Curiously, while Aranha was deeply suspicious of the Allies’ motives for putting together the proclaimed list, these feelings did not affect his thinking about trade between Brazil and the United States and Great Britain more generally. Perhaps they should have, for the proclaimed list was a strong indication that neither country was truly interested in an equitable partnership with Brazil. Washington viewed trade with Brazil as an element of the Good Neighbor Program, but it also regarded it as a means of deepening Brazilian dependence on the United States.
While Aranha continued his attempts to develop Brazil’s alliance with the United States, and while the training program for the FEB escalated, President Vargas was upping his own performance as well. In the months prior to his departure for the summer retreat at Petrópolis in January 1944, the president had been busy signing a huge number of decrees intended to improve the Brazilian economy. He was also trying to get Brazilians to see the silver lining of their wartime hardships. While food and fuel shortages were a direct result of the war, Vargas talked up the positive effects the conflict was having on Brazil, namely, the fact that its alliance with the United States was allowing Brazil to initiate numerous public works programs, slowly improving the country’s transportation infrastructure that was beginning to link the different regions of Brazil together.
As Vargas headed up the road to his summer retreat in January, he planned to give a great deal of thought to his country’s political future, as well. The vast majority of Brazilians were now demanding democratic reforms once the war was over. The major question confronting Vargas was how far he should—or indeed could—go in promising this type of political change. But given that the impending departure of many young Brazilians for the war zone was emboldening Brazilians to demand more from their government in return for their sacrifices, Vargas considered it imprudent to wait much longer to give Brazilians an answer. He would need to make a declaration of his intentions prior to the departure of the soldiers, which was still on track to fall in the middle of 1944.
15 The Promise
On the sweltering summer evening of January 28, 1944, a huge crowd gathered in front of the Municipal Theater in downtown Rio. Large posters of the leaders of the nascent United Nations hung from the theater’s balconies: black and white images of President Vargas, President Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and, for first time, Joseph Stalin. As the sun sank behind the neighboring buildings, the shadows lengthened and the temperature cooled. Powerful backlights illuminated the building, throwing into dramatic relief its impressive, European-styled façade. On Praça Floriano square below, a noisy crowd—the local press reported there were one hundred thousand people—contented itself by singing patriotic songs.1 The event in which they were participating had been organized by the Liga de Defesa Nacional, Brazil’s government-sponsored civilian-defense league, to commemorate the second anniversary of Brazil’s breaking of ties with Germany and Italy. These men, women, and children had come out to show their support for the ongoing war effort and for the leaders who were directing it.
The main speaker at the event was Osvaldo Aranha, the man who had made the dramatic announcement about Brazil’s new foreign policy two years earlier. Now, addressing his countrymen, Aranha recalled one of the main reasons for Brazil’s decision to break relations with Germany and Italy, calling on Brazilians to continue its “battle with the fifth column.” He reminded them, too, that “Brazil must strengthen even further its ties with the United Nations, and our friendship with the United States is indestructible.”2 The speech told Cariocas nothing they didn’t already know, but they received it well nonetheless, and sang the national anthem as the event drew to a close.
The popular outpouring of support on the evening of January 28 boded well for Brazil’s next move in the war: its commitment of troops to the ongoing struggle in Europe. On the home front, however, the Brazilian people were finding themselves under more and more stress as the war dragged on. Although Carnaval, the most important party of the year in Brazil, took place as usual at the end of February that year, it was one of the quietest on record.3 The local authorities withheld all funding for popular festivities and the chief of police in Rio warned that “any Axis subjects found on the street or in public places of entertainment will be arrested.”4 Warnings to this effect were also posted in the local press.5
As Cariocas got back to work following Carnaval, many of them grappled with drastic increases in the cost of living. The situation had worsened considerably during the first part of 1944 and now threatened to destabilize the Vargas administration, as the US embassy noted in a report to the secretary of state:
The grumblings and discontent about food shortages and high prices are now so general that unless prompt and effective action is taken to alleviate the condition of the laboring classes, it may assume proportions where dissatisfaction with the government could bring on a grave political crisis for President Vargas. The endless queues, which one sees day after day in front of the butcher’s shops [and] milk distribution depots, are a source of constant irritation. Housewives and servants spend hours daily standing in line, and criticism of President Vargas and the government is so widespread that it is affecting his popularity with the masses.6
The rising cost of living was due to a host of factors. The salary increases that President Vargas announced in November of the previous year had all but been wiped out by inflation. Profiteering and corruption among government officials, as well as structural problems such as the lack of a modern transportation system and shortages of fuel, had all been combining to drive up prices, putting the pinch on ordinary Brazilians and increasing the risk of political unrest within the country.7
At first, President Vargas failed to note the seriousness of the situation. Only in March 1944 did he promise to take measures to counteract the increases. More specific promises were made to root out corruption and punish anyone caught excessively profiteering. With the country at war and so many Brazilians making sacrifices, Vargas warned, such selfishness and criminality would not be tolerated.
After returning to Rio from his summer retreat, Vargas sought other ways to defuse popular discontent. He attempted to improve the civilian food supply, particularly the shortages of meat and milk. He also devised a plan to mollify Brazilians who aspired for political change.
During his summer stay in Petrópolis, after holding meetings with Aranha and other ministers at his retreat, Vargas concluded that the Estado Novo could not survive in the postwar era. Given the populist demands for changes that the war had created, it was clear that the Brazilian political system needed significant reforming. Now, after returning from the mountains to find Rio’s populace seething over the worsening domestic situation, Vargas was prepared to make a far-reaching statement to the Brazilian people about the country’s political future.
The administration warned international journalists and newswire organizations in Rio that the president would make a major speech on Brazil’s future during April 1944. The timing of the speech was important; the first Brazilian soldiers were almost ready to embark for Europe, and President Vargas had publicly proclaimed that he would make his announcement about Brazil’s future before the Força Expedicionária Brasileira left the country’s shores. The FEB’s training had been going smoothly, and the US joint chiefs of staff had identified Italy as the FEB’s final destination, confirming that the force would receive further training and equipment once it arrived in Europe. Given the troops’ progress, May looked like the most likely month for their departure, so Vargas had to hurry.
President Vargas gave his much-anticipated speech on April 15, 1944, at the opening ceremony for a new building for the Brazilian press association. Although his remarks were lengthy, he spoke with passion and authority, increasing the intensity of his rhetoric as he reached his conclusion. Only then did Vargas deliver the lines he knew the media would highlight in the following day’s newspapers:
&
nbsp; With reference to our external situation, although there is still much fighting to do, it is not to avoid defeat but to obtain a complete victory and effectively reconstruct the world on a more humane and just basis, respecting the sovereignty of all nations, large or small, militarily weak or strong. Each nation should be able to organize itself according to its own desires, adequately expressed in accordance with its historical traditions and the needs of its autonomous existence. We are now about to enter into the struggle more actively by sending to the battlefront our young and brave soldiers alongside of our glorious fighting allies. This implies added responsibilities, which means the acceptance of additional restrictions in our usual comforts and a courageous disposition to confront new sacrifices. We have maintained exemplary internal conduct, but the hour calls for even greater union among us, putting transitory differences and selfish preoccupations aside. When the future of the country and the national destiny is at stake, we must not be occupied with sterile agitations and questions of form. Any act or word that casts doubt on our major objectives is disguised fifth columism. What is of greatest importance is winning the war, and that is our prime objective. When again we enjoy the benefits of peace, we shall complete the development of our various institutions, which are not as yet functioning. The people will then by means of the most ample and free methods without intimidation of any kind manifest themselves democratically and select their own rulers and representatives in an atmosphere of law and order.8
Informed ahead of time of the speech’s importance, the United States had expected something of a state of the union address, but what Vargas delivered was much more unusual.9 By directly alluding to the possibility of democratic elections in postwar Brazil, he had given the growing number of pro-reform Brazilians a reason to hope, and had signaled a momentous and imminent change in the country’s political structure. While Vargas had given previous indications of a return to democratic politics after the war, this speech represented the most direct commitment he made to such a political transformation.
The British ambassador said, “The speech was listened to with apathy, but the final sentences brought terrific cheering that lasted for at least two minutes.”10 The local press, like Vargas’s audience, were hugely enthusiastic about the address. Front-page headlines included, “President Vargas Promises Elections After the War,” “The Free Vote of the Citizen,” and “Foundation of Democracy in the Thought of President Vargas.”11 The New York Times reported the speech as part of a detailed article on Brazil on July 13, 1944, titled “US Aid to Brazil Spurs Her Advance.” The New York Times correspondent, Foster Hailey, was a little more cautious than the local press in assessing Vargas’s promise, writing, “There is no opposition party, but there is open criticism of the government in every coffee shop. President Vargas, for whose tenure the Brazilians coined the phrase continuismo, meaning an intent to continue in office, has made a qualified promise that after the war free elections will be held.”12
“A qualified promise” turned out to be a relatively accurate assessment of Vargas’s closing remarks in the speech. The president’s local critics suggested that he had little time for democratic politics, and that his promise of free elections at the end of the war was simply a political ploy to distract the public’s attention from—and defuse their dissatisfaction with—increases in the cost of living.13 Indeed, according to the New York Times, the real effect Vargas’s speech had was “taking out whatever wind the sails of his active political opponents may have accumulated lately.”14 As the US embassy in Rio warned, however, “the food situation is not improving to any appreciable level, and here, as elsewhere, when bellies are empty, unrest is always latent.”15
Back in Washington, however, President Vargas’s promise was widely lauded. In an article in the Washington Post, Sumner Welles wrote:
Thus the solemn assurance has now been given to the people of Brazil that they will once more enjoy popular self-government. If one may venture in this uncertain world to make a prediction, I would prophesy that in the years after the end of the present war the two nations that would most swiftly forge ahead because of the capacity of their people, because of their vast natural resources, and because of their entrance upon a period of rapid industrial expansion would be Brazil and the Soviet Union.16
By so favorably comparing Brazil’s economic and geopolitical potential with that of the Soviet Union, Welles was elevating a former tropical backwater to the ranks of the world’s great superpowers. It was, by any measure, a remarkable statement—and one that, if not entirely accurate in the short term, would prove prescient in the long run.
The British were less sanguine than the Americans about the prospects for Brazilian democracy. For some time before and after Sumner Welles’s tribute in the Washington Post, the British argued that the US press had a tendency to “laud all things Brazilian just as it decries all that comes out of Argentina.”17 Welles and the Americans, they felt, were far too easily taken in by President Vargas, whose comments—according to the British, at least—represented little more than an attempt to distract Brazilians from the food shortages and price increases still racking their country.18 As the British embassy in Rio warned Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, “The Brazilians, with all their love for bestowing and receiving flattery, are no fools and in the long run are more likely to be influenced by the circumstances of the day rather than by memories of expressions of praise, however highly placed their authors may be.”19
Whatever their attitude toward Vargas’s speech, however, the British were looking toward the postwar relationship with Brazil for the greater part of 1944, and anticipating the potentially lucrative trade deals they might strike with Brazil after the war. Part of this, they knew, was dependent on a loosening of US-Brazilian ties, but that was beginning to look like a distinct possibility. London sensed that, despite Welles’s warm words, elements of the Vargas regime were getting cold feet about Brazil’s alliance with the United States, and were looking at Great Britain as a counterbalance to US influence in their country.20
Whatever misgivings certain Brazilian officials might have harbored about the United States, one American, at least, continued to enjoy high standing in Rio: Sumner Welles. Although Welles had left Rio at the start of February 1942 and had been forced to resign as secretary of state in the autumn of 1943, his presence was still felt in Latin America. He was, after all, the main architect of the original Good Neighbor Program, and he continued to laud the US policy of developing closer ties with South America. As World War II progressed toward its final phases—and as Brazilian troops prepared to enter the battle—his resounding support of the Vargas administration came to be much missed in Rio.
In June 1944, the same month as the D-Day landings in Normandy, the first squadron of the FEB was ready to leave for Italy. On June 4, the Allies liberated Rome, but German forces were still well dug in across the north of Italy and were proving very difficult to dislodge. The topography of Italy, its mountains and valleys, suited the defenders, who were disciplined and well organized; many of them were battle-tested veterans of the eastern front. Prior to the departure of the first 5,075 Brazilians on board the US troop ship the General Mann, the entire division of twenty-five thousand men who would eventually serve in Italy marched through the streets of central Rio. The soldiers were cheered by the huge number of Cariocas who had turned out for the occasion. It was a simultaneously joyful and somber occasion. The crowd tried its best to lift the spirits of the troops, most of whom were heading overseas for the first time; some of the girls in the crowds threw rice, while the older mothers waved hankies. The sight of the first war-ready troops was slightly unnerving for many Cariocas, and brought the reality of war home in a way that blackouts and shortages of food and fuel had not.
It was, in truth, a less than convincing display of Brazilian military might—the troops were not ready for war. The soldiers appeared poorly equipped. Their uniforms were far f
rom appropriate for the hostile Italian winter: soft hats, thin cotton clothing, and small backpacks barely large enough to carry a packed lunch. The rifles they proudly carried on their left shoulders belonged to the era of the previous world war, and as the division marched, bits of their guns fell off, littering the streets with small fragments of gun butts and even whole barrels. Few armies in World War II had been sent into a war zone so ill equipped and badly trained. The US promise to train and equip the force once it reached its destination was vital.
The choice of Italy as the destination for the FEB had been very last minute. The United States originally planned to send them to North Africa, but the Allies’ rapid victories in that region meant a new front had to be found. There had been some disagreement between senior US and British officers as to where the FEB should be located. The British wanted nothing to do with the FEB, arguing that it would get in the way of combat operations. The British viewed the force as little more than an American ruse, one intended to show that the United States enjoyed widespread support in South America. Nonetheless, the United States had promised President Vargas that the FEB would be involved in combat operations and that its members would receive the best training and equipment that the United States had to offer—and this promise eventually trumped British objections to Brazil’s participation.
The farewell parade through Rio climaxed with an emotional address by President Vargas, who waved two little Brazilian flags as the parade marched past his podium. The address was pure Brazilian theater, soulful and passionate, but eschewing any mention of the difficult realities confronting the nation. Vargas concluded his relatively short speech by saying:
The hour has come for vengeance against those who in 1942 used pirate ships barbarously to massacre Brazilian lives. Our army, which has covered itself with honors in memorable deeds, will demonstrate its new arms and its traditional bravery on the battlefields of Europe. Everything has been done to make sure the FEB lacks for nothing. Your wives, mothers, sweethearts, and children await your return. . . . The [Brazilian] nation is proud of your courage and dedication. May God’s blessings accompany you, as our spirits and hearts accompany you until you return with victory.21
Brazil : The Fortunes of War (9780465080700) Page 28
