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#281
May 28th, 2012, 01:24 AM
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 (If anything, the death of his wife in 1962 would give Fleming another year, free from the stress of her overbearing-ness.) Also, curious... anything planned for Alfred Hitchcock? I've no suggestions, here, but I would hope he gets a better late '60s than he did OTL... 
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#282
June 3rd, 2012, 04:50 AM
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...okay, this is completely hilarious; if the end event is butterflied away, it could have a whole series of knock-on events:
 "For the film "The Bible: In the Beginning", French director Robert Bresson was hired in 1964 by producer Dino De Laurentiis as director. When he shot his first scene - the deluge - he requested the use of all the animals in Rome city zoo. The producers complied, but upon checking the daily rushes saw that the only thing Bresson filmed was the tracks of the animals upon a sandy beach. They were furious and Bresson was fired, John Huston took over the project, delaying production a further six months." If someone tells the producers to calm down, because they've got one of the few great filmmakers left from the Sixth Republic exodus, well... Huston doesn't get hired for the movie, and is free to do EON's Moonraker. As for the alternate Casino Royale... well, I keep changing my mind, again; I've got it in my head that the only logical director for Feldman would be Ken Hughes, but I think a more "timely" Bond for 1966 would be, of all people, Terence Stamp. ...but this is all really irrelevant to the timeline, sorry; just hope it's considered.
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#283
June 16th, 2012, 08:47 PM
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Any more movement on this? I'm eagerly anticipating the next update...
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#284
June 16th, 2012, 08:52 PM
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#285
June 16th, 2012, 08:58 PM
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#286
July 11th, 2012, 08:15 PM
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"All along the watchtower!"
A readership did growl. Hopefully, we'll soon no longer howl As 037771 will give us... relief.
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#287
July 20th, 2012, 02:12 PM
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Well I have a couple of things I want to ask.
Just how will the Centurions effect French cultural life? I imagine that a lot of the artistic and philosophical movement of OTL will be squlched and a sort of reactionary neo-Vichy/French Fascist cultural & socal polices to be enacted. Also what effect will this have on the rest of Europe? As major power in Western Europe has fallen to a militery coup. That'd have a major chilling effect on them and some goverments would look askance at their own armies deployed in colonial holdings overseas. Lastly what of Spain & Portugal? OTL a lot of western Europeans lumped them in with tin-pot Latin & African dictatorship and quite seriously said they wernt really ''European'' at all. That isnt sustainable in the case of France and I'd think Franco & Salazar would be keen to form a sort of ''authoritarian bloc'' to bolster their postion internationally.
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#288
July 21st, 2012, 04:59 PM
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So, as you can probably tell, cultural life in France will be stunted. Nonetheless, I can't wholly envisage Ministries of Information and Propaganda pumping into the mass media a set government line (although I can certainly imagine those Ministries existing.) The message the Centurions are trying to articulate is that of a strong France, with the most emphasis placed on domestic concord. Dissent, even if it is disguised in elaborate metaphors, is unlikely to be tolerated, given the likelihood of it being interpreted as a symptom of the same societal decay the Centurions fought to reverse in the first place. But that doesn't preclude some measure of recovery in the arts; Soviet Cinema got on just fine (as far as I know) without going to great lengths to criticise the system in which it existed. Quote:
The political fallout - with regards to Europe - is probably limited to stunting the formation of the EU rather than impacting on colonial policies. The major colonial powers in Western Europe in 1963 are now France, Spain, Portugal and the UK; the first three operate under authoritarian systems, while the last one is already decolonising, with various degrees of success. Quote:
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#289
July 21st, 2012, 07:01 PM
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Hey, kind of a stupid idea, I know, but... Oswald couldn't assassinate Ronald Reagan, could he?
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#290
July 24th, 2012, 05:57 PM
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#291
July 24th, 2012, 07:55 PM
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#292
July 29th, 2012, 08:51 PM
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Well... Brazil update's finished by now, I hope.
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#293
August 27th, 2012, 08:58 PM
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So... been a month; any more movement on this?
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#294
October 7th, 2012, 11:20 PM
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...seriously, Brazil can't take this long.
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#295
October 8th, 2012, 12:18 AM
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Last edited by 037771; October 8th, 2012 at 12:30 AM..
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#296
October 8th, 2012, 03:41 AM
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#297
October 12th, 2012, 02:19 PM
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XIV Canudos “Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher; “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” - - Ecclesiastes, 1:2 ‘To quote the sociologist, “One should never start surveying Brazil in the Sixties through a statistical lens; do that, and the ebullience and initial optimism of that decade falls retrospectively, inexorably, back into the misery and despair of the 1970s. The beaches of Rio are replaced with the sludge pits of Recife, the high-rises of Brasilia with the favelas of Salvador.” Cynics have forever scoffed at the Brazilian notion that theirs is the country of the future, as if to seize tomorrow was something only they could do.[i] At certain stages, Brazil came tantalisingly close. At the beginning of 1960, Brazil was industrialising at a rate three times faster than the rest of Latin America. A new capital was reaching the final stages of completion far into the interior; a home-grown automotive industry churned out vehicles with German and Italian names that whizzed and buzzed around the expanding cities of the coast; and for the first time in a decade, it seemed that the democratic process ordained by the Constitution was finally regulating itself. “Fifty years progress in five!” President Kubitschek had promised to the nation five years before. It looked like he’d achieved it. Inflation, corruption, and extra-constitutional activity, the opposition alleged; after all, everything has to come at a price. Developmentalism was a lie. The parasitical foreigner controlled the purse-strings now, and dined with the entrepreneur, the banker and the Senator while the common man could not afford to feed his own family. Towers had been raised in the jungle while farmers saw their profits melt away. It had all come too fast, and for what? Brazilians needed new leaders now, men who truly understood the value and interests of the nation. They elected a paulista schoolteacher.[ii] His career had been meteoric. Although teaching was his vocation, the cut and thrust of politics was his passion. It said much about a man few could intuit. Gradually, this teacher had risen up the ladder of administration, from Alderman to Mayor to Governor. He was his own man, his disciples alleged, unfettered by the strictures of the political machines. He moulded policy, even those around him, through the sheer force of will. This outsider would not be dictated to; like the people, he would not be told what to think, what to do and how to do it. He would lead, first in Sao Paulo and then, then the Fatherland and with it all the responsibilities that only he could shoulder. The Presidential Election of 1960, for all its intrigue, functioned perfectly as an example of the democratic process in action in Brazil. In that, it was also a failure. Brazil had elected a leader who, while endorsed by several of the parties he philosophically repudiated, nonetheless possessed no personal party-political following. Three years later, they had been rewarded with chaos...’ - Taken from Gétulio, JK and Jânio HERE COMES JÂNIO! - Unofficial election slogan of Jânio Quadros, 1960[iii] *** - Extract from Os Sertões “A fight, I would call it, a fight to the very end. SUDENE was formed by President Kubitschek to regenerate the Northeast after the great drought,[iv] perhaps not to bring it up to speed with the south, but at least to alleviate some of the troubles of the population. When I arrived though, it became abundantly clear that our real mission was to end a permanent humanitarian disaster. The Northeast of Brazil, if it were suddenly to be excised from the rest of Brazil, would have been the second largest country in South America in population terms; overall, it comprised nearly a third of the Brazilian population, and yet in total it produced just 13% of its income. My report – the one that the President ordered after the drought, the one that predicated SUDENE in the first place – highlighted all of this. The disparity between north and south was enormous. Not only did the Northeast contribute very little to our economy, but its precious capital was draining south, as the cost of imports soared. So I proposed that the Federal Government attack the very root of the problem, the principle causes behind this decay. And that was how SUDENE was conceived. When you think of the Northeast during the Sixties, you shouldn’t fall into the trap of lumping one half of the country as barren back-country and the other as a bunch of whitewashed cities by brown rivers. In actuality, there were four zones: yes, those whitewashed cities on the coast, but also the sugar zone that hugged the coast for seventy miles, the sertão and the agreste that lay in-between. Most of the population lived and worked in the sugar zone, although the tropical agreste was inhabited by the producers of the food that fed the cities, so that wasn’t altogether neglected. A lot of people also lived in the sertão, and just why illustrated the depths of the problem. It was all arid land; when you went, all you could see, stretching all to the horizon, was the caatinga, what the Indians called the bleached white trees and brush. This is where the drought started. Everybody was poor and nobody could read.[v] At best, you’d be paid $140 a year for your work on the local landowner’s plantation, and you’d be lucky if you weren’t farming a postage stamp for yourself. 690,000 families were living on land suitable for 110,000, and all the money – 40% of the total income produced – was in the hands of the 2.5% who let you rent it. Life expectancy was about thirty-five...infant mortality 60% if I recall correctly, which was just as well since many of the poor bastards didn’t know that sex actually led to children.[vi] If your child did survive, you probably wouldn’t see she or he breast fed for more than six months after the birth, because you’d have so little food in the family that the mother would have stopped producing milk.[vii] The plantations many of these tenants lived on were badly run, whether you’re talking in the material sense or the moral. Brutality was rife. In my first week on the job I received dozens of reports of peasants being taken out and shot by their charges because they’d failed to pay their rent that month. And considering what I’ve just said and the disposition of the landlord himself, that was a good death. There were always the horror stories drifting on the whispers of Recife’s chattering classes; peasants dragged behind jeeps for miles on end, placed in tankards of water up to their chins until their knees gave.[viii] Even if all the landowners lived by their precious Catholic morality though, they’d still be losing money. They used their profits to live a high life, instead of buying machinery to refine their sugar. Only a third of the land was fertilised. When the price of sugar rose in the fifties,[ix] production doubled, but the usineiros[x] were always going to be outmatched by their southern counterparts. To keep them afloat – and to stop their peasants from starving to death – the government had to bail them out with loans or grants every other year. Of course, that policy varied somewhat on whether the boss wanted to evict his peasants to make room for more sugar cane. Our strategy was straightforward. We’d bring an intelligent policy of industrialisation to the Northeast, transporting and resettling the worst-off out of the region into the more affluent states, radically re-think how we’d use the land in the sugar zone, and establish an irrigation policy that would increase food production. Kubitschek gave me the requisite powers, and 2% of the national fiscal revenue to make sure I had the resources to use them. When Szulc with his New York Times notebook came to Recife and called us the last bastion against Communism, I flew to the United States and begged a little more. At first, Nixon was interested. I talked up the threat of Castro and the old Marshall Plan; maybe I even mentioned Julião, although I can’t recall. But as I saw him lean back behind that old desk in the Oval Office, I saw the doubt in his eyes. He must have thought I was the same money-grubbing radical that had tried to stone him in Caracas, and he’d never trusted another Brazilian after Kubitschek. I’d asked for four hundred million dollars in aid, and he gave me twelve.[xi] So we tried, and we did some good I think. We built our wells in the sertão, and we started our internal migration scheme, organised the MEB[xii] and shouldered the usual accusations of Bolshevism.[xiii] The real enemy wasn’t the petty accuser though, or the landlord, or the Communist. It was always the generosity of Jânio...” - Celso Furtado, interviewed forThe Troubled Land: Revisited, broadcast 29th March 1991[xiv] “Long live reform: by the law or the sledgehammer.” - Francisco Julião, 7th September 1962 *** ‘Fortunately there still exists in Brazil an Army, fully aware of its dignity, the vigilant guardian of the glorious traditions of the nation. That Army know the history of Communism in Brazil.’ - Extract from The Philosophy of Communism, by Padre Agnelo Rossi[xv] “Mediocrity reigns now. We’re becoming a nation ruled by dwarves and charlatans.” - General Humberto de Alencar Castello Branco to his son Paulo, January 1963[xvi] 'Since the end of the Second World War, Brazil four times had witnessed the overthrow of its government by the Armed Forces. In 1945, it had appeared Gétulio Vargas was attempting to engineer a perpetuation of his dictatorial rule in spite of calling new elections; in view of the demise of Germany and Japan, and Brazil’s role in that demise, the President was asked to resign by his War Minister. In 1954 – by which time Vargas had managed to recapture the presidency through democratic means – it seemed that this consummate Machiavellian was attempting to regain the absolute authority he had relinquished nine years previously; once more, he was asked to resign by his own Army Chief of Staff. Instead, Vargas shot himself. The following year, it appeared that the result of the national elections would not be honoured by Acting President Carlos Luz, ruling in place of Vargas’ critically-ill successor; Luz’ War Minister, General Henrique Texeira Lott, ringed Catete Palace with troops, declared the Acting President incapacitated, and forced the presidency on the pro-democracy non-entity Nereu Ramos. This succession of coup and counter-coup had exposed to the world the dialectic raging in the mind of every Brazilian military officer; how best to defend order and progress in Brazil, without succumbing to the threat of subversion from within. Precisely what constituted order, progress and subversion proved fabulously hard to define; the legacy of Gétulio Vargas and the emergence of populism had further obscured their meaning, and split the Armed Forces into factions. There were those, like General Artur da Costa e Silva and Admiral Sílvio Heck, who were starting to perceive in 1961 the threat to Brazil as entirely external, facilitated in its subversive machinations by the actions of the populists on the Left, while officers like Rear Admiral Cândido Aragão saw the threat as borne from agitation by the Right. One of the only officers considered truly neutral in his political sympathies, one who stood for a plain, literal defence of legalidade and democracy – at least publically – was Brigadier General Humberto de Alencar Castello Branco. An illuminative insight into the General’s character may be provided through analysis of his actions during Lott’s ‘preventative coup d'état’ in November 1955. At the time, Castello Branco was serving as commander of the Army Command and Staff School (ECEME,) and received information that some of students were about to produce a manifesto condemning General Lott for his “treason.” Castello Branco had previously attempted to defend Lott’s actions in guaranteeing Kubitschek’s forthcoming inauguration to the student body, and made it clear to them that he sincerely hoped they would not publish the manifesto. However, when Lott himself received a report on the ECEME “conspiracy” and ordered Castello transfer the students out of the school, their Commander refused. Lott forced Castello out of his directorship, but out of respect for their commander, the students refrained from issuing their manifesto. Nevertheless, when Lott visited the school at the end of the teaching year, he received a thoroughly dour reception, in contrast to the lively whoops and cheers of the cadets for Castello Branco. After the ECEME episode, Castello fought hard to claw back the prestige he had won as Chief of Staff of the B.E.F[xvii] in Italy. He made the most of his time commanding the Amazonian Eighth Military Region, substantially improving Army instruction, and did his utmost in restraining officers from involving themselves in the electoral hype of 1960. When Candidate Quadros wrote a note to Castello complaining of the local, public intervention of the military superintendant of Petrobrás in Amazonia in civilian politics, the General privately upbraided him. Castello’s action, quite minor in the scheme of things, nonetheless won him the respect of a tempestuous candidate, who subsequently promised the General the full support of his administration should he win. After his inauguration in January of the following year, it seemed that Quadros was keeping to his word. At the end of the month, Castello was made the General Director of Instruction in the Army, and in December of that year Commander of the First Military Region, Guanabara.[xviii] Although the latter may have resulted as much President Quadros’ desire to have a man of unimpeachable credentials to be in charge of the region home to his political nemesis Governor Carlos Lacerda, Castello saw the move as less a transfer than a promotion. However, when his assumption of command in Rio was first attacked over the Guanabara airwaves by Lacerda – ostensibly a defender of Castello since his defence of the ECEME students from Lott – and then retrospectively lambasted by the Chateaubriand chain of newspapers when General Costa e Silva made a similar move from his command in the Northeast to one headquartered in Brasilia, Castello resumed his fundamental disdain for the “demagogic prattle” of the populists on both left and right. His private criticism, voiced mainly to his family but not uncommonly to confidantes such as General Antonio Carlos Murici, was not reserved solely for Lacerda...’ - Taken from The Ghost of Gétulio Vargas: A History of Brazil, 1954-1965 “Every President [of Brazil] needs to keep the Army friendly, there’s no question about that, and believe me, it’s some high-wire act. You look at Vargas before you try to needle that with your little questions. That bastard made Brazil; his only problem it turned out was that everyone thought he’d been making it for too [REDACTED] long, and didn’t listen to those men who’d allowed him to do it! Café Filho, too. Moron did the same thing, practically handed the country over to JK.[xix] Country got sick of golpes after all that. Pity, though I suppose we wouldn’t have been in a job if JK got turfed out by a few tanks on his doorstep instead of a term limit. So you could say Jânio was lucky. All of the hype of the campaign convinced even the worst of the officers that what Brazil needed was the sweep of the broom. They guaranteed the inauguration, and in return we asked them to head the [military] Ministries. I mean, these bastards knew Jânio wasn’t going to order them to do anything stupid; he wasn’t Jango, he wouldn’t put them to the fields,[xx] and he wasn’t about to sack them like Lott would have done. And he wasn’t a Communist, that they knew for damn sure. He proved that with Paraguay. The Reds were never strong over the Paraná, never really convincing foes, but we knew that we could clamp down on the restlessness in the Army while upping our credentials with the norte-americanos by saying that they were, and that we’d act as far as we could as a friendly neighbourhood watch. [Lights cigar] And I...suppose, of course, you could say some of the udenistas were bought in Congress by it, but...that’s neither here or there, now. We first discussed the insurgency in Cabinet in Goiás.[xxi] Jânio was equivocal; he didn’t see at the time that the Red struggle in Paraguay was linked to the ambitions of the Reds in Russia, the very Reds he was trying to open relations with at the time. Nor should he have done, as it turned out; Moscow knew by the end of ’62 that they’d made a mistake running guns to FULNA. They were just students, and the Communist core of the movement didn’t look like it was going to convince the rest of them[xxii] that the ‘People’s Republic of Paraguay’ was ever going to be a great idea. Where... [puffs on cigar]...yes. Whatever they say about Jânio, he had a keen political...what is the word in English? Instinto? [murmuring off-camera] Instinct! Que piada do caralho... How could he have become Mr President without one? A lot of people forget that, and forget they voted for us too! [Laughs; coughs] He said to us, he said “We’ll open a channel to Stroessner and say to him ‘we are ready to send you anything, for a price.’” And we all said, ‘what price, Jânio?’ “That he can’t wear his medals in the presidential palace forever! How can we end such a threat” – and he turned to Denys – “without emphasising the rule of constitutionality.” And I saw a little smile on Odílio’s face, but not the grin I saw when he gave the...the student order. And so we moved onto the next issue. Stroessner was polite; he’d already got his support from Nixon by then. We could have provided more help in the long-run, but he didn’t want the conditions. And anyway, the American’s were never convinced by Jânio’s offer, even when we leaked it. We did do our best though. Denys proved very efficient in making sure none of our guns got over the border, and making sure the Press knew. I don’t know whether he really thought a Red insurgency would spill over the border, but that made him the darling of the udenistas all right...” - Pedroso d’Horta, interviewed for NBC’s Guns and Amazons: Brazil in the Shrieking Sixties, broadcast 7th July 1981 BURNIER LEFT ASUNCION 16:00 STOP REQUEST FURTHER ORDERS STOP - Internal Air Force Intelligence communiqué, 14th January 1962 *** ‘A full-blooded cafuzo,[xxiii] he was endowed with an impulsive temperament which combined the tendencies of the lower races from which he sprang. He was the full-blown type of primitive fighter, fierce, fearless, and naive, at once simple- minded and evil, brutal and infantile, valiant by instinct, a hero without being aware of the fact - in brief, a fine example of recessive atavism, with the retrograde form of a grim troglodyte, stalking upright here with the same intrepidity with which, ages ago, he had brandished a stone hatchet at the entrance to his cave.’ - Os Sertões, by Euclides da Cunha[xxiv] ‘My closed my fingers flat, leant back on the planks of wood that separated I and the other four from the road, and let the air, so thick that it felt like water, flow over the top and bottom of my palm. Some of the others occupied themselves in the other rituals of a long journey on the road. We kept ourselves alert in this way. In the agreste death came in many guises, and it didn’t serve us well to think about it. Marighela always rode in the front: “If they shoot again, they had better see me here,” and then he’d reload his shotgun, and wink. “Or I’ll see them first.” Then he’d slap you on your shoulder and you’d feel you could be borne aloft for a thousand miles upon that thunderous roar. That was the man most of my comrades choose to remember. It is the man I would like to remember, in my old age. We drove for thirty miles in the truck, until we reached the estate, past every kind of bleached tree and cow-carcass and biting fly and vampire bat the agreste could throw at us. We were not tired; we had kept ourselves alert, and we were not shocked when we saw the Student’s body at the iron gates of the estate. As I said, we were used to death. The flies gathered black, obscuring the white of his spine and his crimson throat. As Marighela slammed the door of the truck and walked toward them, they scattered, then buzzed back toward the corpse. Maggots spewed forth from the wound, and from under the Student’s shirt. His arms were burnt black, the shirt on his back ripped to bloodied shreds. There were four more wounds in his back, and another, festering green, in his leg. That was where he had been shot the first time, probably with a rifle, and there must have been two pursuing him because no rifle I’ve seen could do quite what had happened to the rest of him.’ - Taken from Citizen Marighela: A Memoir, by Joel Camara “To agitate is one thing. To organise is difficult.” - Francisco Julião, 3rd March 1963[xxviii] ‘Francisco Julião used to be a local, hardworking lawyer. And then, in 1955, a group of peasants from the plantation of Galiléa had sought his assistance against eviction by their landowner, for the crime of starting a co-operative. And then, as he fought that landowner in the courts on the peasants’ behalf, Francisco Julião was made into a political activist, starting on the path that would end with his leadership of the much mythologized Peasant Leagues. And then, in 1963, as he gesticulated in front of cheering, punch-drunk masses in the central square of Palmares introducing a Vice-President and flanked by a Governor, Julião was a man of importance. To the mill- and landowners of the Northeast, he was the devil; to the peasants and millworkers, a hero. Julião’s 'Peasant Leagues' were not the first of that name. In 1945, the PCB had begun infiltrating rural cooperatives in Pernambuco, reorganising them as self-defence organisations, dedicated to combating the interests of local land speculators and any landowners tempted to evict them. Yet when the Party was declared illegal in 1947, the original Leagues were easily broken up, their leaders arrested and their members forced back into the same backbreaking toil their fathers and their grandfathers before them had always endured.[xxv] An attempt in 1951 at violent revolutionary struggle in and around Paraná was also ignominiously suppressed. Why did Julião’s efforts succeed where those of the Communists did not? Since the region was first settled, there had always been an undercurrent of dissent in the agreste and the sertão, and now landlords not only threatened their charges with bad treatment but now eviction, in order to expand the production of sugar. Many also belonged to fundamentalist Protestant sects that, although it possessed no institutionalised clergy, nonetheless imbued many peasants with a sense of collective consciousness, as opposed to their Catholic landlords. The original effort ten years before by the Party had doubtless raised that collective consciousness to new heights. The Leagues’ main link to that past was José de Prazeres, the leader of the delegation that had visited Julião in 1955 and a former rural organiser for the party. He knew very well that in order to sustain itself, the movement he had helped create required political cover. Such cover proved readily available through his connections with the Party in Recife,[xxvi] as well through the forging of alliances with the new populists, opportunists like Cid Sampaio and Miguel Arraes who’d risen out of the milieu of northeastern party politics after the fall of the New State.[xxvii] It proved no accident that one of the first umbrella committees formed to organise and protect the new Peasant Leagues from Recife had as its members both Julião and the Communist organiser Clodomir dos Santos Moraes...’ - Taken from The Devil’s Garden: A History of the Brazilian Northeast *** ‘The birthday of my daughter Vera Eunice. I wanted to buy a pair of shoes for her, but the price of food keeps us from realizing our desires. Actually we are slaves to the cost of living. I found a pair of shoes in the garbage, washed them, and patched them for her to wear.’ - Extract from the diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus, entry dated 15th July 1955 ‘Few could scarcely believe her story; indeed, success was never supposed to come to Carolina. The very thought of a proud, black paulista rising from a (proto-)typical life of indigence in a favela like Canindé defied all measurable odds during the Second Republic.[xxix] Born in 1914 to an Afro-Brazilian family in the village of Sacramento in Minas Gerais, Carolina was raised in an environment so suffused with poverty that she knew not for a great part of her childhood what the word really meant. By the age of twenty-three, she had started to learn, by treading the well-worn path from the countryside in search of a job and a better life in the city. Carolina ended up being employed in various menial occupations, from working in an orderly in a hospital to selling beer on the streets of Sao Paulo. She finally found a steady role as a domestic, although not a long-term job as one; Carolina, exhibiting the haughtiness and pride that would so repulse the majority of middle-class Brazilians after 1962, held no fewer than six jobs as a maid, being sacked from each one. In 1948, after a brief affair with a Portuguese sailor, Carolina gave birth to a son. She named him Joao; another son, José Carlos, would be conceived two years later under similar circumstances. The white family employing Carolina sacked her soon after she had fallen pregnant with Joao; homeless, she and her infant son were forced to scratch a living in Canindé, foraging refuse cans for (re-)useable bottles and paper. A pound of either would fetch roughly one cruzeiro, or half a U.S cent. Yet in spirit, life in the favela did not diminish Carolina. What distinguished her from her neighbours would be the simple fact that she was literate, in a country where, despite its professed carefree, Western airs, one in six people could not read or write.[xxx] Carolina kept an account of her daily life in her diary, a text quite different and more sophisticated than that edited and published by her discoverer, Audálio Dantas. Through it, she chronicled her daily triumphs and despairs, guarding her private hopes and dreams from the unsparing aggregation of circumstance in a world simultaneously rich in the fleeting beauty of the hummingbird or a meteor in a (yet undimmed) night-sky but degraded by the mutual cruelty of man.[xxxi] In keeping the diary and how she chose to act toward her neighbours, Carolina maintained some measure of distance from that life, and from her fellow favelados; yet this strange mixture of pride and self-preservation did not prevent her from becoming a valued member of the community, Carolina taking the time outside of foraging through Sao Paulo bins to care for neighbourhood children newly released from the local borstal. Thus, Carolina Maria de Jesus was simultaneously the dreamer of her childhood, a storyteller like her wizened old grandfather, and a pillar of her local community of the damned. It was this fact that so entranced the Brazilian public when the diary was eventually published, in 1958, first as a serial in the Diário da Noite.[xxxii] A journalist, by the name of Audálio Dantas, had discovered Carolina in a playground while covering a local municipal campaign. It turned out that she had been “screaming bloody murder,” as Dantas later put it, at a man bullying the children: “If you continue mistreating these children, I’m going to put all your names in my book!” Dantas the journalist was more interested in the book than the sad faces of the children deprived of a turn on the swings; he asked Carolina if she would show him what she had written, and before long, in amidst the damp walls of her shack on Rua A, Dantas knew he had happened upon something altogether extraordinary. The twenty-four year old journalist took excerpts to his editor;[xxxiii] to the readers of Diário da Noite, he announced that he was bringing “not a news story, but a revolution.” Fame and fortune came quickly enough. Dantas took Carolina’s diary in full to Livraria Francisco Alves, a publishing house, who agreed to print the text as a (heavily edited) book. The first print run of ten thousand ran out in three days, and within a year Carolina was one of the most widely translated authors in Brazilian literary history. And within that first year , Carolina accumulated enough royalties to finally move out of Canindé into the brick house she had always dreamed of owning. It was for that, and for writing about her fellow favelados without sharing any of the benefits, that the aspiring single mother come writer was turned upon by her neighbours. As she moved her belongings out of her shack into a waiting van, her former neighbours spat, cursed and threw stones at Carolina and her children. The hostility shown toward her in Canindé did not abate in her new suburban surroundings; it just changed its form. Carolina – mother of three, haughty, nouveau-riche, Black –stuck out like a sore thumb in the wealthy district of Imirim. But it was there where Carolina would write her second diary, the one she wrote as Brazil spun into chaos...’ - Taken from ‘Conscience of Brazil: The Observances of Carolina Maria de Jesus during the Quadros Era,’ in the Journal of Inter-American Studies[xxxiv] ‘I am going to write tonight but the house is dirty. I went to buy meat in the morning while the children were out [at school.] I wanted to take the bus but the drivers and conductors were on strike again so I had to wait fifty minutes for one. Why is this country like this? I said to the person sitting next to me. She was white and blonde and had a mean face She told me this country is going to the dogs and I agreed, certainly when it came to prices. She said something about Communists and mentioned the drivers but then I stopped listening and stared at the merging vermillion of the road and the green of the gardens as I returned home. Joao was already back...’ - Extract from the diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus, entry dated 22nd October 1961[xxxv] *** ‘There was not time for it. The disgrace inflicted upon the army and the fatherland must be avenged; the entire country was clamouring for it.’ - Extract from Os Sertões ‘No history of terrorism is complete without discursive analysis of the ‘Tenente-Coronel,’ id est former Lieutenant-Colonel of the Air Force of Brazil, Joao Paulo Burnier. Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1919, Burnier made sure to join the Air Force at a young age. Until 1959, his career was more or less unremarkable; indeed, even a cursory reading depicts a career mostly spent in isolated aerodromes up and down the country during peacetime. Yet the outward traits that he would so earnestly display in his latter, alternative career – decisiveness, impatience, a filthy temper – may be inferred from the many psychological assessments of Burnier made during the 1950s.[xxxvi] His later antipathy towards democratic institutions may only be guessed at; even his enthusiastic support of Jânio Quadros for the presidency, in view of his subsequent actions, at most suggests an ambivalent attitude toward them. Burnier’s leadership of the abortive Aragarças Rebellion in 1959 succeeded in lifting the Lieutenant-Colonel from obscurity. Officially, the ‘rebellion’ was intended to convince the Brazilian people and/or the Armed Forces that Juscelino Kubitschek was unfit to rule as President, and should thus be deposed; unofficially, given its scale and level of planning, the later statement made by the other participants that it was merely designed to convince presidential candidate Quadros to resume campaigning, after one of his many fits of pique caused him to renounce his ambitions for the presidency in 1960. Although the operation was more of a political stunt than a serious attempt at overthrowing the Kubitschek Administration, alarm bells rang within the government. Contrary to the customary magnanimity he usually responded with to his more dangerous critics,[xxxvii] the President ordered the suspects pursued, and when they escaped abroad, to be arrested on sight if they dared re-enter Brazil. In 1961, Burnier did just that, via Paraguay; when confronted by military police as per Kubitschek’s instructions, the rebel stated that he bore no ill-intention toward the Quadros Administration. Considering the large UDN bloc in the Congress was thought likely to pardon Burnier soon, the Lieutenant-Colonel was released by the government, on the condition that he returned to Paraguay.[xxxviii] Back in Asuncion, his diary – started just prior to his attempt at re-entry to Brazil – indicates a mulling over of an offer to join the Paraguayan Air Force, something that would have almost certainly have led to Burnier machine-gunning Communists from the air over Chaco if he hadn’t heard news of a very different kind of revolution happening seven thousand miles away, one that would inspire the former Lieutenant-Colonel onto grander designs...’ - Taken from The Penguin History of Global Terrorism, Vol. II: 1945-1970[xxxix] “When were you first assigned to the Lieutenant-Colonel?” “The fall of 1961.” “Can you be more specific?” “[Subject pauses] September.” “And what was your initial assignment?” “I was to monitor his movements while he was in Asuncion and liaise with the Paraguayans.” “Why do you think you were given the assignment?” “You know.” “I’m asking you, Major.” “[Sighs] One of Paraguay’s largest exports is Scotch, Sir. The Paraguayan’s don’t make it, so where do you think they get it from: anyone with a foreign accent, a crate, and a sense of discretion. Our people in Asuncion spend most of their time trying to stop them bringing in the crates, and when FULNA started to ship in guns instead of whisky, Command felt that the situation in Paraguay was not going to be improved by the arrival of a red-baiting golpista.[xl]” “Did you ever come into direct contact with the Lieutenant-Colonel?” “No Sir. I was not ordered by anyone to...” “Yes, Major. Did you or did you not fail to prevent contact between the Lieutenant-Colonel and the Paraguayan state?” “I was never asked to. And you know as well as I do that that would have been impossible if I was only allowed to talk to the Paraguayans. And if you’re going to ask me whether it was my fault that he got to them –” “- I am not, Major -” “– then you should have let me [interviewer hits table violently]” - Extract from Tape #4 of Military Intelligence interview of Major Joao Figueiredo, 7th February 1963 *** “I see favouritism, nepotism strangling the nation and blocking the advancement of those with the most ability. In public life it is hard to distinguish the sacred from the profane. The state of dissolution to which we have come arises in part from the crisis in authority and of austerity of power, compromised as its prestige is with official scandals carried out with greatest impunity. My government, be it noted, represents the end of this, definitive and final...” - Extract from the inaugural address of President Jânio Quadros, January 31st 1961[xli] “I remember not a man afflicted by psychosis and tragic delusions of grandeur, but a man of uncompromising principles and an inflexible spirit. The seeds of Jânio Quadros’ isolation lay in these credentials, not madness – that, and the intervention of horrible circumstance. And it was that very absolutism that had captivated the voters of first Sao Paulo, and then all Brazil. Back in the Governor’s Mansion, that inspiration was imbued daily. Yet, it had started as fear. The Governor’s power reached near unlimited proportions, light years away from the eventual situation we all found ourselves in when he ascended to the presidency. This was a man whose strictures one would obey, with unquestioning, holy fervour, for we knew that to write this man’s speeches, to implement his bilhetinhos, to organise his rallies and to curry grace and favours from the industrialists and landowners for him, without his knowledge, was to serve the common cause all those aspiring to politics should shoulder. We appreciated his rages as akin to the divine, his rénuncias with dread, and his thanks at the end of the day as manna. And once the Governor became the President, this cause began to decay under the weight of the national contradiction. Immediately, my service was recognised by the President-elect, and I was named Head of the Civil House.[xlii] All the lessons I had learned in Sao Paulo suddenly proved entirely irrelevant to governing a country of seventy million people, and with furtive guilt I heretically pined for the reflective wisdom of Juscelino Kubitschek. In Minas Gerais, he had governed a state that was truly Brazil in microcosm; in Sao Paulo, we had faced a pliant legislature and state aid in abundance. I shed my memory of the campaign speeches, on all the inefficiencies and the corruption and the decadence, to wade into national politics. And I became the President. Jânio Quadros was never a man who sought dictation as to his actions from his peers. He had risen up and up through paulista politics in defiance of that narrow patriarchy. Yet it was when this intransigence became known to all Brazil that the spell began to unravel, for under the Constitution, the President of the Republic has to work with the Congress, perhaps not in perfect concord but in such a way as to guarantee that the votes balloted in every election be respected. The President ignored the Congress; Jânio thought it beneath him to deal with “these people.” I remember a conversation after the inauguration. We were discussing Richard Nixon, a man that certainly interested the President: “I like that he cites Lincoln. America needs another Lincoln.” I asked him who Brazil needed; he smiled artfully, but did not answer. Later, a reporter asked the same thing, and Jânio answered “A Gétulio,” but that was near the end and Jânio never really liked talking to reporters. He pointed at something imaginary beside me. “I supersede them,” he said, “and we must teach them the value of true politics.” I have never ascertained what he meant by that. I became less his Chief of Staff than his discretionary conduit between his office and the Congress, especially after the Deputies and Senators began to see their congratulatory embassies turned away with irritation by the new Justice Minister, Pedroso d’Horta. It was through my organisation that the President enjoyed his budget being passed by the Congress, and it was thanks to me that the number of his ministers being called to explain their conduct to the Senate was kept to a manageable minimum.[xliii] Yet I was only one man; my efforts to shore up the presidency against the machinations of this or that Deputy could not halt the decline...’ - Quintanilha Ribeiro, Head of President Quadros’ Casa Civil in 1961, writing in The Man in the High Tower: A Personal Memoir of the Quadros Administration “Arraes tells us that we’re being led by a devil, Jango by a fool,[xliv] Lacerda by a Communist. In view of this, I think it’s only right to conclude that our beloved President is an evil genius biding his time, and that can only mean good things for Brazil.” - Sobral Pinto to reporters gathered outside his office, April 8th 1963 ‘I have chosen my profession. It is to be an agronomist. I shall not get involved in politics, I have made this vow. I shall neither defend nor attack. I know that such things upset you because it was with this accursed politics that my father became lost.’ - Carlos Lacerda, in a letter to his mother Olga, 1922[xlv] ‘Once the unerring supporter of the Party line, Carlos Lacerda saw himself in 1962 as the last man in Brazil making a stand against the Communist disease ravaging the country which he had for so long humbly served, first in his capacity as a journalist, thence a Deputy to the Congress, and now Governor of the State of Guanabara. It was his broadcasts that had driven Vargas to the death he deserved, it was he who had alerted the people to the systemic corruption of the Kubitschek years, and it was he who had brought the National Democratic Union into the Congress in strength.[xlvi] The Governor preferred not to contemplate his role in bringing Jânio to power, or his time on the Tamandaré during Lott’s ‘preventative coup.’ As he would later, rather sarcastically, whisper to his friend and later critic David Nasser during a Union fundraiser at the Palace, “Such details should not be forgotten in the footnotes.” And now Governor Lacerda badly wanted to be President, and if that dream were to be realised, such details needed to be forgotten. Since Quadros began his “slashing and burning” of the budget, they had been drowned in a sea of vitriolic rhetoric. Always hypercritical of any incumbent, in the sense that Lacerda always criticised those in power who erred, the Governor’s excoriating speeches earned him the permanent ire of the Executive. There wasn’t any question that, as far as he could, Jânio would seek to undermine the authority of the man who, in convincing the UDN to nominate him, had done the most to raise him to the Presidency. Despite the President’s best efforts, the Governor had achieved great things in Rio. As well as a brilliant polemicist and orator (or as his critics alleged, demagogue,) Lacerda had proved an able administrator, making great progress in alleviating Rio’s water shortages and its chronic housing problem, as well as driving down the costs in public transportation after Quadros’ virtual removal of the state subsidy on oil. His position and his record seemingly made him the man to beat in 1965. And yet the Presidential election was three years away; for all his criticism of Quadros as wilfully incompetent and completely unengaged with the practical problems of that Brazilians faced every single day, the President could at least have postponed this level of misrule for eighteen more months. Daily, he received letters from udenista stalwarts lamenting the fate of the Fatherland. The Quadros Administration had laid the path to authoritarianism, to tin-pot dictatorship-by-emergency. The Communists would step in, he had no doubt. They had already in the North and the interior...’ - Taken from The Ghost of Gétulio Vargas: A History of Brazil, 1954-1965 ‘[...]and so to understand the Quadros Administration, the man’s forging political principles – to upend the status quo – must always be taken into consideration. Those historians searching for a unified ideological position behind Quadros’ forays into both the Left and Right of Brazilian politics like, in the words of Carlos Lacerda, "a drunk driving home to his dying mother," search for it in vain. Jânio Quadros had always defined himself as a man of the (entirely abstract) people, who stood firmly against all that Brazilian democracy at its lowest entailed, that is to say, corruption, mismanagement, and elitism. The former city alderman had been raised to the presidency according to this record, and had done so even outside the conventional party political system.[xlvii] As early as his Inauguration Speech, Quadros started to attack everything he perceived as flawed in the Brazilian body politic. Corruption investigations were launched against several prominent members of the opposition PSD and PTB, including former President Kubitschek and Quadros’ own Vice-President Goulart.[xlviii] Whereas before many centrist and left-wing Congressmen had held out for a breath of fresh air in Brasilia, to blow away the dust settling from the capital’s construction, now they began to feel palpable fear at just what he was capable of. What party political loyalty he could command in the Congress – that of the conservative udenistas – slipped away as Quadros the Outsider blindly adhered to his political gut instinct. His visit to Havana shortly after his election victory raised not a few eyebrows among his conservative colleagues; his open sympathy for the plight of Fidel Castro the following year predicated an open break with his most formidable supporter, the firebrand Guanabara Gov. Carlos Lacerda.[xlix] Always hypercritical of any incumbent – as previously related, Lacerda was not only famed for his radio broadcasts exhorting the overthrow of Vargas, but also those denying the basic legitimacy of the democratically elected Kubitschek Administration – the Governor directed his prickly indignation at the President, accusing him of base incompetence in foreign affairs at the very least and tacitly aiding a Communist conspiracy at (a purely rhetorical) worst. As Jânio watched his UDN support in Congress slowly ebb away with each new pronouncement – that the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, by reason, should be recognised, that Nixon’s stand over Berlin had been a reckless gamble that had endangered the continuing survival of Man – he contemplated a gambit to attain increased Executive powers, id est resigning and forcing upon Brazil the prospect of PTB stalwart and Vice-President Joao Goulart being inaugurated.[l] After being informed by his military ministers that if he did resign he would not be supported by the Armed Forces in attaining such powers, Quadros sulked in the Presidential Palace cinema for a week, accompanied by his wife, copious amounts of alcohol, and popcorn. Soon enough, all the Brazilian people were prepared to associate their absentee President with were his two main policies: anti-corruption, soon to be granted physical form in the Institutional Fraud Office (the ‘FI,’ at first merely an arm of the Federal Department of Public Security, given the relative difficulty of establishing an independent agency through legislation), and the austerity drive...’ - Taken from Gétulio, JK and Jânio *** ‘A Communist will say anything to gain your trust.’ - Extract from the diary of Joao Paulo Burnier, 18th July 1961 ‘On the 15th June 1961, rogue elements of the French Army, Navy and Air Force overthrew the democratically elected government of the Fourth Republic. With days, demonstrations against military rule in the military and wider society had been isolated, singled-out and “forcibly halted,” usually at the point of a bayonet. Two weeks later, our disgraced Lieutenant-Colonel had arrived in Paris. The rabid anti-Communism voiced over the French airwaves by Pierre Lagaillarde and the efficiency of the roundup of members of the PCF had certainly impressed Burnier, in ways aside from the obvious. Most importantly, it had heartened him as to the likelihood of decisive action being taken in eradicating Communism within a democratic framework. The fact that Massu and the High Command possessed little inclination to hand the reins of power back to the same politicians they had castigated as pansies and pedants was one that, at first, failed to occur to Burnier; when it did, it no longer mattered. Ensconced in a comfortable apartment in the Latin Quarter, Burnier quickly grew accustomed to the new regime’s ideas regarding radical action against any and all opponents...’ - Taken from The Penguin History of Terrorism “[...]and you were assigned to the Paris Embassy...” “The day after he’d arrived” “Why the delay?” “A week would have been a delay, Sir. We had to wait 24 hours before I’d been given the appropriate clearance from Command. They don’t usually send spies to France.[li]” “And did you assignment remain the same?” “[Sighs]This time I was given clearance to search his accommodation, although that didn’t extend to me being caught.” “Major?” “My cover was as a liaison officer. I didn’t have immunity. And the Embassy didn’t care to tell me that they’d decreed martial law either, so I could have been shot out of hand.” “That’s irrelevant, Major. [Pause] When did you first search the Lieutenant-Colonel’s apartment?” “On the fourth day, after I had ascertained his movements. I picked a time just after he’d arrived at the library, at the Sorbonne...” “And I assume that is when you first came into contact with his diary?” “Yes...” “[Impatiently] And did you read it?” “In line with the instructions given to me before my arrival in Paris, I did. I dared to read as much as I could thereafter...although at first it seemed somewhat of a fruitless enterprise.” “Why?” “My English is passable Senhor, but he made it as difficult as possible...” - Extract from Tape #4 of Military Intelligence interview of Major Joao Figueiredo, 7th February 1963 ‘In Paraguay or Bolivia, Joao Paulo Burnier was merely an irritant, a man popularly considered within Itamaraty to be the quintessential malcontent, biding his time abroad for a pardon and some precious recognition of his importance. Only when he arrived in France in the fall of 1961 did Burnier become a threat to the vaunted ambitions of the Quadros Administration. Precisely what threat Burnier posed to Brazil’s external ambitions was entirely abstract, motivated by considerations of realpolitik over those of moral principle. Since the rejection of Quadros’ plea for a new round of loans to keep the Brazil’s economy afloat, Itamaraty had been ordered to pursue trade negotiations with almost any nation willing to consider them. Such a pragmatic policy was bound to clash one day with Quadros’ vaunted ambitions with regards to the Third World, but in 1961 the hypocrisy that the country with the largest population of those descended from African slaves on the planet might make friendly overtures to Hendrik Verwoerd’s South Africa was one that was conveniently overlooked in the interests of acquiring hard currency.[lii] Similarly, opening relations with an international pariah in the knowledge that their own nation already had a serious problem with military intervention in civilian politics was ignored for the same reasons by Itamaraty, although not a few within the corridors of power evidently considered a new trade accord with the Centurions delicate enough without the addition of a violent home-grown extremist. The campaign to disassociate Brazil completely from Joao Paulo Burnier’s person began through the observation of that gulf between Brazil’s moral and pragmatic world positions. The Lieutenant-Colonel was explicitly barred from returning to Brazil from France as soon as he made landfall, on pain of arrest. As soon as he arrived in Paris, it became abundantly clear to Burnier and all involved with him that there existed an obvious time limit on his residence there, although in light of his status as one of the few foreign nationals who had entered France during this heady period of oppression and murder willingly, the longer he did stay, the more likely he would be noticed and possibly befriended by the Centurions. The publicising of this could jeopardise the Franco-Brazilian trade accord and perhaps even Itamaraty’s approaches to other, less salubrious potential international partners. For their part, the Centurions were of a similar mind; they were happy to safeguard the negotiations, however inconspicuous they were, with the Brazilians, in light of France’s suspension from the EEC. When it became obvious that the trade-off would be the expulsion of Burnier, the majority of the High Command was in favour of complying; a minority of one however pressed for a delay. Where President Massu perceived an impediment toward the swift resolution of an impasse, the Interior Minister saw twisted opportunity...’ - Taken from From Napoleon to the Centurions: The Foreign Policy of France ‘He is an exceptional gentleman, of exquisite taste and manufacture; indeed, it remains a fervent regret of mine that my sojourn here will be decurtated by the machinations of subversive forces outside our control. He has made my stay as comfortable as he dare, and his words of encouragement and advice will be missed.’ - Extract from the diary of Joao Paulo Burnier, 1st October 1961, describing Pierre Lagaillarde ‘Although Burnier’s stay – or holiday, in his eyes – yielded no actual training and little assistance from the French government, it did afford our Lieutenant-Colonel substantial personal encouragement. Lagaillarde’s lobbying in the National Salvation Council[liii] ensured Burnier could stay in France for a another fifty days; after that point, the French government would ensure his expulsion so as to safeguard its new trading relationship with Brazil. For Pierre Lagaillarde, fifty days was ample time. The motivation behind his visits to Burnier in the Latin Quarter may only be inferred from the formers diaries and his granting of the means by which our Lieutenant-Colonel would eventually return to Brazil; although these details grant us some insight into the relationship between the two men, the reasons behind it remain altogether murky. Did Lagaillarde see Burnier as a future prospect for promotion in the Air Force? Did he attempt to nudge the Lieutenant-Colonel onto the path of mayhem and destruction in his homeland? Or did he simply wish to converse with an individual possessed of a similar political outlook? Historians have usually rested upon a mixture of all three, although perhaps such an analysis is a little too generous in according as much foresight as it does to Lagaillarde. Whatever the reasoning behind the visits, Burnier did not leave France for Portugal on the 20th September discouraged...’ - Taken from The Penguin History of Terrorism 'Prophecy in his mouth, as may be seen, was the same as it was in Phrygia, on its westward bound course. Here was the same identical judgement of God, the same casting-down of the mighty, the same trampling of the profane world, the same millenium and all its delights.' - Extract from Os Sertões [i] Most notably Stefan Zweig. [ii] A ‘paulista’ is an inhabitant of Sao Paulo, with implications of regionalist sentiment. The British equivalent would probably be ‘Londoner.’ [iii] Look at him. Here he comes, now. [iv] The 1958 drought in the Northeast of Brazil. The statistics by the way are mostly derived from Joseph A. Page’s ‘The Revolution That Never Was,’ a fantastic book on the attempt to develop the Brazilian Northeast by the Peasant Leagues, the Communists, SUDENE and the Alliance for Progress in the Quadros/Goulart years. I cannot recommend it enough. [v] Illiteracy ran at – at its highest – 80%. [vi] This little titbit was uncovered by a Peace Corps volunteer in 1969. If he discovered it then, I’d fully expect the same to be evident in an even more underdeveloped Northeast in 1960. [vii] In 1957, a survey by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) found out that the average calorie intake for a Northeasterner was only 1,900 calories; you need 2,500 as a minimum in the developed world. Another sampling ten years later found that some were only consuming 1,299 per day; medical logic ordains that 1,440-1,512 calories are needed to maintain basic metabolism. The lack of mothers milk after six months also predicated a high level of mental debility among children in the region. [viii] These stories were avidly related by Francisco Julião to Joseph A. Page; whether the specificities are correct or not are immaterial, considering the sheer volume of catalogued cruelty in the Northeast during and prior to this period in Brazilian history. [ix] More specifically, from 1946-1961. [x] Northeastern landowners. [xi] Nixon – aside from his personal antipathy toward South American politics if it didn’t involve overthrowing Reds, not just from the incident from Caracas but also evident in his OTL presidency – was part of the same administration that had considered helping the Northeast a ‘lost cause.’ [xii] More later. [xiii] In 1961, a PTB Senator accused Celso Furtado of being a closet Communist. You’d expect a PTB man making such accusations would be the equivalent of a toddler throwing stones in glass houses, but party lines remained sufficiently fluid in Brazil for the Senator to be a large landowner from the state of Paraíba. [xiv] If, as I’m doing, you’re taking the consequences of the POD for Brazil as an austerity plan implemented by Quadros, partly due to the parsimony of the Nixon Administration with regards to lending to Brazil in the first place, then generosity really is the word. Under Article 198 of the 1948 Brazilian Constitution, 3% of all federal tax revenue must be devoted to relief projects in the Northeast, at the very least to alleviate the effects of drought there. If Quadros is cutting spending, in the beginning that might hit hard on tax revenue, since its unlikely the President is going to slash them when he’s trying to close the budget deficit. [xv] John W.F. Dulles in his biography of Humberto de Alencar Castello Branco makes a point of the general reading again and again this book, and heavily underlining other passages pertaining to Brazil’s history of political instability and the subversive nature of Communism in general. [xvi] Something HC-B ended up saying in OTL, but IIRC in 1964. [xvii] Brazilian Expeditionary Force [xviii] Rio de Janeiro, essentially. The Director of Instruction promotion is OTL, and it makes sense to me that out of all the generals, it would be Castello Branco who Quadros the Outsider would turn to for what is termed in the coup business as ‘military cover.’ [xix] Kubitschek. [xx] The inert role of the Brazilian Armed Forces led many on the left to question whether servicemen would be better employed supporting the flailing agricultural sector, or helping to build roads. One of the greatest peeves of the top brass were politicians interfering in any way with the internal workings of the Armed Forces, so you can imagine how pissed off many of them were – including Castello Branco – at this idea. I personally believe that the popular discussion of this particular idea made the prospect of (OTL) President Goulart radically breaking up the Army into ‘people’s militias’ on the Cuban model all the more convincing in 1964, just before the coup that overthrew him, even though Goulart was far too weak as a president to even broach the idea. [xxi] Every month, Jânio liked to hold cabinet in a different state of the republic. [xxii] The less totalitarian-minded... [xxiii] Half Amerindian, half of African descent. [xxiv] Quoted originally in Levine’s brilliant article, ‘Mud Hut Jerusalem.’ [xxv] Information for this portion of Brazilian history derived from ‘Peasants and Rural Labourers in Pernambuco, 1955-1964,’ by Florencia E. Mallon. [xxvi] Unlike say, in Rio, the intellectual community in Recife was so much more isolated from the rest of Brazil that to be a Communist didn’t mean you were automatically anathemised from the social scene. One telling example of the relative unimportance of party lines – whether illegal or otherwise – is the befriending of a US Army officer by a known and active Communist in the city during WWII. The two apparently developed a penchant for cinema visits together. [xxvii] And the implementation of a new electoral code by the Kubitschek Administration, that required a voter registration form be accompanied by photographic identification. That quickly wiped off 200,000 phantom votes, controlled by the coroneis and other rural power-brokers, off the rolls, and added to the importance of the largely poor, but nonetheless ambitious, urban electorate pandered to by Arraes and Sampaio. [xxviii] OTL quotation, from Page. [xxix] I’d like to say at this point that I’m getting much of the facts here from Robert Levine’s fascinating essay on Carolina Maria de Jesus, ‘The Cautionary Tale of Carolina Maria de Jesus.’ He’s also written cursorily on her in his overview of Brazil, as well as translated her (unedited) diaries, from which I am adapting the following post-1959 quotations. If you want to get a simple introduction to Brazilian history, I do recommend starting with Robert Levine. He’s also written a truly fascinating study on the city of Canudos, both in essay and book formats. Of course, saying that, he’s always good for the more complex analyses that are sometimes lacking in some of the earlier literature. [xxx] Appropriate figures here. [xxxi] According to Levine – for I must rely on him in lieu of the ‘preview’ section of the Google Books version of the diary – Carolina documented in her diary the daily sufferings of sons beaten by fathers, of beggars forced to go hungry for longer periods as they watched restaurant owners pour acid over the leftovers they dumped in back alleys, of undernourishment, drunkenness, prostitution and death. [xxxii] A local Sao Paulo newspaper. [xxxiii] Something Carolina at first objected to, citing the relative ugliness of her account of life in Canindé. [xxxiv] In print since 1959, so plausible. [xxxv] In Levine’s translation, the lack of punctuation is something that really stands out to the reader. [xxxvi] I’m being careful with my wording because sources on Burnier in English are practically non-existent, and in Portuguese scarce at best. For the first description of the man’s character, I’ll be citing this portrait of the man by Jonas Correa. [xxxvii] Something that Kubitschek was forced to display in 1956, when the threat was graver. [xxxviii] In OTL, Burnier got his pardon in due course by the forcing of the issue by UDN sympathisers in the Congress. ITTL, the order of business in the Congress is randomised according to butterflies, delaying any consideration of the rebels case. President Quadros also has different priorities ITTL. Sympathy is further eroded by the shocking brutality of the Centurions’ rise to power in France, potentially rendering a public pardon of the 1959 Aragarças rebels quite unpopular. [xxxix] The author is overlooking that, if Burnier decides to accept employment by a foreign government without the President’s permission, under Article 130, Section 2 he will abrogate his citizenship. To a right-wing nationalist like Burnier, I’d calculate that this would be a significant deterrent. That and, although Brazil now allows dual citizenship, back in 1961 it didn’t, at least according to the translated version of the 1946 Constitution I’m consulting. [xl] Smuggling remains a problem between Paraguay and Brazil. [xli] OTL. [xlii] Basically, his Chief of Staff. [xliii] Articles 54 and 65, S.1 respectively of the Brazilian Constitution of 1948. [xliv] Joao ‘Jango’ Goulart. [xlv] OTL, but the exact date eludes me. The quote itself is derived from Dulles’ biography of Lacerda, ‘Carlos Lacerda, Brazilian Crusader – Volume I: The Years 1914-1960.’ [xlvi] The UDN party. [xlvii] In the sense that Quadros was never closely affiliated with the party’s that nominated him to the Presidency. He certainly wasn’t a UDN man; indeed, as is related in John W.F. Dulles’ biography of Carlos Lacerda, the eminence-grise of the UDN, he was only nominated to avoid another disastrous candidacy in the form of Juracy Magalhaes (although, considering the PSD-PTB alliance nominated Henrique Lott, he might well have won, or even (in a more unlikely scenario) have narrowly lost to Adhemar Barros.) [xlviii] This makes more sense if you bear in mind that Brazilians voted in 1960 on a split ticket; the Brazilian voter had the right to choose their own VP, as well as their own President. Hence why Quadros’ running mate Milton Campos wasn’t elected. [xlix] Thomas E. Skidmore in his ‘Politics’ openly speculates whether this break was inevitable, whether Lacerda’s disgust over the decisions Quadros took were really down to his domestic or foreign policies. In OTL, we never got to see which one it was, because Quadros resigned barely half a year into his presidency, but it’s my instinct that Lacerda – who was angling for the UDN presidential nomination in 1964, and probably sensed more than others that Quadros was a better municipal politician than a national one – was searching for any excuse. [l] OTL, Jânio Quadros resigned the presidency on the 25th August 1961. The consensus among historians of Brazil – Skidmore, Dulles to some extent, Levine – is precisely this, that, faced with an increasingly intransigent Congress, Quadros wanted the Army to beg him to return with new Executive powers. The gamble failed because Quadros commanded little national support through any party political structure – which had aided his elevation to the presidency in the first place – and because his military ministers had been completely unprepared by the prospect of his resignation. In the end, while they were prepared to block the accession of Goulart for a short time, they were entirely willing to take Quadros by his word that he wouldn’t ever return to the presidency, and tried to force a pliant conservative president on Brazil. [li] A slightly ironic statement, since Brazil was used to sending military personnel, thanks to the close relationship between the Brazilian and French armies before WWII. [lii] Closer to OTL than you might think. Brazil possessed a willingness to deal with South Africa during this period, objectively strange behaviour for the nation with the most people of African descent outside of Africa. Yet, it was judged by Quadros and then Goulart that Brazil needed hard currency more than ideals. [liii] What the High Command likes to call itself, officially. Really just the HC still, but with an idealistic name to go with the facade that what just happened was a revolution.
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Last edited by 037771; October 13th, 2012 at 09:17 AM..
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#298
October 12th, 2012, 02:47 PM
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Hooray, it's back!
 More detailed commentary to follow when I get a chance to actually read it.
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#299
October 12th, 2012, 03:38 PM
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As ever I want to praise the great detail and depth of this research in this TL, illuminating OTL as well as exploring AH like all the best TLs. I've always felt Brazil in particular is an under-explored area in AH; as with its neighbour Argentina, its reputation as the land of 'coulda, woulda, shoulda, but never did' rather lends it naturally to the genre. And this provides a lot of fascinating stuff about a forgotten horror in the description of the grinding poverty of the northeast in this period. Minor correction--your footnote [xix] seems rather redundant (I assume it was meant to apply to a nickname or epithet in the text rather than the name itself). It would seem we are about to see yet another military coup. I like how you show that this all ultimately stems from a Nixon administration despite the apparent lack of connection at first glance, in this case due to the lack of foreign aid Kennedy provided in OTL.
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#300
October 12th, 2012, 04:14 PM
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Thank you very much. I'm in total agreement about how under-explored South America, particularly Brazil, is in AH, especially in light of its economic progress in the last decade. Quadros in particular is someone largely neglected on this sight, especially odd given the vast potential (for good and ill of his presidency. Quote:
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I mean with Brazil from 1930 to 1964, a military coup is on the whole not an unusual thing; the relationship between the Army and civilian politics largely guaranteed the former a disproportionate say in the dealings of the latter. The problem with a coup against Quadros is that, unlike Goulart, he isn't altogether despised by those who matter in the Army. From the start of his presidency, he did pack the military ministries with conservative and authoritarian figures, and so based on the (admittedly) paltry evidence we have from his OTL term in office, a coup against him seemed unlikely. I shall expand more on the *Nixon Administration's attitude toward Brazil in the next update.
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