As a native of an inland state he was convinced of the need to move the federal capital to the central plateau. Brasília was a colossal achievement, but it proved a colossally expensive achievement.
All the economic ills which resulted from the narrow views of the nationalists, and from the highhanded neglect of fiscal problems that had been the rule for years, began to come home to roost. The loss of value of the cruzeiro and the daily rise in the cost of living became the dominant facts in Brazilian life.
Jânio Quadros, with the assistance of sound economic advisors and, particularly, of Carvalho Pinto, the hardworking fiscal expert who was to succeed him as governor, had made good his promise to put the finances of the wealthy state of São Paulo back in order. When he announced his presidential candidacy to succeed Juscelino Kubitschek, the voters believed he would do the same thing for the federal government. His emblem was still the new broom. As a mass meeting orator he had no rival. No one paid any attention to stories of his drinking, of his emotional instability, of the passes he made at nubile young women who found themselves alone in his office. He aroused overwhelming enthusiasm. He was elected President by six million votes.
By a quirk in the constitution the Vice-President could seek re-election, though the President could not. In spite of a split in the labor vote João Goulart marshaled enough of Vargas’ old following to become Vice-President once more.
The same hopes for a thoroughgoing reform of the government that carried Jânio Quadros into the Palace of the Dawn at Brasília, carried Carlos Lacerda into the governorship of the new state of Guanabara. Next to the presidency, being governor of Guanabara was the toughest political assignment in Brazil.
The preceding administration had been so taken up with Brasília that the beautiful old capital was left in the doldrums. The city kept growing. New quarters were springing up in every nook of the difficult terrain between the bay of Guanabara on one side and the lagoon on the other. The close-packed buildings were hemmed in everywhere by the tooth-shaped basalt peaks that form the chief beauty of the city’s landscape. Transportation was in a snarl. A complete new highway system was needed. Electric light, power, water were insufficient. The telephone service was years behind the times. The sewers mostly dated from the mid-nineteenth century when Rio was rated as having one of the best systems in the world. Even the handsomest residential quarters were flanked by hillside slums, the famous favelas. By this time almost a million squatters lived in these shantytowns without policing or public services of any kind. The condition of Rio would have been a challenge to a man who had spent his life in public administration.
To the amazement of friend and foe, Governor Lacerda, after a little preliminary fumbling, developed one of the most efficient administrations the city had ever seen. He collected about him a group of townplanners and architects and engineers and laid plans for new electric light plants, for a new water supply, for renovating the sewerage system and for dealing with a long list of what he called skeletons, projects started by previous administrations that had been halted for lack of funds. When the Alliance for Progress came along he eagerly took advantage of American money. He announced his administration’s aim to “make Rio once more the Marvelous City.”
“Oh, marvelous city,” went a popular song. “By day we lack water, and by night we lack light.”
The President Breaker
It was at Jânio Quadros’ suggestion that Carlos Lacerda ran for the governorship of Guanabara. During the early months of Quadros’ presidency the two men continued to see eye to eye. Quadros’ first administrative reforms had Lacerda’s hearty approval. The governor’s plan was to keep pace in his local administration with the President’s reform of the federal government.
The trouble that began to develop between them stemmed from the fact that the problems Quadros had to meet at Brasília were much tougher than the problems he had coped with in São Paulo. There he had the advantage of able collaborators, since the city and state of São Paulo had for years enjoyed the most competent administration in Brazil. In São Paulo the new broom could be placed in the hands of men who knew how to use it.
In Brasília everything was chaotic. The capital city had been only recently inaugurated. More than half the government offices were still in Rio. Politicians, and particularly their wives and families, balked at exchanging the familiar amenities of the old capital for the windswept immensities of bare red clay and the dust of construction work of the fantastic new city on the plateau five hundred miles inland. Nie-meyer’s new congress building was striking to behold but inconvenient to operate. Even when the President could coax enough senators and deputies out to Brasília for a quorum he found it hard to keep their minds on constructive legislation. He was confronted by the fact that running a vast sprawling nation, where the problems of government were different in each different region, was a far more exacting task than acting the spellbinder as figurehead for that nation’s best organized state. Failure stared him in the face.
Lacerda now says that Jânio was a charlatan all along. He points out his slovenly working habits, his lack of education, that his only reading had been some Shakespeare and a little Zola. His taste in art Lacerda found atrocious. Though immensely clever at picking ideas out of other men’s mouths, Jânio, says Lacerda, always lacked the inner cohesion needed to face adversity. Still he can’t help admitting that at the time of Jânio’s inauguration, like millions of other Brazilians, he expected a miracle.
Unable to cope with the complications of reforming the federal government, Quadros began to listen to advisers who brought up the parallel of Fidel Castro in Cuba. Castro wasn’t plagued with a recalcitrant congress, with a faultfinding press or with powerful financial interests all tugging in different directions. Castro was having it all his own way. Instead of piecemeal reform, maybe Brazil needed a Castro-type revolution. Jânio’s gift for swaying the crowd was equal to Fidel’s. With dictatorial powers he could really use his new broom.
Quadros wanted Lacerda’s help in this half formulated enterprise. Members of his administration turned up in Rio, suggesting that Lacerda’s own work would be easier if the President and the state governors had more power. Lacerda’s answer was that Quadros had all the power he needed. He had the prestige. He had the backing of the whole population. What he must do was present an itemized program to congress. Popular clamor would do the rest.
Gradually it dawned on Lacerda that Quadros had no program to offer. He wanted power first. The program could wait. The newspapers were full of the handsome reception the President was giving to Fidel Castro’s mission to Brazil.
The old watchdog of democracy was aroused. He talked with other state governors and federal senators. He became convinced that something unhealthy was brewing at Brasília.
Although it was second nature to Lacerda to make his every thought public in his newspaper or on the air, he kept his doubts to himself until at last he could contain himself no longer; he must have it out with President Quadros.
Quadros was in Brasília. His wife, Dona Elvá de Quadros, whom Lacerda speaks of as a really nice sensible woman, was in Rio. Lacerda went to see her at the presidential residence and explained to her that he had to have a quiet talk with her husband. The answer was an invitation to dine that same night and the appearance of the President’s jet to transport Governor Lacerda to Brasília.
It was from the President’s military attaché, who met him at the airport, that Lacerda learned that Quadros had just given the most important Brazilian decoration to Castro’s chief assistant, “Ché” Guevara. The President’s household was caught by surprise.