Top Quotes: “Brazil: A Biography” — Lilia Moritz Schwarcz

Introduction

“In a country characterized by the power of the landowners — many of whom own immense estates, each the size of a city — authoritarianism and personal interest have always been deeply rooted, undermining the free exercise of civic power, weakening public institutions and consequently the struggle for people’s rights.”

“There is a further trait which, as a social rather than a natural construction, is not endemic, but is nevertheless shockingly resistant to improvement and a constant presence in Brazilian history. The logic and language of violence are deeply embedded determinants of Brazilian culture. Violence has characterized Brazilian history since the earliest days of colonization, marked as they were by the institution of slavery. This history of violence has permeated Brazilian society as a whole, spreading throughout, virtually naturalized. Although slavery is no longer practised in Brazil, its legacy casts a long shadow. The experience of violence and pain is repeated, dispersed, and persists in modern Brazilian society, affecting so many aspects of people’s lives.

Brazil was the last Western country to abolish slavery and today it continues to be the champion of social inequality and racism, which, albeit veiled, is equally perverse.”

“Far from any alleged attempt at social harmony, the different races were deliberately intermingled. This resulted from the purchase of Africans brought to Brazil by force in far larger numbers than to any other country. Brazil received more than 40 per cent of all slaves that were brought from Africa to work on the plantations in Portuguese America — a total of around 3.8 million individuals. Today, 60 per cent of the country’s population is made up of blacks and browns; it could thus be ranked as the most populated ‘African’ country, with the exception of Nigeria. Furthermore, despite the numerous controversies, it is estimated that in 1500 the native population was between 1 million and 8 million, of which between 25 per cent and 95 per cent were decimated after the ‘meeting’ with the Europeans.”

Origins of Brazil

“It was the Genovese explorer himself, Christopher Columbus, who coined the term canibal, a corruption of the Spanish word caribal (‘from the Caribbean’).”

“In 1534 the Portuguese government began the process of dividing Brazil into fourteen captaincies that were granted to twelve men, known as donees. Since the interior of the country was completely unknown, it was decided to imagine parallel strips of coastline that stretched inland as far as the sertão. All the beneficiaries were members of the minor nobility; seven had served with distinction in the African campaigns and in India, and four were high-ranking court officials. The system granted them jurisdiction over their captaincies with supreme powers to develop the region and enslave the Indians. The extreme isolation, however, proved to be highly detrimental. So much so that in 1572 the Crown divided the country into two departments: the Northern Government, with its capital in Salvador, was responsible for the region that went from the captaincy of the Bahia de Todos os Santos to the captaincy of Maranhão. The Southern Government, based in Rio de Janeiro, was responsible for the region that stretched from Ilhéus3 to the southernmost point of the colony. In this way territories within territories were created, regions that barely recognized each other as belonging to a single political and administrative unit.”

“It had to be peopled and colonized and some sort of economic activity had to be stimulated. Apart from parrots and monkeys, the only tradable product was a ‘dye wood’ well known in the East as a valuable pigment that could fetch high prices in Europe. Thus, shortly after Cabral’s expedition, other Portuguese navigators set sail to explore the new territory and extract this native plant.

Brazilwood, which grew abundantly along the coast, was originally called ‘Ibirapitanga’ by the Tupi Indians. Often growing as high as 15 metres, the tree has a large trunk, sturdy branches and thorn-covered pods. It was in high demand for making quality furniture, and for its reddish resin that was used for dyeing cloth. It is thought that about 70 million of these trees existed when the Portuguese arrived. In the years that followed, the species was decimated by Portuguese loggers, with the aid of Indian labour, which they bartered. As early as 900 CE the wood can be found in the records of the East Indies, listed among a number of plants that produced a reddish dye. Both the tree and the dye went by many different names: brecillis, bersil, brezil, brasil, brazily, all of which were derived from the Latin word brasilia, meaning a glowing red, ‘the colour of embers.’”

“The first ship carrying brazilwood to Portugal, the Bretoa, sailed in 1511, with five thousand logs, as well as monkeys, cats, a large quantity of parrots, and forty Indians, who excited great curiosity among the Europeans.

In 1512 or thereabouts, with the product established on the international market, the term Brazil became the official name for Portuguese America. But other names, or combinations of names, remained in parallel use. These included both Terra Sante Crusis de lo Brasil and Terra Sante Crusis del Portugal.”

“Whereas according to Western science, humans were animals who became humans, for the Amerindians all animals were previously humans. The consequence of this was a different interpretation of the interaction between humans and animals, all of whom are ‘citizens’ with social relations. This model also questions basic Western parameters such as ‘nature’ and ‘culture. For Westerners, there is Nature (which is a given and universal) and different cultures (which are constructed). For the Amerindians, on the other hand, there was one culture but different ‘natures’: men, animals and spirits.

In this interaction between ‘natures’ the shaman plays a vital role; he was the equivalent of a political, social and spiritual leader. An appreciation of this role is essential for understanding societies that do not discriminate between humans and nonhumans. He was the only one who could ‘transport bodies’ and had the powers to perceive these different states of being (human, animal or spirit).”

“The territory they occupied was vast, stretching from the coast of Maranhão to the north of the present-day state of Tocantins. The French also controlled almost all the eastern part of Pará and a large amount of what is today Amapá. They established several settlements, including Cameta, on the banks of the Tocantins river, and others around the mouth of the Araguaia river. Portugal’s reaction was proportional to the size of the invasion.

They gathered their troops in the captaincy of Pernambuco from where they marched on the settlement of Saint Louis. The expedition ended with the capitulation of the French on 4 November 1615. Portuguese settlers then occupied the area and introduced the cultivation of sugar. The French, however, did not give up. Their next attempted colonization was at the mouth of the Amazon river, from where they were once again expelled by the Portuguese. In 1626 they colonized the territory of what is today French Guiana, where they finally met with success. Although its capital city Cayenne was founded in 1635, the French only acquired control of the region in 1674; the region has been administered by the French state ever since. Nonetheless, after 1615 the French made no further attempt at establishing colonial settlements in Brazil.”

“The population of Salvador was aware of Dutch intentions and expected an attack. Since the end of the truce, a recommencement of the conflict between Spain and the Netherlands was thought to be highly plausible and it seemed likely that it would spill over into Portuguese America. The next Dutch attack on the capital came on 9 May 1624, on which occasion they held the city for twenty-four hours. According to the historian Charles Boxer, ‘such was the panic, and so generalised, that neither whites nor Indians were of any use at all, each looking for a safe place to hide without even thinking of fighting back’.

However, the Dutch didn’t manage to go beyond the limits of the city. Led by Matias de Albuquerque — the new Portuguese governor of the colony — and by Bishop Marcos Teixeira, the so-called ‘good men’ organized the resistance and prevented the farms from being taken. They used guerrilla tactics until the arrival of a surprisingly large contingent of reinforcements from Portugal — 56 man-of-wars, 1,185 pieces of artillery and 12,463 men from Castela, Portugal and Naples — who managed to prevent the expansion of the invasion. Portugal was determined not to lose its richest colony; after suffering prolonged fighting, ambushes and going without food, the Dutch surrendered. They had been in Bahia for almost a year. There was to be another attack in 1627, but on that occasion the Dutch force was smaller and the city was better fortified. The Dutch seemed more interested in sacking the city than invading it, to the extent that they took 2,654 crates of sugar (approximately one-sixth of the annual production of the Recôncavo), as well as leather, tobacco, cotton, gold and silver.

But the Dutch refused to give up. They set their eyes on the prosperous captaincy of Pernambuco, which at that time rivalled Bahia in wealth. With its 121 sugar mills the captaincy had awakened the interest of the directors of the Dutch West India Company. In addition, the journey from Salvador to Luanda took thirty-five days, whereas from Recife it took only twenty-nine, a difference that the Dutch would have been well aware of. They launched the attack in early 1630, with sixty-five vessels and 7,280 men. Olinda, the capital, fell on 14 February.”

“A revolt was organized in Pernambuco under the leadership of André Vidal de Negreiros and João Fernandes Vieira, one of the most prosperous landowners in the area, and they were joined by the Afro-Brazilian military leader Henrique Dias and the Indian Filipe Camarão.

The two battles of Guararapes, fought between 1648 and 1649, ten kilometres south of Recife, are seen as a sort of cornerstone for the creation of the Brazilian nation, above all in Pernambuco. The story was further elaborated by future generations, glorifying the multiethnic people of the region who had united to fight for Brazil’s emancipation. With time the term ‘Reconquest’ acquired an emotive force, and even today the event is celebrated by Portuguese and Brazilians as a triumph of ‘the just.’ Most of the time history is written by the winners, and, in this case, the Dutch were the losers.

Today we know that, in addition to Calabar, many sugar-mill owners, cane-cutters, New Christians, black slaves, Tapuia Indians, poor mestizos and others among the poorest classes supported the Dutch. The forces that confronted the Dutch in no way demonstrated a united front made up of the country’s three races: Indians, blacks and Portuguese.

The wars continued for several years: while the insurrectionists occupied the interior, the Dutch maintained control of Recife. The uprising of the Brazilians was not, however, the only reason for the collapse of the Dutch: the West India Company itself was in crisis and could no longer find investors. Besides the lack of funds, there was also a culture shock: while the Portuguese tended to be dogmatic about religion, and rather unorthodox when it came to politics and economics, the Dutch were the exact opposite. They were tolerant in religious practices, but extremely harsh when dealing with landowners in debt. In the end, after so many years of conflict, the resources required for financing the military operation in Brazil were simply no longer forthcoming.

The Dutch finally capitulated in 1654, when a Portuguese squadron arrived and blockaded Recife. The Portuguese resistance movement, which became known as the ‘War of Divine Freedom’, concentrated on making alliances throughout the region, especially with landowners who were discontent with the high taxes demanded by the Dutch. On 6 August 1661, with the intervention of the British monarchy, the details of the Treaty of The Hague were finally agreed: the Portuguese would keep all the invaded territories in Africa and America and would pay the Dutch compensation of four million cruzados. The Brazilian government introduced a tax to help pay for it; to have an idea of how long a shadow was cast by this tax, it remained in force until the nineteenth century (although the sum had been fully paid off long before). The Pernambucans were indignant at the idea to having to pay for a war that they had won. Perhaps the seeds had already been sown for the future uprisings that were to take place in this state, most ferociously in the nineteenth century.”

“in contrast to the traditional view popularized by history books — that the demise of the Indians prompted the importation of African slaves — we now know that the Indians in fact continued to be enslaved for a very long period of time. For example, the Paulistas continued to imprison Indians until the eighteenth century, either selling them or using them as slave labour for plantations on the Piratininga plateau. The Paulistas not only attacked the Jesuit missions established in the region of the Paraguay River, but also, starting in 1640 they virtually decimated the Indian populations from the whole of the northeastern scrublands, before the advance of the colonizers into the region. This campaign against the Indian population, known as the Barbarians War, continued until the middle of the eighteenth century.”

The Slave Trade

“There was also a thinner syrup that oozed from the moulds. This was used as the raw material for producing aguardente — cachaça or pinga — a spirit that was consumed throughout the colony and also widely used in Africa as barter for slaves. Although the three terms are used interchangeably to refer to the same drink, they are not, in fact, synonymous. Aguardente is the generic name for any spirit distilled from sweet vegetables; cachaça is the specific name for aguardente made from sugarcane, for which pinga is a popular nickname. The word (which means ‘drip’ in Portuguese) is said to have originated from the slaves who distilled the cachaça: while the liquid sugarcane boiled, the steam condensed on the roof and dripped down onto their heads.

Cachaça was so popular that the importation of the product to Portugal was banned, and restrictions were even imposed on the amount that could be produced in the colony, in an attempt to protect the interests of Portuguese wine-growers. However, as an essential item for barter in the slave traffic, the spirit remained a very important product in Brazil. In the eighteenth century the city of Rio de Janeiro exported more cachaça than sugar. It was the city’s number one export, a large amount of which was destined for use in the slave trade in Angola.”

“It is important to bear in mind a crucial and very characteristic aspect of Brazil’s sugar economy: the lack of refineries. There were none in Brazil, nor in Portugal. This meant that not only the trade in sugar but also the final production stage were left in the hands of the Dutch. Brazil was best known for its unrefined sugar (the pardo or muscovado). This type of sugar, also produced in the Antilles, accounted for most of the country’s production and provided the raw material for the refinery industry of northern Europe.”

“The popular assumption that slavery in Brazil was less harsh than in North America, where special ranches for ‘breeding’ slaves existed, is more hypothetical than true. The behaviour of Brazilian slave-owners was in no way humanitarian; it stemmed from commercial and pragmatic considerations. Maintaining a child slave until she or he had reached a productive age was expensive. Thus it was better to purchase a ‘new one’ in one of the open markets, where slaves were put on display alongside household goods and items of decoration. Prices also varied according to ‘use’: women and children were cheaper than adult men. Slaves were classified as children until they were eight; after thirty-five they were seen as old and of little use for the heavy work on the engenhos.”

“Portuguese contact with black Africa has an equally long history, pre-dating the colonization of Brazil by almost half a century. In 1453, for example, in his Crônica de Guine, the Portuguese chronicler Gomes Eanes de Zurara described the activities of the Portuguese at the mouth of the Senegal river. At this time the Portuguese were mainly interested in gold, with only a secondary interest in slaves, ivory and pepper. When they first began to traffic in slaves it was to meet the demand for domestic labour in Europe. However, this was to drastically change with the growth of sugar plantations. Portuguese interest in pepper was entirely superseded by the demand for human beings. Trafficking now became the priority. By the middle of the sixteenth century, Lisbon was the European city with the largest number of African slaves, followed by Seville. Out of an overall population of a hundred thousand inhabitants, ten thousand were either black or mulatto captives.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries veritable Luso-African societies developed in Cape Verde, São Tomé and Madeira. The Portuguese presence grew out of transatlantic commerce, and, after 1492, the sudden increase in contact between the continents. By 1582 the population of these islands was around sixteen thou-sand, of whom the great majority were slaves, who accounting for 87 per cent of the total.”

“Between 8 and 11 million Africans would be enslaved during the years of the trade. Of these, 4.9 million were taken to Brazil.”

“Usually, before boarding, they were branded with a hot iron on the chest or the back, as a sign to identify the trafficker to whom they belonged.”

“In addition, Africans from different regional groups were placed in close proximity aboard the ships, with the result that many died from illnesses with which they had had no previous contact.”

“In Africa, where the economic, social and cultural organization was structured according to regional and matrilineal kinship, there was a greater demand for women, which accounted for the fact that more men than women were taken captive. In some societies women were highly valued due to the status acquired by men who ‘accumulated wives’, as well as due to the kinship rules that resulted in the formation of powerful networks within these societies. In polygamous societies, female slaves conferred greater power on the local lords. In Africa women were also in great demand as agricultural workers, especially during the planting season. With so many important roles in African society, it is no wonder that, in general, the women who disembarked in Brazil were older than the men.”

“Residential apartment blocks all have separate lifts, not just for cargo and deliveries, but for service providers and household employees whose skin colour is often consistent with the history of slavery in Brazil.”

“The police stop and arrest many more blacks than whites. The practice is euphemistically referred to as ‘interpellation’. There are many cases in which innocent individuals who are constantly harassed by the police begin to actually believe that they are somehow guilty. The anthropologist Didier Fassin calls this ‘incorporated memory’: the body remembers before the mind has time to reflect. During the time of slavery free blacks were stopped on the streets as ‘suspected slaves.’ Today they are detained in the same way for other alleged offences. This is racial profiling. Their real ‘offence’ is their ethnic origin.”

“Enslaved females were also forced to work as prostitutes in the areas surrounding the port, selling their bodies and handing their earnings to the master.”

“Brazilian slavery was unusual in that it offered an opening for an enslaved person to achieve her or his freedom, called ‘alforria’. Freedom was usually conferred for good behaviour, but could occasionally be purchased by slaves. They were allowed to make savings and a few of the mulattoes who had specialized skills could actually hope to be freed sometime in the future.”

“Freedom could be granted in wills, as a recompense for loyalty, or out of personal affection. Women, children and those with special abilities accounted for the highest number of releases. In Bahia, 45 per cent of all the slaves granted freedom were mulattoes.

However, the number of releases was small — in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it never surpassed 1 per cent per year of the total slave population. Meanwhile, the likelihood of being re-enslaved was extremely high. All release documents could be revoked; their maintenance depended on the former slave’s behaviour being considered ‘appropriate.’”

“While appearing to be good Catholics and true converts to the faith, who attended Mass and worshipped the saints, they maintained a secret, parallel system that related each of these Catholic saints to an African orisha.”

“In the Lower Amazon region, in the extreme north of Portuguese America, the encampments of escaped slaves along the Curuá and Trombeta tributaries were established ‘in the midst of the turbulent waters’ above the first rapids and waterfalls on the left bank of the vast river. This was dense forest near the frontier with present-day Suriname. In order to survive there, physical fitness, courage and acute perception were not enough; it was crucial to know the forest. The quilombolas (inhabitants of the quilombos) adapted to forest life by establishing relations, at times friendly and at others hostile, with the local Indians, and with local animals. They adapted their diet, substituting flour for babassu coconut paste and eating turtle meat when fish was in short supply. They also sculpted images of their deities using pulp they extracted from palm-tree trunks; and they discovered the economic value of nuts and the medicinal use of cer-tain plants, such as caraíba oil and salsaparrilha. In due course they became ‘bichos do mato’ (forest creatures) sons of the forest.”

“Every quilombo has its own story, but Palmares — the largest and possibly the longest-lasting community of escaped slaves in Portuguese America — became a national symbol of the long tradition of bravery and resistance of Brazil’s quilombo warriors. It is generally thought that the original nucleus of Palmares was made up of around forty slaves, all of whom were from the same engenho in Pernambuco. They escaped, climbing the Serra da Barriga in the Zona da Mata, in what today is the state of Alagoas, probably around the year 1597. The location, surrounded by mountains and completely unpopulated, provided a natural fortress from which the fugitives could ward off attack. Palm trees were abundant in the area, providing sustenance and comfort, including the palmito (hearts of palm), which they ate, and fronds for thatching houses, making clothes and laying traps. The palms were powerful symbols; it was only natural that the fugitives should settle in their midst, and baptize the place Palmares.

Palmares did not refer to one single quilombo, but to a confederation of communities of various sizes scattered around the region. They were interconnected by pacts, but they conducted their own business affairs, were autonomous, and chose their own leaders.”

“It was from here that the Palmares leader Ganga Zumba, the ‘Great Chief, presided over the council of leaders and made decisions on vital questions of war and peace.

Although later, with its expansion, the quilombola confederation became a multi-ethnic society, many of the first inhabitants were from Angola and the Congo and the refuge was initially known as Angola Janga — ‘Little Angola.’ This attempt at the recreation of an African nation in Brazil demonstrates not only that the inhabitants saw themselves as foreigners, but also that they created a politically organized community with public administration, its own laws, form of government and military structure, as well as religious and cultural principles, all of which helped forge and strengthen a collective identity. The colonial authorities also recognized the existence of Palmares: in documents sent to Lisbon they referred to it as a ‘republic,’ a term which at the time was used to refer to any area, whether in Portugal overseas, that had its own administration, was regulated by a political system, and possessed a relative degree of autonomy.

At its peak, Palmares had a population of around 20,000. Of these approximately 6,000 lived in the Cerca Real do Macaco. This was at a time (around 1660) when the population of Rio de Janeiro, including Indians and Africans, was estimated at 7,000. The quilombola confederation maintained a thriving trade with neighbouring towns and villages. For more than a century it encouraged slaves to escape en masse, made innumerable attacks on engenhos, farms and hamlets, and repelled all the military expeditions that were sent to destroy it. The first Portuguese attack on Palmares was launched in 1612, and the last, during which the leader Zumbi (Ganga Zumba’s successor) was killed, in 1695. Between 1644 and 1645, during the Dutch occupation of the sugar-producing region in the northeast — notably the captaincy of Pernambuco — the West Indies Company ordered two attacks on Palmares, both of which failed. The Dutch became the victims of forest guerrilla tactics that employed ambushes, skirmishes and surprise attacks.”

“In 1678, Portuguese representatives met in Recife with a large group of rebels sent by Ganga Zumba to celebrate a peace treaty proposed by the colonial authorities. The agreement arranged for the return of all escaped slaves to the Crown, in other words all the quilombolas who had not been born in Palmares. The Portuguese plan was to put an end to the complicity between the quilombolas and the slaves on the engenhos. In exchange, Portugal guaranteed freedom, the donation of land and the status of subjects of the Crown for all those who had been born in Palmares. The Recife Agreement divided the quilombolas, pitted Ganga Zumba against Zumbi, and inaugurated the most violent period in the community’s history. Ganga Zumba was poisoned after being declared a traitor and all his military leaders were beheaded. During the next fifteen years Zumbi led the war against the Portuguese authorities, maintained the autonomy of the quilombo and guaranteed the freedom of its inhabitants. The war only ended with the fall of the Cerca Real do Macaco after a siege of forty-two days, the defeat and execution of Zumbi, and the total destruction of Palmares.”

“On the coffee and sugar plantations, and in urban environments, slaves often faced up to their masters and bargained for the right to drum and to dance and sing in accordance with their religious rites, without permission from the overseer, and particularly without the intervention of the police. These activities usually took place in clearings in the woods, prepared with special care by the slaves, in areas near the engenhos and towns. They were called terreiros. The rituals practised there incorporated a unique combination of cultural and religious elements. Music, dance, rhythm and movement were integrated to form a distinct spiritual language of worship, characterized by its connections to the oral transmission of African rituals and possession by the deities.

This reconstruction of African rituals, based on the traditions of the Nagô peoples and culturally influenced by groups of Jejes, has been known as candomblé — the religion of the orishas — since the beginning of the nineteenth century. From the outset, candomblé combined a number of cultural elements the slaves absorbed through contact with different groups of peoples brought from Africa. In many ways candomblé created itself: breaking down cultural barriers between the different groups, generating principles of symbolic importance for harmonious community life, and serving as a channel communication with other segments of the slave-based society. It also incorporated the religious traditions of the Indians, so that even today candomblé de caboclo evokes the ancestors of the peoples who lived in Brazil long before the Europeans arrived.”

The 18th Century

“The town of Sao Paulo developed around a college that had been built by the Jesuits of the Society of Jesus, the walls of which were made from a mixture of clay and sand. It had a small church and a large plot of land surrounded by Indian houses. It stood at the exact location of what today is the Pátio do Colégio, at the very heart of the city centre. The college was a cherished project of Manuel da Nóbrega, the leader of the Jesuits in Brazil: to gather the Indians of the region together and with them to build a new society of devoted Christians — a society that would be free of both the pagan customs of the natives and the bad habits and vices of the Europeans. The project was a dismal failure. The natives had no intention of abandoning their beliefs and the Portuguese colonists were equally reluctant to forgo their predatory behaviour. But the town remained, strategically located at the entrance to the hinterlands from where the settlers captured and enslaved the Indians.”

“Dazzled by the sheer quantities of the precious metal that gleamed from the rocks around them, in their frantic efforts to locate new veins the miners forgot the most basic fact of all: they could not eat gold.

It was a disaster. Between 1697 and 1698, 1700 and 1701, and again in 1713, having failed to plant enough manioc, beans, pumpkin and corn to provide sustenance for the multitudes that continued to arrive, the inhabitants of Minas Gerais, in the words of Padre Antonil, ‘died of hunger with their hands full of gold.’ To avoid starvation the Mineiros ate anything they could get their hands on: dogs, cats, roots, insects, snakes and lizards. They even ate the bicho de taquara, a poisonous white larva found inside the stems of bamboo.”

“The quilombolas were spreading panic throughout the region with their systematic assaults on travellers, farms and the outskirts of villages and towns. There were quilombos scattered all over Minas Gerais; it almost seemed as if they had sprung up spontaneously to complement the rugged terrain. Most of them were relatively small, but very dangerous due to their proximity to the towns. The quilombo of São Bartolomeu, for example, took its name from its strategic location at the top of the mountain range of that name. It sheltered enough highway robbers to torment the lives of travellers making their way to Vila Rica along the Caminho Novo and to seriously affect the communications between Vila Rica, Mariana and the village of Cachoeira do Campo. A complex social network of contacts developed between the quilombos and the urban centres. The black women who sold fresh produce on the streets were at the centre of this network. Inhabitants of the gold-producing region frequently complained that these women, who sold fruit and vegetables to the grocery shops as well as from their stands in the streets, maintained close ties with the quilombolas. Out of solidarity, they also acted as go-betweens, helping runaway slaves to take refuge in the quilombos, in addition to supplying these with livestock and information.”

“The positive outcome for the gold rush was irreversible: by the end of the 18th century, Minas Gerais was the only area in Portuguese America where the settlers had created a network of towns and cities. This was the origin of a unique society capable of developing a highly distinctive and sophisticated culture.”

“The gold was still paying the bills. By the beginning of the 1780s Vila Rica had erected churches whose interiors were lined in gold. They were the wonder of every visitor to the town, and still are today.”

“In the early hours of 8 December 1660, a group of farmers decided that the time was long overdue for a revolt against the new taxes imposed by the governor of southern Brazil”

“At five in the morning the crowd invaded the Municipal Council Chamber, removed its members from office, and deposed the governor.

For the next five months the political and administrative life of Rio de Janeiro was controlled by the colonial insurgents, who attempted to install their own form of government. They called elections for the new members of the council, extending the right to vote to the entire area around the bay, including the Banda d’Além. Thus, the inhabitants and landowners in the rural areas of Rio de Janeiro were included in a process that had previously been restricted to those who were privileged enough to be established in the town. They also suspended taxes authorized by Sáe Benevides, and his allies were imprisoned in the Fortress of Santa Cruz. His closest associates were expelled from the captaincy.”

“Nevertheless, loyalty to the Crown was demanded loudly and clearly. The Cachaça Revolt, as the episode became known, was not a revolt against the Portuguese king, but against the fiscal policies of the governor. And it was definitely against a very specific royal decree, which limited the production of cachaça and its exportation in order to protect the consumption of Portuguese wine in the colony. Former governors had turned a blind eye and not interfered with the clandestine production of cachaça by the inhabitants of the captaincy.”

“As the fourth generation of his family to govern the captaincy, Sá e Benevides considered Rio de Janeiro as part of his property holdings, and his inheritance. It was this distorted view that permitted him to override the decisions of the Council, impose unpopular taxes, drain the city funds, and abuse the power invested in him by the king.”

“Terrified, the newly appointed governor, Pedro de Vasconcelos e Souza, appealed to Archbishop Sebastião Monteiro da Vide for help. His holiness did not hesitate. He immediately summoned the priests and the cannons and friars from the fraternities who, invoking the wrath of God, berated the insurgents. The bishop organized a procession that descended the steep slopes of the town, solemnly displaying the sacred symbols of the Eucharist to the turbulent throng, exhorting them to calm themselves. But to no avail. The crowds showed great respect as the procession went by, laying aside their weapons, baring their heads and kneeling in contrition. But as soon as it had passed they picked up where they had left off: taking up their weapons, they surrounded the palace and forced the governor to surrender. Governor Pedro de Vasconcelos e Souza had no choice but to give in to all their demands: he suspended the new taxes, reduced the price of salt, and promised a pardon to all those involved.

Uprisings are sudden explosions. They are essentially impulsive forms of political expression, with no clear strategy or even a short-term plan for holding power. Their aggressive energy rapidly dissipates, as if the rioters are suddenly overcome by exhaustion and disband. No sooner had the crowd dispersed than Pedro de Vasconcelos, blithely abandoning his agreement with the rebels, had the leaders arrested and severely punished. But this was not the end of the story. Less than fifty days after the pact had been broken, furious crowds once again occupied the slopes of the city.”

“Whatever form they took, in one aspect all the settlers’ revolts were remarkably similar: none of them questioned the authority of the Portuguese Crown. Quite to the contrary, the language used by the rebels expressed their unswerving loyalty to the monarch, reaffirming the king’s symbolic role, always ready to listen to the afflictions of his people. However, the slow pace of communication between the metropolis and the colony was a source of frustration and viewed as the reason for the mismanagement and excesses of His Majesty’s representatives overseas. There was only one exception to this general rule of support for the monarchy: the uprising in Pernambuco in 1710 when, for the first time, the insurgents openly questioned the Crown’s authority.”

“The trouble began when the sugar barons of Olinda (Pernambuco), who were regarded as conceited and decadent by the merchants in neighbouring Recife, reacted to pressure from the latter for the establishment of their own independent Municipal Council. Their anger was also directed at the crown authorities in the captaincy who controlled the production of sugar, still the colony’s principal source of revenue.

During the rebellion, which lasted for less than a year, ample use was made of the rural militias. These were made up of troops at the service of the sugar barons who came from the poorest classes of the free population. When they marched on Recife, provoking the inevitable flight of the governor to Bahia, a large part of the captaincy fell into the hands of the insurgents. Far more serious, however, was the intention of the rebels to declare the independence of Pernambuco. The majority of them wanted to form a republic. They discussed how to raise the resources for prolonged armed resistance and planned a possible extension of the rebellion to Bahia and Rio de Janeiro. In the event of the conspiracy failing, they contemplated a French protectorate. ‘Pernambuco would be better off as a republic,’ suggested Bernardo Vieira, one of the leaders of the revolt. He went on to say: ‘If for any reason […] the war goes against us, it would be preferable to seek the support of the sophisticated French than to submit to the ill-mannered mascates. The conspiracy ended in disaster for the sugar barons of Olinda. The following year the maligned mascates got even with a vengeance. They won back Recife, attacked the rebels in the interior of the captaincy, and received reinforcements from the Portuguese fleet, which arrived with a new governor, appointed by Lisbon to negotiate the terms of a royal pardon. The outcome of the conflict was the complete victory of Recife: the town was elevated to the status of ‘vila,’ granted its own Municipal Council, and converted into the capital of the captaincy in the place of Olinda.

Although the rebellion of 1710 was restricted to Pernambuco, the ideas behind it spread well beyond the borders of the captaincy.”

“In December 1782 the poet Tomás Antônio Gonzaga arrived in Vila Rica, having been appointed to the post of ouvidor-geral. The journey on horseback from Rio de Janeiro had taken him fifteen days. His arrival completed the group of intellectuals that a few years later was to form an alliance with the economic and administrative elite of Minas Gerais to contest Brazil’s colonial status, plan an armed uprising against the Portuguese Crown, and disseminate the notion of a politically autonomous republic in Portuguese America.”

“What transformed a group of intellectuals and landed subjects of the king, completely integrated into this world of royal absolutism, into the leaders of a political revolt such as the Conjuração Mineira, without precedent in Portuguese America? It was a combination of resentment and the realization that the captaincy could be economically self-sufficient.”

“Precisely when there was a recession due to the decline in gold production, Lisbon was imposing new taxes.”

“The conspirators carefully observed the progress in N. America, where new instituions were being established as the result of the revolution. The Minas conspirators were seeking a structure for their republic that would reflect the principle defended by the N. American colonies in their struggle against the British.”

“The Embuçado was right. The Viscount of Barbacena had received six denunciations of a conspiracy under way in Minas Gerais. The first, and most important, was made by Joaquim Silvério dos Reis, who was one of the conspirators himself. He was a rich man, and also the conspirator who was most in debt to the Crown. His betrayal of the cause was motivated by the prospect of his debts being pardoned. He related everything in detail several times, and then in writing: the particulars of the conspiracy, the password, the names of the main conspirators, the political plan and the military strategy.”

“These Bahia pamphlets were written by members of the most heterogeneous and numerous segments of the social hierarchy: mulatto tradesmen — whose skin colour acted as a further impediment to their social ascension artisans and soldiers. This was something new in Brazil: unlike the defamatory, pornographic or satirical pamphlets that had been in vogue since the end of the sixteenth century, these pamphlets represented an important channel for the dissemination of news and radical propaganda. They were a public expression of the intent to break away from the Portuguese Empire.

The target of the pamphlets, with their abrupt, coarse, irascible style, was the ‘people’ of Bahia — in other words, the poor and mixed-race citizens of Salvador. Presenting the ‘people’ as the source of the sovereignty of a republic in Portuguese America in this way was inflammatory and audacious. Above all, it was an indication of the influence of French ideas on the conspirators.”

“The Bahia Conspiracy radically changed the central discourse of the colony. Now men and women who suffered a double injustice — the daily struggle for survival and marginalization based on race — began to realize they had an equal right to citizenship, to be protected by law, and to conduct business in the captaincy.”

“The Bahia Conspiracy was something radically new: it proposed the inclusion of distinct groups of people, of differing social and economic statuses and with diverging interests. Despite their achievements, the leaders of the conspiracy have been unjustly overlooked by Brazilian historians. Outside restricted academic and cultural circles in Salvador, they are virtually unknown.”

“In 1789, a new event of significant consequence was to occur: in France, the Revolution disrupted that which had seemingly been the natural order of the Universe. In 1793, Louis XVI, stripped of his divine right by an increasingly radical regime, was sentenced to the guillotine. His death was a presage of many others, symbolic or not. The Revolution tore down a centuries-old system in which the monarch was an icon at the centre, where he had absolute rule over the state.”

The Brazilian Monarchy

“In the small and once opulent Portuguese court of the late eighteenth century, the atmosphere was one of unease. The situation resembled a chessboard with Britain and France as the knights and castles and Spain and Portugal as the pawns. While Britain and France vied for the position of the most powerful nation in Europe, Spain was struggling to keep what remained of its autonomy, and the once vast and powerful Portuguese Empire could no longer hide its vulnerability. The country was largely dependent on its American colony, much of whose wealth was squandered on inefficient administration and the construction of ostentatious monuments, notably churches. Faced by these disadvantages, Portugal did what it could to maintain its image of neutrality, adopting contradictory positions that aimed at pleasing everyone but in fact pleased no one.”

“In January 1793, Louis XVI was executed. In Portugal the reaction was immediate: fifteen days of private mourning followed by a further fifteen days of public mourning, during which the theatres were closed in tribute to the monarch who had been a friend and relation of the royal family. Wild rumours spread terror among the inhabitants of Lisbon, especially among the elite. The superintendent of police in the capital, Pina Manique, was adamant in his defence of the rights of the monarchy: French ships were seized and republican soldiers forbidden from coming ashore; republican books were banned, intellectuals arrested, and all French residents expelled.”

“Napoleon – Emperor of France since 1804 — yearning to reshape the map of Europe, was concerned with removing the only thorn that remained in his side: the British. In 1806 he decreed a continental blockade, forbidding all European nations from trading with Britain. The British reaction was proportional to the provocation: it declared all commerce and navigation from enemy ports to be illegal and claimed the legitimate right to seize any ship proceeding from these ports. The following year, after being defeated in battle, both Russia and Prussia signed peace agreements with Napoleon. With these threats hanging over Portugal’s head, the government began to draw up a provisional plan for transferring the Crown to the colonies. The foundation of a grandiose empire in Brazil was by no means a new idea – it had been considered every time the royal family felt its sovereignty was under threat. As early as 1580, when Spain invaded Portugal during the War of Restoration, one of the claimants to the throne, the Prior of Crato, was advised to leave for Brazil. Padre Vieira had also suggested Brazil as a refuge for Dom João IV – ‘where a place for a palace would be found where he could reside in comfort during the four seasons of the year, and where he could found the fifth empire…’ In 1738, during the reign of Dom João V, Luís da Cunha offered the same advice. Luis da Cunha thought the transference of the royal family to Brazil would create a more balanced relationship between Portugal and its colony.”

“Lourenço de Lima was given the unenviable task of transmitting the emperor’s instructions to Dom João. The message was short and to the point: the time had come for the Portuguese to declare war on the British. They must recall their ambassador from London and demand the withdrawal of the British ambassador from Lisbon, close the ports to British ships, arrest all British residents in Lisbon and confiscate their property. Furthermore, the emperor gave the Portuguese one month, until 1 September, for his demands to be met. Failure to meet the deadline would be considered a declaration of war against France and Spain (also a signatory to the letter). By this time Spain, whose geographical location was equally disadvantageous, had already submitted to the French. But this was not enough for Napoleon, who instructed General Junot, formerly his ambassador to Lisbon, to organize the formation of an armada in Bayonne, on the French-Spanish border.

During all this time Dom João was in poor health and had taken refuge in the palace of Mafra, thirty kilometres from Lisbon.& There, protected by the thick walls of the monastery, he tried to forget the war. On 12 August he received a visit from his minister Antônio de Araújo de Azevedo, the leader of the French Party, who brought him the news that Napoleon had issued an ultimatum. The caricatural game of neutrality was over. This time the Prince Regent had no choice: he would have to go to Brazil.”

“It was the first time in Western history that the seat of an empire was to be moved to a colony.”

“The fleet sailed on the morning of Sunday, 29 November. Later that day Napoleon’s troops entered Lisbon.

The Portuguese people were left with the last words of their monarch in a declaration he ordered to have printed and distributed once he was onboard. Even then the government was still attempting to avoid a rupture with France, by not using the word ‘invasion’. The monarch referred to the French troops as a foreign army stationed on Portuguese soil and asked the people to receive them, so as to conserve ‘the harmonious relations that must be established with the armies of other nations with which we share the continent.’ This was the I act in that theatrical show of neutrality.”

“The plan was complex. It was not a case of a royal family travelling alone, with a few chosen favourites. They were joined by a host of others — the families of ministers, of counsellors, of the nobility, of the court, of civil servants — in other words, of all and sundry whose livelihoods depended on the Prince Regent. Nor was it a case of a few individuals making a hurried escape; this was the seat of the Portuguese State being transferred — along with its administrative and bureaucratic machine its government offices, its secretariats, its law courts, its archives, its treasure and its employees.”

“As soon as the Prince’s intention of embarking for the Brazils became known, a dreadful scene of desperation and panic pervaded every rank; thousands of men, women and children, filed onto the beach, endeavouring to escape onboard. Many ladies of distinction waded into the water, in the hope of reaching the boats, with ‘some even perishing in the attempt.’

To make matters worse, country folk, in their fear and haste to get to Lisbon, and bewildered by the conflicting rumours, abandoned all of their belongings along the way. The beaches and docks that lined the Tagus at Belém were littered with packages and trunks left behind at the last minute. Amid the chaos fourteen cartloads of silverware from the cathedral were left on the riverbank. Boxes of priceless books from the Royal Library were also left behind, much to the indignation of the city’s booksellers, who yelled insults at royal officials in their disbelief at the sight of such negligence. Luxury carriages, many of which had not been unloaded, were also abandoned. There were even those who embarked with no luggage, with only the clothes on their backs.”

“According to Nuncio Caleppi’s secretary, who viewed the entire exodus, 10,000 people travelled with the royal fleet. In his calculations the civil servant João Manuel Pereira da Silva included the numerous merchants and landowners who had hired ships to follow the royal squadron: ‘On that day around fifteen thousand people of all ages and sexes abandoned the lands of Portugal.’”

“He estimates the number of people on-board the Principe Real at 1,054, adding that the task of weighing anchor alone, tying it to the prow and storing the cable, occupied 385 men.”

“It is thought that many of these remained in Brazil — some out of fear of the French invasion, others preferring to stay with the monarchy, others simply marooned. According to these estimates the total number of emigrants must have been more than 10,000.”

“In June 1808, after an uprising in Porto, the French were routed during the restoration of the Portuguese monarchy. The French tried to invade on two further occasions, in March 1809 and in the summer of 1810, before leaving the country for good in 1811.”

“The transport of merchandise to and from Portuguese America was no longer restricted to Portuguese ships or to countries with whom commercial partnerships had been signed. Merchandise could now be imported directly from other countries; Brazilian ships could dock at foreign ports, except for in France and Spain, which were still at war with Portugal.

The opening of the ports was not so much an act of benevolence as a necessary and inevitable outcome of events in Europe. With Portugal under French occupation, the supplies needed in Brazil — where virtually everything was imported — were no longer arriving, nor was Brazil able to export anything produced there.”

“Although the presence of the court brought undoubted political benefits to Brazil, the price it had to pay was extremely high. As the government machine acquired increasingly gigantic proportions, so did the taxes needed to maintain it. Although the measures the Portuguese monarchy took while based in Rio de Janeiro were largely self-serving, those were years of political and administrative growth that set the course for the colony. It was a course that was both unpredictable and irreversible. And while neither entirely European nor exactly an empire, Portuguese America was gradually abandoning the status of a colony.”

“In the 1820s the court owned around 38,000 slaves, at a time when the total population of Rio de Janeiro was only 90,000, a figure that did not include the free blacks, who were everywhere present throughout the public spaces of the city.

It was the largest concentration of slaves since ancient Rome, with the difference that, in Rio de Janeiro, their number equalled the number of inhabitants of European descent. In fact the balance tended to tip in favour of the enslaved: with the waves of captives brought in by the traffickers, the city became increasingly African in appearance. Near the Paço the concentration was such that the area became known as Little Africa. And there was no doubt that Rio de Janeiro looked like an African coastal town, with different groups of Africans proudly displaying the distinct scars and markings of their nations on their faces and bodies. Paradoxically, the arrival of the royal family and the opening of the ports, rather than restricting the traffic, increased it.”

“Now the celebrations of the monarchy itself were added to the already busy calendar of festivities. On 16 December 1815, on the eve of the commemoration of Queen Dona Maria’s eighty-first birthday, Dom João elevated Brazil to the title of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Southern Territories, transforming the colony into the seat of the Portuguese Empire. The measure was a tribute to the country in which he had lived for seven years. However, it was also motivated by political, economic and diplomatic considerations: it eased trade relations, met British demands, and was clearly aimed at preventing revolutions like those in British America and the neighbouring Spanish colonies. In other words, it was a move meant to protect Brazil from the process of independence, the creation of a republic, and from the ever-present danger of fragmentation.”

“To make matters worse, a crisis now engulfed the Portuguese state. Crops failed, coins became scarce, paper currency lost its value, and the credit offered by other European countries vanished. According to the Portuguese elites, to re-establish Portugal’s wealth and stability Brazil’s increasing autonomy would have to be reined in. Not only did they attribute the growing financial disasters to Brazil, they also accused their ‘Brazilian brothers’ of neglect: ‘From Brazil they sent us neither troops, nor money, nor meat, nor flour, nor sugar, nor rice […] nor indeed anything at all.’ Deprived of the resources of its overseas dominions, without profits from colonial trade and humiliated by its dependence on Britain, Portugal had been relegated to a secondary position within its own imperial system. Even the king seemed oblivious to the plight of its citizens. The crisis was economic, political and symbolic. The Portuguese elite believed that in order to avoid irreversible, radical consequences a gesture of great symbolic importance was now essential: the return of the king.”

“On 7 March the Courts in Lisbon issued decrees determining the return of the king to Portugal, with his son Dom Pedro to remain in Brazil as regent; furthermore, rules were set in place for the election of the Brazilian deputies who would represent the colony in Lisbon.

The situation, which was already serious, became explosive. On 21 April 1821, in one of Rio de Janeiro’s main civic buildings, located on the Praça do Comércio, a meeting of the electorate was abruptly interrupted with shouts of ‘Let the People rule Brazil!’ and ‘Revolution!’ The crowds demanded that Dom João VI sign the Spanish Constitution of Cádiz of 1812, and remain in the country. While the king hesitated and was inclined to agree, his son ordered the demonstration to be crushed. Maria Graham, the prince’s tutor, described the attack, lamenting the thirty deaths and many wounded. The next day the words ‘Bragança Butcher’ appeared scrawled across the building’s façade.”

“On 13 July 1821 the Portuguese courts established the provisional assemblies that proceeded to revoke the laws of King Joao’s reign, including that which appointed his son Dom Pedro as head of the ‘general government and entire administration of the Kingdom of Brazil’: Between late September and October 1821 a number of measures issued by the Portuguese Courts made their real intentions clear: to transfer Brazil’s main government departments to Lisbon. New contingents of troops were sent to Rio de Janeiro, and finally, on 29 September, a decree was signed demanding the Prince Regent’s return to Portugal.”

“The Courts also determined that Brazil’s provinces be transformed into Portuguese ovérseas provinces, thus Rio de Janeiro would no longer be at the centre of a unified Brazil.”

Independence

“While Brazilian voices were stifled at the Courts of Lisbon, the country had no representation, no legitimate administration and, gravest of all, no protection against recolonization. Leaders like Gonçalves Ledo and Januário da Cunha Barbosa reacted with inflammatory speeches, and newspapers poured fuel on the fire with their ardent campaign against the Courts.”

“At half past four in the after-noon, mounted on his horse, overcome with intermittent attacks of diarrhea and exhausted from the journey, Dom Pedro made the formal declaration of what was already a reality. He tore the blue and white ribbon (the constitutional colours of Portugal) from his hat, threw it on the ground, and drawing his sword shouted loudly and clearly: ‘The time has come!… Independence or death! […] We have separated from Portugal…””

“In 1822, the Mexican elite, in their struggle to deter Spanish attempts at recolonization and to suppress the republican nationalist movement in the country, had proclaimed a general called Iturbide emperor, with the title of Augustin I. It was a short-lived experiment, but it meant that Brazil was not the only case of a monarchical regime on the republican continent.”

“In the view of the local elites, only the figure of a king could unite this gigantic country with its deep internal divisions.”

“It is somewhat ironic that, not only did Brazilian independence establish a monarchy instead of a republic, but the country’s first constitution was vetoed and never became law! Actually, in 1824, Dom Pedro I presented another constitution to, or rather imposed one on, the country. The nickname stuck, and to this day the first Brazilian constitution is known as the Outorada: ‘the imposed one’.”

“By 1830 the situation in Brazil was reaching a critical point. Tension in Rio de Janeiro was exacerbated by a series of conflicts. From one side, the 1830 revolutions in Europe, which led to the fall of Charles X in France and the crowning of Louis Philippe – the Citizen King who openly declared his sympathy for some of the ideas of the French Revolution – encouraged the Brazilian liberals to mobilize against the absolutist character of Dom Pedro I’s government. From the other side, the murder of the journalist Libero Badaró in São Paulo, on 20 November, led to further anger on the part of the public and, above all, the press. Libero Badaró was an Italian who had settled in Brazil and become the owner of the opposition newspaper O Observador Constitucional, which argued that the imperial government was exercising a type of negligent authoritarianism. Articles exhorted Brazilians to break all links with any Portuguese monarch, including Dom Pedro himself. The rumour quickly spread that the man who had ordered the crime, a High Court judge named Cândido Japiaçu, had done so in collusion with the emperor.”

“The tension was such that Dom Pedro I’s appointment of a new Cabinet composed only of Brazilians and his nomination of a new superintendent of police had virtually no effect. The atmosphere at court and in the provinces was ‘electric’, in the words of John Armitage, with the newspapers pouring fuel on the fire. Even the moderates, who had previously attempted to calm things down, now joined in the general discontent. Putting their differences aside for the time being, the ‘moderate’ and ‘exalted’ liberals joined forces to overthrow the emperor. People in the streets took to using the same green and yellow ribbons that had been worn by the supporters of independence, while exalted liberals and republicans alike sported straw hats with a sempre-viva in their buttonholes.

On 25 March, the anniversary of the constitution, rebellion broke out in the streets of Rio de Janeiro. Dom Pedro I, who was watching a military parade in the Campo da Aclamação, was confronted by people shouting ‘Long live the constitutional emperor.’ Public protests and tumult in the streets became a daily occurrence. But the straw that broke the camel’s back came on 5 April when Dom Pedro dismissed his Brazilian ministers for failing to control the riots and appointed new ones from his inner circle of supporters. The next day a crowd of over four thousand men gathered in the Campo da Aclamação — which was rapidly becoming the most popular location for public unrest – and proceeded to spread throughout the city streets. They were protesting the dismissal of the Cabinet and the appointment of a new one, whose members’ only qualification was their proximity to the emperor.”

“Pressure became so intense that the emperor decided to play his last card: he abdicated in favour of his son. It was in fact the only way of quelling the revolt while guaranteeing the continuity of the monarchy in Brazil. At 3 o’clock in the morning on 7 April the emperor’s abdication was read out in public. The news was greeted ecstatically.”

“It turned out that Dom Pedro I was better at abdication than at ruling. Supercilious, he declared the situation was irrevocable: ‘Everything is over between me and Brazil. Forever.’ He returned to Portugal with his wife, assuming his previous title with the added words ‘perpetual defender of Brazil.’ He now put all his energies into fighting for the right of his daughter, Dona Maria da Glória, to succeed to the Portuguese throne.

In Brazil the atmosphere was one of euphoria. The abdication was seen as foundational, as an inauguration. Many considered it an exemplary revolution, because there had been no bloodshed. Others called it ‘the regeneration of Brazil.’ An entire historical memory was fabricated regarding the abdication, as if it represented a new era: one of real independence. The date of 7 April became more symbolically important than that of 7 September, in terms of consecrating the public as actors in the political arena and the group of ‘exalted liberals’ who had managed — through informal means — to give voice to the country’s citizens.

Nonetheless, once again the seeds had been sown for future discord. The new monarch was not yet six years old and the years to come were to see a series of regencies. Other people would have to govern in young Dom Pedro II’s name, until he reached ‘adulthood.’ Further attempts at a citizens’ federation were to be made and further uprisings were to occur.”

“After the break with Lisbon, the unity imposed during the colonial period weakened. Two incompatible movements emerged: the centralizing impulse of the court and the desire for self-government in the provinces.

The question was where the centre of sovereignty would be: in the provinces (and this would require a new constitutional pact) or in Rio de Janeiro.”

“A political vacuum was created that was to have serious consequences. On the one hand, the immediate practical and bureaucratic problem was solved by appointing Brazilian politicians to govern as regents in a succession of four regencies. Two of these were composed of a council of three (known as the ‘triple regencies’) and the other two of just one (known as the ‘single regencies’). But, on the other hand, with no emperor ruling the country, the question of succession inflamed the provinces.”

“The slaves that planned the 1807 uprising were Africans from the north of what is today Nigeria, a region occupied mainly by Hausa. They were prepared to take their revolt beyond the captaincy’s borders. They would then invade the town from the quilombos on the outskirts of Salvador. But that was not all. The plan was to mobilize blacks and mulattoes, poison the white population, burn statues of saints in the public squares, and then proceed to Pernambuco to liberate the slaves of the Hausa ethnic group. The struggle would continue until all the whites were dead and an Islamic kingdom had been established in the interior of the region.

However, before the revolt began the plans were denounced to the governor. The punishments were harsh: the leaders were arrested, the slaves were sentenced to be whipped at the pillory.”

“The territory had been initially occupied in 1626 by Jesuits from Paraguay who claimed it for Spain and set about establishing missions and villages for the indigenous peoples. With the arrival of the bandeirantes, the Jesuits left, leaving behind them a special breed of cattle known as chimarrao. In 1680 the Portuguese Crown took over the territory and founded the colony of Sacramento in what was later to become the independent state of Uruguay.

The Spanish frequently invaded the area, only for the Portuguese to take it back. After all, they considered it an extension of their territory in the south.”

The Late 19th Century

“Despite the festivities, the young Dom Pedro had experienced an unpleasant surprise. None of the information he had received about the princess’s virtues had revealed the fact that Teresa Cristina was short, overweight and slightly lame. It was said that the young bridegroom managed to conceal his disappointment but afterwards wept in the arms of the Countess of Belmonte, his nurse, and on the shoulder of Paulo Barbosa, who said to him: ‘Remember the dignity of your position. Do your duty my child!’”

“Brazil had little to offer them compared to the United States, which offered greater facilities for the acquisition of land, had a more developed transport system and, in much of its territory, no slave labour to compete with. Nevertheless, from 1850 onwards, immigrant workers began to arrive from Europe and the East. Since the prohibition of the slave traffic, the price of a slave had doubled on the domestic market, and the policy of attracting immigrants had been planned to replace them.

But the policy of importing farm labourers, financed by landowners, created a series of problems. A model emerged that was no more than a form of slavery through the accumulation of debt. The immigrants had to pay the landowners back for all their expenses, including travel, housing, use of the land and farming tools. Having been tricked with the promise of plots of land of their own, many left for the towns. Revolts followed, the most famous of which occurred on the estates of Senador Vergueiro in 1856. Three years later the Prussian government banned all emigration of its nationals to Brazil.

At the end of the 1860s the government decided to finance immigration. One of the aims was the ‘whitening’ of the population, which, according to the scientific theories of the time, would be beneficial for the country. There was concern over the ‘future of a country of mixed races’ and, with slaves still a majority, the old fears of a Haitian-style revolution had not been laid to rest.”

“Female street vendors and snack sellers stood out for their independence in their trades and social contacts. Many of these women managed to save enough money to buy their freedom. They sometimes formed families of their own by purchasing young slaves, who were later granted their freedom as well.”

“The decision to create a country with a representative constitutional monarchy had been one choice among many. The chief aim was to avoid the disintegration of the former colony with the unfortunate precedent of Spanish American territory, where four viceroyalties had splintered into fourteen different countries. It also confirmed the domination of the Brazilian elites.”

“The members of the Institute were mainly drawn from the court elite. They met on Sundays to debate previously selected topics with intellectuals. Their overriding aim was to construct a national history by selecting carefully chosen events and persons that could be converted into national heroics and heroes. The ties to the government were significant, the institute received three-quarters of the funding from the Crown. Thus through the financing of poets, musicians, painters and scientists, a process began that was not only aimed at strengthening the monarchy and the state but also at building nationhood through cultural unification. This was how Dom Pedro II earned his reputation as a patron of the arts: a ‘wise emperor of the tropics’. Following the example of Louis XIV, Pedro II carefully selected a group of historians to forge a national memory, painters to create an exalted image of the country, and writers to create a national type.”

“It was ironic that at the same time that the indigenous peoples of Brazil were glorified in epic poems describing heroic chiefs and tragic love affairs, politically these native Brazilians were being completely ignored. At the time dictionaries of indigenous languages became bestsellers, and the emperor himself began to study Tupi and Guarani. Meanwhile there was no official policy to protect these groups.”

“In 1865 the disastrous Paraguay War, which marked both the high point of the Brazilian monarchy and the beginning of its decline, broke out. The war ended five years later, in 1870, with an appalling death toll, casting a shadow over the empire for its part in the massacre. The Republican Party was founded the same year, and the abolitionist movement gained an impetus that was irreversible.”

“War was in the air; all it needed was an event to spark it off. That event occurred in 1864, in Uruguay. The Brazilian government issued an ultimatum demanding that rapid measures be taken against alleged abuses of Brazilian residents in Uruguay. Cattle-breeders in Rio Grande do Sul, on the Brazilian side of the border, were also subject to attack and Brazil would have none of it. When the Uruguayans ignored the ultimatum, Brazil invaded the country. Meanwhile, there were confrontations between the other countries in the region. Perhaps the most serious of all stemmed from President Solan’s determination that Paraguay gain access to the sea. War broke out when, on 12 November, the Paraguayan authorities seized the Brazilian steamship Marquês de Olinda. Then in December, President Solano invaded Mato Grosso. Four months later, in April 1865, he invaded Argentina, attacking Corrientes and Entre Rios, two provinces that had previously been his allies. From then on the Paraguayan leader found himself isolated in a very dangerous game.”

“On 1 May 1865, in Buenos Aires, the secret Treaty of the Triple Alliance was signed between Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. The treaty determined that peace would only be negotiated once President Solano had been deposed. New frontiers were established for the countries involved in the dispute and it was agreed that Paraguay, the aggressor, would be forced to pay reparations for the war. The arrogance of these terms reflected the allies’ confidence and their belief — entirely mistaken as it turned out — that the war would soon be over due to their obvious military advantage. The three countries combined had a total of 11 million inhabitants (of which 9.1 million were Brazilian), while Paraguay had just 318,144 soldiers at its disposal. The annual exports of the three allies totalled £36 million, whereas those of Paraguay were worth less than half a million. Paraguay thus entered the war at a great disadvantage, especially since it had lost its previous allies: the Argentinean President Atanasio Aguirre had been defeated and in Uruguay General Flores had been elected.”

“It turned into a five-year war, with terrible sacrifices and loss of life, which threatened the unity of the alliance and became increasingly unpopular at home.”

“The emperor’s image suffered greatly. From a peace-loving monarch and supporter of the arts with little interest in politics, he had become the leader of a terrible war.”

“When the former owners decided to send them to the army, in order to avoid sending their own sons, the slaves were immediately considered free. This meant that when the hostilities were over they were in a strong position to negotiate a permanent end to slavery. [But] many of them could still be forced to return to work as slaves because their newly won freedom could easily be revoked.”

“‘As from the date of this law, slavery in Brazil is abolished. All dispositions to the contrary are revoked!’ The law, signed on 13 May 1888, emancipated 700,000 slaves, which by this time represented a small proportion of the total population of Brazil, estimated at 15 million people.

This belated freedom for the slaves meant the last strong tie to the monarchy had been broken. The coffee planters had lost all hope that they would receive some sort of financial compensation, which resulted in legal action against the Crown. Celebrated abroad as a victory for Dom Pedro II’s government, the law of 13 May also brought joy and optimism to most Brazilians.”

“In 1874 a serious rift had occurred between the Church and the State. The trouble began with the arrest of two bishops — Dom Vital and Dom Macedo Costa — who had tried to restrict the role of the Masonic lodges in Brazil. But the real reason went deeper — the bishops were frustrated at the government’s hegemony and autonomy. The government, in turn, had reacted harshly with the arrests, and the release of the bishops in September 1875 had done little to heal the rift.

But the army was the deepest source of discontent, and among their ranks were some of the main supporters of positivism and republican government. Since the end of the Paraguayan War, military leaders had been protesting over the ban on officers from making political statements in the press. The tension had been increasing since 1884.”

“The provisional government gave the imperial family a period of twenty-four hours to leave Brazil.”

“As soon as Dom Pedro II arrived in Portugal, the Brazilian government formally decreed his banishment. The decree of 23 December 1889 also provided financial assistance of 5,000 contos de réis for him to establish himself and his family in Europe. But the former monarch refused to accept the money. His attitude irritated the provisional government and in an amendment written by Cabinet minister Rui Barbosa the donation was eliminated; and that was the end of the matter. The time had come to turn that page of Brazilian history and to open a new one: the era of the Republic.

To prove the Republic had come to stay, place names and national symbols were changed as quickly as possible to give a public face to the new regime. The name of the Largo do Paço (the main palace square) was changed to Praça XV de Novembro; the Pedro I Railway Station to Central do Brasil; the Colégio Pedro u to the Colégio Nacional, and the Vila Ouro Preto, a development of elegant town houses, was renamed Vila Rui Barbosa. The images on the banknotes were also, of course, changed: Pedro II and the monarchy were replaced with symbols of the new Republic of the United States of Brazil. Newly born children were named after historical figures from North America, such as Jefferson, Franklin and Washington.”

“The separation of Church and State was established, as well as a national register of births, marriages, and deaths. The new federalist government was no longer centralized, in part to establish a clear break with the monarchical system. Former provinces — now known as states — were given greater autonomy and powers of fiscal control.”

“The ‘corral electorate’ referred to an improvised building where voters were kept under watch and given a good meal, and only released upon the casting of their ballot, which was handed to them in a sealed envelope.

The vote was seen as a currency of exchange and relationships of power began at municipal level. This was the origin of the phenomenon known as coronelismo. Colonel was the highest post in the hierarchy of the National Guard. With the founding of the Republic, the National Guard lost its military status, but the colonels maintained their political power in their municipalities. From this time on, coronelismo was the term used to refer to a complex system of negotiation between these local leaders (or bosses) and the state governors, who, in turn, negotiated with the president of the Republic. Coronelismo became one of the cornerstones of the traditional oligarchic structure based on the power of local individuals, generally the owners of farms and large estates.

Thus the ‘colonel’ was a fundamental part of the oligarchic system. He gave his support to the government in the form of votes. In exchange, the government guaranteed his power over his dependents and rivals. This was accomplished mainly through the granting of public posts, which ranged from chief of police to primary-school teacher. Thus, the early twentieth-century Brazilian Republic was based on the exchange of favours and loans, favouritism, repression and negotiation. Seen from this angle, as the satirical magazines of the time pointed out, the country was little more than a large fazenda (plantation).”

The Early 20th Century

“Enticed by the government’s propaganda, waves of immigrants — Poles, Germans, Spaniards, Italians and Portuguese (and, from the late 1910s, Japanese) — emigrated to Brazil. The poor and oppressed of Europe were drawn by the mythical abundance of the tropics. With the growth in the world population and the modernization of transport, large numbers of unemployed peasants were looking for work. It is estimated that more than 50 million Europeans abandoned their continent in the search for ‘freedom’ in the form of property and employment. Although most of these emigrated to North America, 22 per cent of them — around 11 million — came to Latin America, of whom 38 per cent were Italian, 28 per cent Spanish, 11 per cent Portuguese and 3 per cent French and German. Of these, 46 per cent went to Argentina; 33 per cent to Brazil; 14 per cent to Cuba; and the rest were divided between Uruguay, Mexico and Chile. Between 1877 and 1903 around 71,000 immigrants came to Brazil, of which 58.5 per cent were from Italy. Between 1904 and 1930 this number increased to 79,000, with Portuguese immigrants accounting for 37 per cent of the total.”

“After pressure from the farmers, which began in the 1890s, the central government began to divide the influx of immigrants according to the increasing demands of the local economy. By 1900, the federal government had financed 63–80% of immigrant arrivals.”

“By the beginning of the 1930s, transatlantic immigration had reduced considerably. In 1927, for example, immigration to Europe was much greater than immigration to anywhere else. Even so, a number of governments began to restrict immigration: first the United States, and shortly thereafter, Brazil. Between 1917 and 1924 the United Sates limited the number of immigrants; President Getúlio Vargas adopted the same policy in December 1930. The Brazilian president’s motive was to control what historian Sérgio Buarque de Holanda called the ‘disorganized mass of foreigners’ who were thought to be responsible for unemployment among Brazilians.”

“There was also large-scale internal migration as a result of the gradual dismantling of the slavery system. Between 1872 and 1900 the population in the northeast decreased. This was because slaves were transferred from the sugar and cotton plantations there to coffee plantations in the southeast. The droughts of the 1870s led to a further wave of migrants from the northeast to Rio de Janeiro, which was like a magnet due to the ample offer of employment in federal and state government institutions.

The three southern states, Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, also attracted many migrants, as did specific regions in the north due to the booming rubber trade in the Amazon. With new developments in transport, latex was in high demand; hordes of workers escaped the poverty of the northeast and penetrated the forests throughout the vast Amazon region in search of rubber to extract. The ‘rubber era’ was short-lived, ending in the 1910s, but it left its mark on the capital, Manaus. The city was transformed into the most important metropolis of the north with elegant avenues, theatres and bourgeois customs. The wealth of the state seemingly appeared from one day to the next.”

“From the 1870s onward the city of São Paulo underwent a socioeconomic, urbanizing, physical and demographic transformation. Due to the prosperity of the coffee plantations and the gradual abolition of slavery, it became an important commercial and financial centre: the ‘coffee metropolis’.”

“The development of Belo Horizante was both authoritarian and violent. The existing village of Curral del Rey was completely destroyed and its impoverished residents were exiled to the new suburbs. The new capital itself was planned and built by the most modernizing and republican of the regional elite, who dreamt of progress and technology. Thus the new town was curiously modern, with wide avenues allowing for a better flow of traffic, an abundance of public squares, and the strict observance of a sort of urban hierarchy. Services, including the railway, the hospital and the shops were established on one side of the city; and on the other side, the theatre, schools and the State Assembly. The layout was planned for maximum dramatic effect. At the highest point of the city there was a rectangular plaza surrounded by imposing government buildings, including the governor’s palace — and in the centre, a statue representing Liberty. The plaza was named the Praça da Liberdade and the palace the Palácio da Liberdade. After all, this was the land of the Republic and of Tiradentes, the hero of the 1789 Minas conspiracy.”

“Between 10 and 16 November 1904 the people of Rio de Janeiro revolted against measures enacted to eradicate yellow fever. The most serious uprising was in the suburbs, where the poorer classes reacted against the compulsory smallpox vaccination ordered by Oswaldo Cruz. The uprising was mainly the result of misinformation, aggravated by the different origins and customs of the immigrants. The situation led to chaos. Trams and public buildings were destroyed and the sanitary agents were attacked. The government reacted harshly: a state of siege was declared, constitutional rights were suspended, and the leaders of the movement were deported to the south of the Amazon, in what is the present-day state of Acre. The revolt was finally controlled and smallpox eradicated from the city of Rio de Janeiro.”

“The first shantytown in Rio de Janeiro, near the port, on the Morro da Providência (Providence Hill), was built by soldiers returning from the Canudos war. It is said that the former soldiers, whose wives prepared meals for the entire regiment, camped outside the War Ministry with their families, demanding to be provided with homes. These campsites, which began as temporary lodgings, became permanent. A similar process occurred in the other favelas that were beginning to be built on the hillsides around the city. Favela was the name of a hill at the centre of the battlefield in Canudos — the Moro da Favela — which in turn had been named after a plant that grew abundantly in the scrublands. The word has since become synonymous with ‘shantytown.’ It is ironic that a word originating from the location of a war between the elite and the poverty-stricken inhabitants of the interior, should now be used throughout the country to refer to the communities that are the greatest symbol of the divisions in Brazilian society.”

“Getúlio Vargas’s greatest priority was the new labour policy. In this area he revealed the two sides of his political self. First, he created worker protection laws: an eight-hour working day; female and child labour protection; holidays; worker registration documents; sick leave; and retirement pensions. Then he repressed any attempt by workers to create organizations outside government control and was especially aggressive when it came to dealing with any communist activities. He dissolved all autonomous trade unions. Unions from then on had to be subordinate to the state. And last but not least, he excluded rural workers from the benefits of the new labour legislation.”

“Despite this legislation, there was very little faith in democracy in the Brazil envisioned by Getúlio Vargas. The liberal alliance had promised to refound the Republic and kept its promise by implementing a far-reaching programme of reforms. But the major political actors representing the alliance were not a product of democracy, nor was it their vocation. They believed the democratic system laid down by the 1891 Constitution had failed because of the ‘governors’ policy, and they now opted for a strong, centralized government.”

“Not all Paulistas were in favour of secession, but they agreed that Getúlio Vargas’s strong, centralized government, which had taken away the state’s political and economic autonomy, must be confronted. The demand for a Constituent Assembly meant there would have to be new elections. If that were to transpire, São Paulo would recover political control of the Republic. This combination of wanting to summon a Constituent Assembly and to overthrow the government led to a movement that became known as the 1932 constitutionalist revolution. On 9 July 1932 around 20,000 soldiers — from the federal garrisons and the state public forces — took up arms against the Vargas government. The population of São Paulo, above all in the capital, joined the fight: thousands of civilians, including students from the law school (located in the Largo de São Francisco), enlisted in the volunteer battalions; factories adapted their production lines to make weapons; Italian and Syrian immigrants cared for the wounded and the Catholic clergy gave its blessings to the fighters. The ‘Paulista cause’ was defended with a fervour that had never been seen in the state before. Thousands of women, rich and poor, gave their jewellery to the campaign called Gold for the Good.”

“During the uprisings in Natal and Recife in November, President Vargas had managed to convince Congress to approve a state of siege. In December he increased the pressure: the government created the Committee for the Repression of Communism, General Góes Monteiro proposed the suspension of individual rights, and the deputies agreed to decree a state of war for ninety days — a measure that was renewed repeatedly until July 1937. The government could now act unfettered and implemented its brutal, large-scale programme of searches and arrests, which led to the imprisonment of thousands of people — members of the National Alliance for Freedom, communists, their sympathizers and anyone who the police considered suspect, including the popular mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Pedro Ernesto.”

“Luis Carlos Prestes was imprisoned for nine years, much of it in solitary confinement. Olga Benário, who was Jewish and communist, was deported to Nazi Germany. Although she was pregnant, she was turned over to the Gestapo and died in a gas chamber at the Bernburg concentration camp.

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.”

“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.

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. 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.”

“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.”

The Late 20th Century

“In January 1958, with the international price of oil relatively low and Brazil’s new automobile industry taking hold, President Kubitschek decided it would be a worthwhile challenge to carve out new highways in the red earth of the central plateau. He summoned the agronomist Bernardo Sayão, an engineer from the Ministry of Agriculture — a man with film-star looks and a spirit of adventure — and suggested they ‘cut down the forest’ and unite the country from north to south. During the construction of the highway from Brasília to Belém, Mr Sayão was crushed to death by an enormous falling tree.”

“As early as 1956, Presi dent Kubitschek decided that the construction of a new capital for Brazil would be the crowning success of the Targets Plan. Brasília was to be a planned city that would represent Brazilian nationalism, the transition from the traditional to the modern. The new capital was meant to integrate the interior of the country to the urban centres, and Brazil into the international community. Brasília became a symbol of the Kubitschek government and the Targets Plan with which people could identify. Brazilians were fascinated by the idea of building a city of the future, based on new architectural and urban concepts, erected on Brazil’s central plateau in a vast, empty region of the country — the population density of the area was less than one person per square kilometre.”

“The thousands of workers, most of whom came from the northeast, Goias and the north of Minas Gerais — the candangos — only lived in Brasilia for as long as it remained a building site. Once the new capital was ready and the government had been established, they had two options: either they were sent back to their state of origin, or they went to live in segregated camping sites, similar to favelas, in the outskirts. These campsites were the origin of the ‘satellite towns,’ which have grown steadily ever since. Ten years after Brasília was built, 100,000 migrants were already living in favelas around the city.”

“The new capital was inaugurated in April 1960. Nine months later, Pres. Kubitschek handed over the office of president to his elected successor, Jânio Quadros. He could have had no idea that the next time a civilian president, elected by popular vote, would pass the presidential sash on to another elected civilian would be in 2003.”

“Janio Quadros continued to interfere in everything. He abolished the requirement for wearing ties in the presidential palace and created a khaki uniform for the civil servants, based on the ‘safari’-style outfits used by the British in their empire — in his opinion far more appropriate for a tropical country.”

“On the morning of Friday, 25 August 1961, Soldier’s Day, Jânio Quadros attended the military parade in the Esplanade of Ministries, reviewed the troops, listened to the reading of the order of the day, saluted the flag — everything according to the book. Then he returned to the palace, summoned the military ministers and officially communicated that he was resigning the presidency. When the astonished officers asked him for his reason, he replied: ‘I can’t govern with this Congress. Organize a junta and govern the country.’ He signed his letter of resignation and gave instructions to the Minister of Justice to send it to Congress at 3 p.m. At 11 a.m. he boarded the presidential plane for the Cumbica Airbase in São Paulo. As he left Brasília, he instructed the adjutant who was travelling with him to bring the presidential sash.

Jânio Quadros never gave a clear explanation for why he resigned. But there is consensus among historians. His gesture was intended to cause a national commotion and to bring about his trumphant return to office with greater presidential powers — preferably without Congress to get in his way. Resigning was a way of exiting the stage without losing face. He had used the threat of renunciation in the past, and it had always succeeded. And it could work again now: Jada Goulast was not popular with the military, and anyway, he was too far away in China to negotiate taking office. President Quadros’ resignation would only be examined by Consress after the weekend, and before that the people would be on the streets defending his mandate, perhaps — who knew? — forming a new type of queremismo, the movement that had earlier clamoured for a permanent Vargas presidency. ‘There is no one left, after me,’ Jânio Quadros is reported to have said at the Cumbica Airbase. And he added: ‘I shan’t do anything to return, but I consider my retum inevitable.’

If that was his plan, it all went wrong. The people did not rise up, the state governors said nothing, Congress accepted his resignation two hours after receiving the letter, considering it a unilateral act.”

“The 1962 elections signalled something else too: the possibility of a coup d’état. The election campaigns had received funding from a number of non-party organizations. The most dangerous among these was the Brazilian Institute for Democratic Action (IBAD), which had been established in Rio de Janeiro in 1959 by the American Central Intelligence Agency. IBAD had poured money into the campaigns of 250 federal deputies and 600 state deputies, as well as those of eight candidates for governor — a practice that was completely illegal under the election laws. The funds came from multinational companies, or companies that were associated with foreign capital, and from United States government sources happy to invest ‘one or two American dollars’ in the conspiracy against President Goulart, as was confirmed some years later by the American ambassador. The objective was strategic: to create strong opposition in Congress, block government initiatives, and prepare the way for a coup d’état.”

“Members included the country’s richest businessmen, directors of multinational companies with operations in the country, representatives of the most important business associations, military officers, journalists, intellectuals and a group of young technocrats. All of them were active, publishing books, producing films or giving lectures. But there was more to the institute’s activities. Its real task was to undermine President Goulart, for which there were two strategies. The first was to undertake a well-orchestrated destabilization plan, which included financing an anti-communist propaganda campaign, funding antigovernment protests, and promoting the opposition and the extreme right in politics as well as in business. The second was to draw up the plans for a new government authoritarian in nature — based on development and the free flow of international capital. Contrary to popular belief, the Research and Social Studies Institute was not just a propagator of anti-communist propaganda, nor a group of right-wing extremists stockpiling arms. It was the nucleus of a coup d’état conspiracy whose members had their own agenda. They were well informed and were very well placed among the conspirators who were to overthrow President Goulart, as they were in the occupation of the state after March 1964.”

“In 1963 there were two political agendas in Brazil, one on the left and one on the right, competing to transform the country. Yet there was only limited space for manoeuvre, and even less political will, to resolve political differences democratically. The government had very little power of persuasion and there were too many radical movements, both within and outside Congress. In April that year, on the instructions of President Goulart, the Brazilian Labour Party proposed a constitutional amendment for agrarian reform. Congress delayed six months, and then rejected it. With the defeat of the amendment, the president lost his second opportunity to implement his government’s programme. Nevertheless, he still underestimated the forces aligned against him.

Among the left-wing parties there was a general feeling of self-sufficiency, and consensus that things were not moving fast enough. The leader of the coalition, Leonel Brizola, was in no way making things any easier for President Goulart. Mr Brizola wanted the government to confront the problem of foreign capital and to summon a new Constituent Assembly whose members would include trade union members, rural workers, and subaltern officers from the armed forces. He claimed Congress had to be bypassed in order to implement core reforms. There is no doubt that Leonel Brizola was hard-headed, but the left-wing parties united under his leadership and he enjoyed unprecedented popularity, particularly among the sergeants in the armed forces and the military police, as well as in the navy and the marines. In 1963 there were 40,000 sergeants in the army, of whom 22,000 declared their support for Leonel Brizola. Mr Brizola’s rhetoric, already pretentious, became dangerously radical. And his was not the only revisionist voice. By late 1963 members of the left-wing parties considered their position so strong they denounced Congress as excessively conservative, determined the 1946 Constitution obsolete, and referred to all political activity in Brazil as superficial propaganda.

At the other end of the spectrum, Carlos Lacerda continued stirring things up in his attempt to destabilize the president.”

“He declared that the situation in Brazil was so serious that the military were debating whether it were better to ‘patronize him [João Goulart], control him until the end of his term or remove him from office altogether.’ For someone who had learnt the art of politics from Getúlio Vargas, President Goulart overreacted to the declarations: he summoned his ministers and sent a message to Congress requesting the declaration of a state of siege, which would allow him to intervene in the state of Guanabara. The reaction was hostile all around. The state governors informed President Goulart that none of them would accept federal intervention in their states. Left-wing leaders feared the same measures might be used against them. And the three major parties the Brazilian Labour Party, the National Democratic Union and the Social Democratic Party — joined forces and informed the Executive that the state of siege would not be approved.

João Goulart had no choice but to admit defeat and accept that his authority had been weakened. And it was not for the first time. A month earlier he had also lost face over the government’s handling of a military crisis — the Rebellion of the Sergeants. The crisis had begun with the decision of the Federal Supreme Court that sergeants who had run for office in 1962 were ineligible for public office. The decision was followed by an unexpected act of military insubordination. In Brasília, air force and navy sergeants, and soldiers from the marine corps, invaded the airforce base and the naval ministry, blockaded the roads and the airports, invaded the National Congress, occupied the Supreme Court building, and kidnapped the Supreme Court president, Victor Nunes Leal, whom they kept under arrest for several hours.

Before the movement could spread, the military commanders sent troops into the streets of Brasília and suppressed the rebellion. But the political ramifications were to be disastrous for the government. For the army command, the incident came as a shock, both for its infringement of military discipline and for the ease with which the sergeants had virtually isolated the capital. But they were even more astounded at President Goulart’s reaction: he remained neutral, neither defending nor attacking the rebels. Nor did he respond to the left-wing parties that had supported the sergeants. His silence allowed the conspirators to take on the role of guarantors of legality, which in turn lent credibility to the Research and Social Studies Institute sponsored anti-Goulart campaign. As from October the Goulart government’s political and administrative instability became increasingly evident. The Executive virtually came to a halt due to the constant replacement of ministers, the absence of a majority in Congress, and the heightened radicalization of political forces on both sides of the political spectrum. Annual inflation reached 79.9 per cent, economic growth was 1.5 per cent a year, and there was a generalized feeling that the government had lost control.”

“Two days later President Goulart sent the president’s annual address to Congress. Therein were his agenda for reforms, a proposed referendum for their approval, a request to delegate legislative powers to the Executive, and recommended alterations to the text of the 1946 Constitution. The presidential message terrified Congress. For many it confirmed the worst fears of the Research and Social Studies Institute and of the National Democratic Union, that sooner or later the president would impose his policies, dissolve Congress, grant special powers to the Executive, change the election rules for his own benefit, and permit Leonel Brizola to run for office. (Under the 1946 Constitution, as João Goulart’s brother-in-law, Mr Brizola was not allowed to stand as a candidate.) In fact, Leonel Brizola made no secret of his ambition to rule the country, and João Goulart probably did covet re-election. It is also true that the two of them planned significant alterations to the constitution. But until then, there had only been rhetoric, a political game. But with the annual address to Congress, everything changed. People began to focus on Leonel Brizola and President Goulart’s activities, realizing there was nothing to prevent the two of them from carrying out the president’s plans. At any moment President Goulart could annul the legislation that sustained his presidency. There was widespread suspicion, in the press and public opinion, as to the government’s intentions.

On 19 March, in São Paulo, a large crowd left the Praça da República and marched to the Praça da Sé carrying banners, flags and a profusion of rosaries, to save Brazil from João Goulart, Leonel Brizola and communism, as they shouted in chorus. The Family with God March for Freedom had been organized by the Research and Social Studies Institute through the Women’s Civic Union, one of the many women’s groups set up by the institute all over Brazil to increase political pressure. The march attracted around half a million people.”

“The march in São Paulo proved that a strong government opposition coalition had been formed, willing and able to mobilize people from all walks of life. Their shared aversion to the increasing political activity of the trade unions and rural workers was one of their main uniting forces. Furthermore, financial stress and uncertainty with respect to the future had stirred the urban middle classes into action. They were well aware that a radical process of redistribution of income and power would affect their traditional position in that brutally inequitable society. Taking all of this into account facilitates the understanding of the intensity and breadth of the opposition movement. Between 19 March and 8 June 1964 crowds marched with God and against João Goulart — or, after 31 March, to commemorate the coup d’état that had deposed him — in at least fifty cities all around the country, from state capitals to small towns.”

“At a U.S. military base in Virginia, a naval task force was waiting for authorization to head for Brazil. The task force was part of Operation Brother Sam, which had been prepared in DC with the complicity of the Brazilian military to provide support for the coup.”

“Between 31 March and 4 April, when João Goulart went into exile in Uruguay, there were still several possible ways he could have dealt with the coup. The first, with a good chance of success, and with little cost and little risk, would have been to prevent General Mourão from advancing. The troops were moving slowly, clearly visible, along the União e Indústria highway. They were badly equipped and many were recent recruits. The second would have been to stay put in Rio de Janeiro, make an announcement to the nation, and take personal command of the resistance, with the support of the garrisons that remained loyal to the government. Instead, his sudden departure from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia confused his supporters, who interpreted it as flight. The third opportunity would have been to then remain in Brasilia and mobilize congressional support. He could have proposed democratic elections. In addition to the support of the Brazilian Labour Party and the left-wing coalition, the chances were high of getting the support of the Social Democratic Party.”

“Historians are still debating how the conspirators were so easily victorious. Obviously, one of the reasons was that João Goulart did not lead a resistance. But nor did anyone else from the left take the initiative to resist the coup — neither the Communist Party, the General Workers’ Command (CGT), the Rural Workers’ Leagues (Ligas Camponesas), nor Leonel Brizola. It is probable that all of them, including President Goulart, thought that the coup would follow the pattern of previous military interventions, such as those of 1945, 1954, 1955 and 1961. In all these cases the armed forces had acted as both protagonist and moderating power, and after a cooling-off period had called elections and returned power to the civilians. It is also possible that João Goulart saw his position as analogous to that of Getúlio Vargas in 1945. He would retreat to his farm in São Borja from where he would watch events unfold and prepare to stand for re-election in 1965.”

The Last Dictatorship

“A faction among the conspirators had its own agenda and the military government was to last for twenty-one years. Brazil’s military dictatorship was about to begin.”

“The military took over the government by unconstitutional methods. They granted themselves emergency powers and ‘elected’ five army generals in succession to head the Executive — Castello Branco (1964–7), Costa e Silva (1967–9), Garrastazu Médici (1969–74), Ernesto Geisel(1974–9) and João Figueiredo (1979–85). There was also a short period during which the country was governed by a Military Junta (August to October 1969), made up of ministers of the three components of the armed forces.”

“General Castello Branco was no exception. Every single one of the military presidents succeeded to the presidency and left office amid a serious crisis. In spite of what is often said, President Castello Branco’s government was anything but moderate.”

“The dictatorship’s economic development project facilitated foreign investment, reduced the active role of the state, and increased the rate of growth. ‘We did it all. There was no force, neither the legislature nor the judiciary that could oppose our economic policies,’ former minister Ernane Galvêas later confirmed. President Castello Branco’s government had built the economic and financial foundation that sustained the development model. It prioritized an incentive programme for foreign investment and for exports. This was achieved through the devaluation of Brazil’s currency, the cruzeiro, against the dollar. The programme was based on a strict stabilization policy: wage control, reduced minimum working age, elimination of ‘job security,’ repression of trade unions and prohibition of strikes.

In 1967, when General Costa e Silva took over the government, the economy began to grow. However, by that time working-class wages and middle-class salaries were feeling the impact of the economic squeeze.”

“As had been the case in Contagem, the Cobrasma workers had been mobilized through committees inside the factory and the support was massive. On the first day 10,000 workers went on strike. But this time the military had no intention of losing face. On the second day of the strike, Cobrasma was invaded by soldiers with machine guns and two tanks. After the invasion, the military police occupied the town of Osasco and around four hundred workers were arrested. Those leaders who managed to escape from prison went into hiding — including the president of the Metalworkers’ Trade Union of Osasco, José Ibrahim. The brutality worked, both as an instrument of coercion and dissuasion. For the next ten years there were no more strikes in Brazil.

The military were improving their methods of repression — inside the factories and in society at large — the economy had expanded and inflation, instead of rising, began to fall. The cycle of economic growth began which, at its height, surpassed anything that had been seen before. The government began to refer to it as the Brazilian economic miracle. There is no denying the miracle occurred; but it had a more mundane explanation. The ‘miracle’ was the result of a combination of factors, including the repression of the opposition and censorship of the media to prevent any criticism of the economic model; government subsidies for exports and their consequent diversification; privatization of the economy with an increasing number of foreign companies entering the market; and centralized government control of prices and wages.

Automobile industry production tripled, the supply of cement for civil construction dried up, and people earned a small fortune on the stock exchange — there was a month in 1970 in Rio de Janeiro when the volume of trade surpassed that of the entire year of 1968. However, the ‘economic miracle’ came with a price tag. The process was accompanied by an ever-increasing concentration of income in the hands of the few as a result of the strict wage controls that prevented any productivity gains from being shared with the workers. Another result was the dramatic increase in the foreign debt, which made the country more vulnerable to instability in the international market. Brazil had taken out loans in hard currency, with longer terms and lower interest rates, and the industrial sector had received credit from private international banks at floating interest rates. Brazilians would only grasp the extent of the country’s economic vulnerability in 1973, when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) reduced the supply of oil, and the price multiplied by four times. There was no alternative but to continue buying it, and the ‘miracle’ came to an end. Unlike most Brazilians, the generals in the Executive and the technocrats in the Ministry of Planning knew the economic growth could not be maintained and that consequences such as these were inevitable. But no one took any action. In fact, the dictatorship benefited enormously from the results. From the somewhat cynical viewpoint of General Médici, who was president at the height of the growth cycle, the country was fine; it was the people who were not.

Dictatorships are a combination of arbitrary leadership, tenacious opposition, and a population that needs to survive — part of which remains silent either out of fear or resignation. While the ‘economic miracle’ lasted, the cost of income concentration was latent. Many people, especially among the urban middle classes, benefited from easy credit, new professional opportunities, and incentives to consume new products, including colour televisions, cassette tapes, Super-8 cameras and cars — the Corcel, Opala, Galaxie and Chevette. And to complete the happy expectations of Brazilians, wage earners could finally plan to buy their own home, with a mortgage from the recently created National Housing Bank (BNH). The ‘economic miracle’ reached its peak between 1970 and 1972. This economic success explains President Médicis popularity, in spite of his leading the country during the worst period of political violence in Brazilian history. He received very little criticism and much applause.”

“The military had a development project of major proportions and were determined to integrate the whole of the country. Brazil was transformed into an enormous building site, all duly noted and celebrated by the Special Agency for Public Relations. The most famous of these construction projects — the Transamazônica — was part of the economic development project conceived by the Research and Social Studies Institute and the National War College programme of internal security. It was a gigantic highway, planned to be 4,997 kilometres long, of which 4,223 kilometres were built (although the work was of very poor quality). It was intended to cut across the Amazon Basin from east to west, connecting Brazil’s northeast to Peru and Ecuador. The construction of the Transamazônica was the basis of an ambitious plan to settle the area, which included the dislocation of close to a million people in the region. The goal was to leave no part of the country uninhabited and, for the first time, to control the frontiers. The highway was inaugurated by President Médici on 27 September 1972, and used to promote a triumphant image of a country fully geared toward modernization whose population had a strong sense of identity. But the reality was rather different. The construction of the Transamazônica destroyed the forest, consumed billions of dollars, and even today there are many parts of it that are impassable due to rains, landslides and flooding rivers.

The project burned money that did not exist, which Brazilians would only discover in 1980, when the ‘miracle’ was over and inflation reached three digits — 110 per cent. In 1985, when the military regime finally came to an end, it left behind a huge national debt and a 235 per cent annual rate of inflation.”

“Because of the number of other Institutional Acts that were to follow, it became known as the Institutional Act no. 1 and gave General Castello Branco the legal means to imprison thousands of people, as well as to create detention centres out of football stadiums, such as Caio Martins stadium in Niterói, and to transform merchant ships and warships into prisons. The AI-1 also allowed the military police to arrest people en masse, close off streets, conduct individual and house-to-house searches, all of which occurred in 1964 — in Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul, São Paulo and Pernambuco — when around 50,000 people were detained in a deployment that the police baptized ‘Operation Cleanup’.”

“Between 1964 and 1973 thousands of Brazilians were victims of the purges. It is estimated that 4,841 people lost their political rights, had their mandates annulled, were forced into retirement or lost their jobs under the dictatorship — 2,990 of these under the Al-1 alone. In the army, navy and air force, 1,313 soldiers were transferred to the reserves. These included 43 generals, 532 officers of all ranks, 708 subaltern officers and sergeants, and 30 soldiers and sailors. These people were treated with particular cruelty: they were declared ‘dead.’ They thus lost everything acquired during a long career — promotion, retirement, health care and benefits. Their wives received a widow’s pension.”

“The army used torture from the beginning of General Castello Branco’s government. The practice spread like a virus, thanks to the silent collusion of those in power — both civilians and military. Between 1964 and 1978 the use of torture was state policy. Torturers became untouchable and the practice moved far beyond the walls of the barracks. For a systematic policy of torture to work, there must be judges who overlook obviously fraudulent prosecutions and accept forced or unreliable confessions and falsified technical findings. Staff in hospitals have to be willing to collude, by forging death certificates and records of the circumstances of death. They also have to treat prisoners who have been the victims of physical violence. A government that relies on torture must also be able to count on people in business who are prepared to make unofficial donations so that the political repression machine can operate efficiently. In Brazil the practice of political torture was not the result of the actions of a few sadistic individuals, and this is precisely what makes the situation so scandalous and painful. It was a killing machine conceived according to the logic of combat: liquidate the enemy before it acquires the capacity to fight.”

“From 1966 on, when the students returned to the streets and led the great protest marches of 1967 and 1968, they too became targets of the military government.

It had never been so dangerous to be a student in Brazil. In 1968 news that the police had shot high-school student Edson Luís de Lima Souto at point-blank range during a protest in his high-school canteen (the Calabouço) in Rio de Janeiro affected people all over the country. His death marked the transformation of student protests into a mass social movement. More than six hundred people attended the seventh-day Mass, which was celebrated in Rio de Janeiro by Dom José de Castro Pinto, the vicar general of the diocese. With the Candelária church surrounded by hundreds of Marines and mounted police, the priests held hands and formed a corridor to allow the congregation to leave in safety. As he left, the literary critic Otto Maria Carpeaux murmured emotionally, ‘Unforgettable, Fathers.’

This was far from the only occasion when a group of courageous priests protected people from violence and from arbitrary acts of the security forces. The undeniable evidence that the military were routinely torturing people led a group of Catholic bishops to join the opposition and to use the Church’s communication channels to disclose internationally what was going on in Brazil. In 1970 the Saint-Germain-des-Prés church in Paris displayed a handcuffed Christ on the altar with a tube in his mouth and a magneto on the top of the cross. Above the cross the words ‘Ordem e Progresso’ were inscribed. In May 1969, Father Antônio Henrique Pereira Neto was kidnapped, tortured and killed in Recife. He was the personal assistant to Dom Helder Câmara, the Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, internationally recognized for his work in human rights. Father Pereira Neto’s death was the first time in Brazil that a priest had been murdered for political reasons.”

“Opposition moves included bank robberies, attacks on armoured cars, companies, weapon stores and the installation of guerrilla bases. The most spectacular feat of the revolutionary left was the kidnap of the American ambassador, Charles Burke Elbrick, in Rio de Janeiro in1969. The kidnap was planned by two young militants — Franklin Martins and Cid Benjamin — from the Dissident Movement of the University of Guanabara, a minuscule but daring organization. In return for the ambassador’s release they obtained the freedom of fifteen political prisoners. This type of action had far-reaching repercussions. It made the armed struggle, the practice of torture and the existence of political prisoners — all of which were denied by the military — into international news, and undermined the dictatorship.”

“But nothing can be compared to the crimes committed by the dictatorship against Brazil’s indigenous peoples. The most important document denouncing these crimes the Figueiredo Report — was produced by the government in 1967. It then disappeared for forty-six years, allegedly destroyed in a fire. In 2013 the report was found, virtually intact. Twenty-nine volumes containing 5,000 pages were found — of the thirty volumes with 7,000 pages contained in the original. In order to write it, Attorney General Jader de Figueiredo Correia and his team had travelled more than 16,000 kilometres and visited 130 Indian reserves in the country.

The report was terrifying: Indians were tortured with appalling cruelty and entire tribes murdered by landowners and state agents. Mr Figueiredo’s investigative work was a considerable feat. The report included accounts by dozens of witnesses, presented hundreds of documents, and identified every crime that he unearthed: murders, Indian women and girls forced into prostitution, ill-treatment, slave labour, and the misappropriation of Indian land and funds. It reported the hunting of Indians with machine guns and dynamite thrown from aeroplanes, the inoculation of isolated groups with the smallpox virus, and donations of sugar laced with strychnine. The Indians living in areas the military had decided were strategic for their occupation of the whole of Brazilian territory, according to the plan conceived by the Research and Social Studies Institute ind the National War College, paid a very high price indeed.”

“Artur Barrio threw bloody bundles of animal bones and meat into the Arrudas river that flows through the capital of Minas Gerais, in an allusion to the crimes of the dictatorship — the bundles suggested human bodies cut into pieces and abandoned anonymously in the open. The event attracted around 5,000 people and ended with the arrival of the military police and the fire brigade who forced those present to accompany them to the police station.”

“On 15 March 1985 the last general to govern Brazil, President João Figueiredo, refused to hand over the presidential sash to his successor and to ceremoniously walk down the ramp from the presidential palace according to protocol. Instead, he left the palace by a back door. Fewer than two months before, in January, in a television interview, he had expressed what was seemingly his own assessment of his term as president. Addressing the Brazilian people he said, ‘I want you to forget me.’ President Figueiredo was ill-tempered, explosive and extraordinarily vulgar. By the time he left office, he had alienated virtually everyone, including the group of generals who had supported his appointment six years earlier. His prestige was low. He was notorious for having been at the helm of the most unpopular administration in twenty years. Most significantly, his government had failed to free the Executive from the control of the military without endangering the developmental project the military had been implementing since 1964. This is what had been expected of his presidency. President Ernesto Geisel and General Golbery do Couto e Silva had begun to gradually dismantle the dictatorial regime in 1975. Both were convinced that the emergency powers could be revoked without undue upheaval. The two generals, along with various other commanders in the armed forces, believed it was time for the military to relinquish the presidency. The wear and tear of political life and the requirement to guarantee Brazil’s domestic safety was taking a toll on the army and beginning to put the interests of the institution at risk. Furthermore, the years of dictatorship had seriously damaged the structure of the armed forces. Countless officers had been removed from the hierarchy of command, from the routine of training and from their professional environments, to work as policemen and interrogators. And worse: those who had remained in the barracks were envious. After all, torturers were being decorated with the Peacemaker’s Medal — awarded for acts of bravery or exceptional service to the army — and received regular promotions and salary increases.”

“While evaluating how to relinquish direct control of the Executive, they were also concerned with protecting their own interests. One of their demands was that the intelligence-gathering institutions be maintained. They also stipulated that all those who had engaged in political repression remain untouchable — there would be no retaliation. They required that weapons industry incentives that had been in effect since 1964 be maintained, as well as those incentives considered of key importance for state security, such as telecommunications and information technology.

No one laid a finger on the military when they left power, nor has anyone done so since. But the armed forces lost prestige and legitimacy in the public mind. Moreover, their strategy failed. They did not maintain control over the process of re-democratization, nor did they substitute their government with a civilian government aligned with their ideas. None of the generals engaged in the abertura process had ever intended a complete return to democracy.”

“The year 1978 was surprising. On 12 May, a decade after the strike in Osasco had been crushed, around 3,000 workers entered the Saab-Scania truck factory in São Bernardo do Campo, near São Paulo, on what appeared to be an ordinary work day. They clocked in, sat down in front of the machines and crossed their arms. Two weeks later, 77,950 workers went on strike in Santo André, São Bernardo, São Caetano and Diadema, the industrial heart of the country, where the new consumer-durables and capital-goods sectors consolidated during the ‘economic miracle ‘were located. The strike appeared to be motivated by economic causes — and it was. But it signified much more. So Bernardo sparked off a cycle of strikes — the metalworker strikes of 1979 and 1980, also in the ABC Paulista, and others throughout the country. Strikes affected more than four million workers in fifteen of the twenty-three states over the course of the following two years. They continued virtually uninterrupted until 1980, and these in turn encouraged collectivization in other areas, including the construction workers in Belo Horizonte, the sugar planters in Pernambuco, and the so-called boias-frias — temporary sugarcane harvest cutters — in the interior of Sao Paulo.

Although the strikes and the organizing of the workers were largely due to the activism of the metalworkers’ union, they were joined by other sectors in what became known as Brazil’s ‘new trade unionism.’ The expression was used to describe a trade union movement that not only opposed the dictatorship, but was also autonomous, free from the state controls established during the Vargas administration; unions that could negotiate collective contracts directly with employers and act independently of the Labour Courts. These trade unions started on the factory floor, took their decisions at large assemblies, and proved that it was not only football that could fill a stadium in Brazil. During the strikes of 1979 and 1980 more than 100,000 workers attended the famous assemblies in the Vila Euclides Stadium in São Bernardo. The cycle of strikes that began with the metalworkers in 1978 led to the consolidation of two major labour movements that emerged at the turn of the decade. The first, the Centralized Workers’ Union (CUT), founded in 1983, was a near-deployment of the ‘new trade unionism’. This organization represented a broad spectrum of workers, including rural labourers, and it advocated agricultural reform. It was democratically run and supported autonomy for organized unions, and the freedom to form them inside the factories. The second major labour movement was represented by the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, or PT). It was founded in 1980, from the bottom up, and drew support from the trade unions and other mass movements. Members of the Workers’ Party planned to capture the vote of the impoverished populations in the city outskirts and the interior. The party was founded by workers to give shape to the social struggle and to the principle of an egalitarian society, within a democratic context. In the words of Lula (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva), one of the party’s founders, it grew quickly, spreading ‘like tiririca, sprouting up everywhere.’ The Workers’ Party was formed from a wide range of political forces. It incorporated the trade unionist and workers’ movements, the progressive wing of the Catholic Church (via the Basic Christian Communities — CEB), the remaining revolutionary armed resistance groups, the Trotskyites, and a wide range of artists and intellectuals.

The Workers’ Party brought out the popularity and leadership of Lula, a factory worker and two-term president of the Metalworkers’ Union of São Bernardo do Campo and Diadema, who became famous throughout the country as the leader of the strikes in 1978, 1979 and 1980. In 1980, when he was thirty-five, Lula was extremely charismatic and thought of nothing but politics. He could never have imagined, however, that in 2002 he would be elected president of Brazil.”

“During the 1980 strike, the Figueiredo administration abandoned its rhetoric and went on the attack. Photographs of two army helicopters, with the doors open and eight armed soldiers in each one, aiming their machine guns at the crowd in the Vila Euclides Stadium, were published in the press all around the world. In São Bernardo, troops occupied the trade unions’ headquarters, the Praça da Matriz and the stadium itself. The companies were not permitted to negotiate with the strikers and fifteen union leaders were arrested — including Lula.”

“The policy of impunity created increasing difficulties for President Geisel and then for President Figueiredo. Between 1976 and 1981 the officers involved in the political repression executed terrorist attacks, bombing newspaper offices, bookshops, universities and institutions identified with the opposition. Members of the opposition were kidnapped and tortured. Between August and September 1976 bombs were exploded — or in some cases found and defused by the police — in the offices of the National Congress of Brazilian Bishops, the Brazilian Lawyers’ Association and the Journalists’ Trade Union — in addition to one that exploded in the residence of Roberto Marinho, the media magnate who owned the Globo newspaper and television channel. Mr Marinho had been one of President Geisel’s most powerful allies. In one of the dormitory towns in the greater Rio de Janeiro area, Nova Iguaçu, the bishop of the diocese, Dom Adriano Hipólito, was kidnapped and later abandoned, naked and tied up, in the middle of a street in the Carioca suburb of Jacarepaguá. Within the first eight months of 1980, during General Figueiredo’s government, there were forty-six terrorist attacks. Newspaper stands that sold alternative publications were blown up in the middle of the night, the legal specialist Dalmo Dallari was kidnapped in São Paulo, a bomb was found in the hotel room where Leonel Brizola was staying, and the house of the rural labour leader, Manuel da Conceição, was attacked and vandalized. On 27 August 1980, the eve of the first anniversary of the Amnesty Law, three bombs were exploded in a period of twelve hours in the centre of Rio de Janeiro. The first destroyed the offices of the pro-labour newspaper Tribuna da Luta Operária; the second wounded six people in the Municipal Chamber; and the third exploded at the head offices of the Brazilian Lawyers’ Association, mutilating a servant, José Ribamar, and killing Lyda Monteiro da Silva, the secretary of the association.

Then on the night of 30 April 1981 something went horribly wrong. A bomb accidentally exploded in the lap of a parachute brigade sergeant, Guilherme Rosário, while he was sitting inside a car, a metallic grey Puma, beside infantry captain Wilson Machado, who was sitting in the driver’s seat. The car was parked in the parking lot of the Riocentro — Rio de Janeiro’s largest venue for events and conferences. The sergeant died and the captain was seriously wounded — he was lucky to have survived. Both worked in the Internal Operation Detachments of the First Army. Inside the car there were three other bombs and two grenades. The two men were part of a group of fifteen soldiers from the Internal Operation Detachments and the Army Information Centre, distributed among six cars, who were there to execute a large-scale terrorist attack. If the attack had been successful, the devastation would have been indescribable. That night the venue was hosting a musical event to celebrate Workers’ Day, which had attracted an audience of 20,000 people to hear thirty of Brazil’s most popular singers. The event had been organized by the Centre for a Democratic Brazil (Cebrade), an institution with ties to the opposition. The plan was to explode a bomb in the electric generator, leaving everything in the dark, and then set off two more bombs close to the stage. Before detonating the bombs the terrorists had padlocked twenty-eight of the thirty emergency exits. They intended to blame the attack on the Popular Revolution Vanguard, an armed group that had been decimated by the army ten years earlier.

General Figueiredo had learnt about the plan a month before, and had done nothing to prevent it. The army had no time to remove the evidence before the press arrived, and was thus forced to divulge the identity of the men who had been in the car, but alleged reasons of national security for giving no further explanation. The military also issued an official statement that convinced no one: the two officers had got into the car without noticing the bomb — a two-and-a-half-litre tin full of TNT — that had allegedly been put under the seat by left-wing armed militants.”

“Sergeant Guilherme Rosário and Captain Wilson Machado were depicted as victims of left-wing insurgents and the case was shelved.

Politically this was the end of the Figueiredo government. Its double game was exposed during the investigation of the Riocentro bombing and the president lost his ability to conduct controlled abertura. The opposition now decided to mobilize the masses. They needed to unite. In 1983 the leadership of the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement and the Workers’ Party united to demand a change in the rules for the election of General Figueiredo’s successor. They wanted a constitutional amendment to re-establish the direct vote for the president of Brazil. Draft legislation for the amendment had been prepared in March 1983 by a Brazilian Democratic Movement deputy who was unknown at the time, Dante de Oliveira, a deputy from Mato Grosso. It was a mere fifteen lines of proposed amendment, and the likelihood that it would not pass was extremely high. But it was picked up by the National Executive of the party. The Dante de Oliveira Amendment, as the law became known, led to the creation of a broad-based alliance between the parties — the Brazilian Democratic Movement, the Workers’ Party, the Democratic Labour Party and even the Brazilian Labour Party — as well as trade unions and workers’ movements. And, for the first time, there were dissidents from within the government party who supported an opposition initiative. Public demonstrations in favour of the law took place across the entire country in the largest display of popular opinion ever seen in Brazil.

Despite the growing pressure from the public for direct elections, there was no chance whatsoever that the government would agree. It had a majority in the electoral college, made up of 660 deputies, and a majority in the National Congress. For a constitutional amendment to pass, a two-thirds majority was needed — 320 votes. There was only one thing the opposition could do to try to prevent President Figueiredo’s successor from being elected by an indirect vote: get the masses onto the streets. And this is precisely what they did. The ‘Diretas Já’ (‘Direct Elections Now’) campaign started in June 1983, with a political rally in Goiânia, the capital of Goiás. Around 5,000 people attended, which was enough to show the viability of a campaign to have the Dante de Oliveira Amendment pass in Congress.

The opposition had several advantages. The president’s credibility was further undermined by the extremely high inflation, which reached 211 per cent in 1983, and the consequent collapse in purchasing power. The government position was then dogged by a series of financial scandals that affected President Figueiredo and his closest advisers.”

“The first sign that the campaign was really going to take off came in February 1984, when Ulysses Guimarães, Lula, and the president of the Democratic Labour Party, Doutel de Andrade, left Brasilia at the head of the Direct Elections Caravan, travelling 22,000 kilometres across fifteen states in the north, northeast and midwest, attracting almost a million people to their rallies. The campaign of ‘Diretas Já’ was a civic celebration of republican values. The editor Caio Graco Prado — son of the historian Caio Prado Ir — conceived the idea of making the colour for the campaign yellow. The idea caught on. People took to the streets wearing yellow T-shirts. Journalists from TV Globo arrived at work sporting bright yellow ties in protest at the television station’s official policy of ignoring the mass rallies. The artist Alex Chacon created the Direct Elections Dragon, made out of bamboo, printed cotton and papier maché and operated by nine people who danced in a zigzag pattern along the streets. Before the Direct Elections campaign, the directors of the Globo television network had believed that anything that they did not show on the news simply did not exist. The campaign woke them up to reality and they started to cover it. But neither TV Globo nor the opposition parties, not even Ulysses Guimarães — who had earned the nickname Sr Diretas — had any idea of the avalanche they had triggered. The first rally, in Belo Horizonte’s Praça Rio Branco, was attended by 300,000 protesters. During the second rally, in Rio de Janeiro, a million people descended on Candelária. And in the last rally, which took place in São Paulo, the crowd was estimated at one and a half million people.

An array of opposition leaders appeared on the stage of these rallies: Ulysses Guimarães, Leonel Brizola, Lula, Tancredo Neves, Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Franco Montoro. The crowds were in a state of euphoria. Many of Brazil’s leading intellectuals and artists made public their support, including Antonio Candido, Lygia Fagundes Telles and Celso Furtado, Chico Buarque, Maria Bethânia, Paulinho da Viola, Juca de Oliveira and Fafá de Belém, Fernanda Montenegro. Football players such as Sócrates and Reinaldo showed the public that they too supported the direct elections. The backing of these public figures was decisive in diffusing the ideals of a democratic project. The success of the campaign generated widespread optimism. People began to believe it could be victorious.

But however much credibility the government had lost, the armed forces remained determined not to allow any change in the rules.”

Democracy

“Ulysses Guimarães was reconciled to the situation, claiming that Tancredo Neves championed indirect elections precisely so he could overturn that system once he got into power. To a certain extent, he was right, but he still could not persuade the Workers’ Party to collaborate with what it considered a conservative transition, nor to participate in the electoral college. But Tancredo Neves was successful in putting an end to the cycle of military governments. On 15 January 1985 he was elected — along with his vice-president Senator Sarney — as president of Brazil. The result was a triumph: 480 votes for Tancredo Neves as against 180 for Paulo Maluf. The president-elect had three months before taking office to consolidate his victory, set up a new government, and turn the rhetoric into reality. The transition plan for the ‘New Republic,’ as it was called, was ambiguous. It was politically conservative and based on compromise, but nevertheless it was an extraordinary change. The way was now open for the reconstruction of democracy and the establishment of economic and institutional stability.

On the eve of his investiture, Tancredo Neves was rushed to hospital for an emergency operation. He was seventy-five years old, and had known he was ill. He had hidden the fact from even his closest advisers, convinced that he would be able to take office and afterwards seek medical help. He was fearful that the generals would find a way to prevent him from taking office for health reasons. For important public figures, illness was a taboo, and the military could allege that medical treatment — however long it took — would incapacitate him from running the country. Everything went wrong. The hospital where the operation took place, the Hospital de Base in Brasília, was badly equipped to prevent sepsis. The doctors were negligent, the infection spread, and the patient’s condition became increasingly serious. Tancredo Neves would never take office. He was transferred to the Instituto do Coração in São Paulo, where he underwent seven more operations. His death was announced on 21 April 1985.”

“The next in the line of succession was the president of the Chamber of Deputies, who in this case was Ulysses Guimarães. It was the only time General Figueiredo and the ‘authentic group’ from the Brazilian Democratic Movement came to an agreement: if Tancredo Neves did not take office, his legal successor would be Ulysses Guimarães. But Mr Guimarães refused. He said that the doctors’ prognosis was that Tancredo Neves would be able to take office in forty-eight hours, as his personal secretary Aécio Neves’ had announced on television. He insisted that José Sarney take office and temporally be in charge of the government. Everyone was convinced.

There is no way of knowing what a government led by Tancredo Neves would have been like. With his death, the New Republic began as a tremendous disappointment and offered very little that was new. José Sarney had supported the dictatorship in 1964. In 1965 he had been elected governor of Maranhão by direct vote, and in 1970 he had successfully stood as senator for the National Renewal Alliance. He had changed horses at the very last moment. Mr. Sarney had an extraordinary capacity for adapting to the ideology of the government of the moment, just as long as he could maintain his position — that is, in power. In Maranhão he was all powerful — and that would remain the case until 2014.

Like many other Brazilian politicians he was an incarnation of a new type of coronelismo, which continued many of the practices characteristic of the First Republic. These included a disregard for the rules of democracy, a strong sense of being above the law, an incapacity to distinguish between what is public and what is private property, and the use of power to obtain jobs, contracts, subsidies and other favours for family and friends.”

Life for the opposition was not easy during President Sarney’s government. Ministers were appointed and then summarily dismissed as he maneuvered to maintain political support for his government from whoever was prepared to offer it. Tancredo Neves’s plans for the transition did not enter the political equation. Conflicts between the Palácio do Planalto (the Executive offices) and the National Congress became frequent as soon as the Constituent Assembly began its work. While Ulysses Guimarães, as president of the Assembly, was trying to mediate between the commitment of the Brazilian Democratic Movement to the re-democratization process, the socialist platform of the Workers’ Party, and the manoeuvring of the conservative groups to protect their own interests, President Sarney concentrated on stitching up a political agreement that allowed him to extend his term of office to five years. Not only that, he abandoned all that still remained of the programme that had been projected for the New Republic.”

“It was a dirty campaign. The president of the São Paulo Federation of Industries (Fiesp), Mario Amato, declared that 800,000 businessmen would leave Brazil if Lula won.

Mr. Collor discovered a former girlfriend of Lula’s, Miriam Cordeiro, with whom he had had a daughter, who was prepared to go on television and say that he had offered her money to have an abortion. It was a lie, but the effect on the voters was devastating. Three days before the election, the news programme with the highest audience in the country — Globo TV’s Jornal Nacional — showed a shortened version of the last debate between Fernando Collor and Lula, which had been specially edited to show the former as decisive and confident and the latter insecure and hesitant. It was seen by 60 million people. The last event to influence the outcome occurred on the eve of the elections, a Saturday, when the police in São Paulo rescued a leading businessman, Abilio Diniz, who had been kidnapped. There was only one Brazilian in the group who had committed the crime — the others were Chilean and Argentinean — but the police reported that they had links to the Workers’ Party. Although none of the party militants had been involved, the Sunday edition of the Estado de S. Paulo printed an interview with Abilio Diniz’s brother who said that the Workers’ Party had indeed taken part in the kidnapping.

Fernando Collor won the election with 50 per cent of the votes, compared to 44 per cent for Lula. He took office on 15 March 1990.”

“The cause of Fernando Collor’s fall was corruption.

The rumours had begun with the confiscation of the country’s savings, when stories spread that there had been exceptions: certain groups and individuals were able to keep their money. But the extent of the abuses only reached the public when the press investigated Paulo César Farias, who had been President Collor’s campaign treasurer, and discovered that he was at the centre of a systematic corruption scheme within the government, a scheme in which the president himself was his partner. From then on it was just a question of time. In May 1992, Veja magazine exploded a bombshell. In a seventeen-page interview, Pedro Collor, the president’s younger brother, accused Paulo César Farias of being a front man for the president, not only in the administration of illegal funds that had been raised during the election campaign — around $60 million — but also by acting as an intermediary in illicit deals involving the exchange of political favours and government posts, in return for bribes. In June, Congress began a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, which, although it had little credibility at the outset, soon began to expose the scandals Through the inquiry, it was discovered that Mr Farias’ interference reached into every level of federal administration. All the president’s personal expenses were paid by him, including the rental of cars for use by the president. It is still not known where the funds misappropriated by Paulo César Farias — estimated at between $300 million and $1 billion — were deposited. Up until the very last minute, President Collor did not believe the scandal could destroy him. However, on Thursday 13 August 1992, during an informal speech to two thousand taxi drivers who had come to thank him for government assistance, he lost his composure — right there in front of the government offices, the Palácio do Planalto. He vehemently denied all the denunciations, claiming they were false. He called on the people to take to the streets the following day, wearing the national colours — green and yellow — in a massive show of support for his government. The president was very angry, but the Brazilians were sick and tired, and Sunday ended up being a day for demonstrations. With one detail: people dressed in black. With no prior organization, all over the country, people spontaneously came onto the streets — but they were all wearing black, with black mourning bands around their arms and black strips of cloth tied to the antennas of their cars. Fernando Collor had underestimated Brazilians.”

“If historical remembrance is our mission, the deep-rooted and long experience of slavery cannot be over-looked. Its scars remain to this day, even in our architecture. Residential apartment buildings have a back entrance for servants and are still built with a minuscule room for the maid.”

“During his two consecutive terms as president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who governed Brazil from 1995 to 2002, was successful in fighting inflation and in the restructuring of government funds, which led to economic growth. He is also one of the founders of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), and has contributed to its consolidation and strength. His government stands out, among other reasons, for having invested in strategic public sector careers, in a clear break with President Vargas’s project. The Cardoso administration implemented the first programme of wealth redistribution, which gave benefits to poor families so they could keep their children in school. President Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s government was also active in the social arena, with a programme of food grants and the eradication of child labour. The first lady, anthropologist Dr. Ruth Cardoso, worked with her husband and was behind many social projects that attended to the poor population, such as Comunidade Solidária, Capacitação Solidária and Alfabetização Solidária.

With the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2002, for the first time Brazil’s working classes became a power to be reckoned with. In a smooth transition of power, a working-class man who had left the drought-stricken interior of Pernambuco for São Paulo as a child — accompanied by his illiterate mother and seven siblings — became president of Brazil. Lula is a left-wing leader with a trade union background, who won the elections at the head of the Workers’ Party (PT), which he had helped to found during the years of repression in the 1970s.

With President Lula’s election, democracy in Brazil was extended to many sectors of the population that had previously been excluded. President Lula’s government reduced poverty, inequality and social exclusion. The improvement of working conditions included registered employment, increased credit and a higher minimum wage, which grew by almost 60 per cent between 2000 and 2013. The Family Benefit programme, which was created in 2004, permitted the direct redistribution of wealth to the poor and extremely poor. In 2013, 50 million people — 26 per cent of the population — received benefits.”