John Passos - Brazil on the Move

After São Miguel we were driven over to another prosperous looking town, Pedro Pedrosa. Milk on sale in the market, and eggs, and decentlooking meat. Few flies. While Governor Alves was addressing the crowd a young man in riding boots invited me in perfect English to have a drink with him. He professed great admiration for Governor Alves. He had been several times to the States. He was the soninlaw of the man who owned a large part of the local cotton business. He was full of the possibilities of developing this region into one of the great longstaple cotton producers of the world. He wanted American capital. He’d spoken to a Rockefeller. “For God’s sake,” he said, “go home and tell the people in Washington to eliminate Castro … It is Castro that is the roadblock against progress in the Northeast.”

The air was bumpy to Martins, an ancient little city perched on a green cultivated ridge high above the arid hills. Martins is the highest populated area in the state. At two thousand feet the altitude gives it a climate of its own. We found the sun roasting, but the wind cool. There were flowering trees and cobbled squares flanked by the long barred windows and tall green blinds of colonial buildings.

A dam was to be inaugurated. The cavalcade of cars plunged through the clinging dust to the edge of a lake in the valley below. It was long after noon. The speakers were grouped on a ranch wagon under the full lash of the sun. The governor spoke. The visitors spoke. The candidates spoke. The local authorities spoke. From the broiling crowd came questions and enthusiastic responses. At last after a couple of hours we were driven back into town to the cool airy corridors of the maternity hospital.

There the ladies’ auxiliary, so much like the ladies who would serve a meal for the benefit of a church or the PTA in any North American rural community, served a magnificent lunch (for the benefit of the hospital) — roast beef, chicken with rice, venison, an assortment of rolled meats and meat balls variously seasoned and sprinkled with farinha —washed down by pitcher after pitcher of coconut water and a special soft beverage flavored with guava. The guava filled the room with a sort of strawberry fragrance.

From Martins the flight was smooth through horizontal sunlight to Mossoró. Mossoró is the second city in the state. The drive in from the airport is a nightmare of noise. Three or four cars abreast, trucks and jeeps move in a slow roaring traffic jam into town. Every horn and claxon is sounding two notes from the governor’s campaign song: “Aluísio, Aluísio.”

This comicio is dedicated to the meninos , the children of the city. The motorcade stalls on a street leading into the square. A parade has become entangled with the traffic jam. There are ranks of girls and boys in costume, marching bands, drum majorettes.

In front of the reviewing stand in the square two floats are stranded. On one is seated a young lady dressed like the Statue of Liberty. She’s already tired of holding up her torch. On the other, a plump youth stripped to the shorts is bound to a plaster pillar by newlooking aluminum chains to represent servitude. Although it’s obviously been a long day he’s still holding up his manacled hands with right good will.

Seeing that I look rather parched after listening to so many speeches in so much sun a thin man with a gray mustache from city hall leads me into the corner bar for a beer. The bar is full of hardbitten characters, obviously not meninos, who are taking advantage of the festivities to get thoroughly tanked up. We are latched onto by the inevitable grubby drunk who thinks he can speak English. He worked for the American submarine base during the war. He loves Americans.

The governor’s chauffeur, a thicknecked man who has the look that bodyguards have the world over — Lacerda would have called him “a sort of Gregório”—comes to fetch us. The speeches are about to start. He tactfully disentangles us from the drunk who loves Americans.

Indeed the children of Mossoró have turned out. Babes in arms, toddlers in their gauzy best. All the pretty girls. Boys and men perch like starlings in the trees of the jampacked square.

The afternoon is absolutely airless. The stand is crowded tight. Every menino who wants to is encouraged to climb up on it. It is hard to pay attention to the speakers on account of the squirming and the wriggling and the squeezing and the shuffling of the little ones working their way between the legs of the assembled politicos. Each one wants to get near the governor.

The boards of the stand creak. I’m wondering if they’ll bear the weight.

Beside me a gentleman in a white suit for whom no time has been found on the program is angrily jumping up and down as he argues with some official. The stand sways and groans. I’m expecting the scantlings to give way any minute.

The speeches go on and on. Every local politico has his say. A gentleman named Duarte Filho is running for prefeito. Evidently the campaign is violent in Mossoró because the denunciations of the opposition become more and more extreme as twilight falls. There are too many adults among the children in the square. Toughlooking waterfront characters like the men in the bar. I’m worried about what would happen to all the little children if the meeting should end in a brawl.

While I’m trying to catch what the speakers are shouting a skinny grayhaired man, shoved up against my midriff by the crowd on the stand, pours into my ear a story you could hear only in Brazil. He too worked at the American submarine base. He too likes Americans. He knows a cave where there are crystals that shine bright as the headlights of a car. He has samples at his home. If they aren’t diamonds they are something just as valuable. He wants me to tell him the name of an American engineer. Brazilian engineers don’t have the education to exploit such a treasure or else they will try to steal it all for themselves. Can’t I find him an American engineer to prospect the cave? Diamonds as big as your fist shine with their own light in the darkness.

The square grows dark. The closepacked crowd is getting hotter and hotter. On the stand we sweat rivers. Speeches are becoming more and more violent. Men in the crowd have a threatening look. A dangerous tension seems to be building up. Suddenly a samba band begins to play.

I’ve been noticing one small band that officials have been trying to keep quiet, behind the speakers’ stand, shushing and pushing back the dark boys with instruments. The minute the governor stops talking they won’t be shushed any longer. Their drums throb. The sound of sambas rises from every street that leads into the square.

In three minutes half the people are dancing. The oratory fades away. No more traffic jam. The floats are moving. The meeting turns into a sort of carnival parade with samba schools dancing ahead of the floats, each behind its own banner. TOO YOUNG TO VOTE, reads one. Songs take the place of speeches. Children, teenagers, old men and women, everybody is dancing.

No more tension. A cool breeze seems to sweep through the streets. The young kids are marvelous. In front of Duarte Filho’s house it is like a ballet. I’ve never seen such really beautiful dancing as fills the streets of Mossoró for hours, far into the night.

The governor and his party have gone on to another comicio. Don’t they ever get tired? I can still hear the piping and throbbing of distant sambas drifting in through the window of the pleasant old tropical hotel — there’s a shower, and a clean bed and the trade wind through the louvers, and even a reading light — what more could you want? — as I drift off to sleep.