The Post-Vargas Republic

The Post-Vargas Republic, 1954-64
If corporatism was the hallmark of the 1930s and 1940s, populism,
nationalism, and developmentalism characterized the 1950s and early
1960s. Each of these contributed to the crisis that gripped Brazil
and resulted in the authoritarian regime after 1964. At the core
of the crisis was the continued unwillingness of the elite to share
the benefits of Brazil's wealth with the majority of the people.
By the early 1960s, the crisis was boiling in reverse, from the
top down. The crisis had much more to do with elite fears of a mass
uprising, supposedly instigated by international communism, than
with the reality of social revolution. They, rather than the masses,
believed the fiery rhetoric of leftist-populist politicians. What
elites elsewhere might have seen as popular democratic mobilization,
the Brazilian elites saw as revolutionary change that threatened
their well-being. Because they portrayed their well-being as the
same as the national well-being, and because they controlled the
state and the instruments of power, they responded with a counterrevolution,
what historian Joseph Page labeled "the revolution that never
was."
Labor became more active in seeking to improve the status of the
working class, and the population continued to grow beyond the state's
ability to expand educational and social services. As a result,
conservative elites feared that they were losing control of politics
and of the state. The elites had opposed Vargas because he sought
to use the state to spread benefits more broadly. The middle classes
tended to identify with elite visions of society and to see the
lower classes as a threat. Curiously, the term povo (people), which
had meant the lowest class, the destitute, the squatters, the rural
poor, had changed by the early 1950s to mean the politically active
and economically mobile urban lower classes. Further, politicians
appealed to the povo during election campaigns but once elected
directed government benefits principally to the middle and upper
classes.
Juscelino Kubitschek (1956-61), the only post-Vargas elected president
to serve a full term, soothed opponents by avoiding the emotional
appeals of the populists. Even so, his common touch reached millions,
and his developmentalist and nationalist visions stirred the Brazilian
imagination. Kubitschek co-opted the military by involving it in
the decision-making process and by adequately funding it. He pushed
the creation of an automotive industry, which in a generation would
result in Brazil's leaping from the bull cart and mule train era
into that of the internal combustion engine. The new factories turned
out 321,000 vehicles in 1960. The great highway network of the late
twentieth century and the world's eighth-largest automobile production
are his legacies. And he yanked Brazil away from its fascination
with the coast by moving the capital to Brasília in a new
Federal District (Distrito Federal) carved out of then-distant Goiás.
Thanks to the changes in transportation and the growing availability
of motorized farm equipment, the vast countryside of Goiás
and Mato Grosso would be cultivated in the next decades, and Brazil
would become the world's number-two food exporter. The overall economy
would expand 8.3 percent a year. There was a lot of truth in his
government's motto: "Fifty Years' Progress in Five."
Brazil of 1960 was very different from that of 1930. The population,
which had been 33.5 million in 1930, was now 70 million, with 44
percent in urban areas. A third of all Latin Americans were Brazilian.
Life expectancy had improved noticeably. The number of industrial
workers had more than doubled from a 1940 level of 1.6 million to
2.9 million, and the industrial share of GDP was higher (25.2 percent)
than that of agriculture (22.5 percent). The underside of such progress
was a continuous swelling of urban slums and inflation. The annual
rate of inflation rose from 12 percent in 1949 to 26 percent in
1959, and then zoomed to a shocking 39.5 percent in 1960. Savings
depreciated, lenders refused to offer long-term loans, interest
rates soared, and the government refused to undertake orthodox,
anti-inflationary programs styled after those of the International
Monetary Fund (IMF--see Glossary). Moreover, the disparities between
rich and poor remained, with 40 percent of national income enjoyed
by 10 percent of the population, 36 percent going to the next 30
percent, and 24 percent being divided among the poorest 60 percent
of Brazilians. Before national wealth could be redistributed, however,
development had to be maintained.
Brazil had the potential, but it lacked the hard currency necessary
to pay for the imports needed to sustain swift industrialization.
Either it could cut imports, thereby paralyzing factories and transportation,
or it could stop repayments on foreign loans and profit remittances
from foreign investments. With such unpalatable alternatives, it
is not surprising that Brazilian governments had difficulty formulating
an economic plan that would both satisfy creditors and keep trade
flowing.
The populist administrations of Jânio Quadros (January-August
1961) and João Goulart (1961-64) expanded the term povo once
again to embrace the rural poor, thereby producing the image of
a budding proletariat ready to join a reformist government against
elite privilege and United States imperialism. Quadros, a former
governor of São Paulo, could not keep his promise to sweep
out corruption, because his bid for more presidential power ended
with his sudden resignation on August 25, 1961. He had assembled
a makeshift political coalition that gave him an impressive electoral
margin but did not give him enough influence in Congress to get
his legislation passed.
Frustrated, he planned to restructure the government, but before
he could act, Carlos Lacerda, governor of Guanabara (the old Rio
de Janeiro Federal District), revealed that Quadros intended to
close Congress, decree reforms, and get the people's blessing in
a plebiscite. Quadros and Lacerda clashed over the issue of an independent
foreign policy. Such a policy, which Quadros supported, emphasized
new markets for Brazilian products and a strong stance in favor
of the developing world, while maintaining relations with the United
States but refusing to isolate Cuba. Lacerda was particularly critical
of Quadros's pro-Cuba policy. Quadros resigned believing that the
military would be unwilling to allow Vice President João
Goulart, a populist and former minister of labor under Vargas, to
assume the presidency. Quadros hoped that his action would shock
the povo into taking to the streets to demand his reimposition and
would spur the military into pressuring Congress. He then flew to
São Paulo, where he spent the next day at a military base
waiting for the summons to return, but instead the head of the Chamber
of Deputies was sworn in as acting president. People were shocked,
but they tended to feel betrayed by Quadros rather than believe
that "terrible forces" had risen against him. On that
Friday in August 1961, the republic of 1945 began its painful death.
Instead of worrying how to restore Quadros, the politicians and
military leaders focused on Goulart's succession. An uneasy country
awaited Goulart on his return from a trade mission to China. Congress
refused to agree to the request of the military ministers that it
disavow his right to the presidency. His brother-in-law, Leonel
de Moura Brizola, the fiery governor of Rio Grande do Sul, and the
regional army commander announced that their forces would defend
the constitution. The threat of civil war was ominous. Instead,
a compromise changed the constitutional system from a presidential
to a parliamentary one (1961-63), with Goulart as president and
Tancredo de Almeida Neves of Minas Gerais as prime minister. In
the next months, Goulart, chafing at the attempt to turn him into
a figurehead, made heated appeals to the masses to mobilize in his
favor. Goulart secured victory in a 1962 plebiscite, which restored
the presidential system in January 1963. Unhappily, Goulart interpreted
the five-to-one margin as a personal mandate, as opposed to a mandate
for the presidential system.
Goulart's relations with the United States went from uneasy, when
he visited President John F. Kennedy and gave a speech to the United
States Congress in April 1963, to frigid, when President Lyndon
B. Johnson took over in Washington in November 1963. The United
States, smarting from Fidel Castro's radicalization of Cuba, resented
Brazilian unwillingness to isolate Havana and became obsessed with
peasants organizing in the impoverished Northeast. Washington poured
millions of dollars directly into that region's states, bypassing
Goulart's government. The regional elites happily accepted United
States aid to expand their autonomy vis-à-vis Brasília.
Goulart carried his populism too far when he backed proposals for
noncommissioned officers to hold political office and when he appeared
sympathetic to rebelling sergeants in September 1963. The officer
corps believed that the president was undermining discipline, thereby
threatening military institutions.
Minister of Army General Amaury Kruel complained that the army
had been subjected to a "survival" budget since 1958 and
that most of its armaments and equipment were either obsolete, beyond
repair, or required replacement. In 1962 every regional army headquarters
reported that it was not in condition to hold regular exercises,
and many officers concluded that their efforts were useless because
of a generalized "disbelief and lack of incentive." General
Kruel alerted President Goulart that inadequate funding was creating
a "calamitous situation" in which the army was being "economically
and financially asphyxiated."
The right and the military charged that Goulart's call for reforming
legislation was merely a cover for a radical nationalist takeover.
Publicly, they organized study groups, formed a shadow government,
orchestrated an intense press campaign, and staged street marches.
Secretly, they armed large landowners (fazendeiros ) in the countryside,
developed plans to neutralize opposition and to topple the government,
and sought help from the United States. The military was again about
to break the bonds of obedience to a national government. The argument
was that the armed forces should support any government as long
as it was democratic.
Such logic grew more persuasive as political mobilization gripped
the society. Peasant land seizures and urban food riots contributed
to a sense of impending chaos. Brizola bragged foolishly that he
had a 200,000-strong peoples' militia organized in groups of eleven.
The opposition charged the government with arousing a "state
of revolutionary war." In the months before March 1964, the
staff and student officers of the Army General Staff School (Escola
de Comando de Estado-Maior do Exército--ECEME) played a key
role in convincing officers that they should support a move against
Goulart. Even the highly respected chief of staff, Marshal Humberto
de Alencar Castelo Branco, joined the conspiracy. Castelo Branco
had served as FEB operations officer in Italy, director of studies
at ECEME, and long-time head of the War College. The officers believed
that rational economic development, internal security, and institutional
well-being would occur only if economic and political structures
were altered, and that the civilian leaders were unwilling to make
the necessary changes. They believed that the left was so well-organized
that the conspiracy might fail. They had plans to flee Brazil in
that case, and United States officers had promised that they would
receive training and logistical support to return to wage a guerrilla
war.
Struggling to keep the impatient left on his side and to stave
off the right, Goulart opted for a series of public rallies to mobilize
pressure for basic reforms. In a huge rally in Rio de Janeiro on
March 13, 1964, Goulart decreed agrarian reform and rent controls
and promised more. A counter rally against the government, held
six days later in São Paulo, put 500,000 people marching
in the streets. Sailors and marines in Rio de Janeiro, led by an
agent provocateur of the anti-Goulart conspiracy, mutinied in support
of Goulart. However, Goulart mishandled the incident by agreeing
that they would not be punished and that the navy minister would
be changed. The uproar was immediate. Rio de Janeiro's Correio da
Manhã published an unusual Easter Sunday edition with the
headline "Enough!" It was followed the next day, March
30, with one saying "Out!" In the next two days, the military
moved to secure the country, and Goulart fled to Uruguay. Brizola's
resistance groups proved an illusion, as did the supposed arms caches
of the unions and the readiness of favela residents to attack the
wealthy. The period of the military republic had begun.
Data as of April 1997
|
|