Behind Brazil's Rebellion

...And it was...

...Since inflation has been caused largely by political unrest instigated by the government, it can be expected to slow down to a manageable figure...

...What did he have up his sleeve...

...From March 13 onward, it was clear to everyone in Brazil that the country faced disastrous alternatives...

...A severe anti-strike bill is likely to pass as a reaction to the abusive strikes which for two years were directed not against management but against the public itself...

...The Center coalition, though aware of this development, planned nonetheless to coast along until the 1965 elections when, it was assumed, it would be well rid of Goulart and his cohorts...

...What had happened to the brilliant organizational technique of the Communists...

...Goulart had been actively inciting insubordination among non-commissioned ranks, and if the non-coms, together with pro-Goulart officers, neutralized anti-Goulart elements, his insurrectionary strategy would probably have succeeded...

...What was his "secret weapon...

...The governor declared a half holiday, and there was no doubt about what was really meant...

...Goulart was burning his bridges...

...With the revolt against Goulart a success, it became imperative to avoid bloodshed over an issue already decided...

...But what peace and progress in Brazil requires above all is that men of Goulart's temperament be prevented from exploiting these pressing political problems for personal gain...

...By making their houses worthless as marketable or income-producing property, the decree in effect wiped out thensavings...

...The second decree expropriated private petroleum refineries...

...with the Left against him, he was lost...

...If his prior equivocations were only feigned, then it is impossible to explain why Goulart chose this particular moment to bare his true colors...

...With the Left on his side, Goulart still stood a chance...

...An alliance which had been in negotiation for some weeks among the governors of the five most important Southern states was made public...

...But if Goulart had abandoned his friends, they would surely have turned against him and made an alliance with his enemies...

...Purged of their conspiratorial minority, they are likely to re-integrate themselves into the system...

...Goulart had never actually been elected to the Presidency of Brazil...

...Alliances arose between men who for decades had been attacking each other with the foulest of insults...

...It turned out to be nothing...

...This was another case of plain demagoguery, since the Legislature had long ago passed a law authorizing the expropriation of any property needed for social purposes...

...The Minister of the Navy resigned...

...ProCommunist Governor Arrais of Parnambuco was shortly arrested, and by noon the next day Goulart was isolated in Rio...

...This too was sheer provocation, for the government already owned most of the country's refining capacity...

...One question cannot now be answered definitely...

...There was actually a shortage of party members to fill the lush government jobs that now became available as part of the international, whiskey-drinking jet set flying to conferences in Havana, Moscow and Peking...

...As President, Goulart became a victim of his own past...

...Goulart seemed intent upon provocation...

...SOME observers believe that if Goulart had deserted his revolutionary supporters, he could have ruled from the Center with the help of the large majority of uncommitted professionals who want the government to continue laying golden eggs...

...GOULART'S INSURRECTIONARY MANEUVERS Behind Brazil's Rebellion By Herbert Cahn Sao Paulo To understand the crisis which precipitated the ouster of João Goulart from the Presidency of Brazil last month, one must go back to the inflammatory speech which the former President delivered on March 13...

...Brazil's foreign debt is not large in terms of exchange income, but too great a part of it falls due over the next 30 months...

...If he could not obtain his objectives by legal means, Goulart asserted, he would go over the heads of Congress and the Judiciary...

...There were no Walter Reuthers or Aneurin Bevans among them...

...It is doubtful, though, that the real Goulart forces can be excluded from Brazilian politics for long...

...Goulart was fleeing...

...In São Paulo, a group of ladies announced that on Thursday they would lead a "March for God and the Family" through the center of the city...

...But however much the present crackdown on the Left offends democratic sensibilities abroad, it should be borne in mind that Brazilians are not bent on persecution, and the repressions will be short-lived...

...Drastic steps had to be taken...

...By a stroke of luck, coffee prices have been on the rise, and can be expected to yield an additional $300 million annually...

...Never before had the word Commissariat been used in Brazil except as a translation from the Russian...

...His successor was a silly old admiral from some bureaucratic backwater whose only qualification for the job was his political subservience to the Left...

...For Brizolla's nonCommunist Left, however, it was now or never...

...The Communists, held together by party discipline and extraterritorial loyalties, gambled on maintaining their penetration under a new government...

...In doing so he has rendered Brazil a service and strengthened its democracy...

...Over half a million people massed around the cathedral...

...Their productivity cannot be improved by giving them land and then turning it over to more powerful neighbors or to the even more powerful state...

...Everyone was dumbfounded...

...They are too strong, skillful and rich...

...The week before Easter a rebellion had broken out among naval ranks in Rio...

...His career on the Left stemmed originally from his position as Getulio Vargas' protégé, and was thus a matter of expediency rather than conviction...

...He was elected Vice President with less than a third of the vote...

...His precipitous behavior can therefore be explained in only one of two ways...

...tax collections are becoming more severe...

...If reasonable concessions are not withheld by industrial management, and as long as the trend of substituting foreign with local management continues, the prospects in that area are not bleak...

...Is it likely that a man with long-range plans to emulate Lenin would expend his energies accumulating land tides and smuggling cattle...

...He had proved to be as ineffectual at revolution as he had been at governing...

...It is far more persuasive to assume that he was simply victimized by events which escaped his control...

...The effect of this maneuver was to drive his opponents into each others arms...

...The law was badly, even foolishly, drawn up...

...And only an examination of the nature of his administration can reveal why he was compelled to do so...

...The third decree, about which controversy had raged for weeks, "authorized" the government to expropriate rural property within six miles of federal improvements...

...Instead of exercising leadership, Goulart temporized, and tried to prove to every side that he was the enemy of the other...

...Since he cannot be taken seriously as a social reformer—the cost of living rose 200 per cent in two years of his administration— one can only conclude that Goulart had either fallen into the hands of his Communist and fascist allies or was deliberately provoking an uproar to perpetuate himself in office...

...One by one, as these units made contact with the "enemy," they switched sides...

...Either his past equivocations were designed to hide his intention of turning Brazil into a Communist state, or he was overwhelmed by events...

...But such disruption could only succeed if the Armed Forces, thought to be split, remained neutral...

...he was never an adventurer like Castro...

...Most of the lower-middle class and upper-working class own homes which constitute the basis of whatever wealth they have...

...Between the expected rescheduling of the debt and this new income, the Brazilian economic position is evidently not desperate...

...For Goulart had incorporated some formerly mute elements of the population into the political dialogue of the country...

...Thus he launched his fateful attacks on the Constitution, Congress and the political parties...

...Protests, pro and con, flooded the mass media...

...The speech itself was given at a rally reminiscent of Nazi Party gatherings, and offered proposals not only unacceptable to the people at large but, in some instances, proposals already repudiated by the Legislature...

...The order was countermanded by Goulart...

...This movement from the land to the city is already well under way in Brazil, and is not likely to be interrupted...

...Many non-Communists of the Left will suffer for nearly delivering their country into the hands of the Communists...

...a mild land reform bill is likely to pass quickly...

...The new laws will sound less radical than those proposed by Goulart, but will be more effective because they will no longer be sabotaged by the administration...

...It may sound comical, but it was in fact a wellexecuted maneuver...

...Two problems remain moot—inflation and the foreign debt...

...Goulart's strategy was dependent, however, on the disruption of petroleum supplies, on general strikes and popular insurrections...

...That speech turned out to have a decisive effect on subsequent events...

...This alliance proved to be an act of statesmanship, not political cunning...

...Legislation is being drawn up to settle pressing problems...

...One by one he sent units out of the city to meet and "fight" the oncoming forces from São Paulo and Minas...

...The adherence of Kruel, formerly a close friend of Goulart, proved to be crucial...

...His mandate was legal, but not popular...

...But the purposes of these decrees was clearly not to solve problems...

...The first timid move was made on Monday, March 16...

...On March 31, the radio announced that Governor Magalhaes Pinto of Minas Gerais, a man who had tried to pacify the hot heads until the very last, was in rebellion against the Federal government, together with the Army command in his state...

...Goulart's problem, then, was to maintain an effective coalition without alienating Leftist support...

...In the early afternoon of April 1 practically the whole country was under control of anti-Goulart forces...

...Those who assume that this fact is not recognized here base their belief on the pretentious supposition that professional politicians are idiots...

...It was probably the largest antiCommunist rally in living memory, and a decisive repudiation of Goulart's claim as the real leader of the people...

...Goulart had always been a cautious politician of the Left...

...São Paulo Governor Adhemar de Barros, with the regional military commander, General Kruel, joined the rebellion that evening...

...What is more, Goulart's administration had two more years in which to prepare a Communist takeover, if that was his intention...

...Their lot can only be improved by the gradual modernizing of farm technology, and by facilitating the transition of agricultural workers to the industrial cities...

...Following the resignation of Janio Quadros he was maneuvered into the Presidency by his brother-inlaw, Governor Leonel Brizolla, and practically the same group of generals who have now removed him...

...Herbert Cahn, a former Rhodes scholar, has for the past several years been living in Latin America...

...But the more reasonable elements in the coalition proved to be at the mercy of the revolutionary faction led by Brizolla, and thus constantly found themselves outside the boundaries of reasonable compromise...

...Their unity was born of the crisis into which Goulart had plunged the country, and Goulart himself was put on notice that the country would not passively submit to his ambitions...

...The march was to be the answer to Goulart's rally of the week before...

...It was, moreover, to be enforced both by the regular police and by an agency only recently created and called, of all things, the Commissariat for the Defense of the Popular Economy...

...The sense of joy and relief the country over was immense...

...The man in the most delicate position was the First Army Commander in Rio because he still had Goulart, his Commander-inChief, breathing down his neck...

...Some somber predictions are now being made about the political stability of the country because of its poverty and its social injustices...

...To underscore his intentions, Goulart followed up this outrageous speech with three executive decrees...

...The first was directed against small property-owners who make their living from rent...

...Either it would go over to the Communists and disappear behind the iron curtain, or become a neutralist bankruptcy on the order of Indonesia or Algeria...

...The party card became an Aladdin's lamp...

...Threatening to withdraw their support, they maneuvered Goulart into a more and more intransigent position as a leader of the Left...

...For weeks there will be severe repressions...

...The decree was juridically pointless...

...But what may be expected now...

...Actually these new elements, mainly the country's poor, will now be cultivated by all, and will be no more of a monolithic block than the rich or the middle class but simply another factor in the political equation of the future...

...The rebellion's leaders are intent upon preventing a Frondizi from taking office after 1965, and will maneuver accordingly...

...Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin and Peron made similar threats, of course, but in their case it was in order to attain power, whereas Goulart already occupied the Presidency...

...The first explanation is difficult to sustain in view of the fact that Goulart had, over the past decade, become one of the largest landowners in Brazil...

...The Left in Brazil being a minority, however, it was by itself too small a base from which to govern...

...a bank reorganization bill is ready...

...It set their rents at one-third the present market value, and threatened expropriation if the property remained vacant more than 30 days...

...The governors were men of completely different temperaments and three of them were competing candidates for the 1965 election...

...As their victory seemed imminent, they lost all sense of responsibility in choosing their associates...

...Only an isolated strike here or there, no insurrections, no burning petroleum refineries...

...Rather than desert the revolutionaries, then, he moved to strengthen them, thereby enabling them to attack all the sacred cows of Brazilian society...

...The coalition was determined to act only in extremis...

...The agricultural workers' problem is more desperate...

...The Communists were, of course, delighted...

...He promptly complained to the press that his fellow officers' opposition to his appointment was due to his marriage to a person of humble origin, i.e., a Negro, and he assured the public that he was happier than other admirals, who were being cuckolded by their wives and who were, in any case, in the pay of the Pentagon...

...The Minister of the Navy called on the Army to suppress it...

...Have the workers of Brazil become Peronized, so that they will now use their power to stir up political mischief to hamper productivity...

...These predictions are fallacious...