THE AMERICAS: Vargas’ Buffers

If President Franklin Roosevelt suddenly seized parts of Maine, Vermont, North Dakota, California and Texas and sent Federal officers to take control from the states’ Governors, that would be roughly equivalent to what happened in Brazil last week. “In the interests of national defense” (and possibly for other reasons), Brazil’s President Getulio Vargas seized direct control of some 200,000 sq. mi. along the country’s borders.

He had legal authority for it. The new Brazilian Constitution which Vargas proclaimed in 1937 authorized him, for purposes of defense, to “dismember” Brazilian states and convert them into Federal territories (like Alaska), governed from Rio de Janeiro under special laws. Vargas’ new territories, carved from five states (Para, Amazonas, Matto Grosso, Paraná, Santa Catharina), create a strip of centrally controlled buffer areas along the frontiers between Brazil and nine of its neighbors.

Strategically, it looked like a sound step. Remote and hard to reach, the peripheral areas have been neglected economically and militarily by the state governments; Vargas now can put his army and political machine to work developing their rich natural resources and building fortifications.

Newspaperman José S. Maciel Filho, considered a Vargas mouthpiece, hinted at a longer-range reason: a big expansion of Federal power for postwar exploitation of Brazil’s resources. Before the war ends, other Brazilian states may be “dismembered.” Said Maciel Filho: “President Vargas is serenely reorganizing our structure. The creation of territories is . . . a preparation for . . . the [postwar] structure of Brazil.”