BRAZIL: The Wonderful People

As the silvery plane taxied to a stop on Rio’s Santos Dumont Airfield, 5,000 waiting citizens rushed toward it. A roar went up as the door opened to frame the bulky figure of São Paulo’s Governor Adhemar de Barros. Attendants struggled to push the loading ramp through the crowd. When they got it within two feet of the plane, Adhemar jumped. The crowd applauded wildly. Then Adhemar fought his way, grinning, down the steps to set foot in Rio for the first time in two years. He had come to open his formal campaign for the presidency of Brazil.

The Chic & the Egg. For five days expansive Adhemar treated Rio to a brand of shirt-sleeved, handshaking, backslapping, speechmaking politics such as the city had rarely seen. Dozens of taxis paraded him and his party to the Copacabana Palace Hotel, while sound-trucks prowled the streets announcing his presence. Well-wishers swarming up to his suite forced the hotel’s chic patrons to use the service elevators. Beamed Adhemar: “These wonderful, wonderful people!”

At the University of Brazil’s Medical School, where Physician de Barros got his degree in 1923, he handed out diplomas to the graduating class. He strode off to inspect the Centro Adhemar de Barros, a free clinic which he supports; lunched with 200 taxi drivers, dined with Benedito Valladares, chief of President Dutra’s copa e cozinha (pantry and kitchen) cabinet. At a churrasco (gaucho barbecue) in the working-class district of Penha, someone threw an egg, spattering yolk over Adhemar’s shirt. Snorted Adhemar: “A Communist.” He called twice on Dutra, attended Mass, visited headquarters of his Partido Social Progressista, ate another churrasco in another workers’ bairro.

Mr. Fixit. For whatever good it might do, Adhemar was careful to drop in on War Minister Canrobert Pereira da Costa and Brigadeiro Eduardo Gomes, both presidential possibilities themselves. One rumor had him offering the foreign ministry to Elder Statesman Oswaldo Aranha. Said Aranha: “Pooh-pooh.”

At a moment when Brazil’s two major parties were still floundering hopelessly in attempts to find candidates of their own, Adhemar, never noted for his humility, turned his ebullient cockiness to good account. He showed off his crowd-drawing prowess at close range, played the self-confident candidate to the hilt. Long after he had flown back to São Paulo, a new samba called Adhemar Dá Jeito (Adhemar Will Fix It) blared from Rio’s radios:

If there is no rice, if there are no beans If there is no butter to spread on your bread, If you have no shirt to tuck in your jeans, Take hope! Adhemar dá jeito!