BRAZIL: The Third Republic

Rio took a holiday. Shops closed, and thousands went to the beaches. Others packed the small square before Tiradentes Palace. Within, while society leaders tossed flowers from the balcony, members of the Constituent Assembly signed the constitution of Brazil’s Third Republic. Then they paraded to the Presidential palace. “This opens a new era,” said President Eurico Gaspar Dutra.

The nine-year period of authoritarian government started by President Getulio Vargas had given way to parliamentary rule. The new constitution was not bad, not good; everything depended on how it would be applied.

It gave the states some of their traditional autonomy, even restored to them the flags that Vargas had burned, in a gesture of federal supremacy. But Brazil’s cities would be allowed no municipal elections. The right to strike was guaranteed. But another clause aroused Communists by giving the Government power to outlaw any party “contrary to a democratic regime.” And divorce was still impossible in Brazil.

Nationalism flavored many paragraphs: foreigners could not engage in coastwise commerce, nor even own stock in newspapers and radio stations. The Government would control the banks and insurance companies, restrict foreign-owned utility rates and profits.

Meanwhile, thousands of old decrees and vise-tight police controls left Brazilian social and economic distress unrelieved. Rents continued to rise like the new skyscrapers. And still unsolved were the massive problems of feeding the people, stopping inflation.