John Passos - Brazil on the Move

Next, after a couple of early morning hours at his administrative office, Governor Lacerda will be out on his rounds to see for himself. He has to see and be seen. The people must be made to know he’s working for them.

First he’ll turn up at a hilltop favela, climbing the goat-paths with a springy step while a subordinate pants after him with a bundle of documents. The documents are to declare the hill expropriated by right of eminent domain from the original owners. The owners haven’t been getting any profits anyway as they are helpless to evict the squatters and in some cases they are compensated by special privileges as to zoning and building heights in the more accessible sections of their land.

Lacerda’s program for the squatters is twofold. Where the land must be used for other construction, they are offered cheap substitute housing in rows of small dwellings which, though not luxurious, are at least better than the hovels they will be leaving. In the majority of cases it is not practical to move the people out. Then the city services bring in light and water. Something is done about sewage. Receptacles are set up for garbage where trucks can reach them. The governor furnishes cement, lumber, and technical help for these projects, but the heavy work is done by the faveladwellers themselves.

Lacerda is delighted by the success in the favelas of the institution of mutirão, mutual help. Since most of the squatters are recent immigrants from the backlands they are used to the old peasant system. If a man is building a house the neighbors pitch in to help. They work the same way in the favelas. The governor’s plan is to give the squatters title to the little plots they have already built their houses on, and gradually to draw them into the benefits and responsibilities of citizenship. “We want them to feel,” he says, “that they are regular people … just like anybody else.”

Leaving the favela the governor will pick up his chief engineer and visit the excavations where they are laying a new sewer, or check on the work on the tunnels being drilled through the mountains for the new water supply, which is to be chlorinated and treated with fluorine at the source. Then he’ll dedicate a clinic that is part of his program for renovating the obsolete hospitals, or cut the tape on a new thoroughfare designed to alleviate some of Rio’s unending traffic jam. Almost daily he opens a school. There are so many new schools he’s run out of names for them and asks his visitors to make lists of suggestions. Next it’s a viaduct or the beginning of a great traffic tunnel to link an isolated part of the city into the highway system.

He seems to carry all the details in his head. He gives the impression of knowing more about each project than the men in charge. Though he’s death on incompetence, he keeps the enthusiasm of his staff at a high pitch. Good work is immediately recognized. “I wouldn’t have believed it,” said one of Lacerda’s oldest friends, a lawyer who had helped him set up his newspaper fifteen years before. “We thought of him as the editorial writer, the fearless orator. To have him turn into an administrator is the surprise of the century … Why, he’s actually happy in administration.”

Brazil is a land of thoroughgoing social democracy. A public man has to be open to anybody who wants to talk to him. On his rounds Lacerda has to be ready with a little speech for every occasion. Humorous hardhitting casual discourses come easy as breathing. Everywhere the crowd presses around him. He seems to have time for everyone, for old women whose sons are in trouble, for a lame man who can’t get into a hospital, for a young man who wants him to start a school for television technicians. Doctors, engineers, hospital nurses, all whisper their problems in his ear. By night the men on his staff are worn out. Governor Lacerda is still ready to talk with a foreign visitor, or to dine with a group of American students.

Tonight a couple of the students have managed to get lost. At going home time between five and seven in Rio taxis can’t be found. Buses and trolleys are packed tight as sardinetins. We sit waiting on a sofa in the livingroom. In spite of his punishing schedule the governor shows no sign of impatience.

He does admit to having a bad cold. Though his voice is hoarse his talk flows on. He has an extraordinary flow of words in Portuguese and in English. He starts to tell about the loneliness of his position. It is the custom in Brazil for a public man to find jobs for all his friends and relatives. Lacerda has kept them at arm’s length. He sees nothing else to do. This has done him more harm than anything. So many people who used to be fond of him now think he’s a terrible fellow.

There are other things he’d like to do, other things than fighting Communists and fellowtravelers, he’d like to take time off to write a novel. He’d like to be Minister of Education in a federal administration he had confidence in, or ambassador to Washington. He feels he knows Washington well enough to get past the pundits and the knowitall columnists and to explain Brazil to the American people in Brazilian terms.

The phone rings. A secretary comes in to announce that the lost students are on their way.

We go down in the elevator. Two uniformed militiamen who guard the front door stiffen to salute. We get into the governor’s old model black car. Still no students. It’s against the traffic rules to park in front of the apartment house so Lacerda tells the chauffeur to drive around the corner. We wait in a dark and solitary street.

There’s no bodyguard, only the little chauffeur.

This is at the height of the political war. A few days before, Lacerda read off the list of Moscow-trained Communists in key posts in Goulart’s administration. The answer was a demand that the federal government “intervene” in Guanabara. “Intervention” was Vargas’ way of removing uncooperative state governors. Lacerda replied that he had been legally elected by the people of the state and if they tried to take him out of his office they would take him out dead.

There have been a few small riots between Lacerda supporters and Brizola’s people. Brizola is in town. When he addresses a public meeting he has a military bodyguard. There have been new rumors of threats against Lacerda’s life.

The minutes drag on. We three are alone in the dark empty street. It is obvious that the thought of personal danger never crosses Lacerda’s mind. While he chats cheerfully of one thing and another part of his brain is busy planning what he is going to say later tonight after dinner when he appears on TV. He grumbles a little about Brochado da Rocha, Goulart’s Prime Minister. As a lawyer in Rio Grande do Sul he had a good reputation, but as a politician he’s proved an absolute ninny. Though a man of moderate opinions Lacerda says he’s turned to putty in the hands of the Communists.

After twenty minutes the American students appear. They are full of apologies, with bright shiny faces. Lacerda seems happy airing his American slang. He’s happy having the Americans there though he knows very well that this is one campaign when contact with an American is a liability. Nobody defends the Alliance for Progress. Yankeebaiting is the order of the day. Lacerda’s never been a man to give in before popular clamor. We all eat dinner at the yachtclub very much in the public eye. Afterwards he goes off to the television station to lash at his enemies in a twohour speech.

When Lacerda went on the air and called Brochado da Rocha the cheerful vivandière of the Goulart regime, that hitherto rather colorless politician blew his top. At the next cabinet meeting he threatened to resign as Prime Minister unless Lacerda were removed as Governor of Guanabara. He cried out passionately that he would not be able to look his children in the eye if he went home without some punishment for Lacerda. The leftwing press went into an uproar. However, military influences made themselves felt in Brasília. Brochado da Rocha had to be satisfied with a vote of censure on Lacerda by the council of ministers.