Brazil : The Fortunes of War (9780465080700)

by Lochery, Neill

  Back at the palace, the danger was still acute. While they had driven many of the rebels into the woods, the first group of soldiers had not managed to capture or kill any of them, much less free the people trapped inside the palace. The situation was still deemed to be too dangerous for Vargas to try to exit through the front gates, so the tunnel and locked door became the sole focus of attention for those trying to get the president out. The special police arrived at the soccer stadium, following Dutra’s orders, and now entered the tunnel, making their way to the other side of the locked door under the Guanabara Palace. They were close enough to communicate with people on the palace side of the door, and together both parties hatched a plan to blow the door open. Fortunately, perhaps, for those on both sides of the door, this desperate plan was abandoned at the last moment.

  Just as the clock inside the president’s study was about to chime 5 a.m., the president’s secretary located a porter who had a key. They opened the door, and special police and other officials poured into the building, ending the siege. Alzira informed her father, “The police are here and it is over, but there is still much to be done to secure the palace gardens and the city.” In truth, however, the arrival of the police led most of the rebels at the front gate and in the woodlands of the palace gardens to abandon their positions. Most merely stripped off their uniforms, which they had worn on top of their civilian clothes, and tried to sneak back to downtown Rio. The majority were rapidly apprehended as they left the palace grounds or traversed the road back to the downtown. At the Guanabara Palace, the police removed the bodies of the seven rebels killed in the exchange of fire. As word spread of the failed assault on the palace, the rebels who had attacked the radio stations and the homes of leading Estado Novo members simply melted into the crowds.28 By 7 a.m. the uprising was over, save for the sounds of sporadic gunfire as the police continued to come across individual rebels or small groups of fighters who had not yet heard news of the uprising’s total failure.29

  Following the liberation of the palace, the tense atmosphere of the siege gave way to a festive mood as the leading figures of the Estado Novo swapped stories of what had happened that night outside their offices and homes. Alzira noted, however, that while everyone else was in high spirits, her father “spoke little and seemed withdrawn.” He was already planning his response to the coup and the plotters.

  Responses to the night’s drama were swift and varied. The coup had been so amateurish that some of Vargas’s critics maintained that it had been staged by the president and his supporters as an attempt to justify the establishment of the authoritarian Estado Novo.30 Subsequent events, however, came to reveal the extent of the plot and those involved in its planning and execution. As for Vargas’s typical modus operandi, a friend and advisor remarked to the British ambassador in Rio: “Senhor Vargas dislikes recourse to bloodshed in disposing of his enemies. He prefers to win them over by persuasion—or so skillfully to place the banana skin that they break their own necks. This calls for much patience.”31

  Later that same morning, while the police continued to round up rebels still hiding in the palace gardens, President Vargas took his usual walk to the presidential office at the Catete Palace, accompanied—as was normally the case—by only one aide.32 He was prepared to take whatever draconian measures were needed to see that the plotters were tracked down and brought to justice. The nascent investigation into the uprising was carried out surgically and rapidly, two words not usually associated with Brazilian authorities of the day.

  As Vargas prepared to strike back against his would-be assassins, Alzira and Benjamin worked to overhaul the security provision for the president. Members of the Vargas family, especially Alzira, found it hard to understand how it could have taken so long for reinforcements to arrive at the palace. They speculated that many security officers had been waiting to see which side prevailed, and that this ambivalence had left the president isolated and vulnerable. Furthermore, while Dutra eventually carried out his duty, Alzira noted his initial hesitancy to fully engage the rebels during the attempted coup. Later, Alzira suggested that Dutra had hesitated because he, too, had been considering joining the Integralistas.33 Her father was less critical, writing in his diary that “the minister of war [was] the only senior member of the state that risked his own life to save me during the attack. The rest fled to first protect themselves.”34

  Following the attempted coup, Benjamin decided that the president needed a personal bodyguard who would report directly to him. The guards were to be drawn from the gaúchos from the São Borja district, men with whom Benjamin had previously served in the military and whose loyalty he could vouch for. “They will be loyal to you,” he assured his brother, “and guard the palace while you sleep or work, and accompany you wherever you go.”35 The men were to be heavily armed, and—Alzira avowed—“would trust no one,” as was the custom from their region. These Brazilian cowboys were rough, with little time for the niceties of city life let alone presidential protocol, but they were given some training and dressed in suits. Their appointment as the presidential bodyguard proved a catastrophe for the president some sixteen years later, but in the aftermath of the uprising they surely brought comfort to him and the rest of the shaken presidential family.

  His stiffened security detail would not, however, protect Vargas from any future political challenges—especially not those that, like this uprising, had partially originated within his regime. As he now turned his attention to making sure that there would be no repeat of the uprising, his daughter kept a close watch over any ministers she believed posed an internal threat to her father. Her attentiveness would, in due time, earn Alzira the nickname of “the right eye of Vargas.”36

  2 The Left Eye of Vargas

  President Vargas was keen to return to business as usual following the uprising. He especially wanted to avoid any appearance of weakness or instability, either domestically or internationally, and he took care to project an image of calmness and strength despite his recent ordeal. “The country is absolutely tranquil and the president of the republic continues to be supported by all the organized forces of the nation,” the Brazilian ministry of foreign affairs proclaimed the day after the attempted coup.1 A statement sent out to the foreign diplomatic corps based in Rio boasted of “hundreds of arrests” and claimed that the culprits would be dealt with swiftly and fairly.

  On May 16, 1938, Vargas and his cabinet introduced two amendments to the Brazilian constitution as a direct result of the uprising.2 The first imposed the death penalty on anyone convicted of attacking the president’s life or liberty. “The new law is not to be used retroactively against the plotters of May 11,” Vargas informed the meeting.3 In truth, there wasn’t any appetite for use of the death penalty, but the president hoped it might serve “as a deterrent against future plots.” The second amendment, Article 177, allowed the government to dismiss civilian or military personnel for reasons that were in the public interest—as defined by the regime—for an indefinite period.4

  In Rio, senior police officers keen to make up for their poor showing on May 11 moved quickly against those they suspected of having any involvement in the plot. Before the police had finished rounding up the usual suspects, their investigation got a big break when officers in Rio located a car used by Severo Fournier, the hapless leader of the rebellion at the Guanabara Palace. Inside the car, the police found detailed plans for the rebellion, including many of the names of the rebels involved. The plans confirmed Alzira’s gut instincts about the uprising; the rebels had planned to kidnap, or kill, her father and several other members of the regime. While the plans found in Fournier’s car proved that the Integralistas were behind the plot, they also revealed that a number of disaffected military non-Integralistas, such as Fournier, had taken part in the attempted coup. The plans also revealed the extent of the Brazilian navy’s role in the plot. Within days the police had arrested some 1,167 civilians and 437 military p
ersonnel, the majority of whom were from the navy.5

  At the end of the siege at the Guanabara Palace on May 11, Fournier had slipped quietly away and avoided capture. He took refuge with friends in Rio, but his photograph had been published in all the newspapers, and a sizable reward had been offered for information that led to his arrest.6 His friends grew more anxious with each day they hid him. Eventually, they hatched a plan. “We can get you to the Italian embassy, and then you’re on your own,” one of the men informed him. “There you can ask for political asylum,” another added. Because the Italian government had tacitly supported the Integralistas before the putsch, there was a chance—however slim—that it would now give sanctuary to one of the rebel leaders.

  It was a desperate gamble, but Fournier was feeling the same pressure as his friends. He had heard reports that the police were torturing people who had been detained in raids following May 11, and the prospect of sharing their fate—combined with the lack of any other viable alternative—led Fournier to go along with the plan.7

  On June 25, 1938, an old car crept slowly around the streets of central Rio, occasionally misfiring and doing its best not to attract the attention of the police. Both the driver and his passenger were wearing military uniforms, their shoulder lapels indicating they each held the rank of captain. The officers were trying not to show the anxiety they were feeling, either to one another or to the pedestrians who walked past when they stopped at traffic junctions. “The police are everywhere,” the driver informed his passenger, who could see perfectly well for himself.

  In truth, the police presence in central Rio was no greater than usual. The major police operation to capture the members of the uprising of May 11 had long since been scaled back, and most of those arrested had already been charged and sentenced. Vargas had sped up Brazil’s normally snail-like judicial process; under new emergency powers, the accused of May 11 were given just five minutes to mount their defense, and verdicts and sentences were issued within thirty minutes by increasingly grumpy, overworked judges.8 By June 25, the police in downtown Rio were more interested in looking for traffic violations and suppressing the city’s increasing crime rate than looking for any rebels who might have remained at large. Nonetheless, the driver of the car was sweating profusely and took Rio’s side roads wherever possible, avoiding the city’s long tree-lined avenues, which were awash with traffic policemen.

  In the trunk of the car, lying in the darkness, was Severo Fournier. As the car approached the Italian embassy, the driver refused to stop, plunging straight past the police guards and into the embassy grounds.9 There the men unloaded Fournier from the boot of the car and drove back past the guards, saluting as they left. It had taken them no more than twenty minutes to dispose of their explosive human cargo.

  Ambassador Lojacono experienced something approaching a panic attack when his secretary quietly interrupted his meeting by whispering in his ear, “Severo Fournier is inside the embassy grounds and wishes to seek political asylum.”10 After the ambassador had calmed down, he cabled Rome, and waited anxiously for instructions. As news spread quickly through Rio of Fournier’s arrival at the embassy, Eurico Dutra, the Brazilian minister of war, dispatched two senior military officers to negotiate with the Italian ambassador. The officers reported back to Dutra: “Lojacono was uncooperative, arrogant, and reluctant to hand over Fournier and therefore violate the very principle of political asylum.” Dutra was barely able to contain his anger.

  After much diplomatic maneuvering, pressure, and threats from the Brazilian government—as well as the personal intervention of Fournier’s own father and the Italian foreign minister, Galeazzo Ciano—Fournier was eventually persuaded to leave the embassy on July 7. He was given a choice of being arrested by the military or by civilian police; he chose the military option in the hope that they would treat him better.11 Fournier was convicted and given a lengthy jail sentence, but spared the death penalty.12 His arrest and conviction officially ended the rebellion, which became known in Brazilian history as the “revolution of the cowards.”13

  Fournier’s gradual ouster from the embassy was meant to signal a renewal of Brazilian-Italian friendship, which had been strained even prior to the events of June 25 when Brazil had frozen Italian funds in the country. While the Fournier dilemma was a potential cause for a further decline in relations between the two nations, it ultimately served as something of an olive branch. Fournier was encouraged to write a letter in which he thanked Lojacono for his hospitality and stated clearly that he would leave the embassy of his own accord. For his part, Lojacono was asked to write a personal letter to Dutra expressing his most sincere gratitude for the minister’s understanding of the moral dilemma the ambassador had found himself in over Fournier’s request for asylum. Subsequently, Lojacono was recalled to Rome for his pains.

  All of this internal political drama had important implications for the future of Brazilian foreign policy. One of the people who helped smuggle Fournier into the embassy was, it was soon discovered, a certain Captain Manuel Aranha, the brother of Osvaldo Aranha, the Brazilian minister of foreign affairs. The minister of war, Dutra, wanted to quickly dismiss Manuel Aranha, as well as his coconspirators in the embassy incident, from the army without a hearing. “Use the new powers invested in you by Article 177 of the constitution to fire the officers immediately,” Dutra urged the president.

  Vargas hesitated, however, as he always did in disputes involving Aran­ha, his oldest and closest political ally. A miffed Dutra subsequently resigned over the issue, and only withdrew his resignation when the president gave in to his demand and dismissed Manuel and the other guilty officers. This decision, in turn, caused Osvaldo Aranha to resign, and it looked for a while as if Vargas would be unable to keep both Osvaldo Aranha and Eurico Dutra in the cabinet. Osvaldo argued to Vargas that he had acted too hastily in dismissing Manuel, did not understand all the facts of the case, and should at the very least, as a courtesy to Osvaldo, grant Manuel a personal hearing.14

  The president, Alzira noted, was “caught between something of a rock and a hard place.” Vargas remarked on the affair in his diary on June 26, 1938, the day after the embassy incident. “I was called urgently to deal with a crisis. . . . The most serious part is that the minister of war, my best helper [at the Guanabara Palace uprising], wants to resign. I slept with the feeling that this could be the beginning of the collapse of the new regime.”15

  The Aranha family dug in its heels, and Vargas grew increasingly frustrated at the impasse throughout the first week of July, at the same time he was facing a crisis in his relations with Italy. The Aranha problem became even more complex and dangerous for Vargas when the powerful head of the Brazilian armed forces, General Góes Monteiro, threatened to resign as well.16 Vargas refused to accept Góes Monteiro’s resignation, telling the general in no uncertain terms “to get on with his job.” On July 6, Vargas added that the crisis “is complicated . . . the minister of war is tired and nervous.”17 The president was working hard for a resolution, but was growing more pessimistic about the prospect of keeping these two key men in his administration.

  At this point, the president decided to talk with some of Aranha’s extended family. The men were old friends and brothers in arms, and the two “old families” from Rio Grande do Sul shared a common history; approaching the elders of the Aranha family was a sensible tactic. Alzira also suggested that her mother, the president’s wife Darci, “talk with Osvaldo’s mother, and get her to broker a compromise with him.” She added, “Osvaldo will listen to her.” Alzira knew full well that Aranha’s mother had a great deal of influence over her son, and was the de facto head of the powerful extended Aranha family.18

  The plea that Darci conveyed to Osvaldo’s mother came directly from the president. “The two Gaúchos,” she said, “should stick together.” Osvaldo responded favorably to the message, and eventually he and Vargas reached a compromise of sorts, allowing the t
wo ministers to remain in their respective positions in the cabinet, at least for the time being. The episode—and its solution—was indicative of the close-knit, traditional nature of Brazilian politics. Old family ties remained a strong feature of the politics and economics of the Estado Novo era, and both Alzira and the president’s younger brother Benjamin were dab hands at knowing when and how to use interfamily politics to win support for the president—or, as in this case, to resolve a major political crisis.

  But family ties did not bind every politician together, nor could they help to resolve the biggest questions facing Brazil. The conflict between Dutra and Aranha was much more than a simple power spat or personality clash. The two ministers held fundamentally opposed visions of Brazil’s place in the increasingly polarized international world order. Osvaldo Aran­ha was, at heart, a strong supporter of democracy. He believed that in any coming war between fascism and democracy, democracy would emerge victorious, although the victory might not be absolute. For Aranha, Brazil’s natural partner and ally was the United States, and he wished to move toward much closer relations with Washington.

  Eurico Dutra, on the other hand, was a well-known admirer of Nazi Germany. He was especially impressed with its military prowess, and was keen to develop closer military and economic ties between the two nations. Needless to say, Dutra found a willing partner in Berlin. Dutra was a powerful man, and he enjoyed strong support within the Brazilian military. His actions in helping to rescue the president on May 11 had made him all the stronger politically within the Estado Novo regime. The bad blood between him and Aranha would become a thorn in the side of the Vargas regime, especially when it came to geopolitics.