Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR HARLEM'S AMERICA I read with interest the special issue of The New Leader containing the testimony of Claude Brown, Arthur Dunmeyer, and Ralph Ellison before the Senate sub-committee...
...I would have preferred the past tense...
...Indeed, the term "bloodless coup" is a misnomer...
...It was a military move against a rather weak government that was attempting to survive...
...I have no quarrel with your reviewer's right to express his opinion of Mc-Luhan's work, but I do deprecate his condescending description of McLuhan as "an obscure professor of English from the Canadian provinces...
...The memoirs of ex-Governor Mauro Borges and those of several exiled politicians all contain some rather hair-raising accounts of what went on in certain army barracks...
...I have been borne out by time in the second and third of the three points raised, i.e., that it would be necessary to install a military dictatorship, and that the bombing would be fruitless, merely a sign of our sterility...
...Too many good men and true democrats were in the government and they have been tarred by that association which has taken on the aspects of a foregone conclusion...
...People like the conservative democratic lawyer Sobral Pinto, who has been resisting the military regime on legal and constitutional grounds, or Alceu Amoroso Lima, the Catholic philosopher and critic who is anti-Communist enough to see a military coup when it happens and can foresee the dire possible consequences that might lead to a true Communist threat if the non-Communist Left is ruthlessly crushed and reaction parades under the name of democracy...
...First, the title...
...When the price of beef placed it out of the reach of the average worker, Roberto Campos suggested in the manner of Marie Antoinette that they eat chicken...
...Guided it certainly is, the second part is most doubtful...
...Unquestionably, one of the basic causes for racial difficulties is the almost complete lack of communication, the continued currency given to outmoded stereotypes, and a failure by the majority population to realize the difficulties of life in the ghetto and the aspirations of ghetto residents to lead productive lives on a basis of equality...
...There are also the students...
...Along with Archbishop C??mara, mention should be made of what is called the "festive left," that group of artists, writers and actors who have consistently needled the regime with satire that often goes over the heads of the government censors and police...
...There is said to be less inflation in the economic sector (I wonder why it's never called segment, if economists must be geometricians), but the rate of exchange is still artificial and staples such as black beans and rice continue to rise as wages remain the same...
...I think that democracy has already foundered there and what is left are a few hidden bubbles of its last gasps...
...What took place in 1889 was the overthrow of the Brazilian Empire and the establishment of the Republic...
...New York City Percy E. Sutton President Borough of Manhattan BRAZIL I have just read Peter W. Rodger's article, "Brazil's Foundering Democracy" (NL, November 7), and as I have recently returned from a year in Brazil I should like to comment on it...
...That did not, as was stated, win independence from Portugal...
...If they kept the anticipated degree of involvement secret from their political superiors they were dishonest, and if it was a surprise to their superiors they were incompetent...
...There was a prohibited meeting of the outlawed student group UNE in Belo Horizonte last August...
...S??o Paulo, Brazil Herbert Cahn MCLUHAN I read with some interest Robert Meister's column on "The McLuhan Follies" (NL, October 10...
...Could it be that had we done so first our people could have produced something other than a more expensive level of stalemate...
...Mention in the article should have been made of some of the "grand old men" of Brazilian democracy...
...Toronto, Canada E. A. R. Newson...
...He does not, as your reviewer would imply, wander about through the 10 Canadian provinces and it is quite unfair to suggest that he is a peripatetic Plato gathering an audience where he may...
...At a time when Goodwin was still writing speeches for the Administration, I put my own vast military experience (Pfc., 10th Inf...
...I applaud your thoughtfulness in preparing this issue...
...New York City Gregory Rabassa Columbia University GOODWIN I was very much impressed by Richard Goodwin's article, "What We Can Do About Vietnam" (NL, November 7), not for what he said but for what he left unsaid: Our military establishment is either incompetent or dishonest...
...The Goulart regime was far from ideal, but it was not the chaos that it has been painted as having been...
...Brazil declared its independence from the mother country in 1822...
...My aim was simply to add some significant footnotes to what he said in the hopes that his expos?© would not be seriously misunderstood...
...The Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) has made a few weak efforts to field an opposition and even these mild complaints have been met with stern measures on the part of Marshal Castelo Branco...
...His erratic course has led him from the extreme Left to the extreme Right, so one wonders how he will fare in the extreme Center...
...One small piece of carping criticism might be made of the piece, and that has to do with the revolt of 1889...
...Realistically, about the only fervent opposition to the military regime these days comes from those not involved in the government...
...I would have thought that some mention might have been made of Dom H?©lder C??mara, Archbishop of Recife, who has been speaking out in favor of democracy and social reform in the afflicted Northeast where the military movement of April 1, 1964 (the date has been changed officially to March 31 to avoid any connection with April Fool's Day) was the harshest...
...There was a recent case in Rio de Janeiro of the appearance of detectives of the DOPS (Department of Public and Social Order, a euphemism for secret police) at a symposium on the works of Bertolt Brecht...
...The Romans did this for centuries We must learn to live with this the number of years necessary...
...Granted there was little public bloodshed, but the tales of individual bloodshed are quite appalling...
...The officer in charge was looking for Senor Brecht so that he could place him under arrest...
...Perhaps Professor McLuhan will shrug this off as evidence of your reviewer's ignorance, but it weakens the review by indicating that Meister is as careless of his facts as he alleges McLuhan to be of his conclusions...
...The so-called revolution was led by the same tired forces that had been hemming and hawing for years...
...Could it be that having written Caesar's speeches, Goodwin now reads his wars, and that this is a sobering experience...
...Surely no equal match, surely no heroic victory...
...Many of the former slum dwellers from the favelas who were moved to a new housing development in the suburbs of Rio called Villa Kennedy have been forced to rise before dawn and walk to work in the city because the bus fares have gone beyond their means...
...The first point was that we are "in a war at the outskirts of our side of the world that is too expensive for us to win, but which we cannot afford to lose...
...Carlos La-cerda has since been left out of the political take and has gone into his usual comfortable position of being against the regime...
...DEAR EDITOR HARLEM'S AMERICA I read with interest the special issue of The New Leader containing the testimony of Claude Brown, Arthur Dunmeyer, and Ralph Ellison before the Senate sub-committee studying the "Federal Role in Urban Problems" ("Harlem's America", NL, September 26...
...April 26, 1965...
...The price of chicken rose of course...
...Rodger has done a good job on the whole in at least introducing the American public to the sorry situation in Brazil...
...I feel that the special issue of The New Leader helped your important readership to a more complete understanding of these matters and thus served a useful public purpose...
...II) at your disposal ("Dear Editor...
...Reg., W.W...
...Despite the fact that the city was an armed camp and the police were stopping traffic into the city looking for young faces, the students met in the basement of a church with the help of the clergy...
...McLuhan is a professor of English at the University of Toronto...
Vol. 49 • December 1966 • No. 24
