The Crisis in Brazil

...Cafe also insisted that the Presidential election be held on October 3, 1955, as scheduled, instead of doing what democrats are now doing in Argentina: disinfecting the entire structure of government...

...press has published only the Lott version...

...Just before Cafe fell ill, an incident occurred which was to prove decisive in the bewildering changes that followed...

...January 31 will not mark the end of the crisis in Brazil, but only the opening of a new phase...

...It has even bracketed this with the Aramburu movement in Argentina as two of the most promising developments in recent South American history...

...But that does not make him a leftist--only an opportunist who is willing to say or do anything to win votes...

...But the facts are these: 1. Tavora was the candidate of a traditionally "leftist" party, the Socialists: of the National Democratic Party (EDN), which is the nearest Brazilian equivalent to the U.S...

...Tipped off in advance, Luz fled the palace just before the troops arrived...

...Now let us look at Kubitschek, the "leftist": 1. Kubitschek was the candidate of domestic and foreign big business...

...Vargas had just committed suicide, and the country was swept by a wave of emotion...

...They want a man in Rio de Janeiro who will look after their interests there, and they want to keep in their own hands power on the local level--the power to appoint sheriffs, teachers, tax collectors and the like...

...Several generals, he explained, opposed Fiuza's appointment as War Minister and he, Lott, was merely taking measures to guarantee an orderly transfer of office...

...He is a former secretary of the Inter-American Press Association and winner of the Maria Moors Cabot Award for his contributions to American journalism...

...Why didn't Luz resist Lott...

...Lott justified the coup by charging that Cafe Filho had feigned a heart attack in order to enable his successor, Luz, to engineer a putsch that would keep Kubitschek and Goulart out of power...

...Fiuza agreed...

...the following day before taking over, as he, Lott, had to clean up his desk first...

...Against the dictates of common sense, the elections were held and Kubitschek won with less than one-third of the total vote...

...The Crisis in Brazil By Carlos Lacerda President-elect Kubitschek, heir to the Vargas machine and an ally of the Communists, faces strong opposition from democratic elements The situation in Brazil is fraught with surprise...

...In any event, how democratic-minded people can possibly call the overthrow of a constitutional government and the arrest of its chief executive a constitutional act is beyond understanding...

...But none of these forces had the power to stop Lott...

...Historically blind to new trends and forces, Brazil's conservatives do not understand that their alliance with the Communists will eventually prove their undoing...

...He has narrowly escaped assassination three times...

...Behind him, agitation was being stirred up by the Kubitschek-Goulart-Commu-nist forces...

...He was replaced by a retired general, formerly his superior, Fiuza de Castro, who immediately went to the seat of government at Catete Palace to take over...

...Wanting to have a foot in both the "rightist" and "leftist" camps, he passed a tricky election law which enabled him to control both the PSD and PTB...

...Lott begged Fiuza to wait until 3 p.m...

...I, having already been the victim of several attempted assassinations, accompanied him when he boarded the Tamandare, a Navy cruiser, where he intended to establish his government...

...Lott declared that he had seized power in order to turn it over to its constitutional possessors at the proper time...

...Nothing resembling a worker has ever been elected to national office on the Labor ticket...

...The answer is that he feared civil war--the danger of which has by no means passed...

...It is a reflection of the low state of Brazilian politics that Lott should charge President Cafe with feigning a heart attack...

...3. Tavora, although he often denounced the electoral processes as fraudulent, participated in the election because he wanted to discourage extra-legal means of solving Brazil's political problems--as against his "leftist" foes, who have since used extra-legal means...

...His son-in-law, Amral Peixoto, is today chairman of the PSD, while his godson, Goulart, is chairman of the PTB...

...But what has not been noted is that, while General Aramburu is cleaning house of all peronistas, General Lott is doing exactly the opposite: giving free rein to the comparable vargasistas...

...Mamede quoted a well-known speech of Canrobert's criticizing Brazil's "fake democracy" and advocating the creation of a real democracy by giving the people more information and curtailing the power of those who dominate them...

...no less important, an army of their own...

...The pro-Kubitschek coalition of conservatives--and I mean the real ones, those with big vested interests--and the reformers of the PTB...

...War Minister Lott wanted to arrest Mamede for committing a breach of military discipline...

...Even as I write, radical changes may be in the offing...

...Sooner or later, with or without the understanding of the United States, the people of Brazil--like their Argentine neighbors--will initiate those sweeping political and economic reforms which are long overdue and can alone bring about Brazilian democracy...

...whose chief asset is their demagogic ability to exploit mass misery, was given additional flavor by the addition of the Communists but did not promise to make leftists of the conservatives...

...Vargas committed suicide...

...Cafe tried to appease Vargas's friends by refusing to divulge evidence of their dishonesty and corruption...

...Accordingly, in order to preserve peace among Brazilians, be relurned to Rio...

...Lacerda is temporarily here in exile, partly for personal security and partly as a symbolic protest against the quasi-military regime which now governs Brazil...

...Having sketched in the background of the confusing Brazilian crisis, let us now proceed to the foreground...

...second, they stand to get important patronage and favors from Kubitschek and Goulart, if and when they take office...

...All responsibility for what was occurring was thus placed on Lott's shoulders...

...We shall see...

...This angered Lott, who felt now that a question of personal pride was involved...

...Kubitschek and Goulart calculated that the Red vote would be decisive for them...

...Democratic party, and of the Christian Democrats...

...The truth is, Cafe had already had one such attack--when he was Vice President--and had had nothing politically to gain from it...

...Eight prominent Brazilian heart specialists, after examining Cafe, issued a statement concurring in the original diagnosis...

...The constitutional President of Brazil has been under house arrest since his release from the hospital shortly after the November 11 coup...

...In the middle of the night, on the 11th, troops, tanks and guns were strategically deployed throughout Rio de Janeiro...

...Cafe Filho is a popular political leader and a man of independent mind who was once arrested by Vargas and then, in 1950, was accepted by Vargas as his Vice Presidential candidate...

...Even if the Communists polled only 5 per cent of that total, it is clear that they elected him...

...The President of the Chamber of Deputies, Carlos Luz, who was Cafe's constitutional successor, became Acting President...

...The oligarchs who rule the PSD want only one thing: power...

...Actually, they united behind him not on ideological grounds but on personal ones: They felt that Tavora, a man of unimpeachable honesty and integrity, would give Brazil a clean government...

...When General Fiuza phoned the War Ministry from his home to inquire what was up, Lott replied that there was nothing to be alarmed about...

...On January 31, President-elect Jusce-lino Kubitschek is scheduled to be inaugurated...

...As a result, the Air Force and other armed services demanded Vargas's resignation...

...In addition to its influence in the unions, the PCB has a tremendous propaganda machine numbering at least 20 dailies and 40 weeklies...

...2. Kubitschek was also the candidate of the irresponsible peronistas headed by Goulart, whose ties with Peron are very well known in Brazil and who would build a Peron-type labor movement--something he may still do as Vice President and probable overseer of the powerful Ministry of Labor...

...This much is certain...

...If inaugurated, he may run into trouble soon afterward...

...Happily, the final decision in Brazil will not be made by the clever politicians but by the people...

...As a newspaperman...

...The Social Democrats, one must hasten to explain, are neither socialists nor democrats...

...What is not generally appreciated, here in the United States, is that the November 11 putsch is an expression of Moscow's new tactics in South America...

...Such facts make it abundantly clear that in Brazil it is silly to speak of "right" and "left...

...conservatism and will protect foreign private interests against his Red allies...

...The old Vargas gang would remain in power with, this time, the Communists sharing it...

...They also made the President of the Senate, Nereu Ramos, Acting President in Luz's place...

...The Labor party, PTB, is based on the masses but exploits its popularity with them to elect corrupt officials, crooked bankers and only the barest sprinkling of honest businessmen...

...Unlike the Communists elsewhere in South America, those in Brazil have close Army ties and...

...And this was followed by statements from the National Academy of Medicine and Brazilian Medical Association to the same effect: both also protested the vicious rumors inspired by the Lott-Kubilschek-Communist combine...

...The PSD and PTB were both created by the late President Getulio Vargas when, after fifteen years as dictator, he was compelled to call an election in 1945...

...They are a party composed of a series of state machines controlled by businessmen and farmers who are solely concerned with power, both locally and nationally...

...The Communist party was invited to join the Kubitschek-Goulart coalition because of its great strength among the trade unions, where it occupies many key positions although its members and followers are a minority...

...Kubitschek and his running-mate, Joao (Jango) Goulart, were elected President and Vice President of Brazil on October 3, 1955 in a fraudulent election...

...His house has been surrounded by tanks and troops ever since...

...Luz refused...

...Nereu, a trusted old Vargas man, could be relied on to carry out orders...

...The Navy and Air Force, as is well known, were thoroughly opposed to Lott's maneuvers...

...As Lott was speaking thus to Fiuza, his troops were entering Catete Palace to arrest Acting President Luz...

...The last time was August 1954, when bullets intended for him felled an Air Force major...

...Lott threatened to resign as War Minister unless Luz agreed to his demand...

...aroused the hostility of certain businessmen by pledging to enforce constitutional provisions granting the workers a share in their profits...

...No statesman, but a politician of integrity who had risen from humble circumstances, Cafe took power under extremely disturbing conditions...

...But Mamede was not under Lott's command, since the War College is operated by the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the direction of the President...

...Lott resigned...

...no North American newspaper has interviewed President Cafe to gel his version of what happened and why the U.S...

...The Communists could switch overnight from opposition to support of Kubitschek because, first, their "popular front" line calls for "unity" with all "patriotic" forces, including the bourgeoisie...

...3. Kubitschek was, finally, the candidate of the Communists, too...

...Luz consulted the Government's legal advisers, and they unanimously agreed that (1) there were no grounds for punishing Mamede, and (2) only the Acting President, not Lott, had the authority to punish him...

...This touched off a chain of events which has led to the present state of siege in Brazil and control of the Government by the Minister of War, Henrique Texeira Lott, and may eventually lead to still more deplorable events, not excluding civil war...

...They were supported by a coalition consisting mainly of these three parties: Partido Social Democratico (PSD), Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro (PTB), and Partido Comunista do Brasil (PCB...

...In 1947, the PCB won more than 800,000 votes, or 10 per cent of the total...

...That was November 10...

...At this point, Cafe had a heart attack...

...Lott demanded that Luz punish Mamede...

...No less myopic, unfortunately, is Nelson Rockefeller, who goes along with Kubitschek because he believes that Kubitschek, as a representative of Brazilian conservatism, has something in common with U.S...

...He has appealed to the Supreme Court of Brazil--packed with Vargas appointees--in vain...

...The false "left-right" view of Brazil has resulted in making Kubitschek's chief opponent, General Juarez Tavora, appear as a "rightist" because observers have felt it necessary to characterize Kubitschek as a "leftist...

...2. Tavora, the "rightist...

...Military men who are members of the Brazilian Communist party led in the planning of the putsch and have been behind Lott--as well as Kubitschek--from the very beginning...

...To make Lott's coup look "constitutional," the leaders of the PTB and PSD rounded up a majority of Deputies to vote Luz out of office...

...The only fixed aspect of the Brazilian crisis is its origin, the events that led up to it...

...Are there not in these facts the makings of a first-class news story...

...The Lafer, Moreira Salles, Matarazzo and Euvaldo Lodi empires--to name only a few--backed him...

...On the other hand, the press here has uncritically accepted the Lott interpretation of the November 11 coup as democratic and constitutional...

...So was a section of the Army, many units of which had no idea why they were being mobilized...

...Colonel Jurandir Mamede, a professor at the War College, spoke at the burial of a former Chief of Staff, General Canrobert da Costa...

...In October 1954, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies, defeating a host of candidates which included Vargas's son, Lutero...

...Carlos Lacerda, 41, is editor and publisher of Tribuna da Imprensa, a Rio de Janeiro newspaper that is widely known for its exposes of graft and corruption under former Brazilian President Getulio Vargas...

...For twenty years, Vargas's cronies had had their hands deep in the public trough, but not one was called to account...

...And the President, Cafe Filho, rejected Lott's demand to punish Mamede...

...But even this has been clouded by lack of information, especially in the United States...

...A law exempting all trade-unionists from the literacy test applied to other voters made the huge working-class vote unusually desirable...

...Kubitschek won by a plurality of about 450,000 last October, out of a total of 9 million votes cast...

...The country was shown to be badly divided...

...That is to say, Cafe's cardinal error was to call elections before cleaning out the Vargas gang...

...Instead, one must think in terms of a country long ruled by a corrupt dictatorship that tortured workers and students but also, like Peron's dictatorship, managed to make some social progress since modern tyrannies must do things that will be "popular...

...1 find it rather diflicult to understand why so far...

...It was...

...Shortly after the Presidential election, President Joao Cafe Filho was stricken with a heart attack...