Brazil

by Heloisa Maria Murgel Starling

  Now that President Vargas had eliminated the National Alliance for Freedom and jailed the communists, he set about liquidating what remained of the left-wing opposition to his government. His plan was simple: to put an end to the democratic regime established by the 1934 Constitution. In 1937, on the eve of the presidential elections, Getúlio Vargas imposed an additional eight years of dictatorship on the Brazilian people. And he did so with virtually no resistance. His cool head and tremendous capacity for political calculation – one step back, then another two steps forward – made this possible. He manipulated the deputies in Congress and the presidents of the states – notably Flores da Cunha, president of Rio Grande do Sul and a former ally who was now in exile. He also controlled every detail of his potential successors’ political campaigns, chose his battles carefully and took advantage of the fragility of Brazil’s democracy.63 Rather than a series of sweeping victories, President Vargas built alliances one by one, above all with the army. He had the support of two generals: the head of the joint chiefs of staff, General Góes Monteiro, and General Eurico Gaspar Dutra, who had close ties to the integralistas and had been appointed Minister of War in 1936. The generals wanted a modern army and a weapons industry, in exchange for which they were prepared to support the coup d’état and sustain the dictatorship. The last important preparatory step was to convince the public that, after the 1935 uprisings, catastrophe was looming. In his radio address at midnight on 31 December, Getúlio Vargas warned the country that ‘Communism constitutes the most dangerous enemy of Christian civilization.’64

  The combination of censorship, repression and propaganda produced an ideological tornado that demonized the communists, struck terror into the hearts of Roman Catholics, the bourgeoisie and the upper classes, and engraved an anti-communist image on the collective imagination that was to be a constant presence in Brazil’s political life for the next fifty years. The 1935 uprisings became officially known as the Intentona Comunista – ‘intentona’ meaning an ‘insane or senseless project’ – and the rebels were accused of innumerable crimes: the communist officers had supposedly murdered their pro-government comrades in cold blood as they slept in the third infantry regiment barracks, and there was allegedly looting, plundering and rape during the Natal uprising.

  To justify his attacks, President Vargas forged accusations. On 30 September 1937 the country awoke to terrifying newspaper headlines: Moscow was planning another communist uprising in Brazil. The story was based on the discovery by the army of a secret plan for taking power – the Cohen Plan – which listed instructions for burning down public buildings, looting, and the summary execution of civilians.65 The document, including the Jewish name, ‘Cohen’, was a fabrication. It had been written by Colonel Olímpio Mourão Filho, the integralista paramilitary militia leader and head of the organization’s secret service. Colonel Mourão Filho worked in the intelligence sector of the army chiefs of staff. The fraudulent document he wrote was given to General Góes Monteiro, who treated it as authentic. He passed it on to President Vargas who in turn made it public.

  Copies began to circulate in the barracks, newspapers rekindled fears over the dangers of communism, radios blared out their anti-communist message, and people were terrified. Pleased with the result, President Vargas waited for two months, then on 10 November 1937 he had Congress surrounded and sent all the deputies home. He announced he was implementing emergency powers, put the police on the streets, and imposed a new constitution. He baptized his new dictatorial regime the Estado Novo (New State). Hardly a shot had been fired. And thus began the long years of the Estado Novo dictatorship.

  OUR TINY LITTLE TUPINAMBÁ FASCISM

  The maintenance and operation of the Estado Novo were centred entirely around Getúlio Vargas. He was the sole commander of a civilian dictatorship, backed by the armed forces, and sustained by populist policies. The new regime drew on concepts from conservative political thinkers, such as Alberto Torres,66 who believed that it was the task of the state to organize society, design policies and implement all changes. There were also fascist overtones. Estado Novo was the name of the Salazar regime in Portugal, which had begun in 1932. The Brazilian regime had many things in common with European fascism: the emphasis on Executive power personified by a single leader; the representation of interest groups and social classes in a form of corporatism, such as the political collaboration between an entrepreneur and his employees, with state oversight. There was also great faith in the idea that technology could be harnessed in the interest of government efficiency, accompanied by repression and the suppression of dissent.67

  But despite this, President Vargas’s Estado Novo was neither a reproduction of European fascism nor could it even be considered a true fascist state – like those in Italy, Portugal or Spain. It was an authoritarian, modernizing and pragmatic regime, sarcastically defined by Graciliano Ramos as ‘our tiny little Tupinambá fascism’.68 A society controlled by an authoritarian state – and not just by the masses – required repressive mechanisms to prevent any form of opposition. But the feasibility of the Estado Novo also depended on Getúlio Vargas’s ability to restrict decision-making to a tightly knit few, while expanding his base of support to the fullest extent possible. This required a political apparatus equipped to recruit supporters and neutralize conflicts.

  The elements of Estado Novo police repression had been put in place before the 1937 coup. The government by then had begun to ignore the 1934 Constitution.69 In 1935 a new national security law that delineated crimes against the political and social order was passed, and in 1936 the National Security Court was created to summarily judge political opponents and send them to prison. Even before this, in 1933, President Vargas had created his political police force in the capital. The exclusive task of the special police for political and social safety (Desp) was political repression. The special police heard denunciations; they also investigated, arrested and imprisoned any person whose activities were considered suspect – with no requirement to produce any evidence. Getúlio Vargas appointed Captain Filinto Müller, chief of the civil police,70 to command Desp. As head of the unit, Captain Müller had no compunction in ordering the death or torture of anyone suspected of being an adversary of the state, or in letting them rot in one of Desp’s prisons. A Nazi supporter, he maintained contact – with the collusion of the Brazilian government – with the Gestapo, which included the exchange of information and interrogation techniques.71 Captain Müller was an army officer in active service; he was simply temporarily transferred to a post outside the regular chain of command and later returned to army duty in 1942. He never received any kind of formal censure from the high command for his actions while working for the Estado Novo. It goes without saying that he had Getúlio Vargas’s unconditional support for everything he did.72

  Like any government imposed by force, the Estado Novo depended on the consent of the majority of the population. No previous Brazilian government had exerted so much time and effort in constructing its own apparatus to prove its legitimacy and enforce its political ideology.73 A great deal of time and energy was spent on censorship, a fundamental government instrument for suppressing dissent. The most essential part of this system – the element that guaranteed its efficacy – was conceived by Getúlio Vargas in 1939: a gigantic agency with the power to interfere in any area of communication, namely, the press and propaganda department (DIP). Directly subordinate to the presidency, it had affiliated bodies throughout the country and was run by the journalist Lourival Fontes, a loyal follower of Getúlio Vargas and an admirer of Italian fascism. The DIP was a complex organization. It was divided into six sections – propaganda, radio broadcasts, theatre and cinema, tourism and press – to promote and defend the Estado Novo. The agency intervened in every aspect of Brazilian culture, censoring all forms of artistic and cultural activities. The agency had in-house composers, journalists, writers and artists, who were trained in a variety of working methods. One of these was to exploit
the potential of the press, which led to the creation of two magazines – Cultura Política and Ciência Política. Another was to gain control of every aspect of popular music – the most efficient means of spreading ideas in Brazil since it was accessible to the whole population.

  During the 1930s, popular music (as opposed to classical or opera) was widely heard and became an important cultural component of daily life. Musical compositions prioritized the specific language of samba – a distinctive Brazilian form of musical expression. Two important new institutions gave voice to this genre: carnival became Brazil’s most important popular festival; and the radio, which became the first vehicle of mass communication. These were the golden years of Brazilian urban samba, with composers including Ary Barroso, Wilson Batista, Ataulfo Alves, Assis Valente, Dorival Caymmi, Nelson Cavaquinho and Geraldo Pereira. And, of course, Noel Rosa, who wrote around three hundred songs in just seven years of activity, between 1930 and 1937.74 Noel Rosa gave samba the form that we know today: the distinctive language based on everyday expressions, the relationship between words and melody, the poetical inventiveness and flexible musical treatment – at times speeding up, approaching a carnival march, at others slowing down and concentrating on the melody, with voice inflections that originated with the serestas75 and modinhas. His sambas reflected the modernization of the period – the telephone, the talking movies, factory whistles, photography and the baratinha, a two-seater convertible sports car.

  Noel Rosa died in May 1937 – he did not live to compose during the dictatorship. Nor did he live to witness the work of the DIP in the area of popular music. He would have been appalled: in 1942 alone the department banned 373 songs and 108 radio programmes. There was no area in which it did not intervene.76 It instituted the date of 3 January as Brazilian popular music day, organized the Rio de Janeiro carnival (during which the samba schools were obliged to choose Brazilian themes, preferably historical), and cultivated samba as a symbol of national identity.77

  The press and propaganda department proved to be highly effective in the use of new technology – radio and cinema – to promote government actions and initiatives. Radio was already a phenomenon of mass communication: it met the demand for entertainment from a growing audience and was a hugely successful vehicle for advertising. In 1939 the press and propaganda department began to transmit government propaganda via a nationwide network for an hour a day. The programme was called Hora do Brasil (Brazilian Hour), and President Vargas’s voice became known all over the country. He gave short, simple speeches, communicating directly with the people. In 1942 the agency extended the programme, following the president’s speeches with musicals and comedies. The agency promoted the phenomenally successful ‘auditorium programmes’ called Rádio Nacional, which became a sort of theatre that entered all Brazilian homes, including those of the poor. There were also fan clubs where people would listen to the popular singers of the moment.

  Maintaining the legitimacy of the dictatorship of the Estado Novo depended on the ability of various government leaders to convince the public that President Vargas and the state were one and the same. This was achieved by associating the president’s image with that of Brazil. One of the most important vehicles for government propaganda, the Ministry of Education and Health, was at the heart of this policy of embedding Estado Novo deeply into every aspect of Brazilian culture. The ministry was directed by Gustavo Capanema, a Mineiro who had wanted the post of federal interventor in Minas Gerais in 1933 but did not get it, and whom Getúlio Vargas brought to Rio de Janeiro the following year. The ministry is perhaps the best example of the ambivalence of political practices during the Estado Novo.78

  Gustavo Capanema made the most of his appointment. He created the Institute for National Heritage and the Arts and appointed Heitor Villa-Lobos – Brazil’s greatest classical composer – as superintendent of musical education. Mr Villa-Lobos trained large student choruses to sing at the mass events organized by the regime. Gustavo Capanema was responsible for the ministry’s new seat in Rio de Janeiro, a modernist construction without precedence in Brazil. The architect and urban planner Lúcio Costa had been inspired by the new architectural language of Le Corbusier. Oscar Niemeyer collaborated on the project and the walls were covered with a mural of hand-painted tiles by Candido Portinari.79 The building is still a wonderful sight, although rather rundown. In seemingly contradictory policies that perhaps best capture the Estado Novo, while Gustavo Capanema’s ministry promoted the modernists and other vanguard groups, it remained silent with regard to the arbitrary arrests and the imprisonment of artists and teachers; it did nothing to prevent the persecution of communists and was also responsible for closing down the University of the Federal District.

  Culture was seen as a matter for the state, used by the dictatorship to create closer ties with writers, journalists and artists. Between Gustavo Capanema’s ministry on the one side, and the press and propaganda department on the other, a market for intellectuals opened up, offering government posts particularly attractive to those anxious to gain access to the decision-making nucleus of the government. Although there were some who refused to follow the party line, a large number of Brazilian intellectuals, on both the right and the left of the political spectrum, accepted the limitations imposed by the agents of the Estado Novo: poets including Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Mário de Andrade, Cassiano Ricardo, Rosário Fusco and Menotti Del Picchia; intellectuals including Gilberto Freyre, Alceu Amoroso Lima and Nelson Werneck Sodré; and novelists such as Graciliano Ramos. In fact, a transformation was taking place in Brazilian culture. A nationwide aesthetic and a collective vision that were no longer the product of regional traditions had come to the fore. The Estado Novo provided the ruler and compass for the construction of this triumphant national identity. On the one hand, there developed a belief in the authenticity of popular culture; and on the other, there was a heterogeneous mixture of cultural elements drawn from different regions. Here an African turban from Bahia or a tambourine from a Carioca favela, there some capoeira movements and the mellow sound of mulatto singing – the voice of all Brazilians. South of the equator nothing is pure, everything is a mixture.80 In the victorious 1930s representation of the country, the Brazilian people were born alongside the mestizos. Being of mixed race was no longer seen as a disadvantage, but rather to be celebrated. A number of regional traditions – in cookery, dance, music and religion – were becoming ‘de-africanized’ and the source of national pride. To this day they are considered important symbols of Brazilian culture.

  As is feijoada. Originally ‘slaves’ food, the combination of black beans cooked with chunks of pork and bacon and served with rice, manioc flour, orange slices and diced kale, which has become the national dish, also serves as a symbolic representation of Brazil. The black beans and white rice, once mixed, become a metaphor for the harmonious mixture of cultures and races; the green kale becomes a metaphor for the country’s forests and the yellowish colour of the oranges for its gold. Using a somewhat exotic, aesthetic argument, a complete feijoada, when everything is mixed together, becomes a kind of portrait of Brazil. This process of absorbing previously rejected cultural traditions became increasingly widespread. Until the end of the nineteenth century, capoeira was suppressed by the police; it was listed as a crime in the 1890 penal code. However, in 1937, the Estado Novo decided to promote it, but no longer just for Africans. It became what was referred to in the early twentieth century as ‘mixed capoeira’ and the participants were mestizos, a mixture of the three races, Portuguese, Black and Indian. During Getúlio Vargas’s government capoeira became an official national sport. Candomblé underwent a similar process.

  The celebration of racial and cultural diversity allowed Brazil to offset the importation of European and North American culture by exporting its own. In 1939 the singer Carmen Miranda – Brazil’s most internationally successful representative – went to the United States. She was already a great star in Brazil who recorded albu
ms and sang in casinos and theatres. The public adored her. She was invited to New York by a group of American producers to appear in the musical revue Streets of Paris.81 It is said that she took just six minutes to conquer Broadway, and with her first film, Down Argentine Way82, she became world famous. Her ascent was as rapid as it was extraordinary – and possibly exaggerated: within a short time she was the highest-paid female star in Hollywood. She appeared on magazine covers, in advertisements and in shop windows, her records sold in the many thousands, and nightclubs vied with each other for the privilege of her presence – preferably accompanied by her Brazilian band, the Bando da Lua. Although she always told journalists that she had no voice at all – ‘what I have is bossa’83 – Carmen Miranda had genuine talent.84 Despite her Portuguese origin, she was a gift for the Estado Novo in its promotion of a mixed-race society and culture. Her repertoire and inimitable style included lyrics that were virtually unintelligible, choreography that mixed elements of samba with exuberant gestures, and a comical musical side – rhythmic and accelerated – all against a backdrop of tropical scenery of, to say the least, dubious taste.