BRAZIL: States Revolt

The revolution in Brazil last week was different, promised to be bloodier than the affairs which lately brought new governments in Bolivia (TIME, July 7), Peru (TIME, Sept. 8) and Argentina (TIME, Sept. 15).

Bigger than North America’s 48 United States, the 20 Estados Unidos do Brasil are too colossal for comic-opera upsets, just right for majestic civil war. Each state has its own army. Each president [governor] of a state is a more or less swashbuckling stickler for “states’ rights.” In Rio de Janeiro, scene of no revolt last week, the Brazilian Congress met and quietly voted $12,000,000 to put down simultaneous revolutions in the three states of Rio Grande do Sul, Minas Geraes and Parahyba. With 120 ballots favoring and eight opposed, the Congress declared “state of siege” (similar to “martial law”).

Coffee v. Livestock = Civil War. Coffee is the President of Brazil (Dr. Washington Luis) and also the President-elect (Dr. Julio Prestes), both from the great Coffee State of Sao Paulo which is supposed to have the best army.

Livestock is the defeated presidential candidate (Senhor Getulio Vargas), President of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, popular in other livestock states of Minas Geraes and Parahyba. It was naturally these three states that rallied in revolution last week around defeated Candidate Vargas. He has charged for months that agents of the “Coffee Oligarchs” assassinated the vice-presidential candidate who was his running mate. He says that he would now be President-elect instead of Dr. Prestes had not the “Coffee Government” of President Washington Luis perpetrated gross ballot-box frauds.

Gore. After the capture of leading federal army officers, eight thousand state troops and police surrounded and captured the federal soldiers in Rio Grande do Sul, but skirmishes were many throughout the three disaffected states as the revolution sought to unify and find itself. Two battleships, bearing federal troops and airplanes, at once set out from Rio to make contact with the revolutionists last week. In short order at Sao Paulo 2,000 youths enlisted to fight the rebels. President Washington Luis admitted that “this internal commotion is projected and directed by the governments of the states involved.” He predicted that “saner elements” would prevail. Basic causes of Brazil’s revolution: 1) “hard times” due to the enormous overproductions and depressed price of her chief crop, coffee; 2) the example and success of neighboring revolutions, now “catching” throughout Latin America.