BRAZIL: After the Landslide

Now that Getulio Vargas was the President-elect, what could Brazil expect next? With three-quarters of the votes counted, there was no longer any doubt that the little ex-dictator had shaken the nation with an electoral landslide. Even before the final count, President Dutra sent word to Vargas last week that the government would “protect the people’s mandate,” i.e., tolerate no coups between now and Vargas’ inaugural next Jan. 31. After that, it would be up to Getulio Vargas.

As usual, canny Getulio was in no hurry to commit himself. From Rio Grande do Sul, the old man issued his first post-election statement. Said Getulio: “I come to power with a heart clean of hate and resentment … I bow before a triumph which has been less mine than that of the Brazilian people.” Aside from talking vaguely about forming a coalition or perhaps a British-style labor government, that was about all he said.

Odd Ties. But Getulio Vargas, dictator-President of Brazil from 1930-45, was no unknown quantity. He first came up out of Rio Grande do Sul in the depth of the depression as the rallying point and presidential candidate of all the discontented elements in Brazil. He was always a man of action. Counted out at the polls by the old-guard regime, he marched on Rio with his gauchos and seized the presidency.

Once in office, he proved to be a masterly politician—a dictator always ready to compromise for the sake of expediency, a Strong Man ever ready to conciliate to hold his power. He reorganized the courts to make justice available to the poor as well as the coffee barons. He gave Brazil the 48-hour week, a minimum wage, pensions, vacations with pay. He also banned strikes, abolished Congress and founded the Estado Novo, an “authoritative democracy” complete with a fascist-type constitution, press censorship, and a home-grown gestapo. When the Nazis swept over Europe in 1940, Vargas proclaimed: “It is not the end of civilization :>ut the beginning, tumultuous and fecund, of a new era.”

That was as far as Getulio Vargas ever went in flirting with the Axis. His dictatorship was always more personal than ideological; the historic ties of U.S. friendship held strong. Vargas swung his country to the Allied side long before it was clear that the Allies would win. He granted the U.S. air bases across Brazil’s strategic northeast bulge. Later he dispatched a division to the Italian front, the only South American troops to fight overseas in World War II.

New Pattern. Vargas never lost touch with Brazil’s poor and underprivileged, but by war’s end, the Estado Novo was discredited. The army, announcing that the country was overdue for democracy, forced Vargas to resign, and he went into self-exile at his Rio Grande do Sul ranch from which he emerged this year.

Now at 67 he was back, but for the first time in his long career, as a democratically chosen, constitutional President. Perhaps the supple old opportunist could change enough to fit the new pattern. Brazilians have always said that Getulio could change his socks without taking off his shoes.