiate a spot for him as vice-presidential candidate on the ticket of a more established political party...
...As Collor moved into first place in opinion surveys, he began to create his own power clique...
...His brother went on the offensive, talking to every media outlet that asked...
...Under the anti-corruption banner, the military-with Lacerda's support-ousted Goulart in a 1964 coup, inaugurating a dictatorship that lasted 26 years...
...I see no other explanation...
...Farias implicated some of Brazil's most important business people, but no formal charges have been laid against them...
...214-215...
...A unique and timely documentaryl Released August 1993...
...A wealthy party-going womanizer, with a cultivated playboy image, he was a man who led a fast and easy life...
...Farias went on the offensive and threatened to bring a lot of people down with him if these charges were pursued...
...It may also partly explain why P.C...
...Fernando also venerated Mussolini, and was reputed to be as hot-tempered and prone to violence as his father, who once killed a senator in the midst of a session of Congress...
...Pro-impeachment demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands of protesters were held in a number of cities, in an uncanny replay of the 1983 "Direct Elections Now" campaign...
...Wayne Smith, Center for International Policy troversial look at Cuba today rom the dynamic perspective of Cuban youth...
...Calls for public morality did not prevent Paulo Maluf-a true symbol of the corruption of the dictatorship era-from winning the mayor's race in Sdo Paulo in November...
...The television networks--earlier hesitant to impugn Collor-now zestfully covered the protests...
...Collor played his last card by resigning before the Senate reached a verdict...
...In Brazil, the oligarchy managed to fix the blame on two people: Fernando Collor de Mello, a small-time politician catapulted onto the national scene by the country's major economic powers, and the businessman Paulo Cesar Farias, the president's chief legal advisor and campaign treasurer...
...Not even the revelations of corruption that surfaced during his mayoral campaign have harmed the presidential prospects of this authoritarian former governor of Sdo Paulo and leader of the right-wing Democratic Social Party...
...Collor had angered the military by destroying the National Information Service, closing nuclear research sites, signing the agreement committing Brazil to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and drastically reducing the military budget...
...Corruption, however, is embedded in a much broader and more complex political process...
...His statement-"Anyone in my government who steals goes to jail"-became famous...
...Pedro Collor said a Miami banker had told him that he had serious misgivings about the source of P.C...
...It took on new life, however, in the figure of Junio Quadros...
...Thus, they reason, the fewer ties to organized social forces a president has, the stronger he will be...
...Even Collor's mother Leda Collor de Mello joined the fray...
...In the political testament that he left behind, Vargas blamed international capital and its local representatives for his fall...
...Farias was a sign to many that he too was guilty...
...Perhaps Collor's victory was the expression of the last flicker of hope in such a solution...
...The president, two-thirds of the Senate, the Chamber of , Lhe governors of all 2 s, and deputies in the state semblies all come up for election...
...Farias if people pursued the charges against him...
...Quadros was elected president in 1961 by pledging to bring morality to the government and struggle against VOL XXVII, No 3 Nov/DEC 1993 17REPORT ON CORRUPTION the oligarchies-despite his extensive commitments to those very forces...
...He went on television several times to deny any wrongdoing, and to insist he was the victim of special interests trying to thwart his economic reforms...
...In the 1950s, Carlos Lacerda led a broad morality campaign against President Getulio Vargas, who had been elected by a wide margin in 1950...
...Although The oligarchy has emerged unscathed...
...The country was under the aegis of the "Republic of Alagoas" to the disgust of many in the establishment...
...It seems incredible that a partyless politician with no clear commitments to the oligarchy-except to some wealthy relatives and TV Globo, the national television network-could become president of a country with 150 million inhabitants and about 90 million voters...
...They gloated that they had dutifully obeyed the wishes of the citizenry...
...5. In his first statement to the congressional investigating committee, Farias cynically threatened to reveal the recipients of money from his "kitty...
...The public was hesitant at first to turn against their president...
...Collor's presidency was a family affair, with political and family matters-ranging from the routine to the scandalous-thoroughly intertwined throughout all levels of government...
...Brazilians will decide between a more collectivist, social-oriented policy and a conservative, private-oriented one...
...As is usual in these kinds of cases, attacks began from the side...
...Maluf's past has been forgotten, and he is being presented as an honest and moderate politician...
...At the same time, the burgeoning drug trade gave rise to illegal profits along with a vast number of businesses linked to laundering drug money...
...The congressional investigation state suL turned up countless examples of the oliga greed that had virtually no limits...
...The banker speculated that such a large amount of cash could only come from drug trafficking...
...But who was Fernando Collor de Mello...
...Farias had set up in each of the main state agencies a group of representatives who skimmed millions through fixed bidding practices on government contracts...
...It is not unusual in Brazil for candidates to pocket such excesses themselves...
...He had also opposed Collor's first economic plan in which private savings were frozen...
...Franco's support among the armed forces was perhaps the most decisive factor impeding efforts to depose the vice-president along with Collor...
...But under popular pressure, the Senate decided to go ahead with the trial, convicting Collor by 76 to 3 on charges of official misconduct...
...More serious yet were P.C...
...It later became known that Collor and P.C...
...he Brazilian elite is unhappy with the Itamar Franco government, which is at odds with it over economic policy...
...In Brazil, a president was impeached and faces criminal prosecution on corruption charges, and a warrant has been issued to arrest his closest aide...
...At the opposite end of the political spectrum, the far-left flank of the PT called for general elections, inadvertently supporting the agenda of the oligarchy, which wanted to pass over Franco...
...Views of Cuba never before seen by a U.S...
...Fernando's attempts to seduce his brother's wife Teresa also aroused Pedro's wrath...
...The congressional investigation into President Collor and P.C...
...Persistent rumors circulated-later confirmed by his younger brother Pedro--that during his youth in Brasilia, he experimented with cocaine and LSD...
...Collor's unwillingness to take specific measures against P.C...
...None of this gave his campaign sponsors pause...
...audience...
...Farias simply his henchman...
...As governor of his home state of Alagoas, Collor fired highly paid government employees and promised a government of public morality...
...Ultimately, state subsidies to the private sector or oligarchical interests are more harmful than the irregular transfers and commissions, known as "corruption...
...See Pedro Collor de Mello, Passando a Limpo: A Trajet6ria de um Farsante (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record, 1993), pp...
...He had also led a congressional committee investigating corruption in the Sarney government in the late 1980s.6 Collor selected Itamar as his running mate because he needed an honest, established politician from a populous state to round out his ticket...
...Translated from the Portuguese by Phillip Berryman...
...All the dissatisfaction that has been building up over the many years of struggle is being channeled into this coming contest...
...In the secondround run-off, he faced Luis Inicio da Silva ("Lula"), the labor leader and candidate for the leftist Workers Party (PT...
...The next general election in October, 1994 will be the most sweeping in Brazil's history...
...popular mobilization was a crucial factor in the president's impeachment, the fact that Collor is still free and P.C...
...Farias and other low-level officials throughout the spring of 1992...
...Then the bomb of domestic strife exploded...
...The armed forces, on the other hand, were inclined to support Franco as a suitable replacement...
...The nation's elites were united in their abomination of the felon...
...They even went along with the president's ill-fated attempt to curb inflation by freezing $115 billion of the $150 billion in the country's bank accounts on his first day of office...
...Then, he decided to form a new government made up of distinguished citizens and conservative politicians...
...The congressional inquiry became a Pandora's box, continually unearthing shocking new evidence...
...Corruption is nothing new in Brazil or Latin America...
...what made that episode different was its scale...
...New evidence emerging this knov June from investigations by police and Kroll Associates, the interna- "corru tional accounting firm, suggests that in this way Farias amassed about $1.4 billion...
...According to transf( gossip in Brasilia, they held a party one year later to celebrate their first commit billion...
...It discovered that Collor and his the priva cohorts had set up a caixinhas, a "kitty" in which to collect off-the- are more books funds...
...It seems that Pedro was provoked when his control over the Collor de Mello family media empire in Alagoas was threatened by a rival media group headed by Farias...
...His brother, a federal deputy from Alagoas, threatened to use a secret dossier of P.C...
...He discusses photocopies of about 20 documents that he received which show Farias' operation of nine cover enterprises in the United States, the Caribbean, France, England and Switzerland, from which he earned a total of $400 million...
...The campaign culminated in calls to impeach the president...
...By the date of the impeachment vote, Collor faced solid opposition from Congress, Brazil's major business groups, the major media, and from 23 of 26 state governors...
...Many of the demonstrators were students, quickly dubbed "painted faces" for the colorful paint they applied to their faces...
...says he won't go down alone...
...The oligarchy and the conservative middle classes were horrified at the monster they had created...
...Lindolfo then turned to Mussolini's fascism for ideological inspiration, which led him to the Brazilian fascist movement, known as integralism...
...It was his wellpublicized campaign against "maharajahs" in government that gave him the credentials to run for president...
...37-38...
...Moving things from the scandalous to the ridiculous, she pleaded in the press with her son not to risk his life by flying jets without a pilot's license and driving Ferraris at high speed...
...Farias is a fugitive at large makes a mockery of that display of public outrage...
...6. For further analysis of corruption during the dictatorship and the Sarney government, see Jos6 Carlos de Assis, Os Mandarins da Repi(blica, Anatomia dos Escindalos da Administra~co Ptblica (Sao Paulo: Paz e Terra, 1984...
...The only possible route was impeachment...
...Naturally, the elite is worried...
...He also documents Farias' close relationship to Andres Gomez-Mena and Guy de Longchamps, both connected to international drug trafficking (pp...
...The Supreme Court has now launched an investigation into her activities...
...The armed forces did not favor dismantling the state, and feared that the excessive opening of the national market to foreign competition might sink the nation's industry and advanced technological research apparatus...
...Corruption will no doubt be important-but it will not be the only issue, nor even the main one...
...The Congress professed its fidelity to the voice from the streets, and prepared to impeach the president...
...Yes, the truly corrupt must be punished...
...Fernando Collor, the first directly elected president after the years of military rule, ran as an anti-corruption candidate...
...The loose-cannon governor of Bahia, Antonio Carlos Magalhdes, a right-wing populist and faithful servant of 20NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 20REPORT ON CORRUPTION Globo TV, and Globo's president Roberto Marinho led a behind-the-scenes campaign to drop Itamar...
...During the president's first two years in office, at least 13 different cases of alleged corruption arose, forcing Collor to remove many top officials...
...Goulart found himself the object of a vicious campaign accusing him of corruption and subversion...
...In Italy, many politicians and business leaders have seen their careers and reputations shattered...
...The net result: it brought on hatred, caused scandal, and affected the very core of the government...
...Instead, thousands of Brazilians wearing mourning black marched ately, )sidies to irchy and te sector harmful irregular Mrs and missions, vn as ption...
...Moving toward the scandalous, his wife Rosane has been accused of embezzling funds from the large state charity she oversaw...
...3 A network of bank accounts registered under false Ultim names was also discovered...
...Maluf's constituency is made up of the very same conservative sectors that tried to overthrow Vargas and that supported the overthrow of Goulart in the name of public morality...
...Congressmen scrutinized more than 30,000 checks drawn on accounts linked to Farias which revealed a host of fiscal subterfuges by Farias and financial links between Farias and Collor...
...But who was to succeed the president...
...These accusations resulted in an investigation by a 22-member congressional committee...
...Committed socialists and disillusioned dissidents passionately debate Cuba's future...
...Pedro began by attacking Farias, but gradually took aim at the president himself...
...Although Collor claimed that he had severed his ties with Farias in 1990, the Brazilian magazine Isto E reported that Collor's personal secretary routinely paid the family's household and personal expenses out of a checking account fed by Farias...
...From a certain age, more or less between 18 and 20, Fernando became known around town as a violent person...
...Finally the dam of impunity built by Collor over two years with such audacious presumption began to wash away under the pressure of those who found their interests harmed by his brutal assaults on both private and public assets...
...Commissions on financial activity rose a great deal, and the money available for that purpose expanded enormously...
...business interests as well as a portion of the Brazilian armed forces, Lacerda was preparing a coup to overthrow Vargas...
...By then, the Attorney General had brought criminal charges against Collor for "passive corruption" and "criminal association...
...through the streets...
...Members of the oligarchy were loath to see Collor's vice-president, Itamar Franco, come to power...
...The leaders of three opposition parties that normally have little to do with one another-Lula (PT), Tasso Jeireissati (PSDB), and Orestes Qu6rcia (PMDB)-came together to call for the president's impeachment...
...The Collor episode will surely weigh on the minds of Brazilians when they vote...
...He was a consistent foe of the military dictatorship, while Collor had collaborated with it...
...In small, closed meet- than the ings, they set the goal of collecting two billion dollars...
...His enormously expensive, modern advertising campaign cast him as a superman-a lone hero in an American Western battling all sorts of corrupt individuals...
...In his chapter on the Miami connection, Pedro Collor provides incriminating information about Farias' alleged involvement in the drug trade...
...Congressional testimony and these checks revealed that P.C...
...In addition, it became known that Farias had extorted millions more from Brazil's main business people-both national and multinational-no doubt in exchange for his services within the VOL XXVII, No 3 Nov/DEc 1993 19 VOL XXVlI, No 3 Nov/DEc 1993 19REPORT ON CORRUPTION presidential circle...
...The oligarchy has emerged unscathed...
...That political formula was actually suggested to Mario Covas, the Brazilian Party of Social Democracy (PSDB) presidential candidate...
...Moreover, in October, the Brazilian press reported that Pablo Escobar and P.C...
...Theotonio dos Santos is a visiting professor at Universidade Federal Fluminense-Niter6i, Rio de Janeiro...
...Farias and international drug trafficking...
...His uncle Lindolfo Collor was a cabinet minister in the first revolutionary Vargas government in 1930, but broke with Vargas two years later...
...Farias's wealth...
...On the routine side, his brother-in-law Marcos Coimbra was one of the mainstays of his administration, and his sister Ana Luiza de Mello was continually under fire for meddling in the government...
...Nevertheless, the difference between the two cases is obvious...
...Farias has been treated so gently, and has even managed to go into hiding and perhaps flee the country when he should be in jail by now...
...Farias of being directly involved in drug trafficking...
...Struggling for his political life, Collor called on Brazilians to show their support by wearing green and yellow-the colors of the national flag-at a mass demonstration...
...Lacerda charged that the Vargas government was mired in a "sea of slime...
...In Italy, the entire political and business oligarchy is in crisis...
...Franco, a former PMDB senator from Minas Gerais state, lost his bid for the governorship of his home state in 1986...
...His words failed to convince the Brazilian public of his innocence...
...But new revelations began to tarnish the president himself...
...This maneuvering occurred as a pageant of civic spirit unfolded on the streets, broadcast nationwide on all the TV channels...
...so too will the question of the degree of Brazil's integration in the world economy and the orientation towards the internal market...
...Farias' possible ties to drug traffickers...
...The public was led to believe 18NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 18REPORT ON CORRUPTION that he would be the country's savior...
...2 The son of a senator of the old National Democratic Union-the party of Carlos LacerdaCollor understood how powerful a vote-getter moralistic demagoguery could be...
...Collor's presidency was a family affair, with political and family matters-ranging from the routine to the scandalous-thoroughly intertwined throughout all levels of government...
...He opposed Collor's neoliberal market reforms, including privatizing state industries...
...Brazilians are still waiting for justice to be done...
...Farias squandered $25 million dollars of "campaign leftovers" on genuine maharajah-like spending sprees...
...The cover headline of the June 17, 1992 issue of Isto E was: "P.C...
...0 Brazil's Controlled Purge: The Impeachment of Fernando Collor 1. During the 1980s, corruption expanded prodigiously due to increased financial speculation...
...The plan was foiled, however, when Vargas suddenly committed suicide in August, 1954...
...government and U.S...
...See interview in Veja, June 24, 1992, p. 7. A DOCUMENTARY FILM Cuban Youth Debate Cuba's Future "One of the m documentaries transitional cr which Cuba is Dr...
...Seizing advantage of the postLve mag1e t Liad acquIre of the impeachment vote, gress decided to move up date of the plebiscite c Brazil's system of governance...
...Policymakers were initially elated and triumphant...
...Subsequently, a figure in Argentine organized crime gave a detailed interview to Isto E accusing P.C...
...Farias did favors for politicians of all stripes with a fleet of planes that periodically flew out of the country on a route very close to that used for drug contraband...
...But inflation, after a period of decline, increased once again, and wages continued to lose purchasing power day by day...
...Backed by the U.S...
...The investigation into President Collor and P.C...
...Covas ruled it out, however, perhaps because he regarded Collor's support as weak-at that point he had only a 5% rating in the polls...
...Such threats continued until he went into hiding...
...Collor's election was a legacy of the dictatorship that had outlawed political parties, but it was also to some extent a repeat of the Janio Quadros episode...
...Taking advantage of the panic among the business oligarchy at the prospect of a socialist president, Collor's campaign treasurer, P.C...
...3. "It was a thirsty and gluttonous way of using power," said Renan Calheiros, a leader of the "bandits," the term he himself coined for the group that robbed the country along with Fernando Collor...
...He describes how his brother tore a bordello apart, beat up several women, and knocked people around using his karate training...
...This partnership was awkward and full of political and personal frictions from the start...
...Pedro asserted that the president was the ring leader and P.C...
...Corruption is just one facet of the general control of the state by private interests...
...who are concerned, ous, or deeply care...
...5 The president too began to fight back...
...mechanic William Black, who is serving a sentence in the United States for falsifying documents for Farias' Miamibased air leasing company...
...Farias as a "front man" for illicit kickbacks and influence-peddling schemes that netted millions of dollars...
...That may be why the legal proceedings against exPresident Collor for criminal activity are moving so slowly...
...The only person behind bars is the U.S...
Vol. 27 • November 1993 • No. 3
