Brazil's New Language

...ex-fascist foreign ministers and exCommunist development commissars—one has to learn to communicate in this language...

...Each question must be examined as it arises...

...it has new responsibilities...

...The main planks in Rocha's platform are delegating Congressional powers to the Cabinet (to solve supply problems which the Premier now has ample power to solve, should he and the President be so inclined), and a plebiscite in conjunction with this October's elections...

...It remains to be seen, though, whether the country-wide elections on October 7 will fashion an equally strong domestic consensus in favor of administrative efficiency, more equitable distribution of income and rural change...

...Thus when Governor Leonel Brizola expropriated an American telephone company last February in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, he was not "nationalizing" or thinking "Socialist...

...It is said here that the reason Quadros (apparently) failed in his bid to regain national prominence last April was that he was too old: Seven months as President of Brazil are equivalent to 20 years in political office elsewhere...

...Only three months later, however, the illusion of moderation was rudely dispelled...

...Actually, this should not have come as a surprise...

...By good timing on the President's part, all this could come to pass on the eve of the elections...

...In the old nations the machinery of democracy is the elective process...

...And by a strange coincidence the scarcities were felt most sharply in Carlos Lacerda's state, Guanabara, where stores were sacked and the smell of violence was in the streets...

...THEORY AND PRACTICE Brazil's New Language By Keith Botsford Rio de Janeiro Brazil today is the largest and furthest advanced of the "new" nations now coming to political maturity in conditions almost totally different from those that formed the Western democracies...

...Instead, what Carlos Lacerda has recently referred to as a coup blanc may take its place...

...Supplies of certain commodities (particularly staples) were suddenly mysteriously scarce...

...Independence is an "active" principle...

...What follows is an elementary lexicon of the new lingua franca, as it is heard every day in Brazil: 1. Brazil needs renewing from top to bottom...

...Keith Botsford, novelist and an editor of Noble Savage, is our correspondent in Latin America...

...During the crisis which followed Quadros' resignation a year ago, the various forces combined and consolidated...

...Every act starts from zero: Brazil will not support systems (unmixed capitalism) or conjunctions (the cold war) which do not serve the nation...

...But this is too far off for Goulart, who apparently feels that the moment is propitious for a plebiscite now...

...Traditionally, the method for establishing a Peronist-type dictatorship is to form a massive, politicized labor movement that, along with the students, can be utilized as the shock troops of the new èra...

...The Constitution also provides for an orderly succession to the premiership...

...medals for Che Guevara and speeches to New York bankers by President João Goulart...

...His first move in his struggle for power came when he nominated his Foreign Minister, Santiago Dantas, to replace Neves as Premier...

...The ultimate aim of this kind of strategy is strong, one-party rule—a radical experiment against democracy...

...But it cannot be understood solely in these OldLanguage terms...

...The Old Language took it for granted that institutions and structures were necessary for the proper functioning of a modern state...

...The most recent episode in the crisis began with another resignation, that of Prime Minister Tancredo Neves on June 16 of this year...

...Having rejected Dantas, the Congress was denounced as "defying the will of the people" (by the people's self-appointed spokesmen...

...Brazil's traditional political parties have done little to deter the President from getting his way...

...Elections no longer have great importance here...

...new roads can be built into the wilderness, while those between major cities remain impassable...

...In such union-based parties Communists rise to eminence under a different name, and the general impatience and artificially created crises do the rest...

...They take the place of the Old Language's "progress," "development" and "evolution...

...The Congress does the same...

...The President was well aware that his man did not have a chance, but he insisted on following through on his nomination...

...it may also be affected by the latent anti-Americanism of the national consensus...

...If it denies these powers, the Premier will resign and another crisis will ensue...

...Goulart is able simultaneously to feud with Governor Lacerda, an outspoken anti-Communist, and to maintain the official ban on the Communist party...

...As was expected, on June 28 Dantas was overwhelmingly rejected...

...Independent institutions, territorial sovereignty, self-rule (all Old Language) do not make a "new" nation independent...

...The purpose was to provide the nationalist "presidentialist" bloc with a new argument against the Congress: that the country's older parties were blocking reform and making it difficult for Moura Andrade to form a Cabinet...

...But who today, Brazilians ask, has 150 years in which to grow up...

...Many believe the Alliance for Progress (note the Old Language) can create the economic conditions for a "great leap forward," and that the country can do without the slow and painful adjustments that accompanied the Industrial Revolution...

...But there is no reason to believe that he has altered his general plan...

...We're nationalists "for" Brazil...

...We have a pragmatic attitude...

...Certainly, Brazil is developing at a fantastic speed...

...It is scheduled to be held six months before the 1965 Presidential elections...

...But President Goulart has never liked the limitations of authority thrust upon him by the "parliamentary" system which was thrown together to govern Brazil when Quadros fled...

...The implications of Rocha's demands are clear to the Congress...

...During his first months in office, Goulart seemed to take a moderate turn...

...They decreed a general strike "on behalf of a democratic, nationalist Cabinet...

...For a national culture to form its own institutions required a long period of peaceful evolution...

...After making several statements that were critical of the President's policies (particularly in foreign affairs), Moura Andrade received the Congress' investiture on July 3. But the very next day he resigned...

...In short, bad politicians and futile political parties could condemn the Congress without its ever having really had a legitimate trial...

...We have to be ruthless...

...Quadros revolutionized the elites, giving them new directions and energies...

...As Goulart's Foreign Minister, Dantas —of whom the least that can be said is that he is a man of unbridled ambition — had become spokesman for the country's combined radical-nationalist-progressive forces...

...What works, works...

...Incessant political turmoil has plagued Brazil since August 1961, when Quadros quit the Presidency...

...They may use words such as "progress," "reform" and "democracy," but if they do, they use them without the associations of class and politics common to the older societies...

...The President speaks in the name of reform...

...After consulting with the congressional majority, the President designates a candidate and submits his name to the Lower House...

...Rather than adapt old forms, Brazil will create new ones...

...if these too are rejected, the House must make the designation...

...His rejection by the entrenched political machines of the Congress was assured...

...Already certain ominous changes have been made in the military, with the result that pro-Goulart elements are now solidly in power while anti-Goulart elements have successfully been neutralized...

...and the Goulart regime, now barely a year old, has attempted to adapt the various revolutions to the nation's political life...

...The New Language calls this amalgam of contradictions "realism" or "pragmatism...

...Nonetheless, a massive propaganda campaign, consisting mainly of demogogic pressures from the trade unions, was unleashed on the country...

...These nations prefer to live without the burden of ideology, and show little interest in the great debates of the 19th century...

...2. We are realists...

...Apparently Goulart had merely been biding his time, awaiting the right moment to strike...

...The immediate aim of the pressure from the unions was to obtain a "plebiscite" on the question of parliamentarianism...

...a new electoral bloc, a "popular front" was in the making...

...Like the country's students, the Leftist unions are controlled at the top by Communists or Communizing elements...

...For while it enabled him to take office by calming the perfectly reasonable fears of many who were concerned about the new President's radical tendencies, it does not work and is a constant invitation to those who (along with Goulart) like to maneuver for political power...

...Recent events in Argentina and Venezuela have pointed up Brazil's primacy in Latin America (only belatedly recognized by the United States...

...For the New Language has not solved all the old problems...

...Brazil is a leader now...

...This second Congressional crisis was a signal for the Leftist unions, which are represented by the National Confederation of Industrial Workers and openly controlled by the President, to plunge the country into chaos...

...If it doesn't, we have to improvise...

...Positive independence in Brazil is an effective instrument of national policy, a lever in bargaining, a demonstrable form of status, a slogan to spur development, an appeal to national unity and, especially, a form of self-definition...

...Indeed, their indifference to the country's fate is little short of extraordinary...

...He can talk in several directions at once, knowing that he has the means (consultations, concessions, compromises, appointments, repressions, gestures, retreats, trial balloons) to seek his own stability...

...4. Brazil has freed itself three times: once from Portugal...

...But where Vargas knew how to manipulate these elements for his own use, it is doubtful that Goulart has a similar grasp of the situation...

...Of its own weight, and in the midst of its democratic inclinations, riches, abilities and hopes, Brazil could fall under another Vargas...

...Yet a bon mot dating from the regime of Getulio Vargas, to the effect that Brazil had fascist rule, Communist laws and a democratic people, expresses clearly what the word "structure" means here: an almost mystical faith in democracy and, ultimately, in the reconciliation of extremes...

...Just as there is "positive neutralism" so there is "positive independence...

...During the past five years, Juscelino Kubitschek built Brasilia and leavened the industrial process...

...Dantas is a controversial figure at best, and clearly a bête noire to Brazil's Center and Right...

...The nomination of Francisco Brochado da Rocha (ex-secretary to Brizola) as Premier, and his acceptance on July 10 by a Congress hoping to assure its own seats and weary of political in-fighting, has solved nothing...

...In effect both men, as well as the Federal Government, which finally intervened in the dispute, were engaged in defining a New Language...

...Meanwhile, the more genuine crises in Brazil—galloping inflation, social inequality, padded bureaucracies, inadequate educational opportunities, corruption, food shortages —remain unsolved and disregarded...

...This New-Language nationalism in foreign affairs has been the major part of Brazil's national consensus...

...maladjustment between industry and agriculture can be chronic—all can be reconciled with Brazilian "reality...

...To be sure, Goulart backed down momentarily when the violence that grew out of the general strike got out of control...

...Progress was an ideal to be attained in the future, not here and now...

...Brazil's recent independent position in world affairs may have roots in its colonial past...

...And agitation and pressure increase...

...And in the "new" nations, concepts like "Left" and "Right" are only so much linguistic deadwood...

...It is not inconceivable that the electorate might decide that the parties' uselessness is an indictment against the system in which they operate...

...one region can be rich and another poor...

...It's the people who count in the end...

...These are the constitutional facts...

...With this pressure against it, the Congress took up Goulart's second nomination, Senate Vice President Auro de Moura Andrade...

...in fact, it has created many new ones, and chief among them has been the country's political stability...

...By turning on the extremes, power can also create the consensus...

...Quadros could not find this equilibrium, and had no excuse for not finding it...

...Regardless of the outcome, the forces working in the country—the Congress, the Army, business, the Church, the rural masses, the workers and the individual politicians—will produce, within a given spectrum, a Brazilian policy, and this policy will turn out to reflect the consensus...

...To understand Brazil—all of it: the rise and fall, exile and return of Janio Quadros...

...Basically, what they are after, at least in the immediate future, is not a just or an ideal state, but a successful one...

...But the fact is that a revolution may soon be unnecessary...

...and now from the United States and everyone else...

...Nor was their scarcity without relation to the fact that the chief rice-growing state, Rio Grande do Sul, is administered by Goulart's brother-in-law and radical cohort, Governor Brizola, the country's number one demagogue...

...And Brazil's economic and political rapprochement with Africa has already produced tangible results: new markets, not only for products but for ideas...

...Yet the President, who set up the famous 1954 ABC Pact which linked Vargas' Brazil to Peron's Argentina and a Leftist Chile, served as the dictator's faithful deputy in the key Cabinet post of Minister of Labor and has long cherished the mantle of his old master...

...The members of Congress faced elections in three months...

...3. There's a national consensus in Brazil, and you can't do anything without popular support...

...Brazil has a stable culture, including a solid tradition of service and loyalty to the State inherited from the Monarchy, a democratic Army and a long tradition of racial convivendo...

...Thus, to Brazil's already numerous problems—a severe economic crisis, the cry for reform, serious social disequilibrium—Goulart added still another: a crisis of confidence in the regime...

...But since it lacks strong political institutions, according to the old logic Brazil should be ripe for a revolution...

...Neves was required to step down by the Constitution, which obliges any public official running for elective office to leave his post...

...Neither does anything about it...

...The old forms are merely obstacles...

...In the neighboring state of Rio de Janeiro, long-prepared agitation led to riots, which resulted in a number of dead and hundreds more wounded...

...It involves a special and important freedom—the freedom from history...

...once from European, particularly French, culture...

...Few Brazilians can forgive him for that...

...If anything, they have been helping him cut their own throats by failing to make even the slightest attempt to bring about reforms, end corruption, or ease the economic crisis...

...The straws were in the wind...

...Revolution was a sign that a durable structure was wanting, either in the culture or in the institutions...

...Such a plebiscite was provided for by the Ato Adicional, the constitutional amendment which limited the President's powers and set up the present system...

...If the nomination is rejected, he may submit two more names...

...Nor was Brizola merely making a gesture to the "Left," since Governor Carlos Lacerda of Guanabara, his arch political antagonist, acted much as he did...

...If it grants him the powers he asks, Goulart will be completely in the saddle...

...in Brazil, the machinery is the national consensus...

...In these terms, SUDENE, the giant development plan for the Northeast, can coexist with jeito, the bribe without which no official business can be transacted...

...Brazil sincerely feels that its racial democracy, its common colonial past, its lack of established ideology and its pioneer work in the New Language makes it a leader among the "new" nations...

...Being one of Goulart's confidants, his nomination was only intended to deepen the crisis, and his gestures of independence had a specific purpose...

...5. We're not nationalists "against" anyone...

...Of course, Brazilians insist there will not be a revolution because their country is too profoundly democratic...

...Consequently, at the time of Quadros' return to Brazil last April, the new President's stock was high...

...These are images of "renewal" that Brazilians can understand...

...The burden of the Alliance for Progress is that such structures must be formed before aid will be given...

...Popular support preserved democracy because everyone knew that government, in Brazil's New Language, is the middle term between extremes...

...In fact, the new Premier is merely another pressure on the already shaky institutions that are attempting to preserve democracy in Brazil...