Brazil: End of the Purges

After six months of housecleaning, Brazil’s revolutionary government last week gave up its power to purge—just as President Humberto Castello Branco had promised it would. The bristles in Castello Branco’s broom were two articles in the sweeping Institutional Act decreed by the revolutionaries after they deposed leftist President João Goulart last April. Under Article 10, which was in effect for two months, the government could revoke for ten years the political rights of anyone judged guilty of subversion or corruption; under Article 7, lasting six months, it could fire or retire any government employee judged guilty of similar offenses but who didn’t warrant the bigger ax.

Article 10 was applied in secret, with no defense permitted; evidence was heard and acted upon behind closed doors by a panel of officers and civilians, who then presented their recommendations to President Castello Branco for approval. When it expired four months ago, 378 Brazilians, including three ex-Presidents (Juscelino Kubitschek, Jânio Quadros and the deposed João Goulart) had been stripped of their rights to vote, hold elective office or government jobs. With Goulart, it was academic, since he had fled to exile in Uruguay, but it ended, at least temporarily, the careers of Kubitschek and Quadros. Article 7 didn’t use such star-chamber techniques. But in practice, accused persons often were given only a few hours to mount and present a defense before the judges.

The final list was not quite complete, but as Article 7 ran out last week, an estimated 3,300 Brazilians had lost their government jobs. Mostly they were professors, middle-echelon executives in government enterprises, local political appointees. The big surprise was how harshly the military dealt with officers who had wavered, however briefly, in the flash revolt; 26 of 82 active generals have been forced into retirement, along with eight of 68 admirals.

Critics of the purges contend that the victors turned them into an instrument of revenge, paying off old scores and sweeping hundreds of innocent people into the same dustbin with the guilty. There is probably some truth to the charge. But whatever the excesses, it is clear that the house has been cleaned of a good many crooks and virtually all of the undermining leftists, and constitutional law is now restored.