BRAZIL: Where is the President?

More frantic than the celebration of Brazil’s deliverance from her last Portuguese emperor in 1889 were the wild transports of Rio Grande do Sul’s populace last week on what they called Armistice Day.

Oldest inhabitants of this No. 1 rebel state said that the dethroning of his Imperial Majesty Dom Pedro II was not half so exciting as the ousting last week of His Excellency President Washington Luis. Reason: This was Rio Grande do Sul’s own victory. She as a state had started the civil war (TIME, Oct. 13), and her former President Dr. Getulio Vargas (as popular in his state as “Al” Smith in New York) was on his way from the battle line to assume the presidency of Brazil. He, like Mr. Smith, was the defeated candidate in his country’s last presidential election. Unlike Mr. Smith, he was able to do something about it.

Rio Grande do Sul crowds simply had to carry somebody on their shoulders. Their “Al” Smith was 400 mi. north, and before he became President would be 800 mi. away in Rio de Janeiro. But fortunately he had left behind a young man, one Osvaldo Aranha as acting president of the state. To his office in Porto Alegre rushed the joy-mad mob, carried him with roars of triumph to the Grande Hotel, put him on a balcony. Three times the young man tried but failed to speak, so full was his heart.

“I cannot talk!” he finally managed to shout. “I will only say that if you think anything I have done has helped to bring about this glorious moment in our history, I swear by my beloved country that I am ready to do more, much more—anything that may be necessary to insure the foundation at last of a really republican form of government in Brazil.”

As fast as he could write the young man and his advisers drafted a message to the people of the U. S., cabled it to their revolutionary representative in New York:

“. . . The people of Brazil, exhausted from suffering continuous humiliations at the hands of a bad government and alive to their sovereign prerogatives, not permitting themselves to fear the bombastic resistance on the part of the government, have been able to do their duty and to enforce their own civic opinions and thereby cater to foreign respect.”

Reporters to whom Senhor Augusto Amaral, President of the Brazilian revolutionary committee in New York, handed this message, asked him to define in a sentence what the civil war had been all about. “Generally speaking,” he replied, “the revolution was the result of political favoritism and domination of the country by the coffee interests in the state of Sao Paulo,” bitterest rival of Rio Grande do Sul.

“Silence! Respect!” The coup d’etat in Rio de Janeiro, contrary to many U. S. newspaper stories and headlines last week, was not featured by the resignation of venerable, white-bearded President Washington Luis. What happened was this: at 1 p. m. Federal General Tasso Fragoso and Federal General Jaoa de Deus Menna Barreto, both natives of Rio Grande do Sul, approached the presidential palace at the head of a body of officers, announced that they and virtually the whole body of federal officers in the capital had decided to take over the government as a military junta, “to prevent further bloodshed.”

General Fragoso and his brother officers were admitted to an anteroom where he paced up & down. In the adjoining library frantic ministers begged the “60-year-old President to resign. Turning his back on them he walked into his office, slammed the door. Just then General Fragoso opened the library door, stuck his head in. “I do not care to invade another’s home,” he apologized, “but where is the President?”

Mute forefingers pointed. General Fragoso with two of his staff crossed the library, entered the President’s office, gently closed the door. Minute later the voice of dauntless old Washington (named for George Washington) Luis was heard through the panel: “The least thing I value is my life—I WILL NOT SURRENDER! Leave this room!”

The generals left. The President began telephoning. At 2 p. m. his wires were cut. At 5 p. m. His Eminence Sebastiano Cardinal Leme da Silveira Cintra entered the library. From the first, Rome had picked the rebels to win, as Washington, D. C. had picked the Federals (see p. 15). Three weeks ago Archbishop John Becker declared :

“The national revolution . . . goes irresistibly on its way to triumph!” (TIME, Oct. 20). Now with majestic mien Cardinal Leme da Silveira Cintra spoke to the frightened cabinet:

“Time does not permit vacillation. The exaltation and animation of the people is great and I urge the President to retire to a fort or barracks. I have been insisting on this for nine hours and now it is almost too late.”

His Eminence then entered the President’s office, closed the door, opened it soon afterward to say that Washington Luis, son of the Catholic Church, would surrender, though he would not resign.

General Fragoso appeared in a trice, escorted President and Cardinal through a mob which began to jeer. “SILENCE! RESPECT!” roared General Fragoso. Respectfully silence came. The deposed President was conducted to the fortress of Copacabana. He did not resign last week, but his presidential term expires Nov. 15 in any case.

King Mob. While the generals and prelates of Brazil thus played their roles with dignity, Rio de Janeiro mobs sacked and burned the offices of pro-Washington Luis newspapers (i. e. nearly all the newspapers in the capital), caused a property loss of $5,000,000.

In the great coffee city of Sao Paulo, capital of that state, more newspapers were sacked and a “Bastille” fell. In this building, the dread Cambucy prison, the mob found what were said to be “man whips” and “wooden instruments of torture.” Soon mobsters ignited the infamous prison (after setting free all prisoners), cheered while it burned.

Dead Germans. That the people should thus behave was to be expected, but at the fortress in which President Washington Luis sat officers, too, lost their heads. They saw the Hamburg-South American liner Baden sail out of Rio bound for Buenos Aires, her decks teeming with Spanish emigrants. To stop her they fired three blank signal shots. The Baden steamed on. The fourth shot was a shrapnel shell. Bursting on deck it killed 23 Spanish emigrants, four German sailors, wounded forty others.

When the Baden put back to Rio her captain was gaoled. Complained he: “They had been firing blank shots all day to celebrate the revolution.”

Spasm. Three days later a minor counter-revolutionary spasm occurred in Rio. Disgruntled military police and hungry Communists rioted, seized the central police station. Barricaded behind bean and flour sacks, soldiers, sailors, marines potshot the insurgents. Inside of two hours the uprising was quelled. Casualties: 200 killed and wounded.