Leonel Brizola
Encyclopedia
Leonel de Moura Brizola was a Brazil
ian politician
. Launched in politics by Getúlio Vargas
, Brizola was the only politician to serve as governor of two different states in the whole history of Brazil. In 1959 he was elected governor
of Rio Grande do Sul
, and in 1982 and 1990 he was elected governor of Rio de Janeiro
. He was also vice-president of the Socialist International
, as well as Honorary President of that organization for a few months, from October 2003 until his death. Brizola and his party (Democratic Labour Party
) preached and practiced a kind of social democratic left-wing policy.
against Rio Grande's dictator Borges de Medeiros
, Brizola was christened Itagiba, but early in life adopted the alias
of Leonel, for the rebel warlord Leonel Rocha, known as "The Muleteer of Freedom". He left his mother's house at eleven, working in Porto Alegre
as a paperboy
, shoeshiner
and other occasional jobs until completing high school and entering college, where he graduated in engineering
, a trade in which he never worked, as he entered professional politics in his early twenties, being elected to the Rio Grande State Assembly in 1946. By his marriage to Neusa Goulart, João Goulart
's sister, in which he had former President Getúlio Vargas as best man, Brizola became not only a wealthy landowner but also a regional leadership of the Brazilian Labour Party
(Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro or PTB). After Vargas's death, he inherited the undisputed regional leadership of his party, while his brother-in-law ruled the PTB national caucus. Both perpetuated Vargas' populist
tradition, specially, in Brizola's case, the practice of a direct personal link between charismatic leader and the broad masses. During the presidency of Goulart (1961–1964) Brizola was an important supporter of his brother-in-law, first as governor and later as a deputy in the National Congress of Brazil
.
As governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Brizola raised himself to preeminence for his social policies, expressed in the speedy building of public schools in poor neighbourhoods across the state (brizoletas) as well as for his nationalist policies, specially his nationalization of American public utilities trusts' assets in the state, such as ITT and Electric Bond & Share. He gained nationwide visibility mostly by acting in defense of democracy
and Goulart's rights as president. When Jânio Quadros
resigned from the presidency in August 1961, the Brazilian military ministers in the Cabinet attempted to prevent Vice-President Goulart from becoming president for his allegedly ties with the Communist movement. After winning support from the local army commander, General Machado Lopes, Brizola forged a pool of radio stations in Rio Grande do Sul, the so-called "cadeia da legalidade" (legality chain), issuing a nationwide call from Palácio Piratini denouncing the intentions behind the Cabinet ministers' actions and conclaimimg common citizens to go into the streets protesting. Also, Brizola toyed with handing out firearms to civilians, surrendered the State Police Force to the regional army command and began organizing paramilitary Committees of Democratic Resistance. After twelve days of impending civil war, the attempted coup failed, and Goulart was inaugurated as president.
Brizola, however, had developed presidential aspirations of his own, which he could not legally fulfill, as Brazilian law didn't allow close relatives of the acting President to present themselves as candidates for the following term of office; therefore, between 1961 and 1964, Brizola acted as the radical wing of the independent left, pressuring for an agenda of radical social and political reforms in general as well as for a specific change in the electoral legislation that allowed for his presidential candidacy in 1965. Seem as personally authoritarian and quarrelsome, and not above dealing with his enemies by means of physical aggression - as in a famous case when he hit the maverick rightwing journalist David Nasser in public at the middle of the Rio de janeiro airport - Brizola acted in the political game around the Goulart government - specially after his landslide 1962 election to Congress as a representative for the State of Guanabara - as a freebooter, being feared and hated by both the moderate Left and the Right.
In early 1963, Brizola took control of a radio broadcast, Rádio Mayrink Veiga, which he used as a means to propagate his fiery rhetorics, at the same time toying with constituting a grassroots network of political cells composed of small groups of armed men, the so-called "elevensome" (Grupos de Onze - paramilitary parties modelled on a soccer team). In a classification developed by Goulart's Foreign Minister and leader of the moderate left, Santiago Dantas, Brizola was the epitome of the "negative left" - a definition somewhat obscure, given the notorious absence, in Brizola's case, of clear ideological commitments. Generally, he stood for an extreme Left Nationalism (land reform, extension of the franchise for illiterates and NCOs)and for tight controls over foreign investment, something that earned him the hatred of the American ambassador to Brazil, Lincoln Gordon
, who went so far as to compare Brizola's propaganda techniques with those of Joseph Goebbels
- a mood partaken by most of contemporary American midia In late 1963, after a conservative plan of economic adjustment (Plano Trienal) devised by the Ministry of Planning Celso Furtado
had failed, Brizola involved himself in a bid for power by means of an attempt to topple Goulart's economically conservative Minister of Finance Carvalho Pinto in order to take the post himself, an attempt that failed—the post was given to a nonentity—but made much to radicalize Brazilian political life at the time.
successfully overthrew Goulart, Brizola one of the few political leaders to offer active support for the president, sheltering him in Porto Alegre
, capital of Rio Grande do Sul with the hope that democracy would be restored. (Governor Miguel Arraes of Pernambuco
also supported Goulart, but Arraes was detained as soon as the coup was declared.) Because of his connection with Goulart, the military regime exiled Brizola in 1964; he went to Uruguay
, where Goulart had gone into exile earlier that year.
Excepted for a botched attempt by his sympathizers at the articulation of a theater for guerrila warfare in the mountains of Caparaó
, which was suppressed without a single fire being shot and raised suspicions about his mismanaging of funds offered him by Fidel Castro
- Brizola spent the first ten-odd years of the Brazilian military dictatorship generally left on his own in Uruguay, where he managed his wife's landed property and kept aloof from various opposition movements in Brazil. In the late 1970s, however, the emergence of a military dictatorship in Uruguay itself allowed the Brazilian government to pressure the authorities of Uruguay to seize Brizola, into the framework of Operation Condor
, the cooperation between Latin American dictatorships for hounding leftist opponents. Brizola may have owned his physical survival to the efforts of the Jimmy Carter
administration to curb Human Right abuses in Latin America, as in 1977 he was deported from Uruguay for alleged "violations of norms of political asylum", and was given immediate asylum in the United States.
According to recent declassified Brazilian diplomatic documents, on the 20th. of September 1977, Brizola and his wife went to Buenos Aires
- from whence they would take a plane to the USA, and at the time a very dangerous place for Latin American exiles - followed by American CIA agents, staying overnight in a CIA safe house at the Argentinian capital, from where they boarded a nonstop flight to New York
on September 22. Afterwards, Brizola moved from the USA to live in Portugal
.
In the late 1970s the Brazilian military dictatorship was in the wane; in 1978, as passports were quietly being given to prominent political exiles, however, Brizola remained blacklisted, alongside with a core group of supposedly "radicals" as "public enemy number one", and was refused the right of return. It was only in 1979, after a general amnesty
, that his exile came to an end.
as a radical nationalist Left mass movement and as a confederacy of historical Vargoist bigwigs. However he was hampered in that by the emergence of news grassroots movements such as the new trade unionism centered around the São Paulo metalworkers and their leader Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, as well as the Catholic grassroots organizations of the rural poor spawned by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, CNBB. Eventually, he was denied the right to use the historical name of the Brazilian Labour Party, previously conceded to a rival group centered around a military dictatorship-friendly figure, the Congresswoman Ivete Vargas, Getúlio Vargas' grandniece. Instead, Brizola
had to found an entirely new party, the Democratic Labour Party
(Partido Democrático Trabalhista, PDT). The party joined the Socialist International
in 1986, and since then the party symbol contains a hand with a red flower (symbol of SI).
Brizola quickly restored his position of political prominence in his home state of Rio Grande do Sul, at the same time acquiring political preeminence in the State of Rio de Janeiro, where, en lieu of associating with official trade unionism, he searched a basis of support among the unorganized urban poor, by means of an ideological tie-in between traditional radical nationalism and a charismatic lumpen
-friendly populism, in what a scholar called "the aesthetics of the ugly": for his accusers, Brizola and his Brizolismo stood for shady deals with the dangerous classes; for its supporters, they stood for the empowerment (although in a paternalistic fashion) of the destitute, the lowest, least organized and poorest layers of the working classes ("Politics, from a Brizolista viewpoint, is above all to assume a radical option for the poor and the meek"). In short, the late Brizola shunned the class-based, corporatist character of his early populism
, adopting instead a Christian rhetorics of friendship to the "people" in general, more akin to the Russian narodnik
s than to classical Latin American populism. Such radical populism, however, required the charisma
tic and highly personal leadership of Brizola's in order to function effectively; in his absence - or without the presence, at least, of his persona - the PDT could never become a contender to power, something that hampered its development on the national level.
In 1982, Brizola entered the race for governor of the State of Rio de Janeiro, in the first free and direct gubernatorial elections in that state since 1965. He ran a ticket of candidates for Congress that tried to compensate his party's lack of cadres by offering a rooster of people with no previous ties to professional politics, such as the Native Brazilian leader Mário Juruna
and the singer Agnaldo Timóteo. At the same time, he centered his personal campaign on burning issues such as education and public security, offering a candidacy that had clear oppositional overtones and proposed to upheld the Vargoist legacy. By developing a nucleus of combative militants around himself - the so-called Brizolândia - Brizola led a campaign that melded violent confrontations and street brawls with a paradoxically festive mood. Brizola kept and expanded his nationwide political visibility during his controversial first term (1983–1987) as governor of Rio, during which he developed his early education policies in a grander scale, by means of an ambitious programme of construction of huge fundamental and high school buildings, the so-called CIEPs(" Integrated Centers for Public Education") whose architectural project had been made by Oscar Niemeyer
and were supposed to function on a day long base, providing for feeding as well as for recreational activities to students. At the same time, he developed policies for providing public services and recognized housing property for dwellers in shantytowns. In a nutshell, Brizola opposed policies for shantytowns based on forcible resettlement to housing projects, proposing instead, in the words of his chief adviser Darcy Ribeiro
,that "slums are not part of the problem, but part of the solution" - once property rights were acknowledged and basic infrastructure provided, it was up to the shantytown dwellers themselves to find their own solutions as far as house-building was concerned.
Also, Brizola adopted a radically new policy for police action in the poor suburbs and slums (favela
s) within the Rio de Janeiro
metropolitan area
. Alleging old relations and modus operandi were founded on repression, conflict and disrespect, he ordered the state police to be refrain from random criminal-searching raids at favelas and also repressed the activities of vigilante death squads, which included policemen on leave. These policies were opposed by the Right, who contended that it made slums an open territory for organized crime
, represented by huge gangs like Comando Vermelho
(Red Command), by means of a conflation between common criminality and leftism: it was alleged that gangs had been born through the association of common convicted prisoners and leftist political prisoners in the 1970s.
Brizola's policies, which included a no small amount of porkbarrel poor management and wild spending of public funds, nevertheless procured for him the political clout required for running for president in 1989.
It was during the 1989 election that Brizola's charismatic leadership would expose its shortcomings, as he finished the first run third, losing the second position, which would have qualified him for a runoff, by a very narrow margin to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
, whose Workers' Party
had exactly the cadres, the professional activism and the deep penetration in the organized social movements that Brizola's lacked. Eventually, Fernando Collor de Mello
was elected in the runoff. Brizola carried the elections regionally, winning huge majorities in both his home state of Rio Grande do Sul and in his adopted home state of Rio de Janeiro, but never got more than 2% of the votes from São Paulo state.
Brizola, however, was a staunch supporter of Lula's candidacy in the 1989 run-off elections, something he justified by an humorous declaration before PDT cronies the was to remain to this day in Brazilian political lore: "I will be candid: a politician from the old school, Senator Pinheiro Machado, once said that politics is the art of swallowing toads (engolir sapo). Wouldn't that be fascinating to forcefeed Brazilian élites and having them to swallow the Bearded Toad, Lula?"
schemes that would lead to Collor's 1992 impeachment.
Clearly emptied of national support and forsaken by close associates such as Cesar Maia
and Anthony Garotinho
, who decided to abandon Brizola's ship for the sake of their personal careers, Brizola nevertheless ran again for president on the PDT's ticket, amid the success of Minister of Finance and presidential candidate Fernando Henrique Cardoso
's anti-inflation Plano Real
. The 1994 presidential elections were a huge failure for Brizola, who scored a poor fifth place on an election in which Cardoso was elected in the first round by an absolute majority. It was the end of Brizolismo as a national political force, as expressed by the fact that, some weeks before actual elections, the kiosk in downtown Rio de Janeiro, around which Brizolandia cronies met, was torn down by City Hall officers, never to be rebuilt. Four years later, Brizola contented himself with a Vice Presidential candidacy on Lula's ticket: both lost to Cardoso.
In his latest years, however, Brizola took still another shift in his jagged relationship with Lula and the Workers' Party, refusing to support them in the first round of the 2002 presidential elections, supporting instead the candidacy of Ciro Gomes
for president, while personally entering the race for a seat in the Senate. Gomes finished third, while Lula was elected president and Brizola lost his bid for the Senate, in what was his end even as a regional force. The PDT had a weak showing against new parties in Brazil's political scene, so Brizola became a secondary figure in his last two years. Despite supporting Lula at some periods during his career, Brizola's last public acts were criticizing Lula for what he termed neoliberalist
policies and for neglecting traditional left-wing and workers' struggles.
Brizola died in 2004, after a heart attack
.
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
ian politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
. Launched in politics by Getúlio Vargas
Getúlio Vargas
Getúlio Dornelles Vargas served as President of Brazil, first as dictator, from 1930 to 1945, and in a democratically elected term from 1951 until his suicide in 1954. Vargas led Brazil for 18 years, the most for any President, and second in Brazilian history to Emperor Pedro II...
, Brizola was the only politician to serve as governor of two different states in the whole history of Brazil. In 1959 he was elected governor
Governor
A governor is a governing official, usually the executive of a non-sovereign level of government, ranking under the head of state...
of Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine...
, and in 1982 and 1990 he was elected governor of Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro (state)
Rio de Janeiro is one of the 27 states of Brazil.Rio de Janeiro has the second largest economy of Brazil behind only São Paulo state.The state of Rio de Janeiro is located within the Brazilian geopolitical region classified as the Southeast...
. He was also vice-president of the Socialist International
Socialist International
The Socialist International is a worldwide organization of democratic socialist, social democratic and labour political parties. It was formed in 1951.- History :...
, as well as Honorary President of that organization for a few months, from October 2003 until his death. Brizola and his party (Democratic Labour Party
Democratic Labour Party (Brazil)
The Democratic Labour Party is a populist, democratic socialist political party of Brazil. It was founded in 1979 by left-wing leader Leonel Brizola as an attempt to reorganize the Brazilian leftist forces during the end of the Brazilian military dictatorship...
) preached and practiced a kind of social democratic left-wing policy.
Early Life and Rise Unto Preeminence (1922-1964)
The son of a small farmer who was killed when fighting as a volunteer in the 1923 local civil war for the rebel leader Assis BrasilAssis Brasil
Assis Brasil is a municipality located in the south of the Brazilian state of Acre. Its population is 5351 and its area is 2,876 km².-Towns and villages:*Abismo*Assis Brasil - capital*Maloca*Reserva Extrema*São Francisco, Acre...
against Rio Grande's dictator Borges de Medeiros
Borges de Medeiros
Antônio Augusto Borges de Medeiros was a Brazilian lawyer and politician, and the President of Rio Grande do Sul for 25 years, during the period of Brazilian history known as the República Velha....
, Brizola was christened Itagiba, but early in life adopted the alias
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
of Leonel, for the rebel warlord Leonel Rocha, known as "The Muleteer of Freedom". He left his mother's house at eleven, working in Porto Alegre
Porto Alegre
Porto Alegre is the tenth most populous municipality in Brazil, with 1,409,939 inhabitants, and the centre of Brazil's fourth largest metropolitan area . It is also the capital city of the southernmost Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. The city is the southernmost capital city of a Brazilian...
as a paperboy
Paperboy
A paperboy is the general name for a person employed by a newspaper, They are often used around the office to run low end errands. They make copies and distribute them. Paperboys traditionally were and are still often portrayed on television and movies as preteen boys, often on a bicycle...
, shoeshiner
Shoeshiner
Shoeshiner or boot polisher is a profession in which a person polishes shoes with shoe polish. They are often known as shoeshine boys because the job is traditionally that of a male child. In the leather fetish communities, they are often called bootblacks...
and other occasional jobs until completing high school and entering college, where he graduated in engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
, a trade in which he never worked, as he entered professional politics in his early twenties, being elected to the Rio Grande State Assembly in 1946. By his marriage to Neusa Goulart, João Goulart
João Goulart
João Belchior Marques Goulart was a Brazilian politician and the 24th President of Brazil until a military coup d'état deposed him on April 1, 1964. He is considered to have been the last left-wing President of the country until Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office in 2003.-Name:João Goulart is...
's sister, in which he had former President Getúlio Vargas as best man, Brizola became not only a wealthy landowner but also a regional leadership of the Brazilian Labour Party
Brazilian Labour Party (historical)
The Brazilian Labour Party was a center-left populist political party in Brazil founded in 1945 by supporters of the late Getúlio Vargas. It was dismantled by the military after 1964 coup d'état.-History:...
(Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro or PTB). After Vargas's death, he inherited the undisputed regional leadership of his party, while his brother-in-law ruled the PTB national caucus. Both perpetuated Vargas' populist
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
tradition, specially, in Brizola's case, the practice of a direct personal link between charismatic leader and the broad masses. During the presidency of Goulart (1961–1964) Brizola was an important supporter of his brother-in-law, first as governor and later as a deputy in the National Congress of Brazil
National Congress of Brazil
The National Congress of Brazil is the legislative body of Brazil's federal government.Unlike regional legislative bodies – Legislative Assemblies and City Councils -, the Congress is bicameral, composed of the Federal Senate and the Chamber of Deputies .The Senate represents the 26 states and...
.
As governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Brizola raised himself to preeminence for his social policies, expressed in the speedy building of public schools in poor neighbourhoods across the state (brizoletas) as well as for his nationalist policies, specially his nationalization of American public utilities trusts' assets in the state, such as ITT and Electric Bond & Share. He gained nationwide visibility mostly by acting in defense of democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
and Goulart's rights as president. When Jânio Quadros
Jânio Quadros
Jânio da Silva Quadros , , was a Brazilian politician who served as President of Brazil for only 7 months in 1961.-Career:...
resigned from the presidency in August 1961, the Brazilian military ministers in the Cabinet attempted to prevent Vice-President Goulart from becoming president for his allegedly ties with the Communist movement. After winning support from the local army commander, General Machado Lopes, Brizola forged a pool of radio stations in Rio Grande do Sul, the so-called "cadeia da legalidade" (legality chain), issuing a nationwide call from Palácio Piratini denouncing the intentions behind the Cabinet ministers' actions and conclaimimg common citizens to go into the streets protesting. Also, Brizola toyed with handing out firearms to civilians, surrendered the State Police Force to the regional army command and began organizing paramilitary Committees of Democratic Resistance. After twelve days of impending civil war, the attempted coup failed, and Goulart was inaugurated as president.
Brizola, however, had developed presidential aspirations of his own, which he could not legally fulfill, as Brazilian law didn't allow close relatives of the acting President to present themselves as candidates for the following term of office; therefore, between 1961 and 1964, Brizola acted as the radical wing of the independent left, pressuring for an agenda of radical social and political reforms in general as well as for a specific change in the electoral legislation that allowed for his presidential candidacy in 1965. Seem as personally authoritarian and quarrelsome, and not above dealing with his enemies by means of physical aggression - as in a famous case when he hit the maverick rightwing journalist David Nasser in public at the middle of the Rio de janeiro airport - Brizola acted in the political game around the Goulart government - specially after his landslide 1962 election to Congress as a representative for the State of Guanabara - as a freebooter, being feared and hated by both the moderate Left and the Right.
In early 1963, Brizola took control of a radio broadcast, Rádio Mayrink Veiga, which he used as a means to propagate his fiery rhetorics, at the same time toying with constituting a grassroots network of political cells composed of small groups of armed men, the so-called "elevensome" (Grupos de Onze - paramilitary parties modelled on a soccer team). In a classification developed by Goulart's Foreign Minister and leader of the moderate left, Santiago Dantas, Brizola was the epitome of the "negative left" - a definition somewhat obscure, given the notorious absence, in Brizola's case, of clear ideological commitments. Generally, he stood for an extreme Left Nationalism (land reform, extension of the franchise for illiterates and NCOs)and for tight controls over foreign investment, something that earned him the hatred of the American ambassador to Brazil, Lincoln Gordon
Lincoln Gordon
Abraham Lincoln Gordon was a United States Ambassador to Brazil and the 9th President of the Johns Hopkins University . Gordon had a career both in government and in academia, becoming a Professor of International Economic Relations at Harvard University in the 1950s, before turning his attention...
, who went so far as to compare Brizola's propaganda techniques with those of Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
- a mood partaken by most of contemporary American midia In late 1963, after a conservative plan of economic adjustment (Plano Trienal) devised by the Ministry of Planning Celso Furtado
Celso Furtado
Celso Monteiro Furtado was an important Brazilian economist and one of the most distinguished intellectuals of his country during the 20th century. His work focuses on development and underdevelopment and on the persistence of poverty in peripheral countries throughout the world...
had failed, Brizola involved himself in a bid for power by means of an attempt to topple Goulart's economically conservative Minister of Finance Carvalho Pinto in order to take the post himself, an attempt that failed—the post was given to a nonentity—but made much to radicalize Brazilian political life at the time.
Exile and Return (1964-1979)
In April 1964, when a coup d'étatCoup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
successfully overthrew Goulart, Brizola one of the few political leaders to offer active support for the president, sheltering him in Porto Alegre
Porto Alegre
Porto Alegre is the tenth most populous municipality in Brazil, with 1,409,939 inhabitants, and the centre of Brazil's fourth largest metropolitan area . It is also the capital city of the southernmost Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. The city is the southernmost capital city of a Brazilian...
, capital of Rio Grande do Sul with the hope that democracy would be restored. (Governor Miguel Arraes of Pernambuco
Pernambuco
Pernambuco is a state of Brazil, located in the Northeast region of the country. To the north are the states of Paraíba and Ceará, to the west is Piauí, to the south are Alagoas and Bahia, and to the east is the Atlantic Ocean. There are about of beaches, some of the most beautiful in the...
also supported Goulart, but Arraes was detained as soon as the coup was declared.) Because of his connection with Goulart, the military regime exiled Brizola in 1964; he went to Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
, where Goulart had gone into exile earlier that year.
Excepted for a botched attempt by his sympathizers at the articulation of a theater for guerrila warfare in the mountains of Caparaó
Caparaó
Caparaó is a Brazilian municipality located in the state of Minas Gerais. The city belongs to the mesoregion of Zona da Mata and to the microregion of Manhuaçu. The elevation of the city is 843m. -See also:* List of municipalities in Minas Gerais...
, which was suppressed without a single fire being shot and raised suspicions about his mismanaging of funds offered him by Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
- Brizola spent the first ten-odd years of the Brazilian military dictatorship generally left on his own in Uruguay, where he managed his wife's landed property and kept aloof from various opposition movements in Brazil. In the late 1970s, however, the emergence of a military dictatorship in Uruguay itself allowed the Brazilian government to pressure the authorities of Uruguay to seize Brizola, into the framework of Operation Condor
Operation Condor
Operation Condor , was a campaign of political repression involving assassination and intelligence operations officially implemented in 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America...
, the cooperation between Latin American dictatorships for hounding leftist opponents. Brizola may have owned his physical survival to the efforts of the Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
administration to curb Human Right abuses in Latin America, as in 1977 he was deported from Uruguay for alleged "violations of norms of political asylum", and was given immediate asylum in the United States.
According to recent declassified Brazilian diplomatic documents, on the 20th. of September 1977, Brizola and his wife went to Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
- from whence they would take a plane to the USA, and at the time a very dangerous place for Latin American exiles - followed by American CIA agents, staying overnight in a CIA safe house at the Argentinian capital, from where they boarded a nonstop flight to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
on September 22. Afterwards, Brizola moved from the USA to live in Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
.
In the late 1970s the Brazilian military dictatorship was in the wane; in 1978, as passports were quietly being given to prominent political exiles, however, Brizola remained blacklisted, alongside with a core group of supposedly "radicals" as "public enemy number one", and was refused the right of return. It was only in 1979, after a general amnesty
Amnesty
Amnesty is a legislative or executive act by which a state restores those who may have been guilty of an offense against it to the positions of innocent people, without changing the laws defining the offense. It includes more than pardon, in as much as it obliterates all legal remembrance of the...
, that his exile came to an end.
Late Brizolismo (1979-1989)
Brizola returned to Brazil with the avowed intention of restoring the Brazilian Labour PartyBrazilian Labour Party (historical)
The Brazilian Labour Party was a center-left populist political party in Brazil founded in 1945 by supporters of the late Getúlio Vargas. It was dismantled by the military after 1964 coup d'état.-History:...
as a radical nationalist Left mass movement and as a confederacy of historical Vargoist bigwigs. However he was hampered in that by the emergence of news grassroots movements such as the new trade unionism centered around the São Paulo metalworkers and their leader Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, as well as the Catholic grassroots organizations of the rural poor spawned by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, CNBB. Eventually, he was denied the right to use the historical name of the Brazilian Labour Party, previously conceded to a rival group centered around a military dictatorship-friendly figure, the Congresswoman Ivete Vargas, Getúlio Vargas' grandniece. Instead, Brizola
had to found an entirely new party, the Democratic Labour Party
Democratic Labour Party (Brazil)
The Democratic Labour Party is a populist, democratic socialist political party of Brazil. It was founded in 1979 by left-wing leader Leonel Brizola as an attempt to reorganize the Brazilian leftist forces during the end of the Brazilian military dictatorship...
(Partido Democrático Trabalhista, PDT). The party joined the Socialist International
Socialist International
The Socialist International is a worldwide organization of democratic socialist, social democratic and labour political parties. It was formed in 1951.- History :...
in 1986, and since then the party symbol contains a hand with a red flower (symbol of SI).
Brizola quickly restored his position of political prominence in his home state of Rio Grande do Sul, at the same time acquiring political preeminence in the State of Rio de Janeiro, where, en lieu of associating with official trade unionism, he searched a basis of support among the unorganized urban poor, by means of an ideological tie-in between traditional radical nationalism and a charismatic lumpen
Lumpen
Lumpen can refer to:* Lumpen , a Chicago-based art and politics magazine* Lumpenproletariat, a term in Marxist economics* Lumpenbourgeoisie* Swedish slang for military service, adopted by armed forces as a near-formal word....
-friendly populism, in what a scholar called "the aesthetics of the ugly": for his accusers, Brizola and his Brizolismo stood for shady deals with the dangerous classes; for its supporters, they stood for the empowerment (although in a paternalistic fashion) of the destitute, the lowest, least organized and poorest layers of the working classes ("Politics, from a Brizolista viewpoint, is above all to assume a radical option for the poor and the meek"). In short, the late Brizola shunned the class-based, corporatist character of his early populism
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
, adopting instead a Christian rhetorics of friendship to the "people" in general, more akin to the Russian narodnik
Narodnik
Narodniks was the name for Russian socially conscious members of the middle class in the 1860s and 1870s. Their ideas and actions were known as Narodnichestvo which can be translated as "Peopleism", though is more commonly rendered "populism"...
s than to classical Latin American populism. Such radical populism, however, required the charisma
Charisma
The term charisma has two senses: 1) compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others, 2) a divinely conferred power or talent. For some theological usages the term is rendered charism, with a meaning the same as sense 2...
tic and highly personal leadership of Brizola's in order to function effectively; in his absence - or without the presence, at least, of his persona - the PDT could never become a contender to power, something that hampered its development on the national level.
In 1982, Brizola entered the race for governor of the State of Rio de Janeiro, in the first free and direct gubernatorial elections in that state since 1965. He ran a ticket of candidates for Congress that tried to compensate his party's lack of cadres by offering a rooster of people with no previous ties to professional politics, such as the Native Brazilian leader Mário Juruna
Mário Juruna
Mário Juruna was the first national-level federal representative in Brazil that belonged to an indigenous people....
and the singer Agnaldo Timóteo. At the same time, he centered his personal campaign on burning issues such as education and public security, offering a candidacy that had clear oppositional overtones and proposed to upheld the Vargoist legacy. By developing a nucleus of combative militants around himself - the so-called Brizolândia - Brizola led a campaign that melded violent confrontations and street brawls with a paradoxically festive mood. Brizola kept and expanded his nationwide political visibility during his controversial first term (1983–1987) as governor of Rio, during which he developed his early education policies in a grander scale, by means of an ambitious programme of construction of huge fundamental and high school buildings, the so-called CIEPs(" Integrated Centers for Public Education") whose architectural project had been made by Oscar Niemeyer
Oscar Niemeyer
Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho is a Brazilian architect specializing in international modern architecture...
and were supposed to function on a day long base, providing for feeding as well as for recreational activities to students. At the same time, he developed policies for providing public services and recognized housing property for dwellers in shantytowns. In a nutshell, Brizola opposed policies for shantytowns based on forcible resettlement to housing projects, proposing instead, in the words of his chief adviser Darcy Ribeiro
Darcy Ribeiro
Darcy Ribeiro was a Brazilian anthropologist, author and politician. Darcy Ribeiro's ideas of Latin American identity have influenced several later scholars of Latin American studies...
,that "slums are not part of the problem, but part of the solution" - once property rights were acknowledged and basic infrastructure provided, it was up to the shantytown dwellers themselves to find their own solutions as far as house-building was concerned.
Also, Brizola adopted a radically new policy for police action in the poor suburbs and slums (favela
Favela
A favela is the generally used term for a shanty town in Brazil. In the late 18th century, the first settlements were called bairros africanos . This was the place where former slaves with no land ownership and no options for work lived. Over the years, many freed black slaves moved in...
s) within the Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
metropolitan area
Metropolitan area
The term metropolitan area refers to a region consisting of a densely populated urban core and its less-populated surrounding territories, sharing industry, infrastructure, and housing. A metropolitan area usually encompasses multiple jurisdictions and municipalities: neighborhoods, townships,...
. Alleging old relations and modus operandi were founded on repression, conflict and disrespect, he ordered the state police to be refrain from random criminal-searching raids at favelas and also repressed the activities of vigilante death squads, which included policemen on leave. These policies were opposed by the Right, who contended that it made slums an open territory for organized crime
Organized crime
Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...
, represented by huge gangs like Comando Vermelho
Comando Vermelho
Comando Vermelho is a Brazilian criminal organization founded in 1979 in the prison Cândido Mendes, on the Ilha Grande island, Rio de Janeiro, as a collection of ordinary convicts and left-wing political prisoners who were members of the Falange Vermelha , which fought the military dictatorship...
(Red Command), by means of a conflation between common criminality and leftism: it was alleged that gangs had been born through the association of common convicted prisoners and leftist political prisoners in the 1970s.
Brizola's policies, which included a no small amount of porkbarrel poor management and wild spending of public funds, nevertheless procured for him the political clout required for running for president in 1989.
It was during the 1989 election that Brizola's charismatic leadership would expose its shortcomings, as he finished the first run third, losing the second position, which would have qualified him for a runoff, by a very narrow margin to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva , known popularly as Lula, served as the 35th President of Brazil from 2003 to 2010.A founding member of the Workers' Party , he ran for President three times unsuccessfully, first in the 1989 election. Lula achieved victory in the 2002 election, and was inaugurated as...
, whose Workers' Party
Workers' Party (Brazil)
The Workers' Party is a democratic socialist political party in Brazil. Launched in 1980, it is recognized as one of the largest and most important left-wing movements of Latin America. It governs at the federal level in a coalition government with several other parties since January 1, 2003...
had exactly the cadres, the professional activism and the deep penetration in the organized social movements that Brizola's lacked. Eventually, Fernando Collor de Mello
Fernando Collor de Mello
Fernando Affonso Collor de Mello was the 32nd president of Brazil from 1990 to 1992, when he resigned in a failed attempt to stop his trial of impeachment by the Brazilian Senate...
was elected in the runoff. Brizola carried the elections regionally, winning huge majorities in both his home state of Rio Grande do Sul and in his adopted home state of Rio de Janeiro, but never got more than 2% of the votes from São Paulo state.
Brizola, however, was a staunch supporter of Lula's candidacy in the 1989 run-off elections, something he justified by an humorous declaration before PDT cronies the was to remain to this day in Brazilian political lore: "I will be candid: a politician from the old school, Senator Pinheiro Machado, once said that politics is the art of swallowing toads (engolir sapo). Wouldn't that be fascinating to forcefeed Brazilian élites and having them to swallow the Bearded Toad, Lula?"
Political Decline and Death (1989-2004)
After the 1989 election, there were still chances that Brizola could achieve his dream of winning the Presidency if only he could overcome his party's absence of national penetration. Therefore, some of his advisers proposed him a candidacy to the Senate in the ensuing 1990 elections, something that could offer him national highlights. Brizola, however, refused, preferring to present himself as a candidate to the gubernatorial elections in the same year, winning a second term as Governor of Rio de Janeiro by a first-round majority of 60.88% of all valid ballots. The second term of Brizola as Rio's governor was a political failure, whose hallmark were the various instances of disorganized management caused by Brizola's ultra centralism and distaste for proper bureaucratic procedure, being further marred by the support eventually offered by Brizola to the Collor administration in exchange for funds for public works, something that made Brizola to be charged with collaborating with the embezzlementEmbezzlement
Embezzlement is the act of dishonestly appropriating or secreting assets by one or more individuals to whom such assets have been entrusted....
schemes that would lead to Collor's 1992 impeachment.
Clearly emptied of national support and forsaken by close associates such as Cesar Maia
Cesar Maia
César Epitácio Maia is a Brazilian politician, notable for having been elected three times for mayor of Rio de Janeiro.A native of Rio, born in 1945, Maia was forced to leave Brazil in exile during the 1960s on account of his affiliation with the Brazilian Communist Party...
and Anthony Garotinho
Anthony Garotinho
Anthony William "Garotinho" Matheus de Oliveira is a Brazilian politician. He started as a radio presenter and changed his name legally to Garotinho - which means "Little Boy" - after it brought him success in his early career as a football commentator...
, who decided to abandon Brizola's ship for the sake of their personal careers, Brizola nevertheless ran again for president on the PDT's ticket, amid the success of Minister of Finance and presidential candidate Fernando Henrique Cardoso
Fernando Henrique Cardoso
Fernando Henrique Cardoso – also known by his initials FHC – was the 34th President of the Federative Republic of Brazil for two terms from January 1, 1995 to December 31, 2002. He is an accomplished sociologist, professor and politician...
's anti-inflation Plano Real
Plano Real
The Plano Real was a set of measures taken to stabilize the Brazilian economy in early 1994, under the direction of Fernando Henrique Cardoso as the Minister of Finance, during the presidency of Itamar Franco....
. The 1994 presidential elections were a huge failure for Brizola, who scored a poor fifth place on an election in which Cardoso was elected in the first round by an absolute majority. It was the end of Brizolismo as a national political force, as expressed by the fact that, some weeks before actual elections, the kiosk in downtown Rio de Janeiro, around which Brizolandia cronies met, was torn down by City Hall officers, never to be rebuilt. Four years later, Brizola contented himself with a Vice Presidential candidacy on Lula's ticket: both lost to Cardoso.
In his latest years, however, Brizola took still another shift in his jagged relationship with Lula and the Workers' Party, refusing to support them in the first round of the 2002 presidential elections, supporting instead the candidacy of Ciro Gomes
Ciro Gomes
Ciro Ferreira Gomes is a Brazilian lawyer and politician. He was a founding member of the then-center-left Brazilian Social Democracy Party , but left the party in 1996. He later moved to the Socialist People's Party and ran as the PPS' presidential candidate in 1998 and 2002...
for president, while personally entering the race for a seat in the Senate. Gomes finished third, while Lula was elected president and Brizola lost his bid for the Senate, in what was his end even as a regional force. The PDT had a weak showing against new parties in Brazil's political scene, so Brizola became a secondary figure in his last two years. Despite supporting Lula at some periods during his career, Brizola's last public acts were criticizing Lula for what he termed neoliberalist
Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is a market-driven approach to economic and social policy based on neoclassical theories of economics that emphasizes the efficiency of private enterprise, liberalized trade and relatively open markets, and therefore seeks to maximize the role of the private sector in determining the...
policies and for neglecting traditional left-wing and workers' struggles.
Brizola died in 2004, after a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
.