Brazil : The Fortunes of War (9780465080700)

by Lochery, Neill

  Senior air force officers met on August 22, and led by Eduardo Gomes, demanded Vargas’s resignation, effectively sealing his political fate.9 A note containing the same demand and signed by all the officers present at the meeting was delivered to Vargas that same evening by the chief of staff of the armed forces, General Masarenham de Morais.

  Everybody waited for the president’s reaction. It was thought unlikely that he would be willing to agree to a deal to leave Rio and enter political exile for a second time in his career. Elements within the military called for him to be exiled from Brazil and warned that the mistakes of 1945 should not be repeated; the president should not be allowed to return to Rio Grande do Sul to start building up his political power base once again. In truth, a repeat of that scenario appeared highly unlikely in 1954. Vargas was in his early seventies and not in the best of health, and he seemed more and more like a beaten man. This time, few Brazilians expected him to make a comeback.

  When the chief of staff delivered the military’s note to Vargas on the evening of August 22, the president responded:

  I can’t agree with this. They want to slip me away from here as though I were a criminal. I have committed no crime. I’ll stay in power. If necessary I’ll leave bathed in blood, but I can’t be made to flee like this. . . . I shall fulfill my mandate until the end, with the collaboration of the armed forces. But even if I should be abandoned by the navy, army, and air force and by my own friends, I’ll resist alone . . . I have lived so much. . . . Now I can die. . . . I am too old to be demoralized, and now I have no reason to fear death.10

  Vargas appeared calm, and the atmosphere inside the palace mirrored his demeanor; to the extent possible, it was business as usual at the Catete Palace. Alzira noted that her father appeared detached and seemed to be preparing to make a stand against what he saw as the bullying tactics of the military. He continued to plan additional trips away from Rio, saying they would be good for his spirits and would take him away from the center of the political storm.

  The storm, however, hit Vargas with full force—and much quicker than he had anticipated. Just before midnight on the evening of August 23, the same night he had received a visit from the chief of staff, Vargas was informed that the military’s two most senior officers were waiting downstairs, urgently asking to meet with him. Just after midnight, they were shown into Vargas’s small study where the president and his brother, Benjamin, were waiting for them.

  The meeting was short and tense. The officers demanded, in the name of the armed forces, that Vargas resign immediately. They gave him the choice of formally resigning or taking a leave of absence; whichever method he chose, however, the result would be the same. The military would remove Vargas from power for a second time.

  Vargas refused to take either option, but he agreed to discuss the military’s request at an emergency cabinet meeting, which was to be held during the early morning hours. Aranha arrived for the cabinet meeting soon after Vargas had concluded his meeting with the military; when the finance minister joined Vargas, he noted that the president was signing some papers he had taken out of a drawer. Vargas appeared calm, if slightly withdrawn. It was clear that he had played for time once more, and did not intend to take either option the military had presented.

  The president appeared to be preparing for a last stand. Sandbags were being stacked outside the Catete Palace, and Alzira and her husband arrived to be with the president. Vargas, dressed in a blue-gray suit, spoke with Aranha and then his son-in-law, in front of whom he signed some more papers.11 As he made his way downstairs to the cabinet meeting just before 3 a.m., Vargas looked relaxed, smoking a Brazilian corona cigar and talking with Benjamin.

  The cabinet was in a somber state as Vargas entered. The ministers seemed to know that the meeting would not end well. Aranha took a seat on Vargas’s right. Breaking with tradition, Alzira was also in the room, along with other members of the Vargas clan and a few close advisors to the president.

  Vargas always handled cabinet meetings in the same methodical manner, and this time was no different. He announced in a quiet voice that there was only one item on the agenda: the future of the presidency and of his administration. He then went around the table, asking each minister to express his view on what to do. Euclides Zenóbio da Costa, the minister of war, said that, while he remained loyal to the president, he felt that if Vargas did not resign, much of the army would follow the lead of the air force and navy and take a stand against him. “If you resist,” the minister said, “much blood will flow and the outcome would be far from certain.”12 Most of the other ministers dodged Vargas’s question, stating simply that the eventual choice would be his alone, but that they would back him come what may.

  It was left to Aranha to summarize the arguments and then spell out the options, as he had done for Vargas for decades. He outlined three alternatives: the first, that Vargas and those with him in the palace could resist the military to the extent they were able; the second, that they could rally the forces loyal to the president to come to his defense; and the third, that Vargas could resign. Aranha did not indicate any personal preference for any of the three options.

  At this point, Alzira did something that she had never done before at a cabinet meeting: she intervened. “Lives are at stake, including mine,” she said, “so I consider myself entitled to speak.”13 She addressed the group slowly, in a voice devoid of emotion, immediately seizing the attention of everybody in the cabinet room. It was as if she were summing up the possible rebuttals to the arguments of the minister of war. “How many generals are really against the president?” she asked, adding, “Would the resignation of the president really bring peace and tranquillity to the country?” Alzira’s lawyerly counterattack was too much for the minister of war, who protested, “I am only trying to point out the consequences of any resistance.” Alzira shot Zenóbio da Costa a look that said everything about what she felt about him and his loyalty to her father.

  Just then, a note was handed to Vargas. It stated that the generals preferred for Vargas to take a leave of absence. The president read the note’s contents to the cabinet, while Alzira continued staring down the minister of war. Some discussion of the note followed, until Vargas interrupted. He said slowly: “As the cabinet has failed to reach a conclusion, I shall make the decision. I am instructing my military ministers to maintain order throughout the country. If this is maintained, I shall withdraw. I will ask for a leave of absence. If not, the rebels will find my body in here.”14

  Without further comment, Vargas brought the meeting to a close. Instructing Aranha to make an announcement to the military to this effect, and asking Zenóbio da Costa to meet with the generals to make the necessary arrangements, he then wished his ministers a good night and, not a little wearily, made his way upstairs to his study. There, he was joined by Benjamin, then by Alzira, who looked tired but who was still hoping for some miraculous solution that would leave her father in office.

  Then Vargas did something that caused his daughter great alarm. Taking a key from his jacket pocket, he informed her that it opened the private safe at the palace. “If anything should happen to me,” he told her, “in there are some securities and important papers . . . The securities are for Darci and the papers are for you, Alzira. Now I’m going to sleep.”15

  Alzira pleaded with her father. “Stop all this, who is going to use the key if we all go together to our end?”

  “I’m only informing you,” Vargas said quietly. With that, he left the room and went to bed. For the first time in a number of nights, he was able to get straight to sleep.

  Downstairs, a few cabinet members hung around the palace and took note of the growing defenses outside its gates. When word reached them that the president was asleep, they slowly slipped out into the mild Rio air. Most expected to be back at the Catete Palace the following day.16

  Aranha went upstairs, carrying the text of an ann
ouncement of the cabinet’s decision. Alzira took it immediately to her father and woke him so he could review it, but she found him disinterested in the document, wanting simply to get some sleep.17 When Alzira told Aranha of her father’s reaction, his old friend took it as a cue to return home and get some sleep himself.

  As Alzira escorted Aranha out of the building, he noticed that revolvers were being handed out to those in the palace who did not already carry guns. Alzira and the family were obviously preparing for the first option he had summed up at the cabinet—to resist the military. This, Aranha thought to himself, was not going to end well, and his mind was cast back to the events of May 1938, the last time he had seen Alzira armed with a revolver.

  Aranha was the final minister to leave the palace, and for a time all was quiet in the building—but not for long. At exactly 6 a.m., two army officers arrived at the front door and demanded that Benjamin accompany them immediately to an air base where the air force investigators who were continuing their inquiry into the attempted assassination of Lacerda wanted to question him and take a statement. “I cannot leave my brother at this time,” Benjamin informed the officers. In the back of his mind he thought it was all a ruse, and that the air force had dispatched the men to arrest him. The officers, however, were insistent that he accompany them. Benjamin tried to stall, insisting that if the investigators wished to speak with him, they should come to him at the palace. The officers simply responded that their orders were to take him to the base.

  Benjamin decided that he had better wake up his older brother, and went upstairs to find President Vargas. Both men agreed that the officers’ arrival at this hour of the morning signaled the military’s intention to arrest Benjamin and remove him from the palace so that he was out of the way. Benjamin again told the awaiting officers that he would not leave the president’s side at this crucial time.

  Learning that her father was awake, Alzira tried once more to convince him that he should move against the generals who were responsible for this outrage. She suggested arresting the ring leader, Eduardo Gomes, and claimed that there were still troops loyal to Vargas who would be willing to carry out the arrest. But Vargas was tired, and he dismissed his daughter’s suggestion. “Let me sleep,” he said. Alzira left the room to check on the result of the meeting of the minister of war and the generals. She did not have to wait long.

  At 7 a.m., news reached Benjamin that it all was final. The minister of war, Zenóbio da Costa, and the generals had reached an agreement; Vargas would take a leave of absence, with immediate effect. Benjamin broke the news to Vargas, who queried the statement. “This means that I am deposed?” he asked his brother. Benjamin replied in the affirmative, and tried to reassure Vargas that he had received the information from a reliable source. “Go and double check,” Vargas quietly asked his brother.

  At 7:45 a.m., Vargas asked his valet, who was due to give him a shave, to let him rest a little bit more. Just after 8 a.m., while Vargas was still waiting for his brother to return to formally confirm the news of his deposition, he walked across the corridor from his bedroom to his study. Still dressed in his pajamas, he startled Alzira, who had thought her father was sleeping.18 She decided not to say anything to him, and Vargas went back into to his bedroom.

  At 8:41 a.m., holding his Colt .32 pistol in his right hand, President Getúlio Vargas shot himself through the heart.19 The gunshot echoed through the palace. On hearing the noise, Alzira ran into her father’s room. There she discovered his motionless body, the pistol lying nearby. She screamed, “It can’t be, it can’t be, you promised.” Vargas’s son Lutero entered the room and pronounced his father dead.

  Benjamin was left with the task of breaking the news of Vargas’s death to the minister of war and thereby to the military and to Osvaldo Aranha. In a state of shock, Aranha raced toward the Catete Palace in his ministerial car. On his way, Aranha learned that Vargas’s death had been a suicide.20

  The police arrived in the president’s bedroom as family members were embracing. Everybody present noticed the white envelope on the bedside table. Alzira’s husband opened it, and discovered that it was the two-page message to the Brazilian people—one of the very documents that the president had signed at the last cabinet meeting.

  Soon after Aranha arrived at the palace, he entered Vargas’s bedroom and proclaimed, “He died in order not to sacrifice us.” When he saw the farewell message, Aranha asked to take it to the director of the national radio channel, which had already begun to announce the news of Vargas’s death, so that the president’s last words to his country could be broadcast for all Brazil to hear. Before he left, however, Aranha read the note out loud in the corridor of the palace for the president’s family and members of his staff to hear.21 His voice choking with emotion, the old gaucho related his departed friend’s last message:

  Once more the forces and interests, which work against the people, have organized themselves afresh and break out against me.

  They do not accuse me, they insult me; they do not fight me, they vilify and do not allow me the right to defend myself. They must silence my voice and impede my actions so that I shall not continue to defend, as I have always defended, the people and especially the humble. I follow my destiny. After decades of domination and plunder on the part of international economic and financial groups, I placed myself at the head of a revolution and won. I began the work of liberation and I installed a regime of social freedom. I had to resign. I returned to the government on the arms of the people. The underground campaign of international groups joined that of the national groups, which were working against the regime of assuring employment. The excess-profits law was held up by Congress. Hatreds were unleashed against the just revision of minimum wages. I wished to bring about national freedom in the utilization of our resources by means of Petrobrás; this had hardly begun to operate when the wave of agitation swelled. Electrobrás was obstructed to the point of despair. They do not want the worker to be free. They do not want the people to be independent.

  I assumed the government in the midst of an inflationary spiral, which was destroying the rewards of work. Profits of foreign companies were reaching as much as 500 percent per year. In declarations of import values, frauds of more than $100 million per year were proved. Came the coffee crisis and the value of our main product rose. We tried to defend its price and the reply was such violent pressure on our economy that we were forced to give in.

  I have fought month after month, day after day, hour after hour, resisting constant, incessant pressure, suffering everything in silence, forgetting everything, giving myself in order to defend the people who now are left deserted. There is nothing more I can give you except my blood. If the birds of prey want someone’s blood, if they want to go on draining the Brazilian people, I offer my life as a holocaust. I choose this means of being always with you. When they humiliate you, you will feel my soul suffering at your side. When hunger knocks at your door, you will feel in your breast the energy to struggle for yourselves and your children. When you are scorned, my memory will give you the strength to react. My sacrifice will keep you united and my name will be your battle standard.

  Each drop of my blood will be an immortal flame in your conscience and will uphold the sacred will to resist. To hatred, I answer with pardon. And to those who think they have to defend me, I reply with my victory. I was a slave of the people, and today I am freeing myself for eternal life. But this people whose slave I was will no longer be slave to anyone. My sacrifice will remain forever in their souls and my blood will be the price of their ransom.

  I fought against the spoliation of Brazil. I fought against the spoliation of the people. I have fought with my whole heart. Hatred, infamy, and slander have not conquered my spirit. I have given you my life. Now I offer you my death. I fear nothing. Serenely I take my first step toward eternity and leave life to enter history.22

  It was a fittingly grandiose clo
sing statement by the undersized statesman who had led Brazil into the modern age. The note became one of the most important and controversial documents in Brazilian history.

  News of the president’s death spread quickly, and soon angry mobs had taken to the streets of Rio.23 The front pages of some newspapers’ early editions, which had gone to print hours before Vargas had died, falsely reported that the president had resigned and that at 5:20 a.m. the vice president had assumed power.24 Angry Brazilians attacked vans carrying newspapers that had recently been hostile to Vargas, setting the vehicles alight as they tried to distribute the afternoon edition of the paper—the one confirming his death.25 When it came time for Brazil to bury its fallen president, hundreds of thousands of people lined the route of the funeral procession.26

  It was, ironically, the Brazilian masses who most mourned Vargas’s death. Many Brazilians thought of Vargas as the “father of the poor,” but in reality he had promised them much and delivered very little. The paradox of his life could be seen in his World War II policies. A strong Brazilian nationalist who was suspicious of US cultural and political aims, he had nevertheless opened up Brazil to levels of US influence hitherto unseen in Latin America. Under Vargas’s leadership, Brazil became powerful in ways—industrially, militarily, and to some extent geopolitically—that it had never been before. Brazil’s elites—its military leaders, politicians, business moguls, and industrial tycoons—benefited tremendously from these advancements. But for ordinary Brazilians, still struggling with high prices and stagnating wages, the father of the poor turned out to be a cold and distant patriarch.

  A more apt legacy for Vargas, and one more commensurate with his goals, could be seen in the city where he died. World War II and Vargas changed Rio de Janeiro beyond recognition. The city’s new infrastructure amplified Brazil’s international appeal and drew visitors from around the world. Guanabara Bay proved to be a gateway into the entire country—if not for the travelers themselves, then at least for their money, which gradually helped to return Brazil’s economy to an even keel. The guest list at the Copacabana Palace Hotel during the 1950s and 1960s reveals a host of American stars, including John Wayne and Kirk Douglas. There were new international airports and expanded port facilities. The highway connections to the rest of the country dramatically improved and the rise of domestic steel production enabled the building of skyscrapers to tower over the city.