Brazil
. HOW TO OVERTHROW A LEGAL GOVERNMENT
Fortune Magazine Reports to Its Millionaire Readers
An article in the September issue of Fortune magazine can be recommended to everyone interested in the current dispute about possible roads to socialism, Fortune is the lush($1,50 a copy) sister publication of Time magazine that specializes in inspirational messages for successful millionaires and stories about challenging problems in management. It sometimes offers special reports on labor, politics, foreign policy or what have you. - The report in the current issue, by one Philip Siekman, is entitled "When Executives Turned Revolutionaries," An entiging subtitle if&tdicates the contents: "A story hitherto untold: how Sao Paulo businessmen conspired to overthrow Brazil's Communist-infected government,"
' The purpose of the revelations is stated with comméndable bluntness. In the months since Brazil's legally constituted govern... ment was -toppled by a coup d'état, some "foreign companies" in Brazil *. "have been.so heartened that'.they are already making sizeable addi« © tions to their Brazilian investments."' However, most U.S. invéstors "are cautiously waiting and watching, Their skepticism is partly explained by the fact that the story of Brazilts revolution [read counterrevolution], with all its encouraging aspects, has not, up to now, been fully told in the American press," The report is aimed to reassure prospective investors about the security of the dollar in Brazil. . “¥
The stakes, as seen by Fortune, were very high in this key: Latin-American country, “Early this year only two roads seemed to stretch before the country. One led to a Communist-dominated totalitarian state like Castro's Cuba, the other to a full-scale civil war as bloody as the one that ravaged Spain. in the Thirties. Hither of these fearful possibilities would have. sent disastrous shock waves. through the rest of Latin America and confronted the U.S.: with its... 7. gravest foreign-policy defeat since the fall of China,"
Fortunately for the U.S.State Department, the Johnson administration and the security of the. $1,000, 000, 006 in investments held by Amerioan coupon ‘clippers, a coup dtétat had long been in preparation, carefully nursed by a gang of businessmen in Sao Paulo..
The origins of the "conspiracy" (this is the frank word used by Siekman, the author of the article) go back to the fifties. Paulo Ayres Filho, a drug manufacturer, began by sponsoring books and paniphlets translated from materials provided by the Foundation for Hoonomic Education in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York. These advocated "limited government" and "free enterprise," They were aimed against "Commun ism,'
"ayres," says the author, “tends to use the word Communism to describe a broad spectrum of political thought, encompassing not only. outright party supporters, but also democratic socialists, students and intellectuals who employ the language of Marxism as a means of protest, and, perhaps most important, unprincipled opportunists, During the late Fifties these influences were unquestionably gaining ground, Attacks on the:U.S. and capitalism in general mounted in fury; demands for sweeping nationalization of industry became more strident; and more and more politicians began talking about class struggle and preaching violence as the path to power,"
In 1961 a young Rio businessman,..Gilbert Huber, Jr., joined forces with Ayres. They met regularly and soon drew in Joao Baptista Figueiredo, the head of the Bank of Brazil where Ayres served as a director, Other businessmen joined the circle. whose topic of discuse | sion was “how to counter the statist and leftist propaganda echoing through Brazil," The outcome was establishment of "the Instituto de Pesquisas e Estudos Sociais (Institute of Social Research and Studies) -- IPES, for short,"
After President Janio Quadros resigned and was succeeded by Vice-President Joao Goulart, the IPES stepped up its efforts, According to Fortune it was not supported by the latifundidrios, the big landowners, nor by some industrialists, "In all, only about 400 firms smostiy in Rio and Sao Paulo, contributed to. the organization; the annual flow of cash never exceeded $500,000.".
That, of course, was not ‘much compared to the dollars poured into reactionary causes in the United States and Fortune lists the $500,000 a year as "limited funds."
"The organization turned out a stream of pamphlets and book~ lets that it gave away to anybody who would make use of them. ... It helped finance a democratic leadership-training program for businessmen, students, and laborers, which has educated 2,600 people, And it encouraged women's groups and student and other organizations by contributions of funds, literature, cheap office space, free office equipment, and. subsidized clerical help."
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~. Up to the end of 1962, the IPES had held to a defensive posture, In the words of Ayres, “not to attack." But by the end of the year, the grouping felt strong enough . to begin "to look for more direct ways of asserting their opposition,"
"an alphabet soup of anti-Communist organizations sprang up on the Brazilian scene, Some held rallies; others painted signs on walls 3 one attempted to buy politicians."
. A "SHo Paulo industrialist" decided to go still further, “He organized vigilante cells to counter left-wing hecklers at anti-~ Communist meetings with tintellectual methods -- like a kick in the head,! Later, the vigilantes armed themselves with light weapons, set up. a clandestine hand=grenade factory, and picked out a site from which to carry out guerrilla operations in the civil war they considered unavoidable and imminent,"
- . Up to this point, the counterrevolutionary preparations followed the standard pattern observable in.Europe in the twenties and thirties when Mussolini, then Hitler, and Franco moved toward power. Fortune does not make this point, carefully avoiding any historical comparisons in presenting this story aimed at inspiring American businessmen with admiration for their Brazilian brothers,
An "important activist.movement against Goulart" was begun by three IPES members, all of them lawyers: Flavio Galvao, Luiz Werneck, and Joao-Adelino Prado. Galvao-is also an editor of O Estado de Sao Paulo, Brazil's equivalent of the New York Times, The Mesquita family owns this newspaper and one of its prominent members, Jvilio de Mes-~ quita Filho, ‘became the nominal head of the IPES. The action group set its aim as the conquest of power, "They decided, in Werneck!s words, ‘that we must do something, If this meant revolution read counterrevolution], we were prepared, We had to transform the whole situation, mn
Adhemar de Barros, governor of the ‘state of Sao Paulo, joined up. “His adherence to the group of businessmen revolutionaries [counterrevolutionaries] was especially important because he had a. well-trained and well-armed state militia of some 40,000 men, Barros opened up lines of communication to other sympathetic governors, notably Carlos Lacerda of Guanabara, the state that contains Rio de Janeiro, With a seemingly unquenchable supply of. venomous inveotives, Lacerda was Goulart'!s most abusive public enemy,!
By the end of 1963 the social situation in Brazil appeared dangerous to the conspirators, Continued inflation, by depressing the living standards of the-masses, was creating widespread unrest, In this situation the plotters claimed to see the influence of gold -- not Moscow gold, but Peking gold ~- and even Cuban arms, ttn the... destitute northeast, illiterate peasants were being orgenized with money from Red China and arms smuggled from Cuba," . They also pro~ fessed to see the placement of "men who were openly sympathetic to
Communism and Castro" in "key posts in the government and its agencies, ;
What was really happening was the advancement of slogans about agrarian reform and lip service in government circles. to the widely popular demand for nationalizations, But in the field of action, Goulart watched the preparation of the counterrevolutionary conspiracy in a state of virtual paralysis. Fortune indicates this: "Goulart shuffled Cabinet ministers. . . set up an economic stabili-~ zation plan, and then abandoned it, talked of reforms and did nothing. On the face of it, he appeared simply unable to govern. .
- In Sao Paulo, Adhemar de Barros openly threatened revolt. "But open revolt would require help from the Brazilian Army," Thus a key problem for the conspirators was to win over the officer caste,
"Informally, IPES members had long cultivated friendships: in the military services, had invited officers to Sao Paulo ostensibly to visit factories, and over. coffee and dinner had told them of their fears, The "most consequential meeting took place" when the central conspirators met “a young lieutenant colonel, Rubens Resstel, then stationed in the Sao: Paulo headquarters of Brazil's Second Army. "
- Resstel was a key man in the. Brazilian Expeditionary Force [BEF]. which fought as part of the U.S, Fifth Army in. Italy in World War II. “As IPES became the mother cell of the civilian resistance to Goulart, so the veterans of the B.E.F, became the moving force within the military. . . . Encouraged by the Mesquita group, Resstel and some of his fellow officers began to circulate through Brazil sounding out other military -.men." They won over a number of young officers but some of the older generals tended to remain loyal to the legally constituted government,
How were these twinges of -conscience to be overcome? The. fascist technique is to discover a "plot" for a "take over" by "Communists" that must be blocked by swift seizure of power, Batista, for instance, used this effectively in Cuba, Fortune avoids the historical parallels, simply noting that early in 1964 "the young military men in the Mesquita group began to piece together bits of evidence which indicated that the Communists around Goulart were planning a coup of their own... "
‘The "bits of evidence" are not without interest: "There had been a split in the Brazilian Communist movement between the socalled Russian wing, which counseled moderation and gradualism, and the Chinese~Cuban wing, identified with Brizola, which preached ‘violence," That is part of the "evidence," Next item: "The latter group appeared to have gained the most influence on the government," This is putting things upside down. Goulart appeared to have succeeded in paralyzing the entire radical movement in face of the growing counterrevolutionary threat, Final bit of evidence: "The Paulistas [the conspirators] feared an overnight attempt to create a totalitar-
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ian state, with a wave of violence and murder, guerrilla actions, strikes in key industries, and an uprising of enlisted military | men,"
There was a grain of truth in this fear, The rank and file in the labor movement and in the armed forces had become .increasingly alarmed over the obvious preparations for a reactionary coup d'état, They had also become increasingly ready for a course of action that could win a radical agrarian reform and nationalization of Brazil's. key industries, The growth of this mood was, of course, one of the factors that had led the Sao Paulo capitalists much earlier to hogan plotting their counterrevolutionary coup d'état,
The conspirators now "began to arm themselves," In time, says Fortune, "the Mesquita group alone spent about $10,000 on.weapons, © ineLudt ing a handful of machine guns, Groups in residential seotions of Sao Paulo obtained weapons, ammunition, and supplies, and carefully plotted out defense plans for their blocks,"
One last force in Brazil remained to be brought into the oon-# spiracy -- if it was not already well aware of all that was going on; and, indeed, inspiring it. This was the U.S,State Department, Resstel and’ the other military officers calculated that they could launch an armed uprising and hang on for ninety days, Before that time ran out the Mesquita group hoped for outside help," Thus the conspirators acted as a minority that did not expect popular hasking and which would be quickly dependent on help from counterrevolution~ ary forces abroad the way Francg required help from Hitler and Mus so~# lini.
"They sent an emissary to ask _U.S.Ambassador Lincoln Gordon what the U.S. position would be if civil war broke out, who reported back that Gordon was cautious and diplomatic, but he left the impres-~ sion that if the Paulistas could hold out for forty-eight hours they would get U.S, recognition and help,"
They asked for U.S. help within ninety days; they'got.a prom ise of help within forty-eight hours! The Johnson administration was demonstrating its exquisite sensitiveness to Wall Street's. needs in Latin America, :
With the stage thus set, a huge street demonstration was organized in Sdo Paulo, This impressed the top generals, showing them that the conspirators were serious, -Army Chief of Start, General Humberto Castello Branco, was won over, “He had been aware of the Paulista conspiracy for some time, but had been unwilling to: join a revolt against a legal government. " The day after the demonstration, he sent out a "secret memorandum to the Army commands" -giving them the tip off.
"The conspirators sensed a marked change in the attitude of many other Army officers; more and more of them agreed to join. the. revolt, Deciding that the time was almost ripe, they persuaded
Castello Branco to begin to draw up a rough plan. of military opera~ tions, Extra stores of gasoline were obtained and hidden away on industrial lots throughout Sao Paulo, A supply of U.S. 'Food for Peace! was discovered on the Santos docks, trucked to the capital,. and stored,"" Itts truly remarkable how easily counterrevolutionary conspirators stumble across supplies of U.S. "Food for Peace"|
A dramatic effort by the rank and file of the Brazilian Navy to do something about the ominously growing conspiracy, was taken as the excuse for launching the planned armed uprising, At the same time, the governor of Minas Gerais, José Magalhaes Pinto, "rounded up all suspected agitators and Communists in the capital, Belo Horizonte, and elsewhere in the state," —
Other sectors of the vast conspiracy went into action, throwing unit after unit into the counterrevolutionary uprising.
The liberal bourgeois Goulart government, utterly paralyzed by its own class connections with the conspirators, went down, scarcely uttering a cry, and the witch-hunt was on, "In the first days of the revolt, thousands of suspected subversives were hastily dumped into jails or temporary prison ships. ... In_the sixty days allowed by the institutional act, the government [i.e., the conspirators now in power] canceled the political rights of 578 people, on the grounds of either corruption and dishonesty or Communist action, Included on the list are three ex-Presidents of the republic, a federal senator, five governors, fifty-one federal deputies; they will not be permitted to run for office or vote for ten years, Perhaps the best~known name on the blacklist was that of ex=President Juscelino Kubitschek,"
~The success of the counterrevolutionary conspiracy does not mean that Brazil's burning economic and social problems have been solved, Fortune admits that. But Castello Brancots "talented Cabinet" oan be expected to do much, It hopes to check inflation, for instance, reducing it from an annual rate just prior to the coup dtétat of 120 per cent to only 24 to 36 per cent.
More than that is needed however, “If Brazil .is not to die on the operating table as the new men attempt to cure its ailments, it will need large infusions of help from abroad, U.S. aid to Brazil had dwindled to Ro million in the eight weeks preceding the revolt, Immediately afterward, the U.S, came up with $93 million in surplus agricultural commodities under Public Law 480 and $50 million more in dollar loans and grants for. over thirty-five development projects, At the same time, the U.S., Japan, and a number of European countries began negotiating agreements to reschedule Brazil's huge, $3-billion foreign debt. Beyond this, additional European and American aid probably will be granted Brazil this year to help underwrite the budget deficit and finance imports,"
The businessmen who run the United States will undoubtedly
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study Fortune!s report on the counterrevolutionary success in Brazil with close attention, Perhaps they will even find lessons in it for application some, day to the United States itself. Socialists, too, should study the account, for there is something to be learned about the fatal effect of the illusion that socialism can be won peacefully in face of a ruling class so contemptuous of constitutional processes as the one in Brazil.