Elizabeth Bishop - Prose

There were elections. The official candidate was one of the generals of the “golpe preventivo” that had helped ensure Kubitschek’s taking power, Henrique Lott. The other candidate was the ex-Governor of the State of São Paulo, Jânio Quadros, a young politician (a few months younger than President Kennedy) whose career had been meteoric. From history teacher, he had gone up all the steps of the political ladder — from alderman to presidential candidate — never having finished one term in office. (In Brazil a man cannot run for one office while holding another, so Quadros resigned regularly from each of his offices.)

Quadros was elected by a tremendous majority, the biggest election ever held in Brazil. The people wanted a change, wanted law, wanted austerity, even — to escape from the spiralling inflation and the long years of the Vargas regime and its successor. There was an atmosphere of hope and pride. In the first seven months of his presidency, Quadros appeared to be fulfilling his electoral promises, and already the country felt the effects of his administration.

Known as a difficult and temperamental man, he had already “renounced” once during his candidacy but had become reconciled to the parties backing him.

Brazil was hopeful when Quadros entered office in 1961, and at first all went well. As he had in São Paulo, Quadros ordered investigations into graft, fired superfluous government employees, and began reform and development programs. Congressional leaders became disturbed, however, when Quadros began sounding them out about the possibility of his being granted additional powers. Late in August, Lacerda made the sensational revelation that he had been asked to join a Quadros plot to close down Congress entirely.

On the morning of August 25, Quadros readied a resignation letter that, like the one supposed to have been left by Vargas seven years earlier, claimed devotion to Brazil and hinted at threats from mysterious foreign powers. Debate still rages over whether Quadros actually meant to resign or whether he was merely making a dramatic play for more power. In any case, the resignation was submitted and accepted by Congress. The country was stunned by the news that the president had “renounced” and on the following day he was on his way to England.

The Vice-President was João (“Jango”) Goulart, a protégé of Vargas since the days of Vargas’s exile in the south and head of the labor “syndicates” since the days of Vargas. He was in China at the time of Quadros’s defection and suspected by the military heads of being red. They vetoed his return to take over the presidency, and for a week things were at a standstill: would Goulart be president, or wouldn’t he? Rio Grande do Sul, as always, was the war-like state (and its governor was Goulart’s brother-in-law), for its “native son.” It prepared for civil war under the slogans of “Legality,” and “upholding the constitution.” The army officers in the north obviously did not want civil war, but they were afraid of Goulart’s leftist politics. Finally, the crisis was again solved by the “spirit of compromise” (the very expression, like “land of unfulfilled promise,” is almost a red flag to a Brazilian at present). The Congress voted a change to “ parlamentarismo, ” that is, Goulart would be allowed to take office as president, but his powers would be curbed by having a prime minister — a system copied more or less after that of West Germany. The new cabinet was chosen. (It was immediately called the “bifocal government.”) The country returned to a Parliament, the system responsible for the greatness of the Empire, some say, and, say others, responsible for its fall.

It is still too early to foresee the results of the change.

The United States and Brazil have many things in common besides both being in the Western Hemisphere and sharing the name of Amerigo Vespucci. It is time we got to know and appreciate each other better; time that the United States gave more to Brazil than loans and those less attractive features of our culture that are thought to be “Americanizing” the world. The United States and Brazil have more in common than coffee and Coca-Cola, although we now have a great deal of both of those.

We are both big countries and very much aware of our size. Perhaps number, gigantism, the “biggest” this or that, mean too much to us. Culturally, too, although we have such different traditions, there are similarities. Both the U.S. and Brazil remained rather cautiously imitative for two hundred years or more, and both have suffered from (let us face it) inferiority-feelings at different periods in our histories. But we laugh at the same jokes, enjoy the same movies, and have almost the same legends of the “frontier,” Indian chiefs, gold-rushes, pioneers, hunters, and savage beasts. Americans and Brazilians are equally quick to sympathy, on the side of the under-dog, hospitable, and kind; both have a sense of national destiny, of great things ahead, and the word “democracy” can still move us deeply.

By a combination of good luck and good mangagement, the U.S. has solved many of the administrative and economic problems of capitalistic democracy earlier than Brazil has. But we should not let that blind us to the many valuable things in the Brazilian “way of life.” Brazil is coping with her Indian problem at least as well as, if not better than, we are ours. And certainly the social and racial problems left over from the days of slavery are being solved more gracefully, and with less suffering, in Brazil than in any other part of the world today. We may never be able to solve our race problem in the Brazilian way, but at least we should be able to think about it calmly.

In personal relations, their less guilt-ridden moral code and their franker attitude towards sex and marriage seem more adult than ours, and preventive of the miseries of prolonged adolescence and over-romanticism. The Brazilian lack of aggressiveness, willingness to compromise, live and let live, love and let love, and their acute sense of the ridiculous in public and private pretentiousness, are all qualities that we could use more of. Their enjoyment of life has not yet been spoiled by the craze for making money; they have not yet added up the hard sum of so much money, so much pay. Although this may come as the inevitable price of further industrialization, perhaps the Brazilians will somehow be able to make it less harsh and driving than we have done.

There are no earthquakes in Brazil, and no hurricanes. There is plenty of space. There is no death penalty. Brazil has no real enemies, has had no real war for almost a hundred years, and never has had a war of conquest. Brazil has no atomic bombs, and so far has never expressed any desire for them. Although the army has helped put an occasional president in or out of power, there has never been a military dictatorship, nor does the military show signs of craving one, — this was clearly demonstrated once more in the last governmental crisis.

Perhaps because of the lack of a middle-class, because the country has been divided between the very few rich and the many poor for so long, it is more democratic, in the popular sense of the word, than many other countries. There is little or no awareness of the insidious degrees of class feeling humanity is capable of. It is perfectly true that an enterprising young man or woman, in the arts or the professions, can pass from one extreme of society to the other without self-consciousness or condescension on the part of any one. Also, although there are proud old aristocratic families, they have never been of such great wealth and grandeur over long periods of time that they can consider themselves natural autocrats. No one is that rich in Brazil. There have been too many political ups and downs; too many families were ruined by the emancipation. There are no vast fortunes, no industries that circle the globe, no “oil for the lamps of China.”