BRAZIL: The New President

As 12.5 million Brazilians went to the polls last week to elect a new President, the expected tight race turned into no contest at all. With better than half the vote counted, Opposition Candidate Jânio da Silva Quadros, 43, held a huge 1,600,000-vote lead over the incumbent administration’s man, Field Marshal Henrique Teixeira Lott, and seemed certain to roll up the greatest plurality in history. Quadros not only won his home state of São Paulo, he also jumped ahead in Lott’s own state of Minas Gerais and won the no man’s land in between. Said Quadros in a message to his nation: “Without reservations or hate, I call on all Brazilians to labor for the common welfare.”

Brilliance & Temperament. In Jânio Quadros, Brazil got a curious blend of introvert and extravert, a man of wide learning whose political thought borrows from Lincoln and Jefferson, who is a hardworking, conservative-minded public servant in office, yet who campaigns with a ward politician’s gallus-snapping appeal for the mass vote, promising all things to all men. He is a man whose life has been studded with flaring spurts of brilliance and temperament. The son of an upcountry gynecologist with roving ways who was finally shot dead at 68 by the irate husband of a 26-year-old woman, Quadros got his early training mostly from his mother, a wise and gentle woman, who taught him that “no man could be slightly dishonorable or partly honest.” At parochial prep school (Quadros is a practicing Catholic), the tall youth with the oddly staring eyes* was so rebellious that he learned large chunks of Ovid and Horace by heart in after-school punishment time. After a shaky start in law school at São Paulo’s state university, he went through his final years with top marks, married a beautiful girl who at first glance thought him “the ugliest man I ever met,” and started off on his career.

Intense, shock-haired and magnetic, Quadros plunged into politics in 1946 at the urging of high school pupils to whom he was teaching Portuguese literature, won a seat on São Paulo’s city council. He has come out ahead in every election since—state deputy, mayor of São Paulo city (the Chicago of Brazil), governor of São Paulo state. On the stump, he emphasized the fact that he worked around the clock by letting his beard go three days without a shave. Once in office, he built a reputation for honesty and efficiency. “Liberty,” as he put it, “is not a permanent concession but a daily battle.”

Debts Paid, Foundation Built. In his first year as São Paulo mayor, Quadros paid off the old deficit of $12.5 million and balanced the budget at $55 million; in his first year as São Paulo governor, he paid off an overdue $30 million loan from the Bank of Brazil, and still managed to chart an efficient public works foundation for what is now the biggest industrial complex in Brazil.

Though Quadros’ campaign pitch curved left and right to suit his audience, he can be expected to follow his own straight line of Brazil-style conservatism. He is committed to continue outgoing President Juscelino Kubitschek’s building program, but he intends to hobble inflation. “If inflation could create wealth, there would be no more economic problems.” he says. The question is whether he can impose his strong will on Brazil, which has become accustomed to Kubitschek’s free-spending, money-printing ways. São Paulo city and São Paulo state were both small enough so that Quadros could exercise the in-person supervision needed to keep officials at work and honest. But the entire, sprawling nation is something else.

* Ever since a piece of broken bottle severed an optic muscle during a childhood carnival celebration, Quadros has been walleyed.