Ford’s film also highlighted the huge flow of Brazilian rubber to the United States, noting that Brazil had become its single largest supplier of rubber. And significantly, for all Rockefeller’s work to deepen cultural ties between the United States and Brazil, he is best remembered in Brazil for his role in the rubber trade—or rather, his role in protecting the people in it. President Vargas had given the order to recruit some thirty thousand “rubber soldiers” to work in Brazil’s rubber industries, with the goal of producing sixty thousand tons of rubber a year for sale to the Americans. However, the rubber industry was based in the Amazon Basin, and the plantations were rife with disease; many young men died working there. Rockefeller and his private foundation invested heavily in efforts to improve conditions in Brazil’s rubber-producing regions by introducing better sanitation technology and practices, and funding the development of vaccines for some of the diseases. The history of the “rubber soldiers” remains extremely controversial in Brazil, yet the tragedy had at least one positive legacy: to this day the Rockefeller Foundation continues to invest large amounts of money combating diseases in Brazil.
The rubber industry of Brazil during World War II was a stark reminder of how different things were in the country from its portrayal in John Ford’s propaganda film. On the surface, however, all appeared well with the rubber trade in 1943. Following a suggestion from Rockefeller’s office, President Vargas agreed to name June “rubber month” in Brazil. The aim of this public relations drive was to highlight the importance of the rubber trade for the US war effort and to illustrate the close cooperation between the Brazilian and US governments. In the decree announcing Rubber Month, Vargas declared to his fellow Brazilians:
Shoulder to shoulder with our Allies we shall lead our forces to final victory. However, before we obtain this objective an urgent task awaits us: we have to win the battle of production. Brazilians: with the same frankness that I have always addressed you I now ask for your loyal and determined cooperation on behalf of a campaign which commences today: the rubber campaign. You know how gigantic is the consumption of material in the present war. And among the essential and most urgently needed raw materials for the struggle we are engaged in, there are some that depend on us and to which we must dedicate all our efforts. This is the case with rubber, which is used in enormous quantities in the manufacture of nearly all war equipment.39
This was a carefully choreographed attempt to reassure the Americans that Brazil was doing all it could to increase rubber production, yet the plan backfired somewhat. Vargas was meant to read the proclamation in a radio broadcast on the evening of May 31, but eventually he delegated its delivery to the director of the department of press and propaganda (DIP).40
The use of the director of the DIP as proxy to announce Rubber Month irritated both Washington and the US embassy in Rio, and the fact that President Vargas gave no explanation for the last-minute change did not help matters. Eventually, President Vargas’s office offered a vague excuse: “The president,” his staff explained, “only returned late in the evening from an automobile tour in the state of Rio, which lasted a number of days and on which he was obliged to attend many inaugurations of public works.”41
As a result of its displeasure, the United States delayed the response it had prepared to Vargas’s statement. President Roosevelt finally replied in a letter to Vargas on June 19, 1943, thanking him for his efforts. Roosevelt wrote:
Your Excellency’s announcement that June will be observed as “Rubber Month” in Brazil reminds the people of the United States once again of the extraordinary contribution the Brazilian government and people are making to the cause of the United Nations in this instance through the “Battle of Rubber.” The personal interest you have shown in encouraging the intensification of rubber production is received in the United States as a symbol of the energy, vision, and goodwill, which have characterized the war polices of the Brazilian government and the activities of the Brazilian people. Each ton of rubber that Brazil can provide has an immediate important use in the United Nations production for war. Brazil already has made manifest in many ways its unwavering support of inter-American unity. We in the United States welcome this added proof of Brazilian determination to carry its great share of the fight of all the United Nations.42
Roosevelt’s letter, which was released to the press, was intended to refocus attention on the positive elements of the expansion of the rubber program—the contribution it made to the United States war effort—and away from the hideous toll it was taking on the Brazilian people who labored on the rubber plantations.
Indeed, prior to Rubber Month it was clear that not everything was going as planned in the joint US-Brazilian drive to increase rubber production. The United States reported that some twenty thousand people had been moved into the Amazon Basin during the first part of 1943 in an attempt to boost the plantations’ output, but that it was difficult to assess the impact of this increased manpower on production. American officials warned that, as they put it, “war conditions have made it impossible to carry out fully the original schedule, coastline shipping having been stopped for a period, river boats ordered for the Amazon were delayed in being delivered, and other unforeseen circumstances have interfered.”43
Rubber Month was also intended to combat popular disaffection with the Brazilian rubber industry. Posters were placed in Rio and other Brazilian cities making the case for increased rubber production.44 Radio programs and even a short film were made. An appeal was issued in the United States for its citizens to collect and recycle scrap rubber.45 Finally, newspaper articles in both Brazil and the United States highlighted the importance of rubber production to the Allied war effort.46
The United States was extremely pleased with the Brazilian press’s coverage of Rubber Month.47 The Brazilian news media, which in 1943 remained much more tightly controlled by the state than its US counterpart, did not focus on any of the negative aspects of the policy of increased rubber production in the Amazon. The response of the US press had not been so easy to control. As part of Rubber Month, Time magazine published an article on the subject of Brazilian rubber production, reflecting on a number of criticisms of the industry. Yet tellingly, these arguments focused less on the human costs of Brazilian rubber production than they did on the potential economic threat it represented.
The central thrust of the Time article—a point of view taken by several other news agencies in the United States—was that the ongoing US program to synthesize rubber would allow US rubber producers to compete with Brazilian rubber plantations.48 The magazine claimed that the annual production per man in synthetic rubber would be sixty tons, whereas the average production of a native rubber gatherer was only one hundred and fifty pounds.49 The article went on to suggest that even on the most efficient plantations the total production per man per year would not exceed one ton.50
The accuracy of these figures could not be verified, but they—and the broader argument of which they formed a part—caused a huge amount of concern at the top of the power structure in Brazil, and even threatened to undermine the cozy relationship between the United States and Brazil’s rubber industry. As the rubber development corporation complained, the Time magazine piece “brought out considerable unfavorable comment on the rubber program in the sense that as soon as the war was over there would be no need for Brazilian crude rubber, and that Brazil would be left high and dry again for a market.”51 The complaint suggested that there were several Brazilian high officials who were dubious about the long-term value of the rubber program, and some Brazilians felt that the United States might not be as interested as it was in carrying out the rubber agreements it had made with Brazil.52 Yet the rubber program remained a largely hidden controversy in greater Brazil. The tightly controlled state press made it easy enough for the Vargas administration to maintain a veil of secrecy over the appalling working conditions that laborers in the Amazon experienced.
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br /> Even as Brazil tried to maximize its returns from its alliance with the United States, the country’s leaders were realizing that their contributions to the Allied war effort were not as great as they had initially thought. Delivering rubber and other strategic goods to the Allies allowed Brazil to play an important part in the war effort, yet it would not, on its own, secure Brazil an equitable partnership with the United States, or convince the United States to back Brazil’s bid for hegemony in South America.
Rio had only one card left to play, and it was the best in its hand: Brazil could make an active military contribution to the Allied war effort by sending it soldiers overseas to join the fight. Aranha understood that sending such a force was in all probability the only chance left for Brazil to achieve the aims that had been outlined in the document he had shown to Caffery, which he had discussed with him, Admiral Ingram, and General Walsh over dinner that humid evening in early 1943.
Part Five: Brazil’s Active Participation
14 Late Arrivals
Brazil’s time was running out. The pace of the war was quickening as 1943 progressed. The North African campaign ended on May 13, 1943, when the Axis forces in Tunisia surrendered. Then, on July 10, US and British troops landed on Sicily, and by mid-August, they controlled the entire Italian island. These Allied military successes contributed to the decision of Italy’s fascist grand council to depose Benito Mussolini on July 25, and on September 8, after lengthy negotiations, Italy surrendered to the Allies.
The surrender did not end the fighting in Italy, which was quickly becoming a major theater of the war—and which seemed likely to be one of the final frontiers. Following the Italian surrender, German forces immediately seized control of Rome and northern Italy, setting up a puppet fascist government there. On September 9, 1943, the day after the Italian surrender, US and British troops landed on the beaches of Salerno, near Naples, to begin a push northward to liberate all of Italy. Meanwhile, in the east, the Soviet Union launched a major offensive that led to the liberation of Kiev on November 6. The Allies now clearly had the upper hand, but they still had much further to go before Germany was forced to surrender.
In Rio, President Vargas followed events overseas in a sort of stupor. At the time of the Brazilian Rubber Month in June 1943, he was still reeling from his son’s sudden death earlier that year and his own car accident the previous year, both of which had taken a massive toll on him. His workload was unrelenting, but Vargas seemed to have fallen out of his usual, energetic rhythm. He changed his long-standing routines, no longer keeping a diary and playing less golf—often due to his injured hip. He was still found working alone in his study at night in the Guanabara Palace, but he took fewer meetings in the evening.
Vargas’s “right eye” and “left eye” kept the gears of government turning during this time. Osvaldo Aranha hosted most of the meetings with foreign diplomats and American military officers, while Vargas came to rely even more on Alzira to organize and prioritize his work. Both Aranha and Alzira understood what President Vargas would feel able to handle himself and what they should keep from him. They knew, too, how to cheer him up. The days that most pleased the president were ones in which he could see the positive results of the public works programs he had initiated. Tours—such as the one through the state of Rio de Janeiro that had precluded him from making the speech launching Rubber Month—appealed to the president, perhaps because they gave him a respite from his responsibilities in Rio. Despite his best efforts to recapture his previous zeal for governing, he remained a man running on autopilot at a time when the country needed strong, dynamic leadership.
The president knew full well that these were crucial times in Brazil’s history, and he remained fond of reminding Brazilians of this fact even though he seemed less capable than ever of handling the challenges before him. He tried to keep a clear head and continued working long hours, but a sense of detached melancholy seemed to hang over him like a dark cloud. His anguish over the loss of his son mixed with a toxic sense of guilt. The president had initially been kept in the dark about his son’s illness, which was ultimately diagnosed as partial paralysis and polio neuritis.1 Getúlinho’s illness came on after an intense period of work mixed with partying, which doctors believed could have triggered the affliction.2 Following Getúlinho’s collapse, he was not taken to the hospital, and Alzira was told on the phone that his case was not serious; she was warned not to alarm her parents.3 In the end, the president believed that his son had been badly let down by all concerned.
Even extremely pressing issues such as the question of whether or not to send a Brazilian force overseas took longer than usual to resolve. Vargas took over two months to respond to the detailed memorandum that Dutra put together at the start of January 1943, which the foreign minister had presumed would receive the president’s immediate attention. Vargas eventually approved Dutra’s memorandum on March 5, 1943, yet his consent did not mark the end of the debate about sending a Brazilian force overseas. On the contrary, it was merely the start of a long and controversial military operation, mixed with disputes and delays over training, which meant that no Brazilian force was readied for departure before the end of 1943.
Osvaldo Aranha proved to be the strongest supporter for the idea of sending Brazilian troops to Europe as quickly as possible. For Aranha, the dispatch of an expeditionary force was the most natural way of expanding the historic alliance between Brazil and the United States. He argued that Brazil had committed itself to the United States in every way except militarily, but that only such a commitment could ensure continued US help for Brazil, particularly in industrializing the country.4 Brazil, he argued, would also need to play a role in policing the postwar order in Europe if it were to have any hope of achieving its ambitious, long-term goals, whether in terms of its own infrastructure or its position in the hierarchy of South America.5 Aranha saw the extension of the Brazilian mission into the postwar era as Brazil’s best opportunity to maximize its returns from the United States. At the center of Aranha’s thinking in 1943 was the notion of exchange; the United States would support Brazil on regional issues if Brazil supported the United States on international ones.
The formation of an expeditionary force would also have the potential effect of strengthening Brazilian defenses—both in the northeast region of the country and along its southern border with Argentina. In both regions, the promised support of the United States would be vital in supplying the Brazilian army with weapons and training.
On August 9, 1943, by way of Decree 4744, Brazil formally established an expeditionary force.6 The decree called for a smaller force than was originally planned, but nonetheless it represented a historic decision by the Brazilian government.
It was widely anticipated that the Brazilian force, known as the Força Expedicionária Brasileira (FEB), would be sent to the Mediterranean theater of conflict. Senior US commanders hoped that it would be assigned to an already pacified area and would take little or no part in the major battles that lay ahead in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. In visits to Brazil, US officers had been far from impressed by the recruits in the Brazilian army, their training, or their antiquated equipment. When President Vargas dispatched Dutra to Washington in August to make arrangements for training and equipping the force, the minister of war carried a letter from Vargas to President Roosevelt in which the Brazilian president expressed the desire of the Brazilian army to actively participate in the war. President Roosevelt was impressed by the sentiment, but his senior staff advised him that a quiet spot should be found for the Brazilians to make their contribution to the Allied war effort.
By September 1943, the Brazilian force was slowly starting to take shape—thanks in no small part to the support of the United States. In a speech on September 7 to mark Brazilian Independence Day, President Vargas proclaimed, “If our soldiers have to participate in overseas operations, they will not lack the moral and material weapons necessary
to fight with efficiency and heroism. There is no lack of enthusiasm and the problem of equipment is being met with the efficient aid of our valorous ally, the great industrial American nation.”7 Brazil, as Vargas had long maintained, would supply the troops if the United States would supply the rest.
Dutra’s negotiations in Washington, meanwhile, appeared to be going well. The United States was taking full responsibility for the task of equipping the Brazilian expeditionary force. It agreed to send some military equipment to Brazil for training purposes, but the majority of the equipment would be transferred to the Brazilians when they arrived in the theater of the war. There had been some initial opposition on this point from senior US officers, who argued that by supplying the Brazilian troops, the United States would deprive its own forces of much-needed equipment, but eventually US planners decided that Vargas would receive his weapons despite the potential repercussions for other Allied forces.
Yet while the Brazilians would get their equipment, all of the weapons and supplies would be useless without troops to use them. In his speech on September 7, President Vargas had dismissed this issue:
Happily the Brazilian people—brave, proud, and vigilant of their honor—have answered the call to arms in an inspiring way. Idealistic and courageous, youth knows its duty and hastens to the defense of the country. . . . The combative spirit of the young people of Brazil is of excellent temper. It is manifested in the patriotic enthusiasm and reflected in the outstanding number of volunteers. The only difficulty in connection with individual mobilization has been the selection of those most qualified and least necessary to the economic life of the country. We can frankly state that our war problems are not the problems of manpower; of men we have plenty ready to fight.8
Brazil : The Fortunes of War (9780465080700) Page 26
