Brazil's Ploce State
Lens, Sidney
BRAZIL'S POLICE STATE by SIDNEY LENS THE RECEPTIONIST at Brazil's minis try of planning speaks fluent, U.S. college-style English. So does the minister, Roberto Campos, a brilliant...
...Under Goulart's secret entouragement, the sergeants were moving to destroy traditional military discipline...
...He usually sided with the unions in wage disputes, he talked of giving illiterates the right to vote, and hi~ brother-in-law even suggested a "people's Congress where nationalist workers, peasants, sergeants, officers, and authentic public men would meet...
...We may question the electoral restriction in Brazil which prohibits illiterates-more than half the population-from voting...
...The students and intellectuals are overwhelmingly hostile, not only because there has been a purge of "leftist" professors, but because they want a genuine nationalist revolution...
...Neither of these assessments turned out to be accurate, but there is no doubt that President Castelo Branco and his planDecember, 1966 ning minister, Roberto Campos, are "our" friends...
...And by linking itself so closely to the police state, the U.S...
...its military and foreign policies are attuned to the wishes of Washington...
...In its first gush of power the dictatorship arrested thousands of people (estimates run from 10,000 to 42,000...
...In 1961, when the military officers decided to bombard the palace of nationalist Governor Leonel Brizola in Rio Grande do SuI, the rank-and-file sergeants disarmed them...
...Everyone in Brazil, including the American Embassy, knows this...
...Some in fact are using the opportunity for speculation...
...In Brazil, the United States was on the scene with its navy and was prepared to send in millions in armaments to any state government that would raise the flag of insurgency against the national government...
...State Department has cut itself off from graceful retreat...
...Thus, no executive chosen by the military's political arm, ARENA (Alliance for National Renovation) , need risk a popular mandate...
...But his main thrust, in line with "sound" international banking ideas, has been to fight inflation by depressing the economy and reducing consumption...
...But he was an elected vice-president, who by a complex but legal route became president after Janio Quadros' unexpected resignation in 1961...
...I asked one American official how Brazil could eliminate its terrible ,fauelas...
...He is preparing to manufacture a counterinsurgency airplane which may be used in Vietnam-if the war lasts that long...
...They also formed separate clubs, with the help of some union leaders, that were an obvious threat to the military hierarchy...
...Perhaps the reason is that the economic crisis did not abate...
...Campos had promised to hold it to twenty-five per cent a year by 1965 (it was forty-seven per cent) and to ten per cent this year (it was almost thirty per cent at mid-year...
...To the students' credit they voted overwhelmingly against government-sponsored candidates and retained their old groups, even though illegally...
...Before Castelo Branco came to power Brazil had been in ferment for years...
...Apart from monetary measures designed to slow down inflation, Campos is determined: One-To make Brazil so attractive to North American investors they will pump hundreds of millions of dollars into its economy...
...More were "cassadoed" later...
...A friend of mine sat in on a meeting of military officers who were actually discussing strategies and dates for overthrowing the government...
...he may even contract it...
...Two-To force inefficient native industry to the wall and drive up sharply the level of productivity through new industry financed by U.S...
...But for Brazilians of all classes, the results of these first two and a half years under Campos have been extremely painful...
...Not only has the "American Way" been a prop to reaction, but it has been a gross failure as well...
...Many hundreds were put in a December, 1966 Mauldin in the Chicago Sun·Times That Old Latin Refrain status called "processing" -they were being investigated on various charges preparatory to standing trial before a military court...
...That war is inevitable, and we in Brazil must do our part to get ourselves ready...
...As for the promising peasant movements, they are currently in suspension, and, like the labor unions, incapable of pursuing their goals...
...Forty of the 408 members of the lower house, for instance, were immediately "cassadoed"-removed from office and deprived of all political rights...
...I t proclaims, in effect: ~ That a small group of a dozen generals and colonels has the unilateral right to abrogate the choice of eighty-four million people...
...It was obvious, however, that neither Congress nor the military hierarchy would permit much social change...
...Recently, when the government found itself in a minority in the legislature of Rio Grande do Sui, it simply "cassadoed" four opposition members to assure control...
...Thus-according to the two governors-if they had declared a state of belligerency against the Goulart government, they could depend on the United States to send them helicopters, machine guns, rifles, and other military equipment...
...firms like Fundo Crescincao and Banco Lar Brasiliero are buying their way into chemical, pharmaceutical, plastics, automobile, rubber, electrical appliance, and other already established firms, rather than bringing in capital for new industry...
...Many millions of Brazilians have never had a pair of shoes...
...There is the "Lider group" which demands that Castelo Branco adopt harsher measures, make more arrests, impose full censorship, and curb all opposition...
...When the United States needed troops for the Inter-American Peace Force in the Dominican Republic last year, General Castelo Branco responded eagerly...
...As it happened the Goulart house THE PROGRESSIVE of cards collapsed without a battle...
...They are being urged, through a new law, to exploit mineral deposits which were previously closed to them...
...firms, 'particularly since they can get credit from sources other than the native banks...
...Castelo Branco's "American Way" in Brazil, thus, is neither popular nor democratic...
...under this system, twelve governors were chosen in September this year, and the president-elect, Artur da Costa e Silva, in October...
...Brazil is the incarnation of the Latin-style "American Way," and as such provides a true index of U.S...
...Inflation, it is true, has been slowed, the budget is closer to being balanced, the adverse balance-of-payments situation is better than in Goulart's time-and this makes American officials happy...
...or nine per cent a year-rose by less than one per cent last year, according to government claims, or, according to other estimates, declined...
...He restricted the remittance of profits by foreign investors...
...it has an economic purpose...
...He permitted the nationalization of the American and Foreign Power Company and the Brazilian Telephone Company...
...Among them were not only Communists but members of Goulart's Labor Party and the right-of-center Social Democratic Party (PSD...
...Unfortunately, however, Castelo Branco's regime provides Washington little to be proud of...
...they had jumped out too far ahead of their rank and file...
...Of the seven confederations of labor, three were "intervened" and put under government direction...
...he sent more troops than the four other participating Latin nations combined...
...Office of Strategic Services in Italy during World War II, where he had met Castelo Branco...
...These rebellious acts reflected not merely personal pique, but the poverty and hopelessness of the vast majority of Brazil's people...
...Castelo Branco's actions after becoming president on April 11, 1964, were even more disgraceful than the "revolution" itself-yet, throughout, the United States has given him unabashed support...
...So does the minister, Roberto Campos, a brilliant economist who is such a partisan of the United States his detractors call him "Bob Fields" -an English translation of his name...
...He will be elected by a thoroughly sterilized legislature, safely under ARENA's control...
...He was the first foreigner to lunch with Castelo Branco following the coup, only twenty-four hours after it took place...
...Lens' books include "The Futile Crusade" and "Radicalism in America./J Argentina, General Juan Carlos Ongania, is so isolated from his people -he has had only since July to lose his following, while Castelo Branco has had two and a half years...
...Per capita income was only $200 a year, and in places like Piaui or Maranhao in the Northeast, only $35...
...In the Northeast, Francisco Juliao was forming peasant unions and receiving a receptive hearing to his talk of revolution...
...He attempted to hurdle this obstacle by taking advantage of a technicality to introduce a partial reform by decree...
...Why kid anyone...
...Mostly they are not the men who command troops but the theoreticians...
...Periodically the police or the military invade book stores to haul away "dangerous" books, or invade a magazine office to remove unflattering pictures of Castelo Branco...
...Campos intends to keep from expanding the large public sector of the economy-railroads, shipping, transport, postal-telegraph, seventy per cent of steel, ninety per cent of electricity, oil, synthetic rubber, and much more...
...He bought crude oil from the Soviet Union, invited a delegation from Red China to discuss trade relations, and increasingly spoke like a neutralist...
...Present for that purpose was a highly competent U.S...
...Even large segments of the Catholic Church and the landed oligarchy are now opposed to Castelo Branco's government...
...Many people believed that after the first wave of repressions the dictator ship would relax...
...It was ready, in other words, to foment a civil war...
...One by one, key figures-including military officers-who participated in the 1964 coup d'etat have dropped away and bitterly assailed Castelo Branco...
...In one instance, bus drivers in Sao Paulo were so stubborn they were made to vote three times because the first two times they elected "dangerous" leaders...
...Under this settlement Castelo proclaimed Institutional Act Number Two, which illegalized existing parties (all thirteen were ordered to form a single movement or go out of business ), and decreed that henceforth elections for governors and the national presidency . would be by the indirect vote of the state and federal legislatures...
...Unlike most Latin Americans, who want greater independence from the United States, Campos seeks to blend his economy with that of the "Colossus of the North...
...Of the 134 federations of labor, sixty-nine were placed under government control as well as 400 of the 4,000 local unions...
...the government is one that has absolutely no popular support...
...They are being offered tax and other concessions just to bring in money...
...In any given month -even now-a thousand or two thousand Brazilians will be picked up and held for varying periods "for questioning...
...But by January, 1963, he had won over enough forces in the army and Congress to regain his prerogatives and he was now headed-from the army's viewpoint-in an unhealthy leftist direction...
...Walters, who speaks eight languages, had served in the U.S...
...In Recife, Archbishop Dom Helder Camara, a close friend of Pope Paul, and fourteen of his bishops are in a virtual state of war with the regime...
...Perhaps the only Latin dictator with less popular backing is General Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay...
...There was no opposition because the various political movements, now forcibly unified as the Democratic Movement of Brazil (MDB), refused to participate in the farce...
...for the left, too confused, devious, and indecisive...
...There is nothing by way of military collaboration that the Pentagon cannot get from Castelo Branco-and conversely...
...Although the Communists and Labor Party people are foreclosed from legal action, there is much ferment within the clergy and at least semi-legal activity takes place to foster opposition...
...BRAZIL'S POLICE STATE by SIDNEY LENS THE RECEPTIONIST at Brazil's minis try of planning speaks fluent, U.S...
...The only way is to encourage more middle class housing, and as the middle class moves out of its present homes, they will be occupied by some of the people in the fauelas...
...The police state does not exist in a void...
...Everything about Brazil, since the so-called revolution of April, 1964, which installed General Humberto Castelo Branco in power, has taken on a North American flavor...
...citizens (as in Santo Domingo...
...Roberto Campos is not trying to strengthen the old oligarchs or the semi-feudal system in the villages, as some of his critics claim, but to fabricate a full-fledged capitalist society that is efficient...
...It was fully expected that Goulart would rally part of the army and, with contingents of workers and peasants, make a fight of it...
...When-there is no question about "if"-the next revolution takes place, it will be a staggering blow to the United States...
...Reputable Brazilian newspapermen later learned from the governors of Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais (the two most important states of Brazil) that the United States had offered them substantial military aid in case of civil conflict...
...Brigadier General, Vernon Walters, who had been in Iran when Mossadegh fell, and in Argentina when Peron fell...
...Brazilians claim that U.S...
...Hundreds of radical priests and nuns are giving aid to students and other oppositionists...
...is also a nationalist force which wants to cast Castelo Branco aside because he is so punctiliously pro-American...
...The United States is being reassured in many ways...
...He will rely for development, instead, on private capital, especially foreign capital...
...This, I am convinced, is the Campos doctrine: reorganize Brazil's economy both in the villages and city along efficient lines, and wait for the leavings to "trickle down" to the poor...
...When new elections were finally ordered for these unions every candidate had to be certified by the police as politically "reliable...
...The "Sorbonne group" is a tight band of military intellectuals, many of whom studied "la guerre revolutionaire" in Paris and later taught at the war college at home...
...A technique called "cassatio.n" was used to purge the legislatures...
...Behind the scenes, however, the contending forces were able to work out a compromise...
...A few days before the first anniversary of the "revolution" last year, Secretary of State Dean Rusk spoke glowingly about how "the situation has changed dramatically for the better [ under Castelo Branco ]. Political stability has been restored...
...Castelo Branco was "chosen" by the army's "Sorbonne group...
...It rests on principles associated with elitism and colonialism, rather than personal freedom and national independence...
...Two thousand men were fired from their jobs...
...This policy has been a boon for U.S...
...Or perhaps it was the fact that Castelo Branco decided to allow elections in October, 1965...
...The labor movement, peasant organizations, and student groups were purged wholesale, or dissolved...
...The United States did not engineer the coup of April, 1964, but it abetted it...
...The emphasis is on efficiency and private enterprise, no matter who pays the price...
...the former because it is responding to the desperate cry of the slum dwellers and peasants for relief...
...Industry is angry with the government because the withholding of credits has caused many bankruptcies and stagnated the economy to the point where factory production-which usually rises eight...
...the nationalists had failed to organize for defense...
...The working class, along with the very union leaders that Castelo's secret police have certified as ninety-nine per cent politically "pure," are bitter because real wages are down fifteen or twenty per cent (some say forty per cent), strikes are illegal, and collective bargaining has been replaced by costof-living increases proclaimed by Planning Minister Campos...
...Six months later soldiers went on strike in Rio, tossed their weapons to the ground, and refused to obey their officers...
...Only the elections for Congress, state, and municipal legislatures are now by direct, popular, vote...
...Since Castelo Branco came to power the United States has invested both its prestige and a billion dollars of its public money in this country, which contains more than a third of the population of all of Latin America...
...The climate which helped the Communists and other extremists infiltrate and exercise disproportionate influence has given way to one which inhibits violence and extreme action...
...an American correspondent said to me...
...Americans are also being reassured by the prevailing economic climate...
...Even a rightist like Lacerda, whose base is with the middle class, talks more and more about "the greed and stupidity of some Americans...
...This is the third in a series of special reports for The Progressive...
...As a formalist, confident that his purges had had their effect, he permitted the people to vote for ;eleven governors...
...A new leftist group called Popular Action has emerged among Catholic youth...
...At Cabo Frio he has American military men training his soldiers in counter-guerrilla war...
...the latter because it has been unable to get better prices for its coffee and other products...
...Foreign companies are now permitted to send much more of their profits home...
...To improve this state of affairs re . quired drastic measures, but when Goulart tried to get a land reform law through Congress as a means of increasing rural purchasing power, he was rebuffed...
...In his desperation, therefore, Goulart began to seek help from the left-both the Communist and the nationalist left...
...Instead it has grown more stern...
...Ther...
...Hundreds of professors wcrc fil'cd, studcnts cxpclled, student organizations dissolved and replaced by new ones...
...But Goulart was chosen at the ballot box nonetheless...
...Regiments began moving into Rio, talk of a coup became persistent...
...T he Washington Post reported at the time that American naval units were at hand to evacuate U.S...
...Not everything that he has done has been bad-he has eliminated some waste in government-owned industry, improved bureaucratic administration noticeably, and is collecting more taxes...
...But here, as in Bolivia the same year, and in the Dominican Republic a year later, the United States was willing to accept the principle that a small group of officers-not one of whom had ever been elected to any post-was the court of final resort in judging a government elected by the people...
...His measures, therefore, fall heavily on the lower classes who foot the greatest part of the bill for this transformation, but they also penalize large segments of the established classes...
...Not even the new dictator of SIDNEY LENS, writer and lecturer, recently returned from an intensive study of a number of latin American countries...
...The military itself is deeply divided...
...The General, like Secretary of State Dean Rusk, is on record in favor of a permanent "interAmerican" army to police Latin America "against Communism...
...Settlements made with the American and Foreign Power Company, for instance, were exceedingly generous (almost twice what the Goulart government offered to pay...
...The harsher members of the military were so outraged at being repudiated they considered overthrowing their own leader, Castelo Branco...
...Its economy is being reshaped on the American pattern...
...His answer, I think, actually reflects the Brazilian government's thinking...
...Brazil's recent history is highly instructive, particularly to Americans who tend to dismiss such fiascos as "mistakes in judgment" by the men around the White House...
...Shortly before his overthrow he attracted a massive audience of 150,000 in Rio to hear him speak...
...In September, 1963, enlisted men of the air force and navy staged a small revolt in Brasilia and held the capital for six hours...
...But not only are the workers and peasants suffering much more than in the past, but so are the middle class and even large segments of the upper class...
...The dissident faction is growing in Brazil by geometric progression, and not merely against Castelo ,Branco but pointedly against the United States as well...
...capital...
...Six hundred citizens, including three former presidents, many governors, deputies, mayors, judges, and cabinet ministers, lost the right of engaging in political activity for ten years...
...One general said bluntly that such measures were necessary because "we are in the preparatory stage of a new world war...
...If there is still a large number of dissidents anywhere, enough men can be "cassadoed," as in Rio Grande do Sui, to assure results favorable to the government...
...Every effort was made-and is still made-to destroy popular expression...
...objectives in the countries to our south...
...In Rio de Janeiro itself, onethird of the population lives in hillside favelas, in improvised huts under incredibly bad conditions...
...Three-To remodel the rural area so that both the fazendas (large semifeudal farms) and the minifundia (tiny holdings) disappear in favor of well-run capitalist farms, and some cooperatives...
...Lincoln Gordon, former American Ambassador to Brasilia, the capital, last November called the Castelo Branco regime Brazil's "best government in thirty-five years...
...Throughout his land he has permitted the Pentagon to station fourteen observation posts, manned by U.S...
...The little general-who is a formalist at heart and insisted therefore on keeping the old political structuresnonetheless found ways to make them impotent...
...You can't do it, he said, by building homes for the poor, there are too many...
...For the right he was too "revolutionary...
...The little general who runs Brazil (he is about five feet tall) is almost as American in his outlook as is our own President Johnson...
...The irrepressible students continue to oppose the government...
...The universities suffered a similar housecleaning...
...This is a police state...
...The military leaders had been disturbed enough over these matters to force Goulart to give up most of the power he was entitled to under the constitution...
...It is true that few people, either on the right or left, thought highly of former President Joao Goulart...
...A government that has no popular support must someday either perform a massive blood-letting to silence opposition-as the "Lider" group in the army proposes-or be swept aside by revolution...
...The results, how ever, were disastrous to his cause, particularly in the important states of Guanabara (which encompasses the city of Rio) and Minas Gerais, where the Labor Party-Social Democratic opposition got three-fifths of the votes...
...and ~ That Latin American economies must either mesh their economies with that of the United States or run the risk of an American-encouraged coup d'etat...
...Inflation is still far from conquered...
...He has emphasized the traditional cures which in the long run help the wealthiest classes-credit manipulation and reduction of living standards...
...If there is anything about it that reflects glory on the United States it was not evident in my travels in Brazil...
...technicians and equipped with appropriate scanning equipment...
...Both Castelo Branco and the United States may be overly optimistic about Brazil's future under his dictatorship...
...it is gaining ground rapidly...
Vol. 30 • December 1966 • No. 12
