Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917–1947 9781477303566

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BRAZIL AND THE SOVIET CHALLENGE, 1917-1947

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BRAZIL AND THE SOVIET CHALLENGE,

1917-1947

STANLEY E. HILTON

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS, AUSTIN

Copyright © 1991 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, Box 7819, Austin, Texas 78713-7819.

§ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39-48-1984. This publication was partially supported by the Center for Soviet and East European Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hilton, Stanley E., 1940Brazil and the Soviet challenge, 1917 - 1947 / by Stanley E. Hilton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-292-70781-9 (cloth) 1. Brazil-Foreign relations-Soviet Union. 2. Soviet Union- Foreign relations-Brazil. 3. BrazilPolitics and government-1889-1930. 4. Brazil-Politics and government-1930-1954. 5. Politicians-Brazil-Attitudes. 6. Brazil-National security. 1. Title. F2523 ·5·s65H55 1991 327.81047-dc20 90-49050 CIP

To Gabriela and Louise, frutos de minha paixão por coisas brasileiras

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Contents

PREFACE

ix

1. Challenge and Response (1917-1930)

1

2. The Debate over Trade and Recognition (1930-1934) 3. Red Rebellion (1935)

22

53

4. Toward the National Security State (1935-1937) 5. The Battle on the External Front (1935-1937) 6. Coming of the Estado Novo (1937)

73 94

121

7. Dictatorship, War, and Internal Security (1937-1941) 8. Global Conflict and Rapprochement (1941-1945) 9. Cold War Antagonisms (1945-1947) NOTES

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

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Preface

background of Brazil's contemporary foreign policy is a relatively unexplored one, and the scarce literature available deals primarily with the United States and secondarily with Germany and Great Britain.1 This emphasis on major Western countries seems appropriate because they traditionally have been Brazil's leading trade partners and sources of investment capital, technology, and military aid—in Germany's case, even immigrants— for not only Brazil, but Latin America as a whole.2 The United States, especially, has played a preponderant role in Brazilian foreign policy considerations. Indeed, at the turn of the century Brazilian strategists assigned a critical place in their foreign policy to the United States, seeing in a special relationship with Washington the key to protecting Brazil's national security vis-à-vis historic rival Argentina, and perhaps expansionist European powers, and to ensuring Brazil's long-range paramountcy in South America.3 The subject of this book, Brazilian policy toward the Soviet Union during the first thirty years after the Bolshevik Revolution, has been addressed only implicitly or tangentially by scholars interested in the Communist movement in Brazil or very briefly in the few existing broad commentaries on Soviet or Soviet-directed activities in Latin America. The fact that Rio de Janeiro and Moscow between 1918 and 1961 maintained formal diplomatic ties for only thirty-one months at the end of World War II would seem to be strong prima facie evidence for ignoring what apparently did not exist anyway. But to ask why the two countries remained officially apart for so long and why it proved impossible to establish permanent relations in the mid-1940s is to open up a fruitful avenue of inquiry. How did the Brazilian foreign policy elite perceive the USSR and particularly Soviet intentions? What role did the Kremlin seem to reserve for Brazil in its external program? What did the Brazilian government do to protect the country from the apparent threat emanating from THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY

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Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917-1947

Moscow? These are basic questions guiding this evaluation of Brazil's response to the Soviet challenge. The analytical focus of this book is thus a dual one: the images of the USSR, particularly of its policies and goals, held by the Brazilian foreign policy elite, and the transformation of those images into a program of anti-Communist action. The result is a study of the linkage between threat perception and political conduct. As used here, "foreign policy elite" refers basically to political leaders, senior diplomats, and high-ranking military officers. Historically speaking, the formulation of national strategy and foreign policy in Brazil was not an open process. The political system itself was highly elitist. The overwhelming majority of the people were excluded from the electorate because of illiteracy, and women were not allowed to vote in national elections until 1933. For fifteen of the thirty years covered in this study, moreover, the country lived under either outright dictatorship or a modified form of martial law ("state of siege" or "state of war"), which obviously meant restrictions on constitutional liberties and a further centralization of policy formulation. In other polities, characterized by pluralistic decision making, representatives of organized labor, for example, might well be included in the foreign policy elite. During the post-World War I era, however, organized labor in Brazil was in its infancy, and scholars who have examined the trade union movement generally agree that it was largely a creation of the central government after 1930. There was no independent labor movement in Brazil, particularly during the period 1930-1945; there was no Brazilian equivalent of a Samuel Gompers or John L. Lewis; and there is no evidence that union leaders contributed to the debate on foreign policy or had a voice in policy decisions. Especially after 1930 the government increasingly controlled both the establishment and functioning of unions, virtually handpicking their leaders. The sindicatos, therefore, insofar as the anti-Communist struggle was concerned, were in part both a result and an instrument of national policy. In the case of Brazil during the period in question, analysis of elite perceptions thus properly places emphasis on men of state. Still, I have sought to avoid an exclusively bureaucratic focus by occasional reference to the opinions of business and church leaders and by frequent reference to the editorial positions of several major newspapers published in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. This book suggests that the Soviet Union occupied a unique place in the history of Brazilian foreign policy in the first half of the twentieth century because it was the only external actor whose behavior, real or attributed, actually influenced the structure of the state in

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Brazil by encouraging the imposition of a system of social control in the 1930s without precedent in the country's history. The profound fear of Moscow-directed subversion had gained strength steadily since the beginning of that decade and was demonstrated to have foundation when the Third (Communist) International sponsored armed insurrection in Brazil in 1935. Had it not been for the Soviet threat, in all probability there would have been no Estado Novo, the eight-year dictatorship launched in November 1937, which constituted a forerunner for the authoritarian, military government installed twenty-seven years later. Therein lies another reason for systematic examination of Brazil's policy toward communism and the USSR in the 1930s and 1940s. The establishment in 1964 of a military regime that lasted two decades was an epochal event in Brazilian history, one that has attracted a great deal of attention from social scientists. The armed forces had intervened in the political process on other occasions in this century to change or overthrow a government, but 1964, when they toppled the left-wing regime of João Goulart (1961-1964), marked the first time that the high command decided to take the reins of power directly in hand. The element common to the military and civilian figures prominently involved in the conspiracy against Goulart, which began as soon as he took office, was fear of communism. Suspect because of his cooperation with Communists while minister of labor in the early 1950s, Goulart fueled the anxieties of his adversaries a decade later by mobilizing wider sectors of the working classes, involving the Communists in his dialogue with the Left, displaying a tolerant attitude toward Castro's Cuba, adopting what seemed to be a confrontational posture vis-à-vis the United States, and showing a keen interest in closer cooperation with the USSR and Communist bloc countries from the outset of his administration, when he restored relations with Moscow. Once in power in 1964, the military proceeded to implement a program based on a "doctrine of national security" that had been gradually formalized by the Escola Superior de Guerra in the 1950s. The doctrine was an all-embracing construct that emphasized the need for broad governmental action, on multiple fronts, to enable the country to meet not only the challenge of direct aggression by external enemies, but more importantly the threat of revolutionary (Communist) warfare. The state, accordingly, must press forward with a program of intensive industrialization, since there was a vital connection between development and security, and at the same time create mechanisms of control and repression, including "a formidable network of political intelligence" and a program of counter

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propaganda—all of which required greater centralization of power. The new order pursued policies along those lines, utilizing greatly enhanced executive authority to arrest "subversives"; purge the bureaucracy, universities, and labor unions; censor the press; establish a Servico Nacional de Informações (SNI), or National Intelligence Service, as a sort of combined FBI and CIA to monitor dissidents; and reassert an anti-Communist foreign policy that included a severance of diplomatic ties with Havana and a marked cooling of relations with the USSR. Widespread disenchantment on the part of many military leaders with representative democracy and judicial restraint as weapons against subversion facilitated the centralization of power.4 The bridges between the anti-Communist movement in the 1930s and 1940s and that of the post-1964 period need emphasis. There was, first of all, a human connection, as various individuals prominent in the plotting against Goulart had been involved in the campaign against communism during the Vargas era (1930-1945). Many of the essentials of post-1964 policies, moreover, were present in military thought and the government's program in the 1930s— which would seem to heighten the historical significance of the earlier period. The nexus between national security and economic development in elite thought is beyond the purview of this book, but it was an operational principle of government leaders in the 1930s.5 More germane to the specific focus here, military planners even before 1935 were beginning to think of Communist insurgency as a new form of potential threat to national security and, disgruntled with the civilian political class and political liberalism, began urging an expansion of the preventive and repressive apparatus of the state to meet the danger, calling specifically for a purge of the civil service, press censorship, counterpropaganda, and more extensive monitoring of antiregime behavior. The uprising of 1935, planned by Comintern agents and led by Communists and fellow travelers, was a pivotal event because it offered "proof" that previous warnings about Soviet policy had been correct. The so-called intentona comunista thus made prophets of many who otherwise would have passed for mere conservative alarmists, and it opened wounds that affected foreign and domestic policy for years to come. Understandably, the revolt gave greater salience to insurrectionary warfare in military thought, and it led to ultimately irresistible pressure for an authoritarian state in order to deal with the perceived subversive threat. In view of the creation of the SNI three decades later, it is interesting that political intelligence was an area to which army leaders gave major emphasis in the 1930s. Here-

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xiii

tofore untapped personal papers of Filinto Muller, the army officer who served as chief of police in the Federal District during 19331942, Ministry of Justice files, official military records, and the private papers of influential generals made possible this book's exploratory probe into that uncharted field. Muller, who exercised enormous political influence, was particularly active in endeavoring to build up counterintelligence capabilities in other countries of the Southern Cone and develop greater monitoring and repressive services inside Brazil, as his extensive correspondence with police agents, diplomats, and other informants indicates. Interestingly, as a senator, Muller was in the vanguard of the battle to secure congressional approval of the bill that created the SNI in 1964. The army high command in the late 1930s and early 1940s undertook a parallel effort to expand domestic espionage and ultimately to organize a national intelligence agency. All of this was primarily a function of the perceived need to defend the state and society against subversion and constituted the pioneering phase of a process that culminated in the SNI. A basic problem in evaluating elite opinion is determining the extent to which statements represent real or sincere beliefs. The dimensions of that potential pitfall are reduced here by reliance primarily on unpublished materials—that is, private communications, both official and unofficial, between representative members of the foreign policy elite. Perusal of Itamaraty (Brazilian Foreign Office) files and the personal papers of several high-ranking diplomats, including three former foreign ministers, permitted what hopefully is a fairly complete appraisal of the Brazilian diplomatic viewpoint and of the external dimension of Brazil's anti-Soviet policy. The discussion here of Rio de Janeiro's cooperation with German authorities, particularly the Gestapo, and efforts by Itamaraty to forge an antiSoviet front in the La Plata Basin was one significant dividend of examination of this material. The mammoth collection of presidential papers at Brazil's Arquivo Nacional and the extensive personal papers of dictator-president Getúlio Vargas (1930-1945) helped further to elucidate Brazilian policy and clarify elite attitudes. This book does not offer a history of Brazilian communism, a subject covered well and in detail by other scholars,6 but relies on these accounts to establish the indispensable background to its primary concern. Fresh detail has been added when relevant, but basically the findings of previous students of the Communist movement in Brazil have been synthesized, rearranged perhaps, and placed within the analytical context of Brazilian policy toward the USSR. No effort has been made here to distinguish between or among elements of

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the extreme Left in Brazil; if, in addition to Communist, such terms as radical extremist, or militant leftist appear, their use should not be taken as a sign of bias or lack of conceptual discipline on the author's part. They are employed mainly because the subject is being approached from the viewpoint of Brazilian leaders, and these are terms typically used by them when referring to Communists. The emphasis here, it bears repeating, is on perception of reality, and the record leaves no doubt that for Brazilian policymakers the source of social threat was the Communist movement. Objectively speaking, and leaving aside the exaggerated dimension they gave to the perceived challenge, they were correct. Anarchism peaked in the early

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xv

post-World War I period and waned rapidly after the mid-1920S, while Trotskyism never really got off the ground. Communism was the dominant radical force, and its importance was enhanced by the fact that it was the only one that enjoyed the support of a foreign power. In any case, Brazilian authorities tended to make no distinction, at least after the 1920s, between or among the varieties of leftwing politics, regarding all the hues of red as products of the same Soviet pigment. A portion of this book—part of chapter 1 and chapters 2-6—appeared originally in Portuguese in 1987 as a slender volume entitled Rebelião Vermelha, which focused on the origins, course, and immediate impact of the Communist-led insurrection of 1935 and concluded with the November 1937 golpe. That study has been incorporated into this book after some parts were condensed and others reorganized; the original study, moreover, has been modified by the addition of more than 100 pages of manuscript on the pre-1930 and post-1937 periods. Chapter 1 of that book has been thoroughly rewritten and expanded to include discussion of elite images of the USSR during the 1920s and the anti-Soviet strategy devised then to meet the perceived threat. New, as well, are chapters 7-9 covering the critical decade 1937-1947, during which Brazil experienced an eight-year dictatorship, participated in a world conflict, and witnessed the onset of the Cold War, reassessing strategy toward the Soviet Union, restoring official ties with Moscow, and then once more severing them. The chronological broadening of the early, Portuguese-language version at both ends permits a fuller discussion of a complete cycle in Brazilian-Soviet relations—that is, a period beginning and terminating with a formal break—and thus provides greater perspective on the pivotal events of the mid-1930s. The cooperation of various individuals and institutions was critical to completion of this book. In part this study is a by-product of research for a political biography of Oswaldo Aranha, the key architect of the Revolution of 1930, who then served as minister of justice, minister of finance, and ambassador to Washington (19341937) before becoming foreign minister (1938-1944). Field work for that project was partially financed by the Fulbright program, and I want to acknowledge here my sincere appreciation for that support; in particular, I would like to thank Dr. Marco Antonio da Rocha, president of the Fulbright Commission in Brasilia, who, along with his team in Rio de Janeiro, was exceedingly helpful. Dr. Rodolfo Aguilar, former director of the Center for Latin American Affairs at Louisiana State University, provided funds for travel to London and Rio de Janeiro, and I am grateful to him. To the detriment of inter-

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national studies at LSU, his dynamic and creative stewardship was aborted. John L. Loos, who retired as chairman of the Department of History at LSU in 1988, after nearly a quarter of a century in that position, performed a number of services, not the least of which was arranging a teaching schedule that maximized time for research and writing. I spent the 1989-90 academic year as a visiting professor at the Air War College. My chairman there, Colonel Kent Harbaugh, did several favors in connection with the preparation of the final version of the manuscript, and I appreciate his assistance. I must also recognize the contribution of Dr. Armin Ludwig of the AWC, who used his geographer's expertise to prepare the map for this book. The readers of the original manuscript for the University of Texas Press, professors Rollie Poppino and Neill Macaulay, deserve special thanks for their encouragement. It was a pleasure to work with Theresa May, executive editor of the Press, and Barbara Spielman, the managing editor. The keen eye of copy editor Robert Fullilove improved the readability of the manuscript. The librarians and archivists who eased my research task are too numerous to mention individually, so I shall extend a blanket note of appreciation to the staffs of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Harry S. Truman Library, Library of Congress, National Archives, Federal Records Center (Suitland), and the Air University Library at Maxwell Air Force Base, as well as to the counselors and clerks at the Public Records Office in Great Britain who provided such superb assistance. My scholarly debts in Brazil are immense. The cheerful efficiency of former colleagues at the Arquivo Nacional and of the directors and staffs of the Arquivo do Exército, Biblioteca Nacional, Museu da República, and Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro greatly facilitated my research, and I must acknowledge my permanent indebtedness to Martha Maria Gonçalves, former head of the Arquivo Histórico do Itamaraty (i.e., Foreign Ministry Archives), whose enlightened professionalism is sorely missed by the scholarly community. I have stated elsewhere and repeat loudly here that Adelina Cruz and Celia Costa, with their assistants at the Centro de Pesquisa e Documentação de Historia Contemporânea in the Fundação Getúlio Vargas in Rio de Janeiro, deserve medals. I want also to thank Corina Pessoa Fragoso, daughter of the late General Pantaleão da Silva Pessoa, for allowing me continued use of his private papers. Jerry and Edie Cook provided occasional logistical support for this project, as they have done for previous ones, and I am grateful to them for their friendship. Finally, I want to single out for praise my wife Cristina, who bore with reasonably good cheer the strains and sacrifices that labor in the vineyard of area studies imposes.

1. Challenge and Response (1917-1930)

posed to the international order by the Bolshevik triumph in 1917 became clearer when Lenin, shortly after the seizure of power, issued his "Proclamation on Peace" in which he appealed to workers in all countries to join in a worldwide struggle against the capitalist system. The establishment of the Third (Communist) International, or Comintern, early in 1919 made revolutionary agitation abroad a permanent plan in the Soviet foreign policy platform.1 As one scholar has put it, "The Comintern's mere existence broke with all the current diplomatic rules of the game."2 The Lenin regime was interested primarily in Europe and only marginally in Latin America, but the latter felt keenly the reverberations of the events in Russia, and for at least the Brazilian government, Moscow's policies and activities were a source of increasing disquiet. Labor turmoil, the formation of Communist parties, a disruption of trade, and diplomatic questions involving recognition and immigration—these were the key issues and problems facing Brazil and other Latin American states as a result of the collapse of czarist Russia and the erection in its place of a political system that seemingly eschewed traditional limits on diplomacy. For the Brazilian foreign policy elite, the post-World War I period was one in which its suspicions and even dread of bolshevism crystallized, generating a perception of threat that in turn led to the incremental adoption of a defensive strategy that would remain basically intact until the end of World War II. THE CHALLENGE

Early apostles of a new, stateless society saw opportunity in Brazil after the conflict of 1914-1918. The great mass of the country's 30 million people tended to be dirt farmers or ill-paid field and ranch hands—illiterate, malnourished, and unhealthy. In the droughtstricken Northeast the rural poor were veritable "social pariahs," battling to survive in the midst of starvation and disease. Even in

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Recife, the seaboard capital of Pernambuco and the major city in the region, the infant mortality rate stood at nearly 30 percent, and half the residents lived in suburban shanty towns.3 In relatively prosperous Minas Gerais, a leg of the nation's dynamic triangle that included the neighboring states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, 90 percent of the population was classified as rural, nearly 70 percent were illiterate, and "disease and death stalked all classes."4 The same could be said of large areas of Rio de Janeiro, and in São Paulo, the country's agro-industrial center and by far its wealthiest state, poverty was likewise widespread.5 Although predominantly an agrarian country, Brazil had experienced a remarkable growth in manufacturing since the turn of the century. Heavy industry remained a task for later generations, but by 1920 the country had achieved selfsufficiency in light manufactures, such as textiles, footwear, and foodstuffs. The industrial working class, concentrated in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, numbered some 275,000. Wages were abysmally low and plant conditions generally grim. Not surprisingly, there was considerable effervescence in labor ranks, and a strike begun by textile workers in São Paulo in mid-1917 rapidly spread to Rio de Janeiro and then to various other states. Unrest continued in ensuing months, and in 1919 another wave of strikes rocked major industrial areas.6 The political system offered little hope of meaningful redress. With the fall of the monarchy in 1889, a republic had been proclaimed, but only literate adult males could vote. By 1919 in the city of Rio de Janeiro, the federal capital, only 21,000 residents out of a total population of over one million enjoyed the franchise. Effective political power lay in the hands of the rural oligarchy, which used nepotism, administrative corruption, and electoral fraud to protect its interests. Dissatisfaction assumed a military dimension when junior army officers, collectively labeled tenentes (lieutenants), revolted in 1922 and again in 1924 under the banner of vague political and administrative reform. Emerging from the latter uprising, the famous Prestes Column, a small army of rebels led by Captain Luís Carlos Prestes, wandered the backlands during 1924-1926 evading federal troops and capturing popular imagination.7 As they surveyed national conditions, future Communist leaders found inspiration and guidance in the events in Russia. Octávio Brandão, then a young socialist in the Northeast, wrote an article in October 1917 comparing that region to czarist Russia and depicting it as ripe for social upheaval; later, as a temporary convert to anarchism in Rio de Janeiro, he ardently defended the Bolshevik Revolution, although he admittedly possessed only "vague, uncertain, frag-

Challenge and Response (1917-1930) mentary" information about it.8 Anarchists dominated the radical labor movement in Brazil during the first two decades of the century, and emboldened by the triumph of bolshevism in Russia, they intensified their agitation, helping to promote the wave of strikes during 1917-1919. 9 By 1920, however, they had split over the question of support for the new order in Russia. For Astrojildo Pereira, a prominent radical intellectual, anarchism had run its course and demonstrated its inability to exploit the "favorable perspectives'' that Brazil offered for fundamental restructuring along Bolshevik lines. Brandão put it simply in 1921: the movement's sole program should be the "intense propaganda of bolshevism, for the glorification of the Russia of the Soviets."10 It was anxiousness to be represented at the Fourth Congress of the Comintern in Moscow that led the proBolshevik faction within the anarchist movement to break away and establish, in March 1922, the Partido Comunista do Brasil (PCB), or Brazilian Section of the Communist International. Nine delegates (including Pereira), seven of whom had been anarchists, representing Communist groups in five states with a total membership of seventy-three, accepted the Comintern's conditions for admission and launched the new party.11 The Communists' message found little resonance within Brazil. As Brandão recalled of his election to the executive committee in 1923 and appointment as head of agitation and propaganda, the PCB was then a "small, closed sect" fighting for recruits among illiterate workers in "skeletal" unions.12 Fellow travelers greatly outnumbered party regulars, which partially explains the circulation figure of 1,800 for the PCB's main propaganda sheet during 1922-1923.13 Only 150 delegates, representing half of the party membership, attended its Second Congress in 1925, and the months-long series of lectures in Rio de Janeiro sponsored by the PCB late that year attracted a total audience of less than 1,500 persons.14 The new party weekly A Classe Operária, founded in 1925 and managed by Brandão, ran through twelve issues and 99,000 copies before being closed by the government; of those copies, however, an unspecified number were distributed free of charge at the doors of shops and factories.15 Public authorities greatly exaggerated the PCB's overall influence in workers' ranks: according to party member Heitor Ferreira Lima, it had controlled only eight unions during this period. The PCB was denied official registration, so Pereira and Brandão, on orders from the executive committee, formed a Workers' bloc in 1927 as an electoral front; only one of its two candidates for election to the Chamber of Deputies received the necessary four thousand votes.16 Brandão and a comrade were elected to the Rio de Janeiro municipal

3

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assembly the following year, but in 1929 an expanded PCB front failed to place a single candidate in national, state, or local office.17 The PCB's weakness explains its active interest by this time in an understanding with Prestes, whose exploits had made him a folk hero. The question was how progressive the Column commander was. Prestes himself acknowledged that when he revolted in 1924, he had only a vague notion of social problems and knew nothing about left-wing ideologies. "I was merely a man disgusted with the way the country was governed," he said. One of his chief lieutenants, João Alberto Lins de Barros, confirmed the nonideological character of their rather amorphous program. "We knew hardly anything about the Russian political phenomenon . . . and we never made a connection between our action and what was happening over there," he later wrote. The experience of roaming some twenty-five thousand kilometers through the backlands and witnessing the pervasive poverty and disease, however, "shook us to the bottom of our souls," Prestes recalled.18 His sociopolitical views transformed, Prestes was cautiously receptive when Pereira, now secretary general of the PCB, traveled to Puerto Suarez to meet with him in December 1927. Pereira reached Bolivia with a valise full of works by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, which he asked Prestes to read. The offer of an alliance with the party was intriguing to the rebel captain, but he agreed only to study Marxism. Two months later he moved to Argentina, where he spent his spare time perusing the volumes that Pereira had given him. It was in Buenos Aires, the seat of the Comintern's new South American Bureau, that he became friends with Rodolfo Ghioldi, a prominent Argentine Communist, and found himself the target of active proselytizing.19 During the presidential campaign of 1929, the Communists renewed their attempt to exploit Prestes' popularity and apparent influence. PCB strategists wanted to mobilize popular support by forging an electoral pact with the Column and putting Prestes up for the presidency. The scheme involved a tactical concession by the PCB in that it would acquiesce temporarily in a "more or less liberal" administration headed by Prestes, but the end justified the means. Consequently, during the First Conference of South American Communist Parties in Buenos Aires that year, Leôncio Basbaum met with Prestes to renew the offer of a political understanding. The platform envisaged by the PCB included state ownership of agriculture, nationalization of foreign companies, nonpayment of the foreign debt, social welfare legislation, and legalization of the party. Prestes expressed sympathy with that program but was unenthusiastic about entering the presidential race and insisted that, in any case, he could

Challenge and Response (1917-1930)

5

make no commitments without consulting his fellow tenentes. Two of the most famous of these, Siqueira Campos and Juarez Távora, participated in the discussions with Basbaum and did not disguise their antagonism toward the Communists. On his return to Rio de Janeiro, a pessimistic Basbaum admonished the Central Committee that it would be best for the party to proceed without Prestes, but a majority favored keeping the door open to negotiations.20 If Prestes was not yet ready to enter into an alliance with the Communists, he nonetheless was rapidly putting ideological distance between himself and other prominent tenentes who wanted to support the reformist opposition candidate, Governor Getúlio Vargas of Rio Grande do Sul, who himself was interested in an accord with Column leaders. Urged by Siqueira Campos, Prestes reluctantly agreed to go secretly to Porto Alegre for talks with Vargas and his state secretary of justice, Oswaldo Aranha, in September 1929, but he had no real desire to work with the gaúcho authorities, who were anything but radical in their views. The upshot was that the two sides agreed to disagree. Prestes accepted a subsidy that Aranha offered him ostensibly for the purpose of purchasing arms in the event electoral processes proved unproductive, but which in all likelihood was intended as a bribe; they decided nothing concrete of a political nature, however. As Vargas indicated to his campaign manager afterward, Prestes was interested in revolution, not elections. The rebel officer, for his part, later recognized that he had been very ''sectarian" with Vargas and Aranha and that his ideas had been "already impregnated with Marxism." That he had more in common with the PCB than with the assorted groups of dissidents and moderate reformers who constituted Vargas' Liberal Alliance was made clear by a letter he wrote to two tenentes who backed the gaúcho leader. Scorning the "so-called liberals" surrounding Vargas, he declared that the Column's task was to mobilize the "poverty-ridden population of the cities and backlands" for armed struggle against the "great lords of industry and agriculture" and foreign imperialists.21 The definitive rupture between Prestes and his Column subordinates occurred after Vargas' defeat at the polls in March 1930. Convinced that, because they were now engaged in an Aranha-inspired conspiracy to overthrow the government and install Vargas in the presidency, a break was necessary, Prestes summoned Siqueira Campos, João Alberto, and a third "historic revolutionary," Miguel Costa, to a war council in Buenos Aires in April. He informed them bluntly that he had become a Marxist and was opposed to any "bourgeois" revolt to place Vargas in power. "He seemed a fanatic, overflowing with violence toward adversaries and friends . . . , sum-

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marily lumping them all together as exploiters of the people," João Alberto recalled bitterly. After heated discussion, Prestes ended the meeting by saying that he planned to make his attitude public. In a manifesto distributed the following month, he inveighed against the landowning class and "Anglo-American imperialism," calling for a general insurrection to implant a Soviet-style government in Brazil.22 The way now seemed clear for a union between Prestes and the Communists, but the PCB, in an episode illustrative of its subservience to Moscow, sharply rebuffed the new convert. From the outset the PCB subordinated itself rigidly to the dictates of the Comintern. When the Brazilian delegate to the Fourth Congress in 1922 clashed sharply with the organization's Soviet directors and accused the Executive Committee of knowing "absolutely nothing77 about the Brazilian movement, PCB leaders promptly expelled him from the party and redoubled their efforts to demonstrate fidelity to Moscow. The Comintern officially recognized the PCB only after Ghioldi, dispatched to Rio de Janeiro to investigate it, submitted a favorable report on the Brazilians7 strict adherence to the tactical guidelines laid down by the Executive Committee.23 Through its small South American Bureau, the Comintern sought to monitor the activities of the PCB; as Brandão put it, Moscow "helped the PCB to overcome its errors and lack of understanding," and party leaders made every effort to base their program on what they thought would satisfy the Comintern. In typical fashion, when Brandão decided to write a book analyzing the revolts of 1922 and 1924, his inspiration was Lenin7s famous essay on imperialism. He therefore interpreted those uprisings as symptoms of a struggle between British and American imperialism, or between feudal agrarianism and bourgeois industrialism. Having forced Brazilian reality into a Marxist-Leninist mold, he hastened to seek Soviet approval, forwarding a copy to the Comintern with a request that it "correct the errors.77 His thesis was approved by a party congress in 1925, but both he and Pereira later acknowledged that the mechanical application of Marxist-Leninist theory had greatly distorted those events.24 All this is not to say that the Comintern involved itself in the dayto-day operations of the PCB; on the contrary, various factors, not the least of which was the remoteness of Latin America on Moscow's list of foreign policy priorities, militated against any such supervision. At the level of formal ties with the region, the Soviet presence was severely restricted. Mexico agreed to establish diplomatic relations with the USSR in 1924, giving Moscow what the Soviet foreign minister thought would be a "very convenient political

Challenge and Response (1917-1930)

7

base" in the Western Hemisphere, and Uruguay took a similar step in 1926, but that represented the extent of Soviet diplomatic success in Latin America. Moscow was able to persuade Argentine authorities to allow it to open a branch of Amtorg (Soviet-American Trading Company) in Buenos Aires in 1925, and two years later the headquarters of the new special agency for commerce with South America, Yuzhamtorg, was set up in that city, but trade with the region was relatively insignificant.25 The scale of Comintern activities in Latin America thus reflected Soviet foreign policy interests. Lenin was candid in telling a Mexican delegate to the Second Congress in 1920 that there were "more urgent revolutionary tasks" than the anti-imperialist campaign in Latin America.26 The South American Bureau, with headquarters first in Buenos Aires and later in Montevideo, was not extensively staffed or financed. South American Communists who had contact with Comintern authorities in the Soviet Union were impressed by their ignorance of the region,27 and Pereira broached the issue in the bureau's official journal, complaining that South America deserved "more serious attention" and "more assiduous political assistance" from the Comintern.28 During the inaugural session of the Sixth Congress in Moscow in 1928, Nikolay Bukharin, theorist of the Russian Communist party and head of the Comintern, had encouraging words about Latin America. Pointing to Nicaragua's "war of liberation" against Washington's "imperialist invasion" and to a "powerful popular movement" in South America against United States influence, he proclaimed that Latin America was "now particularly important to us." The congress, however, then went on to deal almost exclusively with other areas of the world. "About what really interested us, Latin America, there was nothing . . . concrete," recorded a disgruntled Basbaum, who attended the conclave as a member of the PCB's Central Committee and who took back to Brazil the impression that "they had never looked at a map of Latin America before in Moscow." Ferreira Lima, who was in Moscow for a threeyear training program and formed part of the small Brazilian delegation, likewise was struck by the ignorance, misconceptions, and increasing rigidity that characterized Comintern thinking about the region.29 The Sixth Congress, nonetheless, apparently stimulated a greater degree of interest in Latin America on the Comintern's part. The South American Bureau summoned Brandão to Buenos Aires later in 1928 to discuss the situation in Brazil, and in mid-1929 the Bureau convened the first congress of Latin American Communist parties. "It signified . . . that the CI [Communist International] was begin-

8

Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917-1947

ning to understand the importance of Latin America, although not its problems and much less their solutions," Basbaum later wrote sardonically.30 The onset of the depression was an additional goad to Comintern planners, and they sought to exploit the sociopolitical unrest in South America. An indispensable first step, they thought, would be to tighten control over the PCB, discipline it, and set it on the proper revolutionary path. At the end of 1929 they held special sessions in Moscow with Pereira, Ferreira Lima, and two other Brazilian Communists, to debate the PCB's performance. Bukharin's successor, Dimitri Manuilsky, presided over the meetings, which resulted in unexpectedly harsh attacks on the party that left the small Brazilian contingent "perplexed, shocked, astonished, almost destroyed." The Riga-born August Guralsky was particularly stern in his criticism. Guralsky (whose real name was Abraham Heifet) had done high-level Comintern work for years—he had been one of Bèla Kun's lieutenants during the 1921 insurrection in Hungary—but his assignments had been restricted to Europe. According to Ferreira Lima, of the Comintern officers present, Guralsky "knew the least about the problems of Brazil and Latin America in general." The fundamental charge against the PCB was that, in the face of a probable "rapid maturing" of revolutionary possibilities in Brazil, it had not fought vigorously enough to establish itself as the revolutionary vanguard of the working class. Consequently, it would have to be proletarianized, by severing its links with petty bourgeois elements, and would have to intensify efforts to seize control of the revolutionary movement. That decision was embodied in an official resolution sent to the PCB early in 1930, and Guralsky, dispatched to Buenos Aires to direct the South American Bureau, called Brandão and Pereira to a meeting there to reinforce the directive, discuss its implementation—and renew the verbal assault on PCB leaders. "I listened to 16 aggressive speeches . . . ," Brandão recalled bitterly. "They tried to make a tabula rasa of my life, work, and struggle."31 The impact of the condemnatory blasts on the PCB was severe. To avoid expulsion, Brandão submitted to the humiliating process of self-criticism, while Basbaum and two others lost their positions on the Central Committee because they were "intellectuals." Then Pereira was summarily removed as secretary general in November. Nominal leadership of the party was now vested in Ferreira Lima, who returned from the USSR at year's end and was deemed sufficiently proletarian in origin by Moscow. The Comintern, through the South American Bureau, also began more attentive monitoring of the PCB. Indeed, from that point on, remembered Ferreira Lima, the party had to contend with the "constant presence" of bureau

Challenge and Response (1917-1930)

9

emissaries, "almost always Argentines or Uruguayans," although there were occasional Soviets as well. One of these was Guralsky's wife Ines—"sectarian and authoritarian like her husband . . . but knowing nothing about our affairs or our past"—who arrived early in 1931 to serve as a political instructor. Four months later she had Ferreira Lima shunted off on assignment to the Northeast while she assumed direction of the party.32 Another casualty of the crackdown by Moscow was a PCB-Prestes alliance. Early in 1930 Manuilsky, president of the Comintern's Executive Committee, condemned the party's flirtation with Prestes, and consequently, at the conclave of the South American Bureau in midyear, Guralsky warned the PCB delegates against prestismo—that is, any attraction to the figure of Prestes and to the tactic of the broad revolutionary front instead of strict adherence to Moscow's proletarian, sectarian orientation. Under attack for his "errors," among them having favored an understanding with Prestes, Brandão not surprisingly assailed him publicly for not having mentioned the party, the Comintern, or the USSR in his May manifesto. Then when Prestes, under the ephemeral influence of Trotskyites, announced in July the formation of a League of Revolutionary Action, the PCB's A Classe Operária labeled him the party's "most dangerous adversary."33 What the experiences of Brazilian Communists during the early years of the PCB's history thus made clear was that, while Comintern leaders may have been ignorant of South American conditions, they demanded unquestioning obedience: any deviation could adversely affect not only individual status, but political survival, within the movement. Ferreira Lima later recorded how Brazilian Communists, although they found the representatives of the South American Bureau to be authoritarian and arrogant, treated them "almost as oracles" and sought to curry favor with them. "Whoever disagreed or challenged their opinions," he wrote, "was cast aside, transferred from his post or even summarily dismissed."34 The subordination of the PCB to the Comintern, an international agency controlled by Soviet leaders, gave an even more ominous contour to the frightful image that Communists projected to traditional Brazilian society. The initial reaction of the Brazilian government to the fall of the czar in 1917 was one of cautious optimism, and the initial impulse of Foreign Minister Lauro Muller was to send a special note of solidarity to the Russian legation. After receiving assurances from Aleksandr Kerensky's Provisional Government that it enjoyed popular

10

Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917-1947

support and wished friendly relations with Brazil, and in view of a message from the Department of State in Washington urging recognition as a means of reinforcing the prestige of the "democratic revolution" in Russia, the Brazilian chief executive on April 9 sent a message of recognition via the Brazilian legation in Petrograd, advising Kerensky of Brazil's earnest intention to cultivate the "most cordial" ties with his country.35 Official harmony, however, was of short duration. The favorable image of the Kerensky government in Brazilian official circles inevitably colored perceptions of the Bolshevik regime that followed it, a regime whose chieftain, Lenin, had been frequently portrayed in the Brazilian press as a dangerous German spy prior to the October Revolution. The Bolsheviks' social goals naturally clashed with the conservative ideals of the Brazilian foreign policy elite, and the new order's external program—its withdrawal from the Allied camp, of which Brazil was a member, and Lenin's call for world revolution—was disturbing. The radical pronouncements that accompanied the upsurge of labor unrest in Brazil deepened official mistrust, and in February 1918, when the Soviet regime refused to accept a new Brazilian envoy of allegedly Germanophile views, Itamaraty convinced the president to sever relations with Moscow.36 The ensuing months and years were a period of careful scrutiny of the Marxist-Leninist experiment in the Soviet Union and its international implications by Brazilian observers, who watched with distaste and progressive uneasiness as the regime in Moscow consolidated its internal position and launched a program of subversion abroad. The minister in Switzerland, Raul do Rio Branco, voiced the general initial shock when he warned in 1918 that realization of the Bolsheviks' goals on an international scale would rival the "destruction of the Roman world by the barbarians." Early the following year the military attaché in Paris echoed that judgment, warning the army chief of staff that the "frightful social cataclysm" in Russia threatened the very foundations of Western civilization. Lucillo Bueno, another career diplomat, personified the resolute antagonism that senior Itamaraty officials felt toward promoters of social upheaval. Conservative ideas, he once wrote, were what kept the "political world in its natural orbit."37 His reports from Europe during the 1920s contributed greatly to the dark suspicion of the Soviet Union that pervaded government circles in Rio de Janeiro. The Bolshevik regime, he cautioned typically from Copenhagen in 1923, was an "apocalyptic monster" that, through the Comintern, preached "anarchy by steel and fire," a policy spawned by the "unbalanced brains" of Lenin and Trotsky, "true psychopathic types."38 Adalberto

Challenge and Response (1917-1930)

11

Guerra-Duval sent similar warnings from Berlin. Conservative to the core, his messages on the woes of the Weimar Republic carried periodic denunciations of the "indefatigable" efforts by Communists to weaken Germany from within. He viewed Walter Rathnau's Drang nach Osten with foreboding. Moscow had no sincere interest in helping Europe solve its problems, he concluded in January 1923, but sought only to "submerge Central Europe beneath a Bolshevik tide." From his post in London, Ambassador Raul Régis de Oliveira watched the mounting friction between the British and Russian governments and cautioned in 1928 that Communists were employing "all possible and imaginable means" to create havoc not only in Europe but in "all countries of the world."39 Private observers in Brazil shared those perceptions. The most influential Catholic thinker and chief lay spokesman of the postwar era, Jackson de Figueiredo, studied events in the Soviet Union with profound horror. "I am one of the last believers and devotees of the Russian aristocracy," he confided at one point, "and I cannot see a photograph of the Imperial Family without being deeply moved." He consequently hailed the rightist reaction in Europe against the "iconoclastic bolshevism" that "like leprosy" was gnawing away at the body of the Old World.40 The young liberal-democrat Paulo Nogueira Filho harbored the same disquiet. His attitude is all the more interesting because he represented not only a more moderate political position than did Jackson—he was a founder of the reformist Democratic Party in São Paulo during the period—but was also a member of an influential planter-industrial family and was active in textile manufacturing. He visited Europe in 1924 and found there a general conviction that "the danger to the security of everyone lay in the hordes forming on the Russian steppes." Carrying back to Brazil memories of "shocking reports of purges and massacres" in the USSR, he came to view Communists as "live satans." A second trip in 1929 left him even more firmly anti-Soviet because of the "atrocities that Stalinism undoubtedly was committing." 41 How did South America and especially Brazil fit into apparent Soviet plans for international disorder? In the immediate postwar period policymakers in Rio de Janeiro began receiving a steady stream of reports, often preposterous but taken seriously, that suggested a disturbing answer. Lenin and Trotsky themselves were said to be planning to leave the USSR in the face of a popular backlash and might head for Brazil, Rio Branco informed Itamaraty late in 1918. "The honest people of Europe," he said, "hope that the Brazilian government will not give asylum to these bandits." In February 1919 the American, British, and French embassies in Rio de Janeiro also

12

Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917-1947

cautioned Itamaraty that numerous Bolshevik agents had sailed for Brazil from Europe with false passports, and soon-to-be president Epitácio Pessoa forwarded a memorandum on Communist activities in South America that he received from French officials at the Paris Peace Conference.42 The turmoil in Brazilian labor ranks and the proliferation of radical organizations heightened the sense of threat, and "by the end of the year, virtually every daily newspaper in Rio, São Paulo, and Santos was calling on the government to do whatever was necessary to eliminate the Red peril to Brazilian civilization."43 The political unrest in Brazil during the 1920s sharpened the sensitivity of Brazilian observers, as they attempted to gauge the intentions of the Kremlin-dominated Comintern. Guerra-Duval on one occasion in 1925 alerted Itamaraty to alleged Communist intrigue in southern Brazil, and the government quickly sought, and obtained, confirmation from local authorities. Brazil, to be sure, was fully exposed to the "contagion," a senior diplomat warned in a book published the following year; indeed, proclaimed O Paiz, a prominent carioca daily, Brazil had become the target of "truly diabolical plans" formulated by Communists based in Uruguay. The patriotic Liga de Defesa Nacional was sufficiently concerned to commission Major João Baptista Magalhães and another army officer to draft a plan for an anti-Communist, civic campaign. Jackson de Figueiredo was so apprehensive about the radical challenge that he saw social choices narrowing to either a Marxist-Leninist order or one organized along authoritarian, Catholic lines. "Either mine or that of the Communists . . .," he phrased it in a letter to the minister of justice in 1926. Figueiredo's was no ivory tower approach, and both his experience as press censor for the Arthur Bernardes administration (1922-1926) and his close monitoring, through contacts in the police department, of dissidents of all hues heightened his anxieties.44 In the late 1920s the alarm signals were numerous. The embassy in Buenos Aires in 1927 warned Itamaraty about "dangerous agents" who allegedly had crossed the Brazilian border on their way to make contact with Communists in Brazil, and to an editorialist for the Jornal do Brasil, the country had been "chosen by Red propagandists as the land most propitious for implanting the second republic of soviets." A report from the consul in Rotterdam early in 1928 seemed to confirm that conclusion: Moscow was planning "great propaganda activity" in South America and consequently intended to infiltrate the region with numerous agents. The consul general in Montevideo reinforced the plausibility of that report by alerting Itamaraty to requests for visas by various Russian nationals, including some with Turkish passports who evinced "a certain intellectual ability" but

Challenge and Response (1917-1930)

13

were evasive when questioned about their motives for wanting to travel to Brazil. The perceived discipline and organization of Soviet penetration of the continent was unsettling. Communist agitation in South America, Itamaraty learned from Buenos Aires, followed "a preconceived method, supported by well-organized apparatuses and directed by secret associations in perfect communication with one another." Oswaldo Aranha, the Rio Grande do Sul secretary of justice, thought he saw that phenomenon at work in his state and warned Police Chief Coriolano de Góes of the Federal District that the devotees of "sovietism" there were corresponding regularly with confreres in Rio de Janeiro, who in turn were frequently dispatching emissaries to the South. Aranha also kept a watchful eye on the border regions and relayed information on Prestes, who reportedly had been invited to visit the USSR by Boris Kraevsky, the Yuzhamtorg representative in Buenos Aires. In ensuing months the fertile collective mind of Comintern strategists worked out another scheme to enhance Communist influence in Brazil—or so the new minister in Copenhagen heard—by energetic proselytizing among blacks, a mission to be undertaken by Soviet agents infiltrated through Uruguay. From the naval attaché in Washington came more disturbing news early in October: the Communists were shipping weapons to Brazil, "treacherously" plotting to instigate civil war.45 Given their image of the Soviet Union as a barbaric, incendiary state that menaced Brazilian society, it was logical that Brazilian authorities would respond to the challenge with a defensive strategy designed to eliminate, or at least minimize, contacts with Soviet agents. The question of formal relations with Moscow was a closed one. After the rupture in 1918, Itamaraty watched carefully debates in other countries on the problem,46 but it followed the American lead in steadfastly refusing to reestablish ties with the Kremlin. One congressman in 1924 sponsored a resolution calling for a normalization of relations, but the Bernardes government was able to have the proposal shelved.47 Uruguay's recognition of the Soviet regime not surprisingly generated "apprehension and annoyance" in policymaking circles. Foreign Minister Felix Pacheco angrily complained to Ambassador Edwin Morgan that Montevideo's step promised to give "Soviet, anarchic and communistic elements" a bridgehead in South America; and in conversation with the British ambassador, Pacheco scored the Uruguayans "in no unmeasured terms." Echoing official criticism of Montevideo, O Paiz warned against any thought of Brazil's imitating Uruguayan policy. When London broke with Moscow the following year, the Jornal do Brasil vigorously applauded. Main-

14

Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917-1947

tenance of diplomatic relations with the USSR, it argued, meant merely facilitating the "insidious propaganda" of the Communists.48 Despite the political abhorrence that Brazilian leaders felt toward the Soviet regime, the possibility of commercial profit engendered some attitudinal ambivalence. Early in the decade several diplomats in Europe pondered the convenience of endeavoring to take advantage of Moscow's drive to reconstruct and expand the Soviet economy. The Prague legation, for example, in 1921 suggested that Brazilian products might find a "vast" market in the USSR and noted that traditional clients, such as Germany and Great Britain, would probably end up reexporting Brazilian coffee and rubber to that country. Even such a fervid anti-Communist as Bueno wavered momentarily, wondering if Brazil should not try to capture a share of Soviet import trade. His colleague in Stockholm was emphatic: with the USSR's ports being opened to international commerce, Brazilian coffee could take the Soviet market "by storm." Apparent confirmation of the opportunity came from the embassy in Washington, which forwarded to Itamaraty a letter from Moscow's commercial delegate in New York. "Russia needs precisely the products of your country," the Soviet agent wrote, "and has the money to purchase them." 49 Overtures from a Petrograd chamber of commerce stimulated similar interest on the part of the private sector in Brazil. In October 1923 the Soviet group addressed a memorial to the Câmara Brasileira de Comércio Exterior (CBCE) in Rio de Janeiro, announcing plans to send a floating fair to South America the following spring and requesting Brazilian participation. The Petrograd merchants intended to display their woods, furs, alcohol, porcelain, smoked fish, and caviar for the South Americans, from whom they hoped to obtain coffee, cacao, and rubber. The CBCE published the memorial in the carioca press and alerted member associations, most of which were in favor of exploring trade possibilities.50 Proponents of direct commerce with the USSR were encouraged by Argentina's decision in 1926 to allow Yuzhamtorg to set up its headquarters in Buenos Aires. In an interview with a left-wing carioca daily in September of that year, Kraevsky proclaimed his "most cordial" intentions toward Brazil and sought to stimulate the competitive appetite of Brazilian exporters by pointing to a recent spurt in Soviet purchases from Argentina. The interview sparked the interest of some Brazilian exporters, who thought that direct contact with the Yuzhamtorg agent might be profitable, and the upshot was a trip by Kraevsky to Brazil in January 1927.51 The absence of diplomatic relations between Brazil and the USSR, however, meant that the Brazilian exporter would be left to his own devices in dealing with authorities in the Soviet

Challenge and Response (1917-1930)

15

Union, where foreign trade was a state monopoly. Some cooperation from the Brazilian government would be necessary to smooth away obstacles, but middle-level analysts in the Ministry of Agriculture were the only ones advocating official intervention.52 Itamaraty stonily ignored all pleas for a resumption of trade with the Soviets. It waited fifteen months before replying to the 1921 dispatch from the legation in Czechoslovakia and then said simply that the matter was inopportune. When Bueno recommended consideration of a renewal of commerce, Itamaraty forwarded his communication to the Ministry of Agriculture for an opinion but in so doing included a warning about Bolshevik plans to "sow revolution in the four corners of the globe." Appeals from the CBCE about the proposed floating fair went unanswered, as did a favorable memorandum from the Ministry of Agriculture in 1925. Reports from Ambassador José Rodrigues Alves in Buenos Aires strengthened official suspicion toward Yuzhamtorg. A respected career diplomat whose father had been president on two occasions, Rodrigues Alves attentively followed Kraevsky's activities and cautioned Itamaraty about the political dangers of any dealings with Yuzhamtorg. In Buenos Aires the Soviet representative maintained "a veritable general staff" at Yuzhamtorg headquarters, he commented. "All those people move about spending a great deal of money on propaganda that is so skillfully executed that the Argentine government can do nothing to combat it." During his subsequent trip to Rio de Janeiro, Kraevsky was the object of "tight surveillance" by the Brazilian police, who used censorship mechanisms to control press coverage of the visit. Brazilian authorities, the British ambassador noted with satisfaction, appeared to have "no illusions" about Kraevsky and Moscow's intentions.53 Pacheco's successor at Itamaraty, Octávio Mangabeira, assured Ambassador Morgan that he was actively discouraging the notion of trade with the USSR, and his suspicions were strengthened by further alarm signals from Buenos Aires, where Rodrigues Alves was convinced that Kraevsky's activities and an upsurge of Communist agitation in Argentina were not unrelated. At one point in 1928 he reported that Kraevsky was said to be financing Communist cells in the Argentine interior and warned of contacts between the Yuzhamtorg agent and exporters in Porto Alegre. The state of Rio Grande do Sul, he warned, should be alert to Communist infiltration "because of its proximity to Argentina, where Bolshevik activity is pronounced, and Uruguay, whose doors are imprudently wide open to those sinister guests." Mangabeira showed the dispatch to President Washington Luís (1926-1930), who thought it sufficiently impor-

16

Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917-1947

tant to copy for Governor Vargas. In a cover letter, the chief executive cautioned Vargas about the seriousness of "Bolshevik propaganda" in neighboring countries and emphasized thta Yuzhamtorg was a mere cover for subversive undertakings. In ensuing months Itamaraty remained inflexibly opposed to trade with the Soviet Union, recommending to entities such as the Commercial Association and the Institute of Coffee that they disinterest themselves. The result of the government's opposition was that the USSR made "only occasional" indirect purchases from Brazil during the late 1920s. With considerable justification, Kraevsky attributed blame for the absence of more significant commerce to hostile groups in Brazil who were placing "every sort of obstacle" in the path of a normalization of Russo-Brazilian relations.54 As a logical component of their anti-Soviet program, Brazilian policy makers set up travel and immigration barriers to the entry of political radicals. In August 1919 Itamaraty instructed its consuls abroad to deny visas to individuals who "counsel force or violence against governments," and President Pessoa later that year admonished Itamaraty to exercise "the greatest care" with regard to visas. Civil war and economic dislocation in the USSR created a huge flow of refugees and raised the question of immigration ties with that country. São Paulo authorities were willing to accept White Russian former combatants as agricultural workers, and considerable numbers of them entered Brazil; however, as official uneasiness over the Soviet threat deepened, the federal government moved increasingly to bar Russian nationals. When the consul in Yokohama queried Itamaraty in 1924 about how to handle requests for visas from "antiBolshevik Russians," he immediately received instructions to issue none. The consulates and legations in Central Europe were ordered to use "all available means" to impede the coming of politically undesirable immigrants.55 The Ministry of Agriculture supported the restrictive policy, arguing early in 1926 that the already sizable Russian-speaking community in Brazil faced severe problems of adaptation, an observation that led Itamaraty once again to instruct the missions and consulates in Germany, Austria, and Poland to deny visas to prospective Russian immigrants.56 Federal authorities made an exception in 1926 for a group of Russians certified by the Jewish Colonization Association, and in response to a renewed appeal from the São Paulo government, Itamaraty the following year permitted twenty Russian families to enter that state. São Paulo officials took the position that such immigrants were anti-Communists and thus not a social danger, but Rio de Janeiro remained skeptical and there was some public pressure in

Challenge and Response (1917-1930)

17

favor of a ban. The Correio da Manhã, an influential, independent carioca daily, railed at the arrival of immigrants from eastern Europe because "Red Communists and dangerous agitators" might be among them. Itamaraty and the Ministry of Justice finally agreed in 1929 to prohibit the immigration of persons coming directly from the USSR but to grant visas to Soviets who had resided in a third country for a considerable length of time and could produce documents from the police in their host country attesting to their good conduct.57 As an integral part of its defensive campaign, the government sought to diversify its sources of intelligence about the Comintern's methods and plans. Postwar labor unrest encouraged Itamaraty and the Ministry of Justice to start a systematic exchange of information about suspected Red agents, and Itamaraty also contributed financially to police surveillance missions abroad. In 1920 Brazilian delegates to a special police conference in Buenos Aires helped hammer out an agreement by which South American law enforcement agencies would exchange intelligence on "subversive" events, "individuals dangerous to society," and the countermeasures taken by each country. By the middle of the decade the multiplying signs of leftwing militancy had sharpened official interest in the counterrevolutionary experiences of other countries, and President Bernardes in 1926 decided to send Colonel Carlos da Silva Reis to Europe on an undercover mission to study local police methods of dealing with subversion. Reis had attended the police conference in Buenos Aires six years earlier and headed the Delegacia de Ordem Política e Segurança Pública, later the Delegacia de Ordem Política e Social (DOPS), which was the internal security section of the Federal District police department. Reis visited Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, and Bern, where he established contact with police authorities and private antiCommunist organizations. On his return to Rio de Janeiro, he recommended to the minister of justice that the government seek to infiltrate Communist groups in Europe.58 Itamaraty naturally obtained information periodically from other governments, and in 1927 it established private links with an organization based in Geneva called the International Entente Against the Third International, which had been founded three years earlier by a patrician lawyer named Théodor Aubert. The intermediary was the passionately anti-Communist Rio Branco, who bombarded Itamaraty in the early 1920s with messages on alleged Red machinations—much of his information came from an exiled Soviet diplomat and from Aubert—and introduced Colonel Reis to Aubert in 1926. The Swiss conservative subsequently corresponded with Reis,

18

Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917-1947

urging the establishment in Brazil of an "anti-Bolshevik center" and requesting a subsidy from Brazilian authorities for his Entente. Rio Branco spent several weeks in 1927 in Rio de Janeiro, where he had "numerous and prolonged talks" with President Washington Luís about the Communist problem and Aubert's work. Luís was keenly interested and ended up agreeing to pay an annual subsidy of 10,000 Swiss francs to Aubert in exchange for information and counterpropaganda materials. Deal with the matter "urgently," the chief executive told Foreign Minister Mangabeira.59 On the internal front Brazilian leaders set for themselves the dual task of discouraging unionization, or at least union militancy, by coopting the working class and containing the activities of subversives. The so-called social question, essentially the potential threat that a disgruntled working class posed to the established order, became a matter of pressing concern to the political elite by the end of World War I, and a number of middle-class intellectuals, politicians, and even some industrial spokesmen began urging the state to steal the thunder of social revolutionaries by taking steps to ameliorate working conditions. Fear of radicalism was not the sole determinant of this reluctant disposition to effect reforms, but the turmoil in labor ranks was certainly the catalyst. In the midst of the tumult of 1919, for example, the government approved a law providing compensation for job-related injuries. And it was no coincidence that Bernardes established the Conselho Nacional do Trabalho (National Labor Council) and approved a law that required railway companies to set up retirement and survivors' pensions, both in 1923 when he was wrestling with the reverberations of the first tenente revolt and with heightened conflict in the labor sector as Communists battled anarchists for control of the trade union movement.60 The sponsor of the original pension bill, Eloy Chaves, was a congressman-manufacturer who, as state secretary of public security in São Paulo during the war, had been charged with keeping restless workers in line. On introducing his legislation, he had defended it as a means of promoting the social harmony he saw as necessary to combat the theorists of class warfare.61 In 1926 the pension law was extended to include stevedores and maritime workers, which meant that the "three best organized and most strategically located" groups of laborers now enjoyed state-ordained social protection. Additional laws passed that year regulated child labor and provided for paid vacations.62 The overall effect of these welfare measures was to weaken the campaign to develop an autonomous, radical-dominated trade union movement. The construction of a repressive apparatus for use against those considered subversives and agitators rounded out the government's

Challenge and Response (1917-1930)

19

postwar defensive program. The creation of the Federal District DOPS in 1920 and emulation of that step by state governments provided a main component of that apparatus. Chief targets of investigation and surveillance were leftist organizations and trade unions. In their endeavor, DOPS offices enjoyed the eager cooperation of business leaders; indeed, the main association of paulista textile manufacturers, representing more than fifty firms in the mid-1920s, developed its own "well-coordinated intelligence network" to monitor workers' activities. The general secretary of the association boasted of "how great a cordiality" existed between it and the state police, which usually allowed managers a free hand in dealing with union organizers.63 The files of the São Paulo DOPS covered nearly three thousand workers by 1927, and that year it took over from the association the task of identifying union militants and distributing information about them to plant owners.64 All postwar administrations maintained steady police pressure on the radical Left. The latter did not represent the most urgent or serious threat to the governments of Pessoa, Bernardes, and Luís, but the scale of labor unrest during 1917-1919 was sufficient to convince national leaders of the need for putting reins on the trade union movement. During that period the police reacted severely, making widespread arrests and eventually deporting a few dozen foreign-born labor organizers, thus dealing a strong blow to union leadership in the major urban areas.65 Even with this, the Pessoa government in 1920 urged the Chamber of Deputies to arm it with more stringent legislation against foreign agents, "whose ideal is the abolition of the fatherland, destruction of the family, and banishment of all religion." The chamber responded by approving two laws that gave the chief executive broader powers to deal with threats to the social order. The first, promulgated on January 6, 1921, empowered him to bar entry into Brazil of persons who had been expelled from another country or whom the police of another country judged to be subversive. The second law, which took effect that same month, gave him wide latitude in defining and punishing subversion. Among other things, this law authorized the closing of any organization that engaged in acts "harmful to public well-being," a provision that enabled the DOPS to move against suspect labor unions and, in mid-1922, to close PCB headquarters, arrest most of the Central Committee, and drive the party underground. By that time the minister of justice had ordered more than 150 additional deportations.66 Pessoa's successor, the austere Arthur Bernardes, proved even more stern in dealing with Communists and anarchists, who faced constant surveillance and periodic detention. PCB stalwart Octávio

20

Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917-1947

Brandão was taken into custody a half-dozen times, and in 1923 the police smashed up a printing shop in Rio de Janeiro that had been used by the party. A new press law and an almost continuous state of siege as a result of the tenente uprisings facilitated the task of cracking down on opposition elements, and in mid-1925 the minister of justice order the PCB's newspaper closed.67 Washington Luís expectedly continued the hard-line policy of his predecessor. After all, as state secretary of justice in São Paulo early in the century, he had welcomed enthusiastically the country's first expulsion law and had initiated the first case against "anarchistic agitators." In the early 1920s, moreover, he had proclaimed on more than one occasion that "working-class agitation" or the "social question" was a matter for the police. The major demonstration of official severity during his presidency came in mid-1927 when, allegedly after being alerted by police in neighboring countries that turmoil of a "Communist-military character" was being prepared in Brazil, the Federal District police moved against striking workers, instituting expulsion proceedings against 106 foreigners, several of whom were Russians. The fact that subversives in Brazil enjoyed the support of "a larger malefic power" (i.e., the USSR) justified governmental severity, Police Chief Coriolano declared. Passage of a more drastic public security law made it possible for authorities to tackle with even greater energy what they perceived as a grave national problem. During one month in 1928, the police broke up fifteen workers' meetings and detained some 800 people.68 The following year saw frequent Communist-inspired strikes and rallies, with the inevitable clashes with police. The PCB's newspaper, which had resurfaced briefly, was permanently forced underground, and Brandão was arrested for the tenth time. Encouraged by the conservative press—it was necessary to lop off the "Muscovite tentacles" and ferret out the followers of Moscow's "monstrous" doctrine, the Jornal do Comércio remonstrated in October 1929—the administration pursued union organizers and other "agitators" to the end. Pondering the PCB's failure to make any significant inroads in Brazil, the German minister in Rio de Janeiro underscored the "ruthlessly harsh" tactics of the police. Indeed, police methods, he advised Berlin in January 1930, "in many instances remind one of conditions in Russia before the war."69 During the early postwar years the battlelines were thus clearly drawn. On one side stood a miniscule, disciplined, tireless sect whose aim was destruction of the prevailing social, economic, and political system. That fanatical group regarded itself as part of the

Challenge and Response (1917-1930)

21

world revolutionary movement supervised by the new regime in Moscow, to which it rigidly subordinated itself. On the other side was traditional society, the leaders of which, while exaggerating the seriousness of the immediate threat, were nonetheless correct in their basic conclusion that the "Brazilian way of life" faced a challenge of an unprecedented, all-encompassing nature, one nourished by an international organization that in turn was controlled by a foreign government. To meet the perceived threat, Brazilian authorities gradually devised a broad program of defense, calculated to prevent direct contact with the hated and feared USSR, impede the introduction of Soviet influences into Brazil, and contain communism at home. That was the anti-Soviet legacy of the Old Republic to the new "revolutionary" regime of Getúlio Vargas, who led a successful revolt against Washington Luís in October 1930 and who would have to address the Russian question during a turbulent era of economic and political crisis.

2. The Debate over Trade and Recognition (1930-1934)

and the Revolution of October 1930 put Getúlio Vargas in power, opening a new period in Brazil's running conflict with Moscow. South America continued to occupy a low priority in the Kremlin's strategy, but the Comintern saw fresh opportunity in the socioeconomic upheaval and political flux spawned by the international crisis and began paying greater attention to the region, activating its South American Bureau, with headquarters shifting from Argentina to Uruguay, and recruiting prominent local Communists for training and indoctrination in Moscow.1 The Vargas regime, grappling with problems of economic dislocation and political turmoil, including a short-lived civil war in 1932, watched with grave disquiet the apparent intensification of Communist activities; but under the pressure of a severe trade slump and in the face of a rapprochement between the United States and the Soviet Union, it found itself forced to reappraise the policy of diplomatic and commercial isolation vis-à-vis the USSR. The upshot, however, was consolidation of an all-encompassing anti-Soviet program and, within the army high command, rudimentary conceptualization of a national security state. THE GREAT DEPRESSION

The chief individual target of the Comintern's burgeoning interest in Brazil was Luís Carlos Prestes, whose supposed popularity with the Brazilian masses represented a weapon of great potential value. There was irony in Moscow's courtship of the Brazilian rebel. At the same time that the Comintern, acting without reference to the PCB, was prepared to go to unusual lengths to bring Prestes into the movement, the PCB, reeling under the impact of the recent purge and the enforced proletarianization of its Central Committee, labeled him persona non grata because of his alleged petty bourgeois ideas. The primary agent of Prestes' transformation was Comrade Gu-

The Debate over Trade and Recognition (1930-1934) ralsky, who established contact with him through the Argentine Communist, Rodolfo Ghioldi. According to Prestes, he met with Guralsky only two or three times in Buenos Aires, but that was sufficient to begin his catechesis. Guralsky's comments on Lenin and the early factional struggles in the USSR "helped me to understand the significance of the Russian revolution," Prestes later recalled. For his part, Guralsky was enthusiastic about the new recruit, describing him to Peruvian Communist Eudocio Ravines as "the most important convert I have ever made in all my career as a revolutionary." As a consequence of the coup d'état in Argentina in September 1930, Prestes was detained by the Argentine police and deported to Montevideo, where Guralsky continued his indoctrination. "We met frequently and talked at length," Prestes remembered. "Those [meetings] and my own study of political problems convinced me that my League of Revolutionary Action was wrong and unfeasible."2 Another Comintern emissary, Arthur Ewert, arrived in Montevideo during this period and helped Guralsky in his proselytizing. Ewert was an important figure in the German Communist movement and recently a member of the Comintern's Executive Committee. His advocacy of cooperation with all nonfascist groups, even the detested Social Democrats, had placed him out of step with Moscow's new sectarianism, and the result was his compulsory public self-criticism and banishment to South America. He reached his new post accompanied by his wife Elise, herself a party militant, and took over political affairs for the bureau.3 Taken in tow by Guralsky and Ewert, Prestes' conversion was complete by May 1931. In a manifesto made public that month he proclaimed his new allegiance and called for revolutionary action under the leadership of the PCB. Party leaders, however, were still skeptical of Prestes, a point that Leôncio Basbaum, who had been expelled from Brazil by the police and had made his way to Montevideo, made personally to Guralsky, Ewert, and other members of the bureau. But what the PCB saw as a defect, the Comintern saw as a potential virtue, and Basbaum was surprised to learn that Guralsky and Ewert intended to invite Prestes to go to Moscow. The idea appealed to Prestes, who announced publicly his intention to visit Stalinist Russia. He sailed from Montevideo with his mother and three sisters in October—according to the German police, he participated in a meeting of the League Against Imperialism in Berlin on the thirtieth of that month—and arrived in Moscow in November.4 Not much is known about Prestes' sojourn in the USSR. To support his family he worked as an engineer for the state construction monopoly and had opportunity to visit building sites throughout the

23

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Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917-1947

country. On one occasion he supposedly uncovered a sabotage plot and gave testimony that led to the conviction of another engineer.5 But the Comintern had taken the Brazilian rebel to Moscow in order to further indoctrinate him and prepare him to assume command of the Communist movement in Brazil. He therefore was allowed to attend the meetings of the Latin American section of the Comintern and to sit in on plenary sessions of the Executive Committee, which put him in contact with the major figures in international communism, such as Bèla Kun of Hungary, Wang Ming of China, and Karl Thaelmann. In all, Prestes had three years to study the mechanisms by which a small minority maintained strict control over an enormous mass of people.6 The reception that Prestes had in Moscow, the support he received from the Comintern, his association with leaders of the organization—all this underscored the anomaly of the PCB's reluctance to accept him as a member. During this period, however, the PCB almost disintegrated as a result of internal divisions, police repression, the co-optation of the labor movement by the Vargas regime, the insistence of the party's Central Committee on isolating it from the government-sponsored unions, and the competition from other radical leftist groups. In view of these multiple pressures, PCB directors judged rigorous discipline to be vital to the party's survival. They therefore again purged alleged petty bourgeois elements— Basbaum, for example, was expelled in 1933—and, more importantly, in January 1934 they once more rejected Prestes' candidacy for membership. But late that year, Dimitri Manuilsky, representative of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist party to the Comintern and president of the latter's Executive Committee, gave the PCB no option during a conclave of Latin American delegates and Comintern directors in Moscow. "The outcome of the discussions was very simple: Manuilsky pounded the table and said I would enter the party one way or another," Prestes subsequently recounted in reference to the decisive meeting that both he and the PCB's new secretary general, a former army sergeant named Antonio Maciel Bomfim, attended.7 That gathering was crucial for the future of the PCB and the fate of the hoped-for social revolution in Brazil. The Latin American delegates, among them an eight-man Brazilian contingent, were in Moscow for the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, which ended up being postponed. The Executive Committee then decided to take advantage of their presence to discuss the situation in Latin America in the light of the debate over the proper tactic to adopt vis-à-vis other nonfascist groups and parties—a debate given urgency by the

The Debate over Trade and Recognition (1930-1934) triumph of nazism in Germany. Georgi Dimitrov, because of his experiences in that country, was an ardent proponent of a popular front policy to combat fascism, and apparently he considered the debate about Latin America to be critical for the subsequent course of communism elsewhere. "The Latin American question is of the greatest importance," he supposedly said to Ravines and Guralsky, who were present, "because the policies adopted there will serve as a precedent for other similar regions." Manuilsky also favored a more cooperative attitude toward social democracy but saw no reason not to be flexible. There might be cases, he pondered, in which armed insurrection might succeed, and Brazil seemed to be one of them. Bomfim argued, perhaps to please Manuilsky and demonstrate as much revolutionary fervor as Prestes, who advocated armed revolt, that opposition to the Vargas government was pervasive and that the country was rapidly entering a prerevolutionary stage. Nothing, of course, prevented the Comintern from combining both approaches: a popular front to mobilize support for a subsequent uprising planned and supervised by the PCB. Ravines, who was assigned the task of helping to forge a popular front in China, later wrote that he had expressed to the Chinese member of the Executive Committee, Wang Ming, his doubts about the feasibility of a revolt against Vargas. "Obviously the Brazilians know more about their own country than you do," Wang retorted. According to Wang, furthermore, Manuilsky was also concerned because his supervision of Comintern activities had yet to bring any noticeable successes. "That, perhaps, is why he is so anxious for the Brazilian insurrection," Wang reflected. In any case, a majority of the Executive Committee finally endorsed the general plan. Bomfim, who used the code name "Miranda," thereupon returned to Brazil, while Prestes and his colleagues in Moscow began preparation for his clandestine entry into the country to organize the overthrow of Vargas.8 In the eyes of the Brazilian foreign policy elite, signs of Comintern intrigue were plentiful in the early 1930s. The counselor at the London embassy, in a letter to his father, Foreign Minister Afrânio de Melo Franco, in 1931 worried that there was "a true Red net cast over the whole world," and reports from the European continent were equally somber. Studying the radicalization of politics in Spain, the commercial attaché in Madrid by 1934 saw only two possible outcomes: communism or fascism. Ambassador Luís de Souza Dantas in Paris was similarly gloomy, blaming the extreme Left for the chaotic drift in French politics. With Communist influence growing rapidly, he said, private property was "more than ever in danger."

25

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Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917-1947

Melo Franco's son visited Paris at this time and painted for his father an alarming picture of the anarchy fomented by Communist-led crowds. "Unleashed, the horde of people pillaged, attacked, and killed," he wrote.9 In South America the Communists seemed to be redoubling their efforts. The legation in La Paz alerted Itamaraty in the spring of 1931 to heightened leftist agitation and weeks later warned of Communist plans for generalized outbreaks in South America. Lucillo Bueno, now head of the mission in Asunción, called attention to the Red challenge in Paraguay, while neighboring Uruguay loomed as a major trouble spot. The Communist party enjoyed legal status there, Moscow maintained a legation in Montevideo, and Yuzhamtorg, after Argentine authorities had closed down its operations in Buenos Aires in 1931, shifted its headquarters to the Uruguayan capital. Efforts by Communist agents to provoke strikes soon followed, a fact anxiously noted by the Brazilian embassy. In April 1932 a special informant in Montevideo for the Brazilian police cautioned the head of the carioca DOPS that a Comintern propaganda specialist had arrived in that city, and weeks later Itamaraty learned from the embassy in Buenos Aires that propaganda materials were flowing from Uruguay to neighboring countries.10 The Chilean political scene was particularly turbulent, and Rodrigues Alves, who headed the embassy there, dispatched various reports on the intensification of Communist propaganda and infiltration of labor unions. In June 1932 radical military officers revolted and proclaimed a "socialist republic," an event that seemed to vindicate his alarm signals. The anti-Communist majority within the Chilean officer corps quickly reacted to abort the radical experiment, but Rodrigues Alves continued to see Chile as a "promising field" for Moscow's intrigue. A memorandum delivered to Itamaraty by the French embassy in September 1932 provided corroborating evidence of what Brazilian authorities were beginning to view as a Red siege of the continent. Stalin's plan, an officer-friend of Police Chief Filinto Muller wrote from Paris the following year, was to throw Latin America into "a state of permanent revolution."11 Signals from diverse sources seemed to indicate that Brazil was a special target of Comintern machinations. "Everything leads us to believe that Moscow,. . . having lost the ground that it had gained in Argentina, is attempting to make Brazil its base of operations in South America," one carioca daily worried in January 1931. Reports from diplomatic missions in Europe told a disquieting story of money, arms, and agents on their way to Brazilian ports. Moniz de Aragão, the minister in Copenhagen, warned that same month that

The Debate over Trade and Recognition (1930-1934) Soviet emissaries were heading for Brazil; shortly afterward, he alerted Melo Franco that Communists in Brazil were expecting a shipment of arms, some of which would be unloaded at some deserted spot on the coast and the rest smuggled across southern borders. In ensuing weeks Aragão returned to the theme of the Red threat, pointing to Montevideo as the center of Soviet propaganda in South America and cautioning about apparent Communist plans to intensify agitation in Brazilian labor ranks.12 Both the legation in Berlin and the embassy in Rome reported that Soviet agents were en route to Brazil, and the minister to Vienna also anxiously relayed information on Communist activities affecting Brazil. In January 1932 a "Communist agent" offered to sell him a list of five hundred purported counterparts of his in Brazil. The following year a member of a visiting Soviet delegation informed him that five "Russian secret agents, supplied with false German passports," were sailing to Brazil to deliver "huge sums" of money to Brazilian comrades. Ambassador Régis de Oliveira in London was more skeptical of his sources, but he also passed along reports about Communist undertakings in Brazil; on one occasion he forwarded to Melo Franco a letter he had received from a spokesman for a group of British investors advising him that a "well-known Russian Secret Investigator" had informed them of Soviet schemes involving Brazil. In 1934 the British government itself warned Itamaraty that Moscow had assigned recently trained agents to Brazil.13 Closer to home, observers in Uruguay bombarded authorities in Rio de Janeiro with similar warnings. Oswaldo Aranha, who served as minister of justice in 1931 before assuming the portfolio of finance, had his own "secret agent" in Montevideo, apparently an employee of the consulate, who sent private reports to him and to the police in Rio de Janeiro. The informant claimed to have contacts in both Yuzhamtorg and a Communist cell in Buenos Aires, and from these sources he learned in May 1931 that the Comintern's South American Bureau was thinking of installing clandestine radio transmitters in the region. At the end of that month he told Aranha about contrabandists who supposedly were carrying arms and correspondence across the border near Santa Ana do Livramento; and several times a week, he added, Russians with false passports appeared at the consulate requesting visas for Brazil. In mid-June he cautioned Aranha that two "propaganda instructors" had departed for Brazil and said that the commercial attaché in Montevideo was going to Rio de Janeiro to deliver personally to Aranha information ("that I cannot put in writing") about Communist plans for an uprising. An angry demonstration in front of the Brazilian embassy in October

11

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Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917-1947

seemed to be an overt sign of the Comintern's intentions toward Brazil. The small crowd plastered buildings with posters and draped sheets over power lines with "Long Live Communism" and "Down with the Fascist Government of Getúlio Vargas" written on them, the ambassador reported, and they broke several embassy windows. A few months later Aranha's informant advised him that "30 or 35" Comintern agents were said to be planning to cross into Brazil from Uruguay or arrive from European ports.14 A matter of substantial interest to Brazilian authorities was the whereabouts and activities of Prestes, whose presumed popularity they feared. Aranha's agent in Montevideo sought to keep track of Prestes, reporting at one point in 1931 that the rebel officer intended to leave shortly for an extended stay in Peru. Then in March 1932 Paraguayan authorities told Lucillo Bueno that Prestes, with funds supplied by Moscow, was stocking arms for an attempt to overthrow the government in Asunción; Bueno quickly wired the information to Melo Franco, who gave credence to it. In midyear, after the outbreak of the brief civil war in Brazil in which the state of São Paulo rose up against Vargas, the consul general in Buenos Aires reported to Itamaraty that Prestes had returned from the Soviet Union with instructions from Moscow to escalate the propaganda war in Brazil. The following month the consul called Melo Franco's attention to the supposed presence of Prestes in São Paulo, a report that the foreign minister quickly passed to the chief of police. A few weeks later one of Vargas' regular sources of information in Montevideo, José Bernardino de Câmara Canto, the commercial secretary at the embassy, advised the chief executive that Prestes was staying at a hotel in Buenos Aires where he was arranging the purchse of arms and dispatching emissaries to Brazil. While the elusive rebel captain was undergoing indoctrination in Moscow, Câmara Canto, in reports to Aranha and Vargas early in 1933, had him attending meetings in Montevideo to discuss plans for revolution in Brazil—and a specialist in explosives had departed for Brazil in that connection, he said in his letter to Aranha. Then in May the consul general in Buenos Aires passed on to Vargas a report from an informant to the effect that Prestes indeed had returned from the USSR.15 Within Brazil there was sufficient evidence of Communist activity to make credible the signals from abroad. The armed forces seemed to be a major focus of Red subversion. Late in 1930, Pedro Salgado Filho, then head of the carioca DOPS, warned the commander of the First Military Region, which included the Federal District, that Communist agents had set out to undermine troop morale, and unit commanders put up their political antennae. Early in

The Debate over Trade and Recognition (1930-1934) 1931 a battalion commander in nearby Petrópolis, to stem the flow of Communist propaganda tracts into the barracks, instituted mail censorship and appealed to Police Chief Baptista Lusardo for assistance. Lusardo himself complained to Aranha several times that the Communists were responsible for "repeated" instances of public disorder in the capital, and his colleagues in São Paulo were sufficiently alarmed by the quantity of Communist propaganda materials coming through the mails that they sent a special courier to see Aranha with a load of the literature in March 1931. General Pedro de Góes Monteiro, military chief of the 1930 revolution and commander of the Second Military Region (São Paulo), kept an uneasy eye on agitation by the radical Left; federal interventors in the Far North reported the arrest of party militants; and in Minas Gerais a "Communist conspiracy with ramifications throughout South America" was uncovered.16 Foreign Minister Melo Franco was deeply concerned about the signs of Communist activity in "various points" of the country. "We are, however, very watchful and ready to act with maximum severity," he privately wrote. Aranha, too, watched developments with growing disquiet. "Communists . . . are preparing their deeds," he commented to the federal interventor in Rio Grande do Sul. "I am absolutely certain of this. And they won't be long in showing themselves everywhere, spilling blood and [spreading] confusion." The civil war that erupted in July 1932 seemed to create further opportunities for agitation. The commander of the First Military Region issued a general warning on July 15, citing Communists as the major threat to public order. Discovery of Communist literature circulating within military zones and the reports on alleged plotting by Prestes strengthened those suspicions and anxieties. On the rebel side, there was similar uneasiness. "Throughout the revolution, the authorities were obsessed with a fear of a Communist rising . . . ," wrote the British consul in São Paulo a few weeks after the paulista surrender. "On several occasions during the revolution, inflammatory pamphlets were distributed throughout the city and large numbers of Communist leaders were imprisoned."17 The apparently quickening pace of Communist activism gave a sense of urgency to the countermeasures adopted by the Vargas regime. The working class, as the primary target of Communist proselytizing, was logically a focal point of the official anti-Communist program. Vargas dissolved the federal congress and state assemblies after his military triumph in 1930, establishing a system of interventors in which his handpicked lieutenants replaced governors, and

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Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917-1947

this enabled his Provisional Government (1930-1934) to move rapidly on the labor welfare front. Within days of occupying Rio de Janeiro, he established the country's first Ministry of Labor and first Ministry of Education and Public Health; in ensuing weeks and months he issued a spate of decrees and regulations on housing, vacations, pensions, unionization, working hours, health and hospitalization, and disability insurance.18 Vargas was interested in the welfare of laborers on humanitarian grounds and because he understood the concept of human capital,19 but political motives—the desire to gain the allegiance of the working class and make it less susceptible to Communist appeals— clearly provided much of the impetus for the regime's labor policies. The presidential decree of March 1931 on unionization, which opened the way for the creation of a dependent labor movement by making the legality of a union contingent upon recognition by the Ministry of Labor and by granting the latter broad powers of intervention, required that union by-laws proscribe "any propaganda of sectarian ideas."20 The first minister of labor, Lindolfo Collor, candidly expressed his concern about the "foreigners" who, "as delegates of theorists and ideologues in other countries, are infiltrating our work force," while the influential Estado de São Paulo, hailing the labor welfare measures, specified the danger: the "Russian communist element in the working-class sector."21 Spokesmen for the high command saw the situation in a similar light. "Communism is hunger," General Monteiro declared in mid-1931, clarifying that communism found fertile ground in the hardships faced by workers. The "rational" organization of workers, he later commented to Vargas, was a good means of "making the class struggle disappear." General Waldomiro Lima, federal interventor in São Paulo after the civil war, voiced similar conviction: if workers' legitimate needs were ignored, he warned, they might fall prey to those who wanted to "destroy the bourgeoisie and create a Communist state." Vargas stated his rationale succinctly in 1933 when he commented that the best way to guarantee property was to "transform the proletariat into an organic force, capable of cooperating with the state, and not leave it . . . delivered over to the dissolvent action of disruptive elements." 22 The DOPS not surprisingly played an important role in the implementation of the labor program. Because the "problem of class struggle" was assuming grave proportions, Police Chief Lusardo announced shortly after the Revolution of 1930 that the special antiCommunist branch of the Federal District DOPS was being provisionally elevated to the status of a separate section. That branch,

The Debate over Trade and Recognition (1930-1934) he remarked, had been maintaining "intense surveillance" of known Communist leaders and was keeping a vigilant eye on factories and plants, as well as simultaneously mediating "with efficient results" various management-labor conflicts. After promulgation of the decree on unionization, it fell to the DOPS to monitor the political climate in industrial establishments to ensure that the antiCommunist intent of the law was being fulfilled. A complaint from the chief of police in São Paulo to Aranha about one hapless or clumsy agent who had alienated everyone—"He will be chased off by workers and industrialists alike," the lawman predicted—attests, perhaps, to the overzealousness of some DOPS agents. In any case, the process continued: early in 1932 a satisfied São Paulo Industrial Federation informed its members that a "great number" of new DOPS officers had been assigned to the sector.23 It was more than coincidence, furthermore, that Salgado Filho, head of the DOPS, was appointed minister of labor a few weeks later, a post he held for the next two years. In labor affairs the regime found a firm ally in the Centro Dom Vital (CDV) and the Catholic church, both of which were preoccupied with the Communist threat. The CDV had undergone substantial growth under the leadership of Alceu Amoroso Lima, a prominent writer and literary critic who had assumed the presidency when Jackson de Figueiredo died in 1928. In the federal capital alone, membership increased tenfold by 1935, reaching five hundred persons. In 1931 a branch was established in São Paulo, and soon thereafter the other principal cities of the country also had branches. In accordance with the Vatican's social encyclicals, the CDV, with the church hierarchy solidly behind it, pursued vigorously the ideals of social justice and class harmony. A means of achieving both seemed to be the formation of Catholic labor organizations, structured hierarchically, that would give unrelenting combat to leftwing radicals. Pressed by the CDV, the government quickly opened for the church an exception to the unionization decree's ban on sectarian ideologies. To map an organizational strategy, the CDV then set up, in November 1931, a committee headed by Lourival Fontes, a self-styled fascist who later played a key role in the regime's censorship and propaganda programs. Amoroso Lima and Raimundo Padilha, subsequently a major figure in the church-supported fascist movement (Integralism) launched the following year, joined Fontes in elaborating a plan, which Cardinal Sebastião Leme approved. The next step was the formation of so-called Workers' Circles at local and regional levels throughout Brazil, all part of a national confederation. Once established, they invariably received federal recog-

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Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917-1947

nition and became valuable weapons in the regime's campaign to check Communist penetration of the labor movement.24 The Catholic labor drive was pressed vigorously, as examples from Vargas' home state indicate. The Workers' Circle in the town of Pelotas was established in March 1932 because "extremist forces were trying to disorient the proletariat... in order to implant the hateful Communist regime," and within two years it, in turn, had organized ten unions that were legalized by the Ministry of Labor. By 1934 the circle had thirty-four hundred members, and it sponsored weekly radio broadcasts to over a score of municípios. During these broadcasts and in frequent public forums, its directors, who included a priest, delivered an anti-Communist, proregime message, stressing Vargas' interest in labor welfare. Statewide there were twenty-four circles by 1936, with a total membership of eighteen thousand. According to Father Leopoldo Brentano, a Jesuit who helped pioneer the movement in Rio Grande do Sul, labor leaders associated with the circles controlled nearly thirty unions by that year. "Combat is given to communism directly and indirectly, in school courses, in the press, and over the radio . . . ," Brentano informed Police Chief Muller.25 Concommitantly with efforts to co-opt workers, federal authorities energetically wielded instruments of repression. Lusardo announced in January 1931 that Vargas and Aranha had authorized him to take the "most energetic steps possible" to suppress Communistinstigated disorder. "Let no one even attempt to disregard police orders regarding maintenance of the peace," he warned sternly. "We will go to the limit and nobody will escape." The police chief urged Aranha to devise new "repressive laws" that would make the antiCommunist struggle more effective, but he had to content himself with the services of two New York police specialists, whom he contracted in March to train his officers in countersubversion, and with existing resources that he employed with systematic severity. Police crackdowns are a recurrent topic in the memoirs of Leôncio Basbaum, who was still a member of the PCB's Central Committee in the early 1930s. He himself was arrested and deported to Uruguay in 1931. After his clandestine return, he helped organize what was intended to be a massive display of proletarian force on May Day in São Paulo, but the exercise was a "complete failure," he recalled: "There were more policemen than workers." On that occasion the paulista DOPS crushed the Central Committee, detaining or dispersing its members; Basbaum spent six months in prison. Octávio Brandão managed to print three issues of A Classe Operária again that year before he was taken into custody and then sent into

The Debate over Trade and Recognition (1930-1934) lengthy exile, and Heitor Ferreira Lima was arrested in the Northeast and subsequently placed in a Rio de Janeiro prison for almost eighteen months. The number of deportees during this period is not known, but Salgado Filho occasionally informed Itamaraty that he was expelling foreign-born Communists, and surviving police records reveal other instances of deportation. After a serious strike in São Paulo in mid-1932, the police instituted expulsion proceedings against some fifty foreign nationals, while military commanders at times took things into their own hands: in 1933 the general in charge of the Mato Grosso garrison had ten alleged Communist agitators detained and escorted to the Paraguayan border.26 The Provisional Government inherited the press law of 1923 and the public security law of 1927, which permitted the closing of newspapers, and to the anti-Communist arsenal the revolution added strict censorship. A month after the new regime was installed, Lusardo convened a meeting of newspaper representatives and cautioned them to refrain from printing any favorable commentaries about communism. The presence of police censors in each editorial office militated against publication of anything that could be construed as supportive of the Soviet experiment, and on occasion it apparently meant a ban on anything pertaining to the USSR. "The police functionary who monitors our news reports," the director of one daily complained to Aranha in October 1931, "yesterday ordered removed from the page a telegram alluding to a secret pact between Russia and China with regard to the Manchurian question, saying that from now on no news about Russia could be published." The established press, of course, was hardly disposed to praise the Stalin regime; on the contrary, it pilloried the USSR and communism in general and encouraged the region's hard line. At one point in 1933 the Associação Brasileira de Imprensa joined the police department in promoting a series of lectures by the "ex-chief of the Russian Secret Service," which pleased Muller because they constituted excellent "anti-Communist propaganda."27 For federal authorities, the question of information about Communist activities and plans assumed increasing significance in the early 1930s, and they sought to improve capabilities in that connection despite myriad handicaps. What intelligence Melo Franco received at Itamaraty from diplomatic missions he shared with the police, maintaining a steady exchange of frequently dubious information. Once in 1932, for example, he relayed a report that Bèla Kun was hiding in Niterói, across the bay from Rio de Janeiro. Seldom did the information provide a basis for effective countermeasures. When the police department alerted him to the "great quantity" of Com-

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Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917-1947

munist propaganda material reaching Brazil from Spain, Melo Franco could order Brazilian consuls in that country to take steps to interdict the flow, but that was hardly operational intelligence.28 Argentina and Uruguay seemed to be conduits for the infiltration of Communist agents into Brazil, underscoring the importance of expanding intelligence-gathering operations in those two countries. The idea of a South American anti-Communist pact was much in the air at this time—one carioca newspaper urged an accord as a means of stopping the "invasion of the Red peril"—but no government in the Southern Cone was willing to go that far. Argentine authorities, however, were receptive to the idea of closer police cooperation against Communist infiltration; in fact, in September 1931, shortly after the government in Buenos Aires had closed down the Yuzhamtorg office, the Argentine foreign minister stressed to the Brazilian chargé the utility of a bilateral police agreement, explaining that what he had in mind was a "permanent surveillance service," particularly in port cities, and a rapid exchange of information. Salgado Filho of the carioca DOPS welcomed the Argentine gambit, since "any alliance in defense of the social order is the greatest duty of the state"; in the spring of 1932 the Buenos Aires chief of police visited Rio de Janeiro to work out the details.29 A check of Itamaraty files, meanwhile, had turned up the unratified South American police convention of 1920 calling for a "permanent" exchange of information on subversive activities, and Vargas hastily had issued a decree of ratification, giving the embryonic pact with Argentina a foundation in treaty. Some observers prodded the government to go even further, reviving the idea of a broad antiCommunist front of the La Plata countries to ward off the "contagion of the Muscovite cancer." The following year, with Muller in charge of the Federal District police, there were additional visits by Argentine investigators, which strengthened the spirit of cooperation. Muller also corresponded with his porteño counterpart, and the latter journeyed to Rio de Janeiro in November 1933 to confer with him. Late that year one of Muller's key aides and a future DOPS director, Israel Souto, spent several days in Buenos Aires studying police services there and examining the possibility of more "systematic" collaborations regarding threats to the "social order."30 Melo Franco endeavored to include Uruguay in the program, pressing the government in Montevideo to ratify the police convention; pending that, the Brazilian and Uruguayan police should cooperate more intimately in matters regarding the "political and social order" in their countries, he suggested in April 1932. The private correspondence of members of the embassy staff in Montevideo indicates that

The Debate over Trade and Recognition (1930-1934) they had the active assistance of local police and customs agents, but this inchoate intelligence service was still unsatisfactory. When Lucillo Bueno was transferred to Montevideo in mid-1933, he made anti-Communist cooperation between the two countries a priority. The presence of a Soviet diplomatic and trade mission there was a source of obvious concern to the inveterate anti-Soviet, and it spurred him to attempt to stimulate anti-Communist sentiment within Uruguayan military circles by furnishing information from Brazilian sources on Communist activities in Uruguay.31 Bueno found an eager ally in Muller. With financial assistance from Itamaraty, the police chief sent a technician to Montevideo to set up a shortwave radio post within the embassy, providing a rapid means of communication that delighted the ambassador, who used it steadily and recommended that all Brazilian diplomatic and consular missions in border countries be similarly equipped. His relations with the Montevideo police were excellent, he informed Muller in November 1933, but insufficient funds and the poor quality of local personnel were handicaps. It would be useful, he urged, if Muller sent an agent to serve as liaison between the embassy and the Montevideo police department. Bueno made a special effort himself to cultivate the head of the investigative branch and was able to report by August 1934 that the Uruguayan official had rendered "good service" to the embassy. When Souto passed through Montevideo on his way back from Argentina at the end of the year, he confirmed that the local "political police" had only rudimentary knowledge of procedures. The radio post was still operating in December 1934, but its future was uncertain because of financial stringency.32 Another source of intelligence that Brazilian authorities tapped during this period was Théodor Aubert's Geneva-based International Entente Against the Third International. The official cooperation established with the Entente in the late 1920s had ceased with the onset of the depression, when Itamaraty suspended the subsidy it had been sending to Aubert. But when Captain Afonso Miranda Correia, the new head of the DOPS, asked Itamaraty in mid-1933 to secure information from Europe on "social questions, especially communism," Melo Franco sent a query to Bern. Still in charge of the legation there was Raul do Rio Branco, who had been responsible for the original contacts with the Entente and had served as liaison between it and Itamaraty before 1930. Sounded by Melo Franco, he immediately recommended his friend Aubert to the DOPS.33 Interestingly, much of the work at Aubert's headquarters on communism in Latin America was being done by a young woman

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groomed by Ambassador José Carlos de Macedo Soares to be an expert on the subject. Macedo Soares was a conservative politician from São Paulo. Former president of the Commercial Association in the state capital, he had married a wealthy woman and was a devout Catholic. He began his brief diplomatic career in 1932, when Vargas and Melo Franco persuaded him to lead Brazil's delegation to the Geneva Disarmament Conference. While in Europe he made a trip to Rome where, in private audience, Pius XI admonished him about the need for more vigorous action against communism. Pointing to the "intense Bolshevik propaganda in Brazil," the pope urged that Brazilian authorities adopt "more active censorship" of publications destined for popular consumption and that the "conservative classes" be more energetic in the field of counterpropaganda. Deeply impressed by this papal counsel, Macedo Soares, once back in Geneva, decided to invite Aubert to give a talk on the Communist problem in the Americas to the heads of the Spanish American delegations to the conference. Gathered in the headquarters of the Brazilian delegation, they listened to Aubert, then Macedo Soares took the floor to argue the urgency of a hemispherewide anti-Communist effort. Before returning to Brazil, he arranged for the daughter of the Brazilian consul in Bern, Odette Carvalho e Souza, to work with the Entente. Using Aubert's archive, she soon was writing articles, translating the Entente's weekly bulletin into Portuguese and Spanish for publication in Latin American newspapers, and preparing a book that, as she put it in a letter to Macedo Soares in October 1932, would emphasize the "need for all Latin American countries to unite in the struggle against the Soviets and their doctrines." Macedo Soares sponsored her entry into the diplomatic service, and when the ambassador became foreign minister in July 1934, he renewed Itamaraty's financial subsidy to the Entente and had Carvalho e Souza join his staff to serve as liaison with Aubert's organization.34 Restrictions on the immigration of Russian nationals remained an essential part of the regime's anti-Soviet blueprint, although the matter underwent reexamination. Apparently, under a system of "letters of call," or certification by local police authorities in Brazil that someone in the community would assume responsibility for a prospective immigrant, the earlier ban had been relaxed to allow a reuniting of family members. Itamaraty experts echoed former arguments, however, insisting in 1931 that any emigrant proceeding directly from the USSR was a potential threat to the social order. After discussions with the Ministry of Justice, Itamaraty in October of that year renewed instructions to Brazilian consulates to grant visas

The Debate over Trade and Recognition (1930-1934) to Soviet citizens living in third countries who could document their good conduct; but as for individuals wanting to emigrate directly from the Soviet Union, only females and minors who already had family members in Brazil could receive visas.35 The trickle of Soviet immigrants into Brazil alarmed Kremlinwatchers, "It is usually foreigners . . . who go about a red flag in hand, working to overthrow the social order," the Correio da Manhã exclaimed in June 1932, calling for tougher controls on immigration. The news early in July that a ship carrying "four hundred Communist comrades" had arrived in Santos provoked a sharp outcry, and the Santos police refused to allow the would-be immigrants to disembark until the DOPS had investigated. "What we need to do," cried one editorialist, "is seal off our sea and land borders against Moscow's agents." It turned out that the contingent of immigrants consisted of eighty-three Russian families of German descent who had fled the USSR and had come to Brazil, with Itamaraty's blessing, under the protection of the German government and the German Red Cross to settle in the South on lands owned by a colonization company. The incident, nonetheless, sharpened skepticism in antiSoviet circles; indeed, the Correio da Manhã spoke for many in demanding more restrictive immigration and naturalization laws to prevent the entry of supposed Communist agents into Brazil.36 After he took charge of Itamaraty, Macedo Soares was struck by a suspicious incidence of requests for visas from Brazilian consulates in the La Plata area by individuals bearing Soviet passports, and in September 1934 he instructed missions there to exercise great caution. Documents of Soviet origin, presented for visa purposes, should be rejected "except in special cases," he said, which meant they could be accepted only after local police had attested to an individual's good conduct and Itamaraty had authorized the visa. In the case of refugees, a visa could be granted only "after detailed examination of the case, about which there must not be the slightest doubt." As a general rule, he concluded, "our attitude toward everything of Soviet origin must be one of absolute wariness."37 The antagonistic attitude of Brazilian authorities and the foreign policy elite in general notwithstanding, the economic crisis raised again the question of trade with the Soviet Union, and this time it sparked an intense debate on the subject of formal relations with Moscow. The startling decline of prices for primary products, especially coffee, as a result of the depression threw Brazilian finances into confusion and had severe repercussions on the industrial sector. Given the need to revive exports, all potential markets had some appeal. The Agrarian League of São Paulo, for example, saw a possible

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outlet for coffee and urged the federal government in December 1930 to seek a rapprochement with Moscow. Indirect feelers from Soviet interests about barter transactions encouraged Brazilian exporters, and early in 1931 various firms sounded the government about taking advantage of the apparent opportunities. The powerful Institute of Coffee in São Paulo joined the movement, seeking first through Brazilian consular officials in Central Europe to promote coffee sales to the USSR and suggesting to the central government that it allow use of Lloyd Brasileiro ships in the event transactions with the Soviets could be arranged. In order to create a market for coffee in the USSR and prevent Soviet authorities from simply purchasing the Brazilian product and then reselling it, the institute came up with an extraordinary scheme to establish a chain of several hundred stands in the Soviet Union that would sell machine-made expresso coffee as well as liquid extract. To launch the project, the institute offered to donate a thousand sacks of coffee without charge.38 Proponents of trade were heartened by publicity surrounding private transactions made indirectly through Uruguayan intermediaries. In March 1931, for instance, the arrival of a Norwegian freighter in Santos with a cargo of kerosene and gasoline from the USSR drew considerable attention. The agent there of the Uruguayan syndicate that originally had purchased the Russian products and then reexported them to Brazil told the press that he already had shipped to the USSR sizable quantities of Brazilian hides and cotton. "The Russian government is an excellent client; it pays for orders in cash and in gold . . . ," he explained, adding that Russian gasoline was "incomparably better" and "impressively cheaper" than that offered by American refiners. Although it stopped short of advocating a restoration of political ties, even the Correio da Manhã questioned the wisdom of allowing competitor nations and intermediaries a free hand in exploiting the Soviet market.39 The opponents of direct commerce with the Soviet Union were emphatic and influential. Former president Arthur Bernardes admonished his longtime friend Melo Franco in December 1930 that Brazil would face "great danger" if it entered into diplomatic relations with the USSR in order to sell coffee, and O Jornal, part of the largest newspaper chain in the country, railed at the idea of direct trade with a nation that had become "an immense cemetery for the living." Reports from diplomats in Europe about Soviet trading practices strengthened the doubts that Melo Franco and his counselors at Itamaraty harbored about Moscow. Moniz de Aragão in Copenhagen warned in March 1931 that the USSR employed commerce as a political instrument in its efforts to cause "disorder and misery" on

The Debate over Trade and Recognition (1930-1934) a broad international scale. Specifically, he charged Moscow with dumping products purchased from other countries in order to provide financial dislocation. Days later the minister in Vienna, after learning that the Institute of Coffee had authorized an honorary vice-consul there to seek Soviet buyers for coffee, quickly alerted Itamaraty to the "danger" of such transactions, predicting that Moscow would simply stockpile the product and then offer it on the European market at low prices when the coming Brazilian crop was ready to be negotiated.40 Melo Franco immediately took steps to halt free-lance commercial discussions between Brazilian consular officers in Europe and Soviet agents, remonstrating that such talks constituted a political act that required his "express authorization." He did consult Vargas about Soviet proposals for indirect barter, which the chief executive approved in principle; however, Vargas agreed with Melo Franco that no Soviet emissaries or merchant ships should be allowed to go to Brazil. Since it had no objections to indirect trade with the Soviets, the government went ahead and authorized the Institute of Coffee to utilize Lloyd Brasileiro vessels, but subsequently, when the institute and Yuzhamtorg wanted a Soviet representative to go to São Paulo for negotiations, Melo Franco, supported by his friend Aranha in the Ministry of Justice, refused to grant the necessary visa. Itamaraty then recommended to the institute that it enter into no transactions with Soviet agencies without first consulting federal authorities. In a study completed in September 1931, the head of the National Commerce Department, Joaquim Eulálio do Nascimento e Silva, supported Itamaraty's argument that trade with the USSR, at least for the time being, was not in Brazil's interest. Current exchanges, he pointed out, were miniscule and were conducted indirectly, consisting of marginal imports of Soviet petroleum by-products and sales of small amounts of hides. Foreign commerce was so tightly controlled by the state in the USSR, he concluded, that it would be virtually impossible to trade with that country without first reestablishing diplomatic relations and allowing Yuzhamtorg to open an office in Brazil.41 That same month Aleksandr Minkin, head of Yuzhamtorg in Montevideo, made a formal bid to crack Brazil's defenses. He called at the embassy and discussed with Bueno's predecessor the possibilities of direct trade. In a subsequent letter to the Brazilian envoy, Minkin, "a cold and impassive man," stated that the two major barriers to a mutually advantageous flow of commerce were the USSR's lack of credits and the absence of a Yuzhamtorg office in Rio de Janeiro. If an agreement could be reached on those two matters, said

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Minkin, his agency could purchase "4 to 5 million dollars" worth of coffee, cacao, rubber, and hides in 1932. The Brazilian diplomat forwarded the document to Itamaraty and pointed out that Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay were trading with the USSR, but Itamaraty in reply limited itself to sending him a copy of Nascimento's study. That same month the embassy in Buenos Aires filed a report that seemed to vindicate Itamaraty's skepticism: the Argentine foreign minister had remarked that his government had shut down the Yuzhamtorg office because it had devoted itself "more to Communist propaganda and subversion than to commercial interchange between the two countries," Its suspicions confirmed, and under pressure from the Commercial Association of Rio de Janeiro, Itamaraty even intervened on occasion to impede importation of individual cargos coming directly from the USSR.42 Temporarily shelved, the question of trade with the Soviet Union resurfaced in 1933 as a result of the financial crisis. Largely because of the civil war and a severe drought in the Northeast, which necessitated unusually high federal expenditures, the government in 1932 experienced the largest budgetary deficit in Brazil's republican history to that point. During 1933, moreover, the favorable balance of trade was cut almost in half.43 Aranha had wrestled daily with financial problems and by 1933 was increasingly less interested in ideology and more concerned with markets. The London Monetary Conference in midyear seemed to him an excellent opportunity to explore commercial possibilities with the Soviets, and he persuaded Melo Franco to allow the head of Brazil's delegation, Ambassador Joaquim de Assis Brasil, to meet privately with Maxim Litvinov, the new Soviet commissar for foreign affairs. Aranha's immediate interest was in bartering coffee for oil, and Assis Brasil sounded Litvinov in that regard early in July, hinting that Rio de Janeiro might be inclined to reestablish diplomatic ties if a commercial basis for them could be found. Litvinov was not encouraging. The Soviet Union was interested only in importing machinery, he said, so purchases of coffee would be dependent upon obtaining a long-term credit from the seller. And, he added, his government required payment in cash for any oil it sold.44 What confused the issue was a conflicting signal from Yuzhamtorg in Montevideo. Whether the new Soviet move was a consequence of the Litvinov-Assis Brasil encounter is not clear; the commissar, perhaps as a bargaining technique, may not have wanted to evince great interest in the Brazilian gambit. In any case, the new Yuzhamtorg agent, Aleksandr Lavin, called on Ambassador Bueno in August to discuss once more advantages of direct trade. Bueno lis-

The Debate over Trade and Recognition (1930-1934) tened skeptically as Lavin pointed to profits that Brazil's neighbors derived from transactions with the USSR. It would be "difficult, if not impossible," the Brazilian envoy reported, to transform the Soviet Union into a nation of coffee-drinkers. It would also be easier, he said, for it to purchase coffee and rubber in Hamburg than to pay the additional freight costs of taking on cargos in Brazilian ports. Bueno duly reported the conversation to Melo Franco, who consulted Catete Palace. Vargas thought that there would be no harm in further study, a decision that modified nothing. Melo Franco revealed his own lack of enthusiasm by not relaying the chief executive's viewpoint to Bueno for another six weeks. The ambassador was disappointed at what he perceived as a weakening of resolve in Rio de Janeiro, and after informing Lavin that his government was willing to examine any specific proposal, he sent a dispatch to Melo Franco arguing forcefully that it was "utopic" to think that Brazil could sell significant quantities of coffee to the USSR. "My candid and sincere opinion, leaving aside the repugnance that communism inspires in me and the instinctive scorn that I feel toward the hangmen of the Russian people, is that it is not in our interest to establish relations with Moscow," he declared.45 Washington's decision to normalize relations with the Kremlin in November 1933 touched off intense debate in Brazil on the issue. The Constitutional Assembly was about to convene and one delegate from Bahia announced that Brazil would derive "unimaginable advantages" from recognition of the Stalin regime, a step that Levi Carneiro, a noted jurist and legal adviser to the government, labeled "most natural and opportune." Raul Fernandes, a prominent political figure and future foreign minister, opined that Washington's move more or less "forced" Brazil to follow suit, while the president of the Brazilian Industrial Federation was unequivocal in endorsing a rapprochement because it would open up an "enormous field" for Brazilian exports. Aranha was concerned about Communist activities but seemed not to think that the presence of a Soviet diplomatic mission would affect their tempo or extent. "A series of small countries lives on the borders of Russia and does not fear communism," he pondered. "Are we then going to be afraid? Why?"46 What interested him, of course, was trade. At Itamaraty there was still strong resistance. Replying to a query from the ambassador in Washington, Melo Franco authorized him to receive Litvinov, who was there to conclude negotiations for American recognition, should the Soviet official desire to discuss Brazil's attitude, but the foreign minister had not changed his own thinking in that regard. When an alarmed Rio Branco telegraphed from Ge-

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neva that the European press was speculating about imminent Brazilian recognition, Melo Franco promptly replied that the rumor was "completely lacking in foundation." In conversation with a reporter two days later, on November 27, he made clear his opposition to normalizing relations with Moscow—which was not to say, he added, that the whole matter, "especially its economic aspect," could not be usefully evaluated.47 It was the growing interest of Brazilian exporters in the Soviet market, and especially moves by authorities in politically influential Rio Grande do Sul, Vargas' home state, to effect transactions with Yuzhamtorg, that kept the issue alive and ultimately forced the government to undertake a full-scale reassessment of policy toward the USSR. The federal interventor in that state, José Antonio Flores de Cunha, was then one of the mainstays of the regime, and his support for trade with the Soviet Union was a strong weapon in the hands of prorapprochement forces. The Rio Grande-USSR negotiations began late in 1933—one of Flores' brothers was involved— and by the spring of 1934 were provoking considerable press discussion in other parts of the country. The interventor's own party newspaper hailed the USSR as an "immense market of unlimited possibilities" for Brazilian products and warned that while Brazil vacillated, its competitors were acting, an argument endorsed by other observers. By August a small group of gaúcho banking and commercial representatives were ready to set up an export-import company to handle business with the USSR. The Soviets wanted to send glass and pharmaceuticals, as well as agricultural machinery, and in return were interested mainly in hides, wool, and rubber. Rio Grande spokesmen wanted the federal government to grant Soviet products the same tariff rates that imports from other countries paid and also to facilitate trade on a compensation basis.48 Dominant opinion within the government, at least in the military and diplomatic spheres, ran strongly against the plans of the gaúchos. Army leaders were rigidly opposed to official contacts with the USSR and, in fact, were working during the second half of 1934 on plans for a major anti-Communist campaign that implicitly called for diplomatic and commercial isolation vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. Itamaraty also remained a stronghold of anti-Soviet sentiment. Melo Franco resigned in January 1934, but the interim foreign minister was equally conservative. During the early months of the year, Itamaraty reaffirmed its opposition to granting visas to Yuzhamtorg emissaries, and it continued to alert the police to apparent subversive activities fomented by Moscow.49 Furthermore, the appointment of Macedo Soares to the post of foreign minister in July, after

The Debate over Trade and Recognition (1930-1934) promulgation of the new constitution and Vargas' election by the constitutional assembly to a presidential term, placed Itamaraty in the hands of an even more dedicated anti-Communist. If federal policy had been slightly ambiguous up to mid-1934, it was primarily because of Vargas. Notorious for what some saw as studied vacillation, he customarily avoided commitments to a fixed course of action, at least until opposing sides had exhausted their arguments. Supremely pragmatic, he had an eye constantly on Brazil's declining foreign exchange reserves and was interested, too, in accommodating his allies in Rio Grande do Sul, which is why he had not firmly closed the door to commerce with the USSR. Thus he had not wanted contacts between Yuzhamtorg and the embassy in Montevideo broken, and in April 1934 he appointed Nascimento, the trade expert at the National Commerce Department, minister to Turkey and Egypt with the special mission of surveying market possibilities in the Middle East and the Soviet Union. Nascimento still believed that if Brazil wanted to trade with the USSR, it would have to reestablish diplomatic relations with Moscow, but he now thought that the danger of Soviet-directed subversive activities had diminished. Vargas was not unimpressed by this argument, and a few weeks later he allowed a left-leaning associate to approach Moscow's embassy in London about a possible formal reconciliation.50 The chief executive obviously was aware of the attitude of his military and diplomatic counselors, but the direct requests from gaúcho authorities, coming with the country once more under a constitutional, representative system and at a time when a considerable segment of informed opinion seemed to favor a rapprochement with the Soviet Union, made a policy review inevitable. The major forum for the debate was the recently created Conselho Federal de Comercio Exterior (CFCE), initially a kind of supercabinet for economic affairs the meetings of which were attended by not only spokesmen for agricultural, commercial, and industrial groups, but several cabinet members and occasionally Vargas himself. The CFCE turned to the Russian question at its second meeting, held on August 13. The influential exchange director of the Banco do Brasil spoke firmly in favor of exploring all export possibilities. He reminded the Conselho that various countries, including some in South America, were trading with the USSR, although he realized that "maximum prudence" would have to be exercised in dealing with the Soviets. Vargas seemed to agree, declaring that "in principle" he did not oppose a reestablishment of "political and commercial" ties with the Soviet Union.51 Macedo Soares was alarmed by the president's apparent wavering.

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Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917-1947

He himself did not want to stand in the way of profitable commerce, especially since he had presidential ambitions and thus would welcome an opportunity to please the powerful planter class in São Paulo, but he adamantly rejected the idea of official relations with the Stalin regime. The problem was how to enjoy the former and avoid the latter. At Itamaraty the prevailing opinion was that it could not be done, particularly since tariff concessions would require a formal trade agreement. Macedo Soares therefore set his staff to work marshaling arguments against recognition. Aranha, Vargas' closest friend, was on his way to a new post as ambassador to Washington and had been replaced in the Ministry of Finance by a conservative, Anglophile banker. This transition facilitated Itamaraty's task of converting Vargas. At the next meeting of the CFCE on August 20, Macedo Soares played for time. He found an ally in a Ministry of Labor representative, who argued against the plan advanced by the Rio Grande interests, and was able to have a decision postponed, reasoning against haste and asking for time to prepare special studies on the political aspects of the question. A week later, with Vargas in attendance, the foreign minister spoke earnestly against any relationship with Yuzhamtorg, reminding the Conselho that the Argentine government had been compelled to expel it from Buenos Aires. Moscow, he warned, merely wanted to use trade to "open the doors of Brazil to its economic, political, and social influence." Once more he promised fresh analyses of the question and again requested a postponement of the final decision. Vargas, having heard nothing from Nascimento in the Middle East, agreed. When news did arrive the following day, it did nothing to bolster the hand of those interested in recognition and trade: Nascimento simply reported from Cairo that he had not yet been able to establish direct contact with Soviet diplomats.52 State authorities and businessmen in Rio Grande do Sul pressed their case in September. Flores da Cunha allowed a Yuzhamtorg spokesman to disembark in Porto Alegre for commercial talks and sent a wire to the head of Itamaraty's Commercial Section, who was also the executive director of the CFCE, on September 13 complaining that Brazil, by its hesitation, was running the risk of letting an excellent opportunity slip away. The Soviet agent, he said, had declared that Yuzhamtorg would not make any further proposals to Brazil should it be rebuffed. Flores' secretary of interior subsequently sent telegrams to both Vargas and Macedo Soares urging that the Yuzhamtorg official be given a visa so that he could visit other states and renewing the request for the concession of mini-

The Debate over Trade and Recognition (1930-1934) mum tariffs for Soviet products. The private backers of the projected export-import company also lodged a new appeal for tariff favors, informing the CFCE that the Soviet government supposedly was willing to allow Brazilian goods to enter the USSR duty-free.53 Itamaraty, meanwhile, was girding for battle. Macedo Soares' staff in September and early October concluded a series of special reports on the USSR that painted an overwhelmingly negative picture of that country, its regime, and its foreign policy. In one memorandum Moniz de Aragão, recently minister to Copenhagen, concluded that the break with Moscow in 1918 had not significantly affected Brazilian interests, since trade with Russia had never been of great value. In seeking to normalize relations with other countries, he wrote, Moscow wanted only to secure diplomatic immunity for its propaganda agents, place itself in a position to flood markets of trading partners with underpriced goods so as to disrupt their industries, and earn foreign exchange to finance international subversion. Carvalho e Souza, who, under the tutelage of Macedo Soares, was on her way to becoming Itamaraty's expert on communism, prepared a paper on "The Soviets in Latin America" in which she compared Russian national character to that of the Latin Americans. In her view, the Russians displayed a "manifest tendency toward hypocrisy" and were emotionally unstable, whereas the Latin Americans, while impressionable and volatile, possessed a "natural good sense that the Russians lack entirely." Her arguments regarding the Soviet threat to Latin America were predictable: "The Bolsheviks resort to any means to infiltrate Latin America, seeking the dissolution of our institutions and our laws, and the destruction of the sacred sentiments of 'God, Country, and Family' so rooted in the soul of our people."54 The refinement of arguments strengthened Itamaraty's position, which gained additional force from commercial overtures from Berlin. Germany was a traditional market of immense importance to Brazil, being not only its second-leading coffee market, but an outlet for a variety of other products. The depression had devastated commerce between the two countries, so when the Hitler regime in mid-1934 dispatched a trade mission to Rio de Janeiro with proposals for a new program of bilateralism, Brazilian exporters and most members of the CFCE responded eagerly. The result was that promising and ultimately successful negotiations with the Germans got under way that fall and served to weaken the hand of those calling for trade with an uncertain, untried, and politically risky Soviet market.55 By the time the decisive debates on the Russian question took place early in October, furthermore, Vargas had become deeply con-

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cerned about a recrudescence of leftist agitation, apparently a result of the opening of the political system in July. Under the umbrella of the new constitution, Communists and other left-wing groups seemed to be actively exploiting the tense political atmosphere created by elections in various parts of the country Street clashes between leftists and members of the fascistic Integralist party became commonplace. As a consequence of a new PCB policy of making legal labor unions the target of a vigorous recruitment drive, membership in the party reportedly tripled that year, reaching five thousand. In a letter to Aranha in October, Vargas voiced his uneasiness about the increasing boldness of the Communists, who threatened "all the living forces of our nationality," and vowed to launch a "coordinated effort" to check the threat.56 On October 4 the CFCE began its final debates on the Soviet issue. Macedo Soares arrived for the session with a written document in which he pleaded forcefully for a hands-off policy. Trade possibilities, he said, were minimal, but even if substantial, it would never behoove "republican, democratic Brazil to enter into relations with Bolshevik Russia." Moscow's commercial gambits were mere facades for its political goal of world revolution, he concluded. Vargas, whose interest in the successful conclusion of negotiations with the Germans took precedence over other questions of foreign trade and whose disquiet over Communist activities in Brazil was growing steadily, now endorsed his foreign minister's arguments. It was clear, he announced, that the Conselho had done well in not acting hastily. When Macedo Soares interjected that, in view of the perceived tempo of extremist agitation, it would be wise to sound neighboring governments on the possibility of broader, concerted action, Vargas quickly authorized him to look into the matter. Four days later, at a meeting dominated by discussion of German trade proposals, Vargas ended serious discussion of the Russian question for the next ten years by presenting a succinct resolution against relations with the USSR that the CFCE unanimously approved. "At the present time," read the resolution, "it is not opportune for Brazil to take any initiative regarding the reestablishment of commercial or political relations with Russia."57 Armed with that decision, Macedo Soares moved rapidly to plug the leaks in his wall of defense. On October 10, after receiving a telegram from Nascimento, who wanted to open talks with the Soviet legation in Athens, he wired instructions to break off all contact, since Vargas had resolved "definitively" to ignore the USSR. That same day the foreign minister sent a telegram to the Rio Grande do

The Debate over Trade and Recognition (1930-1934) Sul government notifying it of that decision. A cable from Aranha in Washington, which arrived at the same time reporting that SovietAmerican trade relations were apparently a "failure," undoubtedly solidified Macedo Soares' faith in the policy he had helped to shape. He already had his staff working on a draft of a South American antiComintern pact, which was ready on October n . As it turned out, the project was not carried forward. The Political Department of Itamaraty argued convincingly that it would be imprudent to attempt to build a continentwide anti-Soviet front when Chile, Bolivia, and Colombia had just voted in favor of the USSR's entry into the League of Nations, and when most countries now maintained official relations with Moscow. Macedo Soares apparently did want to prepare the ground for possible future cooperation in that sense, however, so he sent the special studies on communism and the USSR prepared by his staff to the Peruvian legation; he later received assurances from Lima that the government there would adopt a similar position regarding the Soviet Union. The foreign minister's impatience and even disdain toward those interested in improving relations with Moscow were revealed in his handling of a request from the Chamber of Deputies late in October for an explanation of the government's refusal to recognize the Stalin regime. He first waited five weeks before replying, then sent a terse message to the chamber stating that the constitution empowered the chief executive to maintain relations with other governments and that Vargas did not think it opportune to have such relations with the Kremlin.58 Itamaraty's diplomatic toughness reflected the progressive hardening of the administration's policy toward the perceived subversive challenge. Vargas' comment to Aranha in mid-October suggests the rising level of threat perception within the government. There is no doubt about the president's anti-Communist sentiments, but he was responding in part to pressures from his military chiefs, whose disgruntlement had become acute. The question of national security was now a matter of pressing concern to the high command. The deplorable state of the illequipped, poorly trained, undermanned services, painfully revealed by the 1932 civil war, had dramatically heightened sensitivity to both external and internal threats. The international environment was turbulent, particularly in South America. Territorial wars on Brazil's borders—Peru and Colombia battled for Leticia (1932-1933) and Paraguay and Bolivia engaged in bloody combat for control of the Chaco region (1932-1935)—and Argentina's rearmament and

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apparently expansionist foreign policy made the possibility of Brazil's being dragged suddenly into war a serious consideration for military planners in Rio de Janeiro.59 But national security had also acquired a domestic dimension in military thinking in the early 1930s. Indeed, as army leaders surveyed the internal scene during the last year or two of the Provisional Government, they grew progressively uneasy about what they saw as a state of sociopolitical flux fed to a dangerous degree by Communist intrigue. Studying labor turmoil in São Paulo, the new commander of the Second Military Region attributed it to Communist provocateurs, and a subsequent wave of strikes among railroad workers and stevedores fueled that conviction. General Pantaleão da Silva Pessoa, head of Vargas' Military Household (1932-1935) and thus in charge of the president's security, advised him early in 1934 that the Communist hand lay behind restlessness among workers on the Brazil Central Railroad, and when incidents multiplied, intelligence officers on the general staff of the First Military Region concluded that "agitators of the III International" were responsible.60 Especially unsettling were the inroads that communism seemed to be making in the ranks. Regional staff analysts in Rio de Janeiro pointed to what was general belief in military circles: "Red agitators" were making enlisted personnel a primary target of their propaganda. The commander of the Second Military Region moved to quash the menace in his jurisdiction, expelling several sergeants and corporals for subversive activities, while his counterpart in the federal capital urged preventive arrests to check Communist troublemaking.61 The most influential general of the era was Monteiro, who had planned the military phase of the Revolution of 1930 and had gone on to lead the main federal army during the 1932 civil war. He then served as commander of the First Military Region until January 1934, when he became minister of war. Highly intelligent, wellread, and endowed with a prodigious memory, Monteiro was as much a politician as a soldier. An unrelenting anti-Communist— the "double sociopolitical danger" threatening Brazil, he privately had written in mid-1930, was communism and the corrupt political system of the Old Republic—he rapidly developed during this period a siege mentality that would make him an even more active political adventurer in ensuing years. In his view, the army was the bulwark against national disintegration and logically, then, was the major focal point of the subversive machinations of "agitators," "hidden agents in the pay of other governments," and "evil politicians."62 Monteiro saw in liberal democracy the roots of the country's lack of

The Debate over Trade and Recognition (1930-1934) readiness to meet the external and internal challenges of the era, and the end of the dictatorship filled him with foreboding. Willing to take up arms in 1930 to eliminate the Old Republic, his disenchantment with political liberalism had deepened further as he contemplated the turmoil of the postrevolution period. During meetings of a special committee set up late in 1932 to prepare a draft constitution, he frankly championed indirect presidential elections and vesting the executive power with legislative functions. He disliked traditional political parties because, as he told the press, they encouraged "only discord, disunion, exploitation, and injustice" that weakened the state's ability to "discipline" the country. In a lengthy memorandum to Vargas on the eve of his taking over the Ministry of War, he dissected the army's problems and society's apparent vulnerability to the pressures of political extremists and other adversaries of the strong, centralized state he thought necessary to guarantee national security. Scorning "moribund liberalism" and the "mediocre results" of legislative bodies, he declared that "limitations on the power of the state cause more harm than good."63 Many senior officers shared Monteiro's views. The commander of the army's General Staff School, on addressing the graduating class in 1933, was harsh in his criticism of the "Machiavellianly satanic" doctrines and the self-serving politicians who made the national environment one of grave challenges. Early in 1934 the commander of the Second Military Region privately complained that the system had greatly weakened the authority of the army, a sentiment that was gradually permeating the officer corps. After talking to various army officers, Macedo Soares was somewhat stunned by the extent of their disaffection. "The uniformity of opinion is striking," he wrote to Vargas in April 1934. "Almost all of them are opposed to liberal democracy." An editorial in the leading military journal in July asserting that a liberal regime was "bad company" for an efficient army was a further sign of a pervasive antipathy in military circles toward the system more or less restored by the constitution that Vargas promulgated that month.64 The apparent inability of the government to extirpate communism was a source of increasing bitterness to the high command. On more than one occasion during the debates of the committee to prepare a draft constitution, Monteiro advocated special laws that would permit "preventive measures to confront modern revolutionary techniques." Nations had to prepare for both external and internal defense, he declared, and the "worst enemy is the internal one." It was important to avoid abuses of power, yes, he recognized, "but preventive and repressive measures must be greater. . . . " As com-

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mander of the First Military Region he endeavored to improve counterintelligence capabilities and warned his unit commanders to be alert to "hidden maneuvering along Bolshevik lines." Once in charge of the Ministry of War, he assigned his staff the task of devising an educational program to combat subversive doctrines, and he urged the General Staff to intensify its cooperation with the police and develop a counterintelligence service to defend better the "institutions of the state and the security of the government."65 His friend Pessoa, who had been Monteiro's chief of staff during the civil war, was tireless in his efforts to strengthen the defensive apparatus of the state. "It is better to spend on preventive measures than cure greater ills," he told Muller. To stay abreast of the activities of conspirators and would-be conspirators, Pessoa created his own private intelligence network, employing various sources, among them Integralists. It was Pessoa who activated and pushed to fruition plans to establish the Conselho de Segurança Nacional (CSN) in 1934. He became ex officio secretary general of the CSN, the structure of which reflected a broad concept of mission, since each ministry was to set up a special office to handle national security affairs as they related to its particular activities and to act as liaison with the CSN.66 By the fall of 1934 sentiment in favor of a more energetic and wide-ranging crackdown on Communists was massive within the officer corps—and military leaders had important civilian allies. The Correio da Manhã, generally regarded as the most influential newspaper in Rio de Janeiro if not Brazil, beginning in October adopted an almost strident editorial line, blasting the government for "timidly" following the constitution when "radical and extreme" steps were necessary to meet the "national danger," even if they were taken "outside" the law. That this extraordinary position was a studied one, an editorial a month later made clear: the "repression of communism" could not wait for the jurists, it insisted; otherwise Brazil would fall prey to "international adventurers." In his letter to Aranha on October 19, Vargas, as well, suggested that the current legal weapons in his arsenal were inadequate. "The government needs laws," he said, "to strengthen it against that wave that dissolved all the living forces of our nationality."67 What best mirrored the high command's preoccupation with the perceived threat and most clearly demonstrates the rapid evolution of military thought in an authoritarian direction, a dimension of which was a growing sense of divorce from the civilian political class, was a special study completed by the General Staff and endorsed on November 8 by Monteiro, who forwarded it to Vargas the

The Debate over Trade and Recognition (1930-1934) same day. "Among the factors that most facilitate the dissolvent action of Bolshevik propaganda," Vargas read, "two stand out considerably: the influence of politicians who . . . use the state to advance personal aims . . . ; [and] the press, . . . which stirs up scandals involving public servants and organizations, or attacks the powerful under the pretext of defending the oppressed, [and] propagates and divulges dissolvent ideas." To fight the Red menace, urged the General Staff, the government needed to adopt a broad program of action that would include counterpropaganda, a purge of the civil service, press censorship, and a "vigorous and inflexible" policy of professionalization of the armed forces, which would mean, among other things, the "systematic and total separation between them and politicians." But all this would not be sufficient to defend the state against communism. "It rests on an international organization and operates . . . by indirect and direct, open and insidious, processes," the army strategists explained. "Its adepts, having created a mentality apart that denies civilization's moral achievements, are men who assume any commitment and lend themselves to any pretense. These facts require different rules of combat or repression." To define those rules and orient the anti-Communist campaign, the General Staff recommended that the government establish a special executive office and that it create as well a countersubversive operational force within the police department. "It will be necessary to provide the financial means for payment of the special agents and execution of counterpropaganda, [and] to aid the religious, political, and benevolent organizations, etc., that step forward spontaneously to combat communism," the army planners concluded.68 At the end of the month Monteiro sent a memorandum of his own to Chief of Staff Benedito Olímpio da Silveira expressing his concern about the lack of national preparedness in the face of both the international and domestic situations, which might bring, "from one hour to the next, rather grave surprises for national security." He pointed to the Chaco conflict, Argentina's military buildup, the possibility of another war in Europe, and the upsurge of internal "agitation and conspiracies" that had accompanied reconstitutionalization. "Our domestic situation must be handled with great care . . .," he told Silveira, agreeing with the General Staff's position and recommending that it draft concrete proposals regarding the acquisition of armament, purge of the officer corps, and means to "prevent an outburst of disorder and extremist propaganda."69 It is clear that by the end of 1934 federal authorities were convinced that the Communist threat was real and was assuming in-

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creasingly dangerous proportions and that, to meet that challenge, more rigorous defensive measures were necessary. Influential military circles, as the General Staff study indicates, were moving toward advocacy of a national security state in which the tutelary and repressive hand of the central government would reach out to mobilize and discipline society. That Brazilian leaders exaggerated the extent of Communist infiltration and influence is unquestionable, but it is also true that their apprehension was reaching unprecedented levels at the precise juncture at which Luís Carlos Prestes and his associates and superiors in Moscow were planning armed insurrection, an act that would make him the catalyst of the process that would bring to Brazil an early version of that state.

3. Red Rebellion (1935)

THE YEAR 1935 was a watershed in the history of Brazilian communism. Aiming to destroy liberal democracy and implant a "popular revolutionary" government as the first step in erecting a soviet regime, the leaders of the PCB, supervised by Luís Carlos Prestes and other special emissaries from the Comintern, worked assiduously for several months to prepare an armed insurrection against the Vargas administration. The Comintern's challenge took violent form in the last week of November 1935, when revolts broke out in quick succession in Natal, Recife, and Rio de Janeiro, three discrete movements that constituted the famous, or infamous, intentona comunista. They occurred without overall coordination, despite the long months of planning, and lacked, despite the rhetoric and propaganda, any meaningful working-class or military support. The government, alert to Communist intrigue for months yet taken by surprise, nonetheless easily suppressed the uprisings. Prestes and his comrades had insisted on viewing Brazilian reality through a rigid ideological prism, with disastrous results. By taking up arms against the system, they vindicated the fears and warnings of liberals and conservatives, and in so doing shouldered much of the responsibility for the subsequent closing of the political system and for making anticommunism a permanently active and credible force in Brazilian politics.

The historic decision taken in Moscow late in 1934 to seize power in Brazil imposed an accelerated rhythm on the work of the PCB. One of its immediate objectives was the mobilization of political opposition to the Vargas government, and the chosen instrument was a popular front organization. The efforts of the conspirators bore fruit in March 1935, when the Aliança Nacional Libertadora (ANL) was launched under the nominal direction of two naval officers, Commander Herculino Cascardo, a socialist and former tenente, and

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Commander Roberto Sisson, son of an admiral, a man of considerable financial means, and equally imbued with socialist ideals. Cascardo assumed the presidency of the ANL, while Sisson became secretary general and confidential liaison agent with the PCB. The raison d'être of the new organization was revealed at its first public ceremony on March 30 in Rio de Janeiro, as Prestes was proclaimed honorary president to thunderous applause. The program announced by the directors of the ANL consisted of five basic points: (1) cancellation of the foreign ("imperialist") debt; (2) nationalization of foreign companies ("sweatshops where Brazilians labor like dogs"); (3) expropriation of large estates and their division among peasants; (4) civil liberties; and (5) the formation of a "people's government."1 The PCB carefully orchestrated the activities of the ANL, and in turn the party was counseled by Comintern agents who began to slip into the country during this period. A week before the establishment of the ANL, the German Communist Arthur Ewert, charged with advising the party's Central Committee and supervising the mobilization of mass support for the rebellion, arrived accompanied by his wife. After their stay in Montevideo in 1931, the couple had been sent by the Comintern to the Far East. Passing through the United States and with the assistance of American Communists, they had secured passports in the names of "Harry Berger" and "Machia Lenczycki" and then proceeded to Shanghai, where for the next two years Ewert served as the Comintern's representative to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party. Local police kept the Ewerts under surveillance, suspecting that they were Comintern emissaries, but the experienced agents managed to avoid major problems. Their new mission now took them to Buenos Aires and from there to Rio de Janeiro, where they disembarked on March 5. Ewert's code name would be "Black" (Negro).2 Within a short while other agents selected by Moscow for special roles in the coming revolution took up their posts. On April 10 a reporter calling himself Luciano Busteros and his wife rented a room at the Hotel Flamengo in Rio de Janeiro; his real name was Rodolfo Ghioldi, the Argentine Communist who had helped to recruit Prestes years earlier. The next operative to arrive was a Belgian named Léon Jules Vallée, whose assignment was to act as treasurer, and then a young American named Victor Barron showed up. The son of Harrison George, a well-known Communist activist, the 25-year-old Barron posed as a sales representative, but his secret task was to set up a radio post so that Prestes could communicate rapidly with conspirators in other parts of Brazil and with Moscow itself. The group was soon joined by a 41-year-old German named Johann Graaf, who

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used the pseudonym Franz Gruber. A member of the German Communist party and a war veteran, Graaf had served the Comintern for years as a military instructor in various countries. He had met Prestes the previous year in Moscow and went to Brazil as an explosive expert.3 Finally, also in April, Prestes, using the nom de guerre "Kid" (Garoto), returned in the company of a female agent named Olga Benario, a German Communist whom Moscow had assigned to handle his personal security and with whom he had fallen in love. Their trip from Moscow lasted three months and took them across Europe to New York and from there to Buenos Aires, where they embarked by hydroplane for Brazil bearing Portuguese passports issued in the names of "Antonio" and "Yvonne Villar." They landed at Florianópolis and made their way to São Paulo and then to Rio de Janeiro by automobile. In the federal capital they rented an apartment in the southern beach district of Ipanema. Prestes knew that he headed the government's most-wanted list, so he took extraordinary precautions. His very presence in Brazil was kept a closely guarded secret within the revolutionary high command, and in ensuing weeks he always used intermediaries to communicate with former colleagues whom he thought might be won over, limiting his personal contacts to the foreign-born Comintern agents and Bomfim ("Miranda"), the PCB's secretary general. The Communist leaders used different houses or apartments for their meetings and changed residences periodically.4 Under the practical leadership of Sisson, who used personal funds to finance many of its undertakings, the ANL carried its radical, but not revolutionary, message to most cities and towns in the country and seemingly was effective. In one major paulista city, some 800 persons attended the inaugural meetings of the local ANL branch, and one PCB militant wrote that in Recife there had been a rush of people to register. Ewert confirmed this during an inspection trip to the Northeast in June. "The Aliança Nacional Libertadora is making great headway," he recorded. "In Recife the rally was attended by 3,500 to 4,000 people." After three months the national directorate claimed a membership of 400,000, which was undoubtedly exaggerated, but certainly the ANL underwent rapid expansion and Communist agents worked energetically behind the scenes to promote it. Lieutenant Sylo Meirelles, a veteran of the Prestes Column and member of the PCB troika that controlled the party apparatus in the Northeast, expressed misgivings about this tactic to the Central Committee, but he was swiftly rebuked and forced to promise to press forward with the ANL campaign "at all costs." Sergeant Gre-

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gório Bezerra, a weapons instructor at an army post in Recife, received instructions from the party's regional committee to launch a discreet recruiting drive within the regional garrisons. "I spared no effort," he later recalled, "and hundreds of army personnel in every state of the Northeast enrolled in the ANL." In Rio Grande do Sul it was army captain Agildo Barata, a member of the PCB since the beginning of the year, who organized the ANL.5 The national political atmosphere became increasingly turbulent during this period as the fascistic Integralist party, under the leadership of Plínio Salgado, flourished alongside the ANL. At the beginning of 1935, Ação Integralista Brasileira (AIB) had a membership of approximately 180,000, but by August it claimed to represent 240,000 voters, or close to 10 percent of the electorate. Preaching the virtues of "God, Country, and Family," Salgado's green-shirted followers sounded a continual alert about the Red threat and frequently found themselves locked in physical, even armed, battle with members of the ANL on urban streets. The expansion of one seemed to spell the growth of the other, and Brazil impressed many observers as a country mirroring the Left-Right schism in Spain, France, and elsewhere in Europe.6 Behind the scenes PCB cadres busied themselves with the formation of paramilitary groups among urban workers and peasants. The party itself was numerically insignificant in the Northeast—indeed, "we can scarcely say we exist here," Meirelles reported in April— but it apparently proved easy to find individuals in the countryside willing to take up arms. Ewert, in fact, was somewhat alarmed by the advanced preparations for a revolt he discovered in the interior in June. "Our comrades in Pernambuco had even drafted decrees on the future soviet government . . .," he warned Prestes. Before leaving the region Ewert exhorted Meirelles and his colleagues to make a more intense grass-roots effort so as to build a "great peasant movement" and admonished them to disguise the true nature or goal of the projected insurrection. Prestes and his comrades in Rio de Janeiro were seriously concerned that the revolutionaries in the Northeast might act precipitately, and they "vehemently" cautioned the regional committee against any isolated action, insisting on a general, coordinated uprising. The following month, using the cover of an ANL membership drive in the Northeast, Sisson delivered to regional party officials preliminary instructions on the revolt, while other emissaries carried similar instructions to other regions. Communist organizers in Mato Grosso received detailed information on how to conduct guerrilla campaigns against the army and state police. The rebels, according to PCB directors, should immediately

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move to distribute food and clothing to people in areas they controlled, as well as destroy police and tax records. Against large merchants and landowners, they were authorized to employ "any violence" and should execute all captured army officers.7 Prestes' general plan was to have the ANL inflame public opinion against the government, while the PCB clandestinely prepared for armed action. The next step would be to provoke federal authorities into harsh repression, which hopefully would radicalize ANL members, facilitating further mobilization for the uprising. He thus sought to stimulate the aggressiveness of ANL leaders with energetic pronouncements, and by July he apparently thought the moment had come to throw down the gauntlet. Using the occasion of the anniversary of the 1922 revolt, he sent a bellicose manifesto to the ANL headquarters and to the press, accusing Vargas of conspiring to establish a "fascist dictatorship." Prestes emphasized the need to continue building a broad popular front under the ANL banner and to immediately execute a more radical program. His new list of goals included the abrogation of all "antinational treaties with imperialism," presumably a reference to trade agreements with the United States and western European countries, and the expropriation "without indemnity" of property belonging to the "imperialists, the most reactionary of the large landowners, and the reactionary elements of the church." To attain power and implement this program, Prestes declared, the only choice was revolution. "The situation is one of war and each person needs to take up his post," he exclaimed, calling on ANL members to "prepare themselves actively for the moment of attack." The treasurer of the ANL, Afonso Henriques, like its other non-Communist leaders, was stunned by Prestes' "masterpiece of provocation," which had the desired effect: less than a week later the police forcibly closed ANL offices throughout the country. "Now . . . we need to work and move energetically from propaganda and agitation to the period of cold and systematic organization so as to be ready at the decisive time," Prestes wrote to a comrade on July 17.8 The Seventh Congress of the Comintern in Moscow in July and August gave the plotters a moral boost. Comintern analysts had been announcing since the turn of the year the existence of revolutionary conditions in Brazil, especially in view of the obvious weakness of the armed forces. One observer, in an article published in May, had argued that the army was going through a process of selfdestruction.9 Now at the congress, various speakers hailed the progress toward revolution in Brazil. Wang Ming praised the ANL as an instrument that was greatly enhancing the prestige of the PCB and

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urged the party to press on until it conquered power. A Brazilian delegate confidently assured listeners that the Vargas government would soon be overthrown.10 During the gathering, Pravda reported that Prestes had been elected a member of the Executive Committee, which placed him alongside Stalin, Bèla Kun, and other eminent figures in the world revolutionary movement, a sign that Moscow not only endorsed but perhaps insisted on seeing its plans for the first soviet state in Latin America fulfilled. Prestes saw an immediately practical advantage in the honor: news of it might convince Police Chief Filinto Muller that he was still in Moscow.11 Encouraged by Moscow and certain that the government's "days were numbered," Prestes and his colleagues pushed ahead with renewed dedication. "We are unquestionably on the eve of great events throughout the country," he boasted in a letter to Major Carlos da Costa Leite, a comrade in Rio Grande do Sul. The reports by Bomfim to the Central Committee and to the Comintern emissaries reinforced the prevailing optimism. According to "Miranda," the movement could count on extensive support within the Rio de Janeiro garrison and enjoyed decisive influence in labor ranks. Ewert, too, concluded that the uprising would have an excellent chance to succeed. "We have organizations in almost all sections of the army and in many regiments," he observed. A technical triumph bolstered morale even more: Barron finally completed construction of a radio transmitter and managed to establish contact with Moscow. The location and precise date of the first transmission is not known, but Prestes later recalled that it had been "almost on the eve of the revolt," so presumably it was in October or early November. The Comintern control in Moscow congratulated Barron, telling him that he was now "a true Bolshevik." Thus buoyed, the Central Committee, to which Prestes was elected during this period, met in midNovember and concluded that the time was almost ripe.12 There were discordant voices but they were not heeded. Leôncio Basbaum, although temporarily out of the party, was kept up to date by the regional PCB chief in Bahia, who revealed to him the contents of his reports to the Central Committee. Basbaum could not believe what he heard. "He spoke of 'intense revolutionary agitation' in Bahia, of the restlessness of the proletariat and the connections that he had with the labor movement. . .," Basbaum consequently commented. "And it was a lie. In Bahia in 1935 there was none of this." When he reproved his comrade, however, the latter was unrepentant. "It's not all true," he retorted, "but it's not all false." The journalist João Barreto Leite Filho, a member of the party's national labor bureau, sent Prestes a long letter at the end of October candidly

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warning him that an insurrection would fail. The PCB "literally lost its head" because of the enthusiasm that had surrounded ANL rallies, Barreto wrote, but the movement had not made any real impact on workers or peasants, and the outlawing of the ANL actually had been a "most shameful" defeat. "Four months have gone by," he said, "and the situation is increasingly worse, with even worse perspectives." Prestes received the letter, but his confidence in his own judgment was unshaken.13 While the PCB and its Comintern tutors laid plans for an assault on the government, the anti-Communist forces grew increasingly apprehensive and antipathetic toward the Soviet Union. Early in 1935 the major press had warmly endorsed the administration's rejection of relations with the USSR, scorning the idea that any meaningful trade was possible with that country and that any might occur without serious political consequences. Said the Correio da Manhã, reversing its previous position, commerce with the Soviets could "only be harmful to our internal security, facilitating and legalizing the presence in Brazil of dangerous agents and agitators disguised as trade delegates." In successive editorials, the carioca daily hammered at the "grave menace" that Moscow's policies represented for Brazil, warning in mid-January that at a recent meeting in Moscow, attended by Brazilian Communists, a decision had been made to intensify the subversive effort in South America and that the Comintern had dispatched special agents to Brazil for that purpose. The Jornal do Brasil agreed that there was a "central directing organ" behind the agitation that the Communists seemed to be spreading throughout the country. "Today they constitute a serious danger," the Estado de São Paulo concluded. "If we do not protect ourselves against that danger, we will be lost."14 What is particularly significant about the attitude of the press, which enjoyed freedom from censorship at that time, was its sharp criticism of what it viewed as official passivity vis-à-vis the threat. The Correio da Manhã scored the administration for its "condemnable attitude of indifference," while the Jornal do Brasil grousing that federal authorities seemed to "have their arms crossed," repeatedly urged "energetic" steps to curb the radical Left. It was time, declared the editor of the Diário Carioca, for the republican government to "grow some claws."15 Federal officials, of course, were not as inactive as the press charged. Security organs monitored Communist activities as well as resources permitted, and following the General Staff's recommendations for a more intense anti-Communist drive, army commanders sharpened their watchfulness, keeping track of the movements of

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suspected Communists and seizing propaganda materials.16 Catete Palace did not set up the special coordinating office that army planners suggested, but General Pessoa did establish early in 1935 a secret organization of military officers who shared his commitment to professionalism, his "scorn for petty politics," and his "zeal for internal peace." This "Union" had special passwords and codes for communication with Pessoa at the palace, and through confidential bulletins he kept his colleagues informed about political developments. On February 25 he reported with satisfaction that an "extremist-political conspiracy" in Recife had been uncovered, but he cautioned that another subversive movement could be expected, perhaps beginning with "incidents between workers and soldiers." He also alerted his friend Flores da Cunha, now governor of Rio Grande do Sul, to the possibility that radicals might launch an uprising with a series of strikes beginning in March. Pessoa saw the challenge posed by the Communists as an all-encompassing one requiring an equally broad counterattack, one that would go beyond repression to include moral and civic education. That was why he had been in the vanguard of the recently successful campaign to transform September 7, Brazil's Independence Day, into a national holiday and why he served as president of the League for National Defense, which was affiliated with the International Entente Against the Third International. Diverse sectors of society, especially religious and educational institutions, had to be mobilized, he wrote to Filinto Muller in mid-1935, shortly before being appointed army chief of staff.17 The National Security Law of April 1935 was striking proof of the consensus within the administration and on the part of influential nongovernmental allies that the Communist threat required extraordinary countermeasures. The bill originally presented to the Chamber of Deputies by government supporters early that year met with the applause of not only conservative, but moderate, sectors of the political elite. Minister of War Monteiro naturally welcomed it as an "urgent necessity"; Governor Flores da Cunha, still one of Vargas' most important allies, expressed approval in similar terms; and Alceu Amoroso Lima, president of the Centro Dom Vital and the Catholic Electoral League, agreed that the state could not afford to allow "Luís Carlos Prestes to continue tranquilly his work of destroying our nationality." Muller sought to push discussion of the bill along by complaining publicly that existing laws handicapped the police in their efforts to protect society against subversives, and the press was virtually unanimous in its endorsement of the bill, which encountered no great difficulty in Congress and became law

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early in April. The new legislation provided stiff prison terms for attempts to change the form of government by force, and lesser, but severe, penalties for spreading subversive propaganda within the armed forces and inciting strikes or class conflict.18 Developments in the La Plata region at this time reinforced the resolve of Brazilian policymakers. Montevideo remained a focal point of concern because of the diplomatic protection enjoyed by Comintern agents, actual or suspected, who seemed to be dangerously active. The complaint by the Correio da Manhã's chief political analyst that the Communist problem was "all the more urgent since Moscow is at our gates . . . and calls itself Montevideo" was an echo of the suspicion that pervaded official circles. Câmara Canto, the embassy officer there who reported frequently to Vargas, carried to Rio de Janeiro early in March information on a supposed Communist plot to spark revolts in several South American capitals that same month on the anniversary of the Paris Commune. Special preventive measures hastily taken by the Brazilian police thwarted the conspiracy, Câmara Canto thought, but on his return to Montevideo he relayed to Vargas a new report of intense movement of Communist emissaries between Uruguay and Brazil and of an imminent summit conference of Red leaders in the Southern Cone.19 It was probably Câmara Canto who warned the government of an alleged Communist plot to assassinate Vargas during a forthcoming trip to Buenos Aires and Montevideo; Itamaraty, at any rate, sent an alarmist telegram to the Brazilian ambassador in Buenos Aires at the end of March informing him of a "vast terrorist plan," devised by an agent "direct from Moscow," to assassinate both Vargas and Gabriel Terra of Uruguay as a preliminary to a bid for power. The ambassador immediately informed Argentine authorities, and President Agustín Justo himself ordered a full investigation—which revealed that one of the alleged Comintern agents had been sitting incommunicado in a Uruguayan jail for three months. The Buenos Aires police detained another suspect and promised to keep him isolated until Vargas had completed his journey, but no evidence of a conspiracy was unearthed either in the Argentine capital or in Montevideo, where police made several preventive arrests. Rio de Janeiro remained preoccupied, however, and Muller decided to send a team of agents, headed by Detective Serafim Braga, to assist the Argentine and Uruguayan police, while in Montevideo the ambassador, Lucillo Bueno, urged Terra to close the headquarters of the local Communist party and detain over a hundred "dangerous individuals." The presidential visit to Buenos Aires occurred without incident, but when Vargas and Terra appeared at a racetrack together in Monte-

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video, an attempt was made on the Uruguayan chief executive, who suffered a bullet wound in the back. Braga, positioned near the presidents, subdued the would-be assassin, who turned out to be not a Communist but one of Terra's political adversaries.20 Despite the lack of hard evidence, Vargas and his assistants sailed for home with no doubt that Communist intrigue lay behind much of the unrest in the region. In Brazil the ANL-PCB campaign had gathered force, and so had demands for repressive action. Amoroso Lima complained sharply to the government in June about the ANL's progress and the "Communist impregnation" of labor unions, declaring that Catholics expected authorities to show a "more energetic attitude" toward the radical Left. The press, too, urged a crackdown on the ANL, something that both General Monteiro and the navy minister already had recommended. According to the general, Vargas was reluctant to heed their admonition that the ANL was a mere front group for the PCB, but the president probably wanted the police to document the case before he moved. The São Paulo DOPS had set up what its director called a "special program of rigorous surveillance" of ANL leaders in that capital, and the carioca DOPS had done the same, occasionally raiding ANL meeting places and detaining spokesmen. Amoroso Lima's appeal actually came as the police were nearing the completion of their task. On June 17, following discussions with Muller and the head of the local DOPS, Pessoa apprised Flores da Cunha of what he had learned: the ANL indeed was working to mobilize support for an insurrection. Unaware that Prestes was in Brazil, he told Flores that the Communist leader probably would attempt to slip into the country across the Rio Grande do Sul border and stressed the importance of his capture. A few days later Vargas convened the cabinet to discuss the perceived threat, and Muller on June 24 handed him a three-volume report on ANL-PCB activities. The chief executive was impressed: a few days later he publicly pledged vigorous action against subversives, warning that he would sanction "violence" if necessary.21 Encouraged by the press, which applauded Vargas' declaration, the administration early in July prepared the ground for its move against the ANL by putting state authorities on alert. In a letter to the governor of Minas Gerais, Vargas pointed to multiplying evidence of "Communist machinations" throughout the country under the guise of ANL campaigning and admonished him to "watch carefully" all radical suspects. Muller sent a similar message to Governor João Bley in neighboring Espírito Santo, advising him that in the likely event of PCB-fomented strikes, they should be suppressed "energet-

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ically" and the instigators prosecuted under the National Security Law. Bley replied on July 4 that state police had closed "all unions where agitators had been openly preaching subversive doctrines" and arrested their leaders. Even Itamaraty became involved in the national alert when Foreign Minister Macedo Soares, to demonstrate the true nature of the ANL, sent to all state governors a clipping from Pravda that bore a photograph of Prestes.22 The fiery manifesto by Prestes that was read on the night of July 5 at an ANL rally in Rio de Janeiro catalyzed the repressive machinery: Vargas, availing himself of the National Security Law, ordered dissolution of the ANL. Security agents throughout Brazil swiftly occupied local ANL headquarters, confiscating files and detaining leaders for questioning. ANL officers in São Paulo admitted having supported illegal strikes and acknowledged that Communists had been members of their organization. The ANL unquestionably represented communism, the DOPS officer in charge of the raids in that city wrote after concluding his investigation. To put the decision to act against the ANL in context, Muller told the Correio da Manhã that Moscow, seeing the USSR hemmed in by Nazi Germany and Japan, had decided to shift the center of its attention to the Western Hemisphere. "And in South America the country preferred by the Communist chiefs . . . was Brazil," he said, explaining that the ANL had been part of that broad subversive plan. Raul Fernandes, majority leader in the Chamber of Deputies, put it simply: the ANL carried the banner for "Asiatic despotism" and had to be stopped. The press, even dailies whose editors had no basic sympathy for Vargas, eulogized him and his chief of police. Assis Chateaubriand, owner of the country's largest newspaper chain, was emphatic in expressing his solidarity: "Captain Luís Carlos Prestes is no longer a Brazilian, but a Russian," and Brazil was facing "true foreign intervention." Indeed, closing ranks behind the president in an anti-Communist drive was a question of "life or death for the nation," agreed the Estado de São Paulo.23 The question on the minds of policymakers in ensuing weeks was how seriously had proscription of the ANL disrupted Communist plans. What was Prestes up to? they wondered. "Something must be in the offing . . . because Communist emissaries are making frequent visits to this capital and to Buenos Aires," Câmara Canto reported from Montevideo at the end of August. A week later he informed Vargas that Prestes was there to meet with other Communists and lamented that the Uruguayan police seemed uncooperative. President Terra, he remarked, had gone so far as to "ridicule" Brazil's anxieties about the threat. Official concern deepened in the

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following days as explicit warnings continued to reach Rio de Janeiro. The British government alerted Itamaraty to impending trouble in mid-October, but did so in general terms, probably because it was unwilling to reveal that its information came from a source close to Prestes. The individual was Johann Graaf ("Franz Gruber"), who had been working for the British as a double agent since the 1920s. He kept his immediate superior in the British embassy in Rio de Janeiro informed of preparations for the uprising, and it apparently was his information that led Sir Robert Vansittart, undersecretary for foreign affairs, to seek cautiously to warn Ambassador Régis de Oliveira on October 18. Communist inroads in Brazil in recent months, especially in the major cities and in the Northeast, had been "impressive," said Vansittart. "He added that he knew, on the other hand, of the existence of a special program of action and propaganda on the part of Moscow's leaders aimed not only at South America, but very particularly Brazil and from which they expect promising results soon," Régis reported.24 That information jibed with what Brazilian authorities believed, and it was reinforced by reports from Ambassador Bueno in Montevideo early the following month. On November 8 he wired that Prestes had been sighted on the Brazilian border, and a week later he confirmed that report. "New intelligence says that Prestes really is in Brazil, waiting for the start of a revolutionary movement of a Communist nature, direction of which he will assume between the 14th and 16th of this month," he stated. On November 18 the ambassador reiterated the warning that Prestes was in Brazil and was preparing an imminent revolt. Bueno had badgered President Terra about the unhampered transit of known Communists through Montevideo and discussed his recent information with the Uruguayan foreign minister and army chief of staff. The latter confided to the Brazilian envoy that Uruguayan authorities had discovered that the Soviet legation recently had received $100,000, presumably to finance subversive activities. When Bueno broached this with Terra, the president declared firmly that should there be proof of the legation's involvement in any revolutionary effort in Brazil, he would break relations with Moscow. What was required for the moment, Bueno urged, was tighter controls at entry and exit points on Uruguay's borders, and he provided Uruguayan officials with photographs of Prestes to facilitate his capture.25 General Pessoa had become chief of staff in July, which gave him control over the army's intelligence resources, to which he joined the private network of informants he had directed from Catete Palace and which now included Integralists who had infiltrated clan-

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destine ANL and PCB cells. The information that he obtained corroborated what Itamaraty learned; in fact, so frequent were the signals received that beginning in October he sent to the Ministry of War "reiterated" reports on Communist infiltration of the armed forces and the preparations for a revolt. As a precautionary measure the general ordered his personal staff and the intelligence section of the General Staff to maintain constant liaison with the DOPS and with regional army intelligence officers. As the signals of imminent disturbance became insistent in November, Pessoa assigned three officers to night duty to maintain communication with regional commands and issued instructions to intensify surveillance of suspect units.26 The new minister of war, on the other hand, was skeptical about the likelihood of a Communist insurrection. General João Gomes Ribeiro Filho had replaced Monteiro in May, and he disliked both his predecessor and the chief of staff. In Monteiro's case, the animosity dated back to the Revolution of 1930, when they had found themselves on opposing sides. Then in 1932, Pessoa had been Monteiro's chief of staff with the federal army operating against the paulista insurgents in the Paraíba Valley. Although Gomes had remained loyal to Vargas, his son, an army pilot, had been killed fighting for the rebels; this loss apparently had strengthened Gomes' dislike for both men and may have impeded communication between them. When Monteiro cautioned him early in November that the Communists were planning a movement that might, from one minute to the next, transform army barracks into a "theater in miniature of what happened in 1917 in the barracks of the Russian army," Gomes retorted that Monteiro was "seeing ghosts in daylight." The repeated warnings coming from the General Staff may well have been counterproductive, since in the absence of the revolt, the Ministry of War and perhaps the police, too, were lulled further into complacency. Muller revealed his lack of immediate concern on November 14 when he called on General Eurico Dutra, commander of the First Military Region, to discuss the situation. "From captured documents," Dutra wrote in his diary, "the police know that Communist leaders expect to implant their regime here within six months." 27 The target date set by Prestes for the revolution was early December, but events in the Northeast precipitated the movement. The weeks that preceded the uprising in Natal were tumultuous in the poverty-stricken state of Rio Grande do Norte. The recent gubernatorial campaign had been one of the most violent in the entire country, with assassination, beatings, and threats the order of the

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day. The candidate of the traditional oligarchy won the indirect elections on October 14 and took office protected by federal troops in view of rumors that the opposition intended to take up arms to prevent his inauguration. Once installed in office at the end of the month, the governor immediately took his revenge, purging the state bureaucracy of friends and supporters of his predecessor, who had served as federal interventor since mid-1933, suspending all public works projects, and dissolving the Civil Guard, which left more than four hundred militiamen unemployed.28 Adding to the turmoil were federal efforts to restore discipline within the garrison in Natal. The major unit there was the Twentyfirst Infantry Battalion, which had a history of rebelliousness—it had been transferred to Natal from Recife for having revolted against the state government in Pernambuco in 1931—and which had become a focal point of discontent. General Manoel Rabello, commander of the Seventh Military Region, later acknowledged that "on higher authority" the Twenty-first had been involved in the state political feud, which contributed to its politicization. Moreover, despite Rabello's "constant and useless" appeals to the Ministry of War, the battalion lacked officers for months, a deficiency that gravely affected morale and helped make the unit notorious for acts of indiscipline. To bring it under control, Vargas dispatched an army colonel from Rio Grande do Sul, Otaviano Pinto Soares, to Natal early in November. He immediately opened inquests and announced the expulsion of forty soldiers. By this act he directly threatened the interests of the PCB, which had concentrated its efforts on the Twenty-first. The Central Committee, in fact, feared that the government would purge the regional military units of Communists and sympathizers and had agreed to consider any moves in that direction a casus belli.29 Because of the general economic distress, unusual political tension, keen resentment of unemployed but armed militiamen, and the existence of an active Communist cell of some sixty members inside the federal garrison,30 by late November the city of Natal was a small powderkeg. The inquests undertaken by Colonel Soares and his resultant expulsion order provided the spark. Local Communists, apparently without consulting the Central Committee, decided to act in the early evening hours of November 23. Just over a hundred soldiers of the Twenty-first Infantry Battalion participated in the uprising, but they were reinforced by many of the jobless militiamen and by an undetermined number of civilians. Few of this rebel band were PCB members, but the revolt was carried out in the name of the ANL and Prestes. Once in control of the battalion headquarters, the insurgents poured into the streets,

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firing their weapons and spreading panic among the wealthier families. The governor sought asylum in the residence of the Chilean consul and then boarded a ship and sailed out of the harbor. The only effective resistance was offered by Colonel Soares, who transformed the state police barracks into a legalist redoubt and held out for several hours until ammunition was exhausted.31 The flight of the governor, along with the members of his cabinet and numerous political leaders, the corralling of Colonel Soares and his small force, and the detention of the chief of police shortly after midnight left the city at the mercy of the rebels. On the morning of November 24, in the name of the ANL they set up a Popular Revolutionary Committee composed of five men, but it was unable to control the tumult in the streets, where mobs sacked stores, offices, banks, post offices, and private homes. The main task as the committee saw it was to spread the revolt to other parts of the state; that same day, therefore, the "secretary of defense" formed a detachment and marched on satellite towns, dominating four of them without great difficulty.32 The events in Natal found a favorable echo only in Recife. In the other cities of the Northeast where there were federal garrisons and state police forces, the troops went on full alert as soon as word reached their commanders of the upheaval in Rio Grande do Norte. In Recife, however, there was a sizable Communist cell convinced that revolutionary conditions obtained. Earlier that month the PCB had stirred up among railway workers a strike that seemed to have aroused a great deal of popular enthusiasm and support among enlisted men in the federal garrison. Emboldened, the party's secretariat for the Northeast had issued instructions to unleash strikes among soldiers and the "popular masses" in case General Rabello, whose headquarters were in Recife, should attempt to arrest or transfer soldiers sympathetic to the cause. When news of the insurrection in Natal arrived on the evening of November 23, moreover, the state governor was abroad and both Rabello and the commander of the Pernambucan Military Brigade were on leave in Rio de Janeiro.33 The PCB regional directors decided immediately to launch the revolt in Recife the following morning. The plan called for Sergeant Gregório Bezerra to provoke a mutiny at the regional command headquarters and then seize the governor's palace, the telephone company, and other strategic points in the capital, while comrades sparked a rebellion by the Twenty-ninth Infantry Battalion in Socorro, sixteen miles to the southwest. Had it not been for Bezerra's grim determination—he struggled physically with a fellow sergeant, wounded one officer, and killed another—his endeavor would have

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amounted entirely to an opéra bouffe: the men he counted on never arrived at any of the prearranged points, and reduced to running out into the streets to try to recruit passers-by, Bezerra managed to win over two newspaper vendors whom he quickly tried to teach how to load and fire a rifle. His arrest virtually ended the Communist uprising in Recife proper.34 In one suburb the struggle did assume bloody proportions. The rebels, led by Lieutenant Meirelles, succeeded in persuading part of the Twenty-ninth Infantry Battalion to join them, but Captain Frederico Mindelo Carneiro rallied legalists and offered stiff resistance from the command pavilion. Leaving troops to contain Mindelo's men, Meirelles sent part of his remaining force to block any legalist advance from Recife, while he endeavored to mobilize public support in neighboring towns, one of which allegedly provided him with "hundreds" of potential revolutionaries. In the meantime, the other rebel contingent, which swelled to some three thousand men and was strengthened by workers of the British-owned Great Western Railway, had set up defenses in a Recife suburb. They faced mainly state police troops, but Captain Malvino Reis Neto, the state secretary of public security, had distributed weapons to vehicle inspectors, the Civil Guard, and some eighty workers who offered to help defend the city.35 Using the radio station in the governor's palace, Reis kept Filinto Muller informed about the situation, assuring him that the inhabitants of Recife remained loyal to Vargas. He did quickly accept an offer by Muller to arrange for federal planes to bomb rebel positions but said confidently that once reinforcements arrived he would subdue the insurgents. With no apparent hope of support and in the absence of the great mass uprising in the city, the rebel lines began to waver the following day and most of the revolutionaries surrendered. Over the next two days the remainder were rounded up, and the Red rebellion in Recife, after costing "several dozen" lives, was over.36 The Popular Revolutionary Committee in Natal had been counting on the triumph of their comrades in Recife for the support necessary to the victory of the movement in Rio Grande do Norte. In an optimistic gesture, on the night of November 26 the rebel leaders printed the first (and only) issue of a newspaper, A Liberdade, in which they proclaimed the dawn of an "era of freedom" in Brazil under Prestes' leadership The next day, however, they received news of the debacle in Recife and of the dispatch of police units from neighboring states—such units, the police chief in João Pessoa wired Muller, were invading Rio Grande do Norte at "various points"—

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which prompted a massive sauve qui peut. One group of rebels commandeered a ship and put to sea—but ended up surrendering to federal naval vessels two days later.37 The events in the Northeast forced the hand of the Communist high command in Rio de Janeiro. Prestes later blamed secretary general Bomflm for the ultimate failure of the intentona, saying that "Miranda" had given exaggerated accounts of Communist strength that created a false sense of optimism and misled him. If that was so, at best it was a case, as the popular Brazilian saying goes, of combining "hunger with a desire to eat." Prestes for years had dreamed of leading another military uprising; he had come to Brazil for that purpose and had prepared for it. He wanted to find revolutionary conditions and found them—even though they did not exist. Bomfim, moreover, was only one of his sources of information. If his comrades painted a distorted picture of the chances of success, they more than likely were responding to his own zeal. After all, as his friend Ghioldi pointed out, Prestes "exercised a well-known ascendancy over his companions." Bomfim had concentrated his efforts on workers, while Prestes sought to coordinate proselytizing within the armed forces, and it was Prestes, furthermore, who overcame Ghioldi's misgivings by firmly guaranteeing decisive military support for the revolt in Rio de Janeiro.38 On November 25, in view of the news from the Northeast, Prestes sent emissaries to inform conspirators serving with military units in various outlying areas that he could not delay things "more than two or three days." That evening he huddled with Ewert, Ghioldi, and Bomfim, and they agreed to start the revolt in the early hours of November 27. According to Bomfim, he told the group that he would order a series of strikes in the capital coordinated with the uprising. The next morning Prestes sent messages to his agents in various units of the federal garrison, particularly the Aviation School at the Campo dos Alonsos outside Rio de Janeiro and the Third Infantry Regiment, quartered at the base of Sugar Loaf Mountain at the beginning of Copacabana Beach, instructing them to begin the insurrection at two o'clock on the morning of the twenty-seventh. In the Third Infantry Regiment there was an ANL cell of some thirty persons, including a PCB cell of a dozen soldiers headed by Captain Agildo Barata, who had been transferred to Rio de Janeiro as a disciplinary measure for his activities on behalf of the ANL in Rio Grande do Sul. The written assignment that Barata received from Prestes was a little short of incredible: once the thirty conspirators had subdued the three hundred officers and sergeants of the regi-

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ment and persuaded the enlisted personnel to join the revolution, they were to send contingents of troops to various parts of the city to block government forces and seal off Catete Palace.39 On the government side, the degree of readiness and alertness varied. One of the frequent subjects of speculation afterward was the role that the British secret service played in the affair, and a story gained currency that it had forewarned the Vargas government, providing details of the Communists' plan. According to Johann Graaf, the Comintern's "Franz Gruber," however, London had decided that if it seemed the plan devised by Prestes had some chance of success, then the Brazilian government would be informed by the British embassy; but if Graaf thought that the uprising was doomed to failure, the British would allow events to run their course. Graaf, a military expert and not a doctrinaire ideologue anxious to please the Comintern, perceived the futility of the projected revolution and so informed his control officer in the embassy. The British ambassador, citing "a confidential source," telegraphed the Foreign Office on November 26, alerting it that an attempt to overthrow the government, involving certain army units, would occur "within the next 48 hours," 40 but there is no evidence of any consultation between the embassy and Itamaraty. The General Staff had learned from an informant on the evening of November 23 that an uprising centered on the Aviation School, where the plan was to seize airplanes and bomb government positions, and the Third Military Regiment was imminent; Pessoa the next morning had alerted the minister of war, but General João Gomes slighted the report. Pessoa's luck was little better with General Dutra, the commander of the First Military Region, who did take some preliminary precautions but who was primarily concerned about Governor Flores da Cunha, who recently had broken politically with Vargas. In fact, when Dutra met with Gomes on the morning of November 24, they discussed the "gravity of the hour, particularly in the direction of the south," and Dutra urged the minister to deploy troops in Paraná in order to counter any possible moves by Rio Grande do Sul state forces. Pessoa's informant, who had infiltrated a Communist cell, reported on the afternoon of November 26 that the revolt would take place after midnight. The chief of staff again alerted Gomes, Dutra, and all the units attached to the General Staff, then hastily organized a special command post in his private residence, where he gathered various officers and a stockpile of weapons and ammunition. From there that evening he established contact with the DOPS and with various unit commanders. Failing to reach the commander of the First Air Regiment, Colonel

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Eduardo Gomes, he ordered a small artillery group near the Campo dos Afonsos to train its guns on the airfield and open fire on any planes attempting to take off. Urged by his subordinates, he once more phoned João Gomes—and was once more rebuked. "You are better informed than the police," the minister said with tart sarcasm. "They know nothing about this." Just before midnight, the chief of staff took it upon himself to phone the commander of the Third Infantry Regiment to urge him to bolster security; the commander assured Pessoa that nothing suspicious was occurring and that his troops were ready to suppress quickly any disturbances.41 The revolt began approximately on schedule and lasted only twelve hours. There were no strikes in support of the movement, and the navy gave no sign of revolutionary life. Prestes remained in hiding with Olga Benario, declining to place himself at the front of his men and thus, in a sense, depriving the movement of what the Comintern and the Vargas government long had considered the most potent weapon in the Communists' arsenal: his vaunted personal appeal for the Brazilian people. The rebels managed briefly to seize control of the Aviation School and the Third Infantry Regiment but in both cases were easily contained. Elements of the First Air Regiment, led personally by Colonel Eduardo Gomes, overcame the insurgents at the Campo dos Afonsos at dawn. Their comrades within the Third Infantry Regiment, under the command of Captain Barata, who persuaded over a thousand soldiers to join the revolution, found themselves quickly sealed off when General Dutra, on receiving news of the uprising, ordered the deployment of troops to block the exits from the beach. Later that morning, when Barata rebuffed a request that he surrender his forces, Dutra ordered howitzers to open fire on the fort, and subsequently two army aircraft also bombed and strafed it. By the time the bloody battle ended early that afternoon, some fifty soldiers had been killed.42 Vargas was widely applauded for the personal bravery he displayed in visiting both "fronts" while the fighting was still in progress. "The whole of the press—one might say, the whole of the country— unite in praising his energy and courage," the British ambassador later wrote.43 The president's dominant sentiment at the moment seems to have been distress at the bloodshed, which he apparently attributed to the "negligence" of the minister of war. João Gomes in fact was keenly embarrassed by developments and compensated by reacting violently, even savagely. "Let's bomb everything," he harshly instructed Dutra that morning with regard to the Third Infantry Regiment, "because I don't want any of that rabble to come out of there alive,"44 this at a time when it was not certain how

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many of the soldiers had joined the insurgents and how many were being kept under guard. Afterward he wanted summarily to shoot the rebels once they had laid down their arms, but an officer in the Ministry of War alerted Catete Palace, and Vargas, shocked at the thought of "such barbarity," immediately sent word to Gomes that he would hold him personally responsible should something of that nature occur.45 The unwillingness of the minister of war to act on what in retrospect had been good intelligence gave a special edge to his vindictiveness, but in truth a desire if not for revenge then at least to punish those responsible permeated broad sectors of society, although it was most pronounced in military circles. The Comintern and its agents in Brazil had miscalculated badly, and the latter would pay the price. Prestes' intelligence and shrewdness as a politico-military strategist had been tested and found severely wanting. Now, as a Red scare swept the country, his fortitude and personal fibre, and that of his comrades, would be put to the test.

4. Toward the National Security State (1935-1937)

set off an explosion of hostility toward Communists and generated a widespread clamor for punishment, repression, and prevention. Far from being something imposed on a hapless nation, the government's anti-Communist drive after November 1935 met with ample public support. That campaign, however, rapidly acquired a dimension of harshness that alarmed many of its original promoters. The inhuman treatment of political prisoners became an international cause célèbre, and the suspension of constitutional guarantees that accompanied the formal declaration of a state of siege opened the door for abuses seen as dangerous by more moderate anti-Communists. Severe press censorship and the government's implicit endorsement of the fascistic Integralist movement were further motives for deep concern in liberal circles. The official hard line nonetheless had the support of influential actors—the church, for example, and especially the military, whose concept of national security had been reshaped by the Communist insurrection to include a much greater emphasis on domestic threats. THE INTENTONA

In the weeks that followed the uprising there was a nearly universal outpouring of support for the administration and a demand for strong measures to rid the nation of Communists. Cardinal Sebastião Leme went personally to see Vargas on November 29 to express the church's solidarity, and in an article published the following day, lay spokesman Amoroso Lima outlined a program of combat that included a systematic purge of the armed forces and civil service and a "more efficient and general organization of internal defense against [subversive] warfare." In a telegram to Vargas, the Catholic leader hailed him as "the man Brazil needs to save it from chaos and Soviet imperialism." Representatives of industrial and commercial associations on the Conselho Federal de Comércio Exterior joined in voting a resolution of solidarity with the government on December 2, and

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the members of the CFCE then went as a group to Catete Palace to transmit their resolution to Vargas personally. The president of the Commercial Association and directors of five other business groups, in a special manifesto, also proclaimed their support for the government and praised the armed forces as a bulwark against subversion.1 The major dailies were unanimous in their cry for a broad, vigorous anti-Communist campaign. Even the unrelentingly anti-Vargas Diário de Notícias, which in preceding months had been the most reluctant to display sympathy for the government's attitude toward the Left, now excoriated Prestes, blamed Moscow for the bloodshed, and called for a severe crackdown on Communists. The Estado de São Paulo, owned and managed by Júlio de Mesquita Filho who was involved in every important liberal conspiracy against Vargas in the post-1930 period, carried almost daily editorials during the month following the intentona insisting on tough, all-encompassing measures: censorship of mails and publications, house-to-house searches, a purge of the civil service, expulsion of Communists, and counterpropaganda. "Laws in themselves are insufficient for the defense of our institutions," it exclaimed, exhorting the administration to set aside "false sentimentalism" and deal sternly with Communists. Newspaper magnate Assis Chateaubriand stood firmly for severe repression. "The declaration of war was issued to the government and people of Brazil by the Third International," he warned. "We are at war with a foreign power." An editorial in his O Jornal on November 30 urged Congress to arm the state with new powers to meet the emergency. "The weapons to preserve us from communism have to be forged from the same steel as those used to attack us." The Diário Carioca demanded that federal authorities take energetic action against the Communists, in particular that they purge the bureaucracy, and the Correio da Manhã seconded the argument, calling for an "urgent repressive drive" against leftist extremists. To the list of necessary anti-Communist measures the Jornal do Brasil added censorship of children's literature.2 In official circles there was a cold determination to ferret out the enemies of the Brazilian way of life. Two days before the rebellion in Rio de Janeiro, Vargas privately vowed to undertake "preventive and repressive" action on a nationwide scale. "It is now necessary to cleanse society and eliminate elements whose antisocial activity has been disrupting the life of the country," he stated in a circular to state governors on November 27. That same day he fired the opening salvo in what became systematic verbal warfare against communism and the Soviet Union. "A nation with traditions of religion, fatherland, and family, such as ours, cannot identify its political and

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human destinies with the barbarous ideology that the fanatics of the Russian creed want to implant here," he proclaimed. Police Chief Filinto Muller, in a confidential memorandum to the president, recommended a sweeping program, the main features of which were a "cleansing" of the armed forces, public administration, and the newspaper profession, more stringent laws against undesirable aliens, and the establishment of "work colonies" for captured Communists. 3 The army high command insisted on vigorous retribution and repression. Minister of War João Gomes, to compensate further for his lack of initiative in the face of warnings about the imminent uprising in Rio de Janeiro, took the lead in pushing for stern measures. On December 3 he called a meeting of generals serving in the federal capital and lectured them on the need for new laws that would permit swifter and more severe punishment of subversives. By emphasizing alleged deficiencies in the legal system, Gomes obviously was seeking to divert attention from his passive role in the recent turmoil, but his colleagues were in no mood to plumb motives: they voted overwhelmingly to authorize him to press for new legislation. The admirals stationed in Rio de Janeiro held their own conclave on December 5 and voted a motion of solidarity with their army colleagues and called for "decisive repression and just punishment." 4 At Vargas' request the Chamber of Deputies quickily approved a thirty-day state of siege, which gave him discretionary powers, and on December 7 he convened the cabinet to discuss further steps. Foreign Minister Macedo Soares, who recently had told the CFCE that the government needed improved internal security laws and must apply them without "sentimentalism," suggested to the cabinet that a central agency be set up to coordinate the anti-Communist program. The navy minister, Admiral Henrique Guilhem, was energetic in his condemnation of the Communists. "They are watching," he affirmed. "The day our attentiveness lessens, the Communists will act. Cleansing and punishment are needed. . . . " General Gomes expectedly underscored the continuing threat—the country stood on a "bed of coals that could burst into flame at any moment," he declared—and renewed his argument that the "liberalism" of existing legislation prevented the kind of repression that was required. Minister of Labor Agamenon Magalhães added his voice to the chorus, complaining that the constitution allowed trade unions excessive liberty that should be curbed. Vargas' comments at the meeting were not recorded, but in a lengthy letter to his ambassador-friend Oswaldo Aranha in Washington, he vented his outrage, confessing that he had not realized that the "toxin of subversive propaganda" had spread so extensively in Brazil. The events in Natal had shown what

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would have been in store had the rebels succeeded, he said. 'There the first soviet was established, composed of three commissars who managed to publish typically Communist decrees" and then looted the city. The fighting had been bloody in Rio de Janeiro, where the rebels not only had killed officers in combat but had engaged in the "true savagery" of murdering some while they slept, he continued grimly. The police unfortunately did not know where Prestes was, but the government intended to locate and punish those responsible for the bloodshed and to launch a "sanitizing campaign capable of detoxifying the atmosphere," he vowed.5 The Chamber of Deputies late that month authorized a ninetyday extension of the state of siege. It also approved two amendments to the constitution, giving Vargas the power to dismiss federal employees and cancel the commissions of officers who participated in subversive activities. On December 31 the chief executive made use of his new authority, rescinding the commissions of Captain Agildo Barata, who had led the revolt in the Third Military Regiment, and twenty-two other officers; Minister of Justice Vicente Rao issued a circular on January 2, 1936, explaining that the amendments could be applied retroactively because the November putsch had been part of "one single plan" that the Communists were still attempting to carry out. A week later Vargas announced the creation of a National Commission for Repression of Communism, a troika to be headed by Congressman Adalberto Corrêa, who would be joined by an admiral and a general. The commission would undertake a nationwide investigation, Vargas told the press. "It will have neither friends nor enemies." According to Rao, the commission would have ample investigative powers and could recommend the arrest of anyone whose activities it deemed "prejudicial to political and social institutions." Convinced, as he confided to Vargas on February 5, that the Communists were preparing a "decisive blow," Corrêa and his colleagues began hunting Reds. In his memoirs he would claim that the commission had avoided finding "hapless victims here and there" and had concentrated instead on truly dangerous individuals, but contemporaries were soon impressed by what seemed to be a blind fanaticism on the commission's part. "All that is lacking is for it to call you a Communist, too," a skeptical friend wrote to Muller at one point. Corrêa himself during this period summed up for Vargas his conception of his task by saying that it was "better to make one or a few unjust arrests than permit Brazil to be bloodied again."6 The army high command was obsessed with subversion, and the state of the military mind kept civilian policymakers under constant pressure to produce results. When it came to devising a policy

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for extirpating communism, however, military leaders were divided. The approach adopted by Gomes was punitive and repressive. He personally lobbied congressional spokesmen on behalf of the constitutional amendments that made possible a purge, by presidential decree, of the officer corps; he then proceeded with Vargas' cooperation to eliminate suspects. Early in 1936 he created a special three-man commission to conduct investigations, and during that year over a hundred officers and 1,136 enlisted personnel were expelled from the army. Chief of Staff Pessoa, like Gomes, was a liberal constitutionalist and believed in preserving the system, publicly scorning the notion that the military wanted to control national politics or change the structure of government. He nonetheless opposed granting the chief executive the prerogative of expelling army officers— something that should be left to military authorities after appropriate decision of the Supreme Military Tribunal, he told Gomes on December 10, 1935—and stressed the preventive dimension of antiCommunist measures. This was clear from instructions he issued on January 8 to regional commanders for the organization of a program involving surveillance, counterintelligence, and civic education. All commands should devise a "plan of special surveillance" and information acquisition that would focus not only on military facilities, but the "political-military-social environment" as well. The First Military Region was strategically critical, he pointed out, so it required a broad program of military and civilian cooperation. The regional general staff, in collaboration with the Army General Staff, civil and military police, civic groups, and private business should endeavor to obtain information on national politics, the "social question," and local military units, he said. In all regions, Pessoa added, the general staffs should designate an officer to monitor confidentially the "mentality of the military or civilian personnel in service, learn their opinions and tendencies, and become familiar with their aspirations." Regional intelligence units, he concluded, should also maintain liaison with factory managers and local police in order to secure information on the work force in plants, "the percentage of Brazilians and foreigners, who the main agitators are, and the identity of Communist elements." 7 Góes Monteiro did not disagree that harsh repression was necessary, but he championed far-reaching political reform. At the meeting of generals on December 3, 1935, he not only endorsed the idea of an emergency law that would allow the state to move expeditiously against its domestic enemies, but called for constitutional change to strengthen the central government. As days went by, Monteiro fretted that an opportunity was being lost to establish a "form

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of totalitarian state," and in a memorandum to Vargas on December 20 he remonstrated that only a regime of the "national-socialist type," that included creation of a highly centralized "National Party," would protect Brazilian society from the "poison produced by the virus of the steppes and Semitic internationalism." Forget legal niceties, he told Vargas, and call in military chiefs, Filinto Muller, and political leaders to hammer out a program for swift execution.8 Monteiro would be the first to insist on a purge of the services, but he bitterly resented the constitutional amendment dealing with the expulsion of officers, seeing in it a grave infringement of the military preserve by the political class and a devastating blow to military morale at a time when the cohesion of the armed forces seemed more necessary than ever.9 Many senior officers agreed with Monteiro, and after promulgation of the amendment, he became the rallying point for a rapidly expanding anti-Gomes faction. Monteiro remonstrated with both Vargas and Gomes that the amendment should be modified because it was an indirect indictment of the army as somehow responsible for the "Bolshevik invasion." A fellow general summed up the widespread disgruntlement when he commented privately to Monteiro that the amendment placed the army in the category of "social refuse" and left it vulnerable to "petty politics." An intelligence report that Vargas received in mid-1936 warned of the growing schism within the high command, because according to his detractors, Gomes had become less a defender of the army's interests and more a "Minister of Political Security" for whom "all officers have become suspects." But the resentment was not directed solely at Gomes; it was aimed, too, at civilian politicians who had approved the amendment. The armed forces had defended the nation, Monteiro later recalled thinking at the time, but "accursed politics" had made a victim of them.10 The ironic result of Gomes' stern campaign against Communists within the military establishment was thus to drive more deeply the wedge between right-wing officers and the political class. Meanwhile, the high command's determination to eradicate the subversive threat was carried to the Northeast by General Newton Cavalcante de Andrade, a hard-line sympathizer of Integralism, who assumed command of the Seventh Military Region early in 1936. State authorities themselves had been waging what the American consul in Recife labeled a "ruthless campaign" against leftist suspects ever since the intentona. Indeed, the state secretary of public security in Pernambuco, Captain Malvino Reis Neto, was particularly stern, ordering summary execution of prisoners during the battle in November because, as he later put it, that had been the "only

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way to deal with communists." Cavalcante thus had a natural ally in the captain, but on his arrival in February 1936 he made it clear that he intended to direct the countersubversion program without regard to the sensitiveness of local authorities. Indeed, his aggressiveness toward the rebels and their suspected allies led the American consul to assume that he had been granted "broad powers" by the federal government. It soon became obvious that those powers were actually "dictatorial77 ones. When a judge in neighboring Alagoas ordered twenty persons caught in the postrebellion dragnet released because there was insufficient proof of subversive activities, an outraged Cavalcante immediately ordered their rearrest. He took little time in alienating Reis, who was proud of his personal role in the suppression of the revolt in Recife and who ended up asking for a transfer, complaining to Muller in April that he had been forced "various times77 to resist the general7s "undue interference77 in the affairs of his office. Captain Frederico Mindelo replaced Reis, and he, too, apparently had problems with Cavalcante7s high-handed tactics; in any case, he did not share the commander7s veritable obsession with the Communist threat, advising Muller at one point in June that, despite the "conspiracies and rumors77 that Cavalcante "constantly" reported to him, he could find no signs of impending trouble, a theme he returned to in a subsequent report. The situation in the region was tranquil, he wrote, so it was unclear where Cavalcante got the information that made him "too preoccupied,77 if not "frightened."11 In the weeks following the uprising, the nationwide crackdown resulted in the imprisonment of thousands of individuals. According to the British consul in Recife, some six hundred persons were arrested there in the first few days. Whether that figure was correct or not, certainly Comrade Gregório Bezerra7s figure of "more than thirty thousand revolutionaries and pseudorevolutionaries77 is grossly exaggerated. Days after the putsch in Rio de Janeiro, Muller informed Ambassador Hugh Gibson that the carioca police had detained a little over two hundred civilians, while official statistics revealed that almost twenty-five hundred military personnel were being held. The number of civilian prisoners did rise rapidly in ensuing weeks. As Muller explained to Captain Reis in Pernambuco, the police should take into custody "Marxists of all kinds, even simple theorists,77 in order to impede further trouble. Among the prisoners in Rio de Janeiro were various professors from the School of Law, several prominent figures in the defunct Aliança Nacional Libertadora, including commanders Herculino Cascardo and Roberto Sisson12— and some key Comintern agents and PCB leaders.

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It was the British double agent Johann Graaf who provided the information that led to the arrest of "Harry Berger," as Arthur Ewert called himself, on December 26, 1935. Graaf had been summoned to the house that Ewert and his wife had rented in Ipanema to install an explosive device on a safe, which he had sabotaged. DOPS chief Miranda Correia, seconded by Detective Serafim Braga, led the team of police agents that raided the house and arrested the Ewerts, discovering in the safe a small archive of letters, reports, memoranda, and other documents on preparations for the intentona. Prestes and Olga Benario lived nearby and narrowly escaped detention. She happened to see the commotion at the Ewerts' residence and managed to warn Prestes in time for their escape by taxi before Braga, following a tip from the Ewerts' maid, led a group of policemen to their home. There, too, the lawmen found a cache of documents, including letters that Prestes had received after the revolt and that incriminated a series of people, including the carioca prefect, his son, and a brother of Governor Juracy Magalhães of Bahia.13 The next to be located was Antonio Bomfim ("Miranda"), the secretary general of the PCB, who was captured on January 13, 1936, along with his teenage girlfriend and a small pile of documents on PCB activities. The young woman, who used the name Elza Fernandes, became tragically involved in one of the most brutal episodes of the period. Her release after two weeks in jail aroused suspicion on the part of Communist leaders still at large that she had agreed to work for the police, and Prestes ordered her killed. His comrades resisted carrying out the harsh sentence, and Prestes, by messenger, berated them. "I was painfully surprised by your lack of resolution and hesitation . . .," he wrote to Honório de Freitas Guimarães, a member of the Central Committee, in February. "Is she or is she not extremely dangerous to the party as someone completely in the service of the adversary, familiar with a great deal and the only witness against a great number of comrades and sympathizers?" Prodded by Prestes' insistent reproach, Guimarães gathered four other comrades, and together they strangled the adolescent.14 Miranda Correia, meanwhile, had been encouraged by the arrest of the Ewerts and Bomfim and assured Gibson's assistant, Theodore Xanthaky, on January 14 that Prestes was in Rio de Janeiro and would soon be tracked down. "I asked him what he thought would be the fate of Prestes," Xanthaky reported to the ambassador, "and he told me that, in his opinion, he should not be taken alive." The next to fall, however, were Rodolfo Ghioldi and his wife, who were taken into custody on January 23, 1936, as they tried to leave the country from São Paulo. Apparently under torture, the Argentine revolution-

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ary told the police about Léon Vallée, the Belgian-born Comintern agent, who was then captured but who became the most fortunate of the conspirators. After being released on January 28 by Miranda Correia, who hoped he would lead the police to other Communists, Vallée managed to elude surveillance and disappear. On that same day, nonetheless, detectives found the person who ultimately would provide the information that would lead them to Prestes: Victor Barron, his radio operator.15 The numerous arrests and the documentary evidence of subversive activities stimulated official and public concern about the true extent of the challenge and provided powerful arguments for the campaign of repression. Brazilian communism initially seemed only a "spiritual digression," but now it was clear that it was part of an "international movement, skillfully directed, [and] supplied with ample material resources," declared an editorialist for the Correio da Manhã. "And in view of the copious documentation found in the possession of the Soviet agents, it really seems that the hydra already had extended its tentacles to where we hardly imagined the Bolshevik poison could reach." When congressman João Mangabeira filed a petition for habeas corpus with a federal judge in favor of several prisoners who were being kept on board a ship in the harbor, Muller officially retorted that there was "still a danger of a new Communist uprising," pointing to the documents as proof that the "agents of a foreign power" had not abandoned their revolutionary goals. Minister of Justice Rao also warned that "Moscow's emissaries" were still actively conspiring.16 The torture of prisoners was routine and became a hotly debated issue both within the country and abroad. There were various deaths among detainees in Recife as a result of brutal beatings, and the carioca police were equally savage. The Ewerts were subjected to all kinds of bodily violence and indignities. In the expectation that Arthur Ewert would not be able to tolerate seeing his wife mistreated, she was stripped, given electric shocks, beaten, and burned with cigarettes—all in his presence. Both, however, withstood everything, refusing to provide any details about their activities. Police agents themselves grudgingly admired the strength of the couple, and the censors even permitted the press to report it. "It will do no good to insist for I have nothing to say!" was one declaration attributed to Ewert. "I have already said that I am a dedicated Communist. . . . I will say nothing else, even if you come and tell me that I am to be shot tomorrow."17 Barron was grotesquely tortured from the very beginning of his imprisonment. According to a lawyer sent from the United States to

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defend him, in addition to being deprived of food, water, and a bed, Barron was beaten with belts and clubs and given electric shocks; on one occasion his testicles were squeezed until he fainted. Muller himself, in conversation with Xanthaky, admitted that "Barron was subjected to third-degree measures after his confession in order to secure more definitive information."18 What Barron had admitted, during his first week of detention, was that he was a Communist, that he had participated in preparations for the intentona, and that he had taken Prestes by car from an apartment in Copacabana to a place in the district of Meier in the northern part of Rio. Throughout February the young American resisted the physical and mental abuse, refusing to supply further details, but on March 4 he finally agreed to show police on a map where he had deposited Prestes in exchange for a promise that he would immediately be deported to the United States. Subsequently, two detectives took him to a barbershop for a haircut and then to a restaurant before returning to DOPS headquarters where, in Xanthaky's presence, he was informed that he would be placed on board a ship sailing for New York the following day. Barron seemed depressed and nervous, and it supposedly was "only with great difficulty" that he was persuaded to go to a special thirdfloor room, which faced an interior patio.19 Early the next morning the police net closed on Prestes and Benario, who was now pregnant. They were staying at the modest home of a party militant and had no possibility of escape. Prestes was in his pajamas when the police broke down the door. Fearing that her companion would be shot, Benario, a woman "of markedly beautiful features," jumped in front of him in a protective gesture, shouting that he was unarmed. The two revolutionaries were then conducted to the Central Police building and separated. They saw each other for the last time as an elevator gate closed on Prestes, who was taken to a different interrogation room. It is not known if Barron heard of the arrests, but at approximately eight o'clock that same morning he jumped—or was pushed—from a third-floor window and fell to the cement patio below. He was pronounced dead fifteen minutes later. According to the policeman who had been watching him, Barron asked to go to the bathroom; on his return he distracted the guard by feigning illness, then broke away and threw himself out of the window. In his official report, Miranda Correia declared that Barron had attempted suicide on an earlier occasion by cutting his wrist with a razor blade. Did he kill himself out of remorse for having betrayed Prestes, or was he murdered? Either is credible, but the Brazilian police at that time were inventively brutal. It is interesting to note that four months later the police agent who arrested Prestes was assassi-

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nated at the entrance of the DOPS building, and the assassin, in the skeptical words of Ambassador Gibson, "committed suicide the next day, in the same way and in practically the same spot as Victor Allen Barron."20 As a prisoner Prestes revealed a stoicism and willpower to match his lack of astuteness and good sense as a revolutionary leader. For the third time in his career as a Marxist rebel, the police had found in his possession documents and recent correspondence, including proof this time of his role in the murder of Elza Fernandes. Even so, from the outset he adamantly refused to furnish any information to his captors except to assume responsibility for the putsch, and in ensuing weeks both he and Benario maintained the same spirit of defiance. Prestes was kept incommunicado, but neither he nor she was physically mistreated—"My torture was all psychological," he later said21—which may help to explain their intransigence. The capture of the key figure in the Red conspiracy, along with the documents that he incomprehensibly had allowed to fall into police hands, reinforced the moral position of the government as it moved energetically to crush the threat. Vargas had no difficulty in securing authorization from the Chamber of Deputies to decree, on March 21, a state of war, which meant suspension of additional civil rights and of parliamentary immunity. Two days later the police arrested Senator Abel Chermont and four members of the chamber for subversive activities. Correspondence seized in Prestes' hiding place indicated that Chermont was in contact with some of the conspirators; the senator, moreover, had fallen from official grace because of his vigorous condemnation on the floor of the Senate of the physical mistreatment of Ewert and other prisoners. Chermont was taken to a garage at the DOPS headquarters and beaten with rubber clubs by several policemen; he then was kept in the garage a week to give his bruises time to disappear before being taken to a common cell.22 Muller announced late in March that, since the November revolts, just over 3,000 people had been arrested, including 901 civilians; of that number, he said, 2,644 had been released, leaving 403 political prisoners. That figure did not conflict radically with the estimated total of between 500 and 800 that a hasty survey made by Gibson suggested. A new wave of detentions in following months, however, raised the official total to some 7,056 throughout the country during the period November 27,1935, to May 31,1937. On the latter date, according to the police, there were 1,002 individuals still in custody.23 The experience of those prisoners varied, but at best it was extremely unpleasant. In mid-1936 a number of them in Rio de Janeiro signed a collective letter to Vargas protesting the "medieval meth-

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ods" employed by the police against various prisoners, including Prestes' former maid, who allegedly had been beaten and given electric shocks. But no other prisoner seems to have been abused on the scale and with the intensity that Ewert was. After the period of direct physical torture, which did not yield the results the police wanted, the German Communist was literally caged like an animal in the cramped space behind a stairway at the DOPS headquarters and kept there for over a year, sleeping on the floor and living in his own filth, without visitors, mail, or reading material. Madness, in those circumstances, was only a question of time.24 The extent to which Vargas was aware of such procedures is unclear, but publicly he rejected the accusations of torture, declaring on May 10 that the police had been "magnanimous" toward prisoners, who had been treated "benignly." Muller also denied the veracity of reports of police brutality. "Against the true Communists, yes, the police campaign tenaciously but have no need to base their action on illegal means," he affirmed in a press note. "On the contrary, within the law the civil police of the Federal District have been conducting themselves with maximum energy, without stooping to violent methods. . . ."25 Olga Benario became the central figure in perhaps the most controversial episode involving the imprisoned Communist agents. She remained strikingly uncooperative throughout her detention, refusing to give any biographical data except to say that she was "Maria Prestes," a 28-year-old housewife. Finally, in mid-May 1936 the police, after receiving information on her political past from the Gestapo in Berlin, threatened her with deportation unless she provided details on her alleged marriage to Prestes. All of this she anxiously reported, or attempted to report, to Prestes in a poignant letter, written in French, on May 18. She had not assisted the police, she said, and would follow his lead in the future: For my part, you can be sure that I shall never lack the courage to accompany you in the struggle. Regarding my health, I shouldn't like for you to worry. . . . Despite having lost 12 kg, because I can hardly eat, I do not feel bad. But you understand that now, to my worry about you, which does not leave me for a single instant, another is added about the health of our little one. My desire to see you, that is, to talk to you about this matter, which logically worries me a great deal, is immense. I asked permission to see you but they denied it. So I have only this way to tell you that our separation during

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the past three months, as well as this little life that is starting to form inside me, has made all my feelings for you even stronger. There is no indication that the missive reached Prestes. At her final interrogation the next day, Benario once more declined to state where she had been born, her parents' names, where she supposedly had married Prestes, and when and how she had arrived in Brazil. In view of this, Muller that same day initiated expulsion proceedings. According to the official justification written by Miranda Correia, she was "harmful to the political and social order." Informed of this development, Benario penned an anguished note to Prestes. "Today in the Central Police they started my expulsion process," she wrote. "They told me that I will have five days to secure a lawyer. But behind locked doors, as I find myself, I don't know whom to appeal to," she pointed out. "If you see any possibilities in this situation, then let me know."26 As witnesses to her political unsuitability, three policemen testified. One of them, Miranda Correia's assistant, declared that when Benario had been arrested, she had exclaimed that she shared Prestes' political ideas "and that she was ready to follow him to the end." She also had participated in a meeting of Comintern agents on the eve of the intentona. As a result of all this, he concluded, she clearly constituted a "serious danger" to the social order. A second investigator was even less specific: she had been arrested in various places in Europe, she used several pseudonyms, and therefore he could say "with certainty that Maria Prestes is a person dangerous and noxious to the interests of Brazil." The third witness could say no more than that information received from Europe proved that she held "advanced ideas," that she was a Communist, and therefore "pernicious and undesirable" to Brazilian interests.27 The lawyer finally contracted by Benario was Hermes Lima, who decided that his only hope was to secure a writ of habeas corpus, not as means of obtaining her release, but of forcing a trial, which would gain time for her baby to be born on Brazilian soil and thus make her deportation extremely unlikely. In his petition to the Supreme Court on June 3, he argued that Prestes was the father of her unborn child, that it had been conceived on Brazilian soil, and that it consequently deserved the protection of the law. To expel her, he said, would be to issue the "death sentence" for both her and her unborn child. The Court asked the Ministry of Justice for an opinion to guide its deliberations, and the police department admitted in reply that there was no proof that Benario had committed any crimes. This furnished

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ammunition for Lima's final arguments to the Court; he insisted, too, that she was the wife of a Brazilian citizen and mother of a Brazilian child-to-be. The silence of both Benario and Prestes on the subject of their alleged marriage, however, weakened the juridical position of the defense, and on June 17 the Court unanimously rejected Lima's petition. On August 27, Vargas and Rao signed the decree of expulsion, and on September 23 Benario and Elise Ewert, who likewise had been declared undesirable, were placed on board a German steamer bound for Hamburg, where the two Brazilian detectives accompanying them handed the two women over to the Gestapo. It was supremely ironic that on November 27, the anniversary of the Communist revolt in Rio de Janeiro, Benario gave birth, in the hospital ward of the women's prison in Berlin, to a healthy girl whom she named Anita Prestes. She was allowed to write to the Brazilian embassy to request registration of the birth. "Please address your reply to the Geheime Staatspolizei [i.e., Gestapo], Berlin, SW 11, Prinz-Albrechtstr. 8," she wrote.28 The deportation of Benario, a Jewish Communist, to Nazi Germany, where she died a few years later in a gas chamber, was the single most controversial event of the anti-Communist campaign of the Vargas government in the 1930s, and with the passage of time it gained a particularly barbaric dimension because of the horrors of Nazi treatment of Jews during World War II. In mid-1936, however, the image that the Third Reich projected was not so grim, as evidenced, perhaps, by the holding of the Olympic Games in Berlin—at the very time that Benario's case was being debated. There were Nuremberg Laws, yes, but no Final Solution; Benario spent over five years in German prisons before falling victim to the Nazi program of genocide. The Gestapo gained official stature as an independent, national political police force only in February 1936 and had not yet become a symbol, for broad Western opinion, of unprecedented terror. The anti-Soviet stand of the Hitler regime, in any case, diverted the attention of many observers abroad from the disagreeable aspects of German internal politics. "What is of interest and is uncontestable," Catholic leader Amoroso Lima pondered in a book published that year, "is that Fascism or Hitlerism . . . has been the European barrier against theoretical Marxism and practical Sovietism."29 For jurists, policemen, political leaders, and much of Brazilian "public opinion" that year, Benario was a foreigner who had arrived in Brazil with a false passport and by means she refused to divulge; she said that she was the wife of a Brazilian national, but possessed no proof and, indeed, intransigently declined to reveal details of the formal union; and she clearly had participated in a move-

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ment, controlled by Moscow, that had attempted to overthrow the government of Brazil. In those circumstances, her deportation to her country of origin, where she was a fugitive from pre-Nazi justice,30 seemed to them a reasonable act. It fell to the new Tribunal de Segurança Nacional (TSN), established by Vargas with congressional authorization in October 1936, to decide the fates of Prestes, Ewert, and other individuals who figured prominently in the intentona. After studying a report submitted by Muller, the TSN, whose five justices included an army colonel and a naval captain, quickly ordered the release of more than one hundred prisoners so as to be able to concentrate on the major indictments. When officers of the TSN visited Prestes, he insisted that he did not want a lawyer to defend him because he did not recognize the legitimacy of the proceedings,· Ewert, in a state of malnutrition and evincing mental disorientation, declined to make any statements.31 At the request of the TSN, the Brazilian Bar Association designated Heráclito Sobral Pinto to represent the two revolutionaries. The assignment handed to Sobral Pinto, a leading figure in the Catholic Electoral League, a Christian Democrat, and a man of profound religious and humanitarian convictions, was a difficult one by any standard, and his work was compounded by the obstructive attitude of both the police and the accused, especially Prestes. When he made his first visit to the DOPS prison to interview Prestes in January 1937, the rebel leader refused to see him. The visit to Ewert, however, was an even greater shock, so much so that the lawyer immediately petitioned Judge Raul Machado of the TSN for measures to improve the German's physical condition. Queried by Machado, the commandant of the Special Police rejected the complaint, declaring that Ewert was being held in the only space available and that his physical weakness was a result of voluntary fasting. "On one occasion that prisoner went 17 consecutive days without any food, for when it was offered, he refused i t . . . ," the commandant wrote. Sobral Pinto did not relent, addressing an appeal on February 13 to the new minister of justice, Agamenon Magalhães. "Neither you nor I would allow a mangy dog to receive the treatment that has been given to Harry Berger," he declared. "Put in the space behind a lower stairway . . . , there he spends his days and nights in the most absolute segregation from all human convivium, hearing constantly the footsteps of soldiers over his head. The clothes that he wears . . . he has not changed in months," the attorney continued. "There is no place on them where new filth can attach itself." Sobral Pinto waited two more weeks for the elusive humanitarian gesture from the authorities and then sent another lengthy petition to Judge Ma-

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chado, repeating his description of the ghastly conditions in which Ewert was forced to live and adding that the prisoner was denied all reading and writing materials. Machado informed Muller of the petition and asked that Ewert be transferred to another prison, but the police chief simply ignored the request, provoking a tart complaint from Sobral Pinto about Muller's flagrant disregard for judicial authority.32 In May 1937 the TSN announced its decisions regarding the main conspirators. Prestes was sentenced to sixteen years and eight months in prison, Ewert to thirteen years and four months, Agildo Barata to ten years, while Ghioldi, Bomfim, and several others were condemned to four years' incarceration. The two leaders of the Aliança Nacional Libertadora received relatively light sentences of ten months.33 The idea that the Red threat required new preventive measures gained ground rapidly after November 1935. Vargas established the special commission on communism and declared the state of war, but more seemed necessary to counteract the "varied and multiform" action of the Comintern. "In its insidious effort to carry turmoil to other lands, it created a specialized technique of crime against the social order in no way similar to the methods of common conspirators," Vargas affirmed in mid-1936. "It is because of this that the usual apparatus of prevention and repression, the ordinary laws of state security, reveal themselves at every turn deficient and inefficient to impede the antisocial activity of the audacious agitators trained and supported by the Communist International installed in Moscow." One of the urgent needs, as the security community saw it, was to improve police capabilities. Captain Mindelo in Recife put his finger on a fundamental problem when, in a letter to Muller, he pointed out that there was "no centralization, no single orientation" of police work. In the absence of a federal police force, state agencies proceeded as they thought best, a situation that produced a "waste of energy and effort" by the various departments throughout the country. Muller was well aware of all this and organized the First Congress of Public Security, held in Rio de Janeiro in October, to address the problem. Law enforcement officers from the various states attended the conclave, the deliberations of which were kept secret. Muller pressed energetically for greater coordination between the diverse federal ministries and the police, and between his department and state police, and secured two conventions that addressed those issues. One, aimed at countering espionage, provided for closer collaboration between military agencies and the police, while the other

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defined ways in which Federal District and state police authorities could tackle more effectively the problem of Communist infiltration of trade unions and student associations.34 Anti-Communist, anti-Soviet propaganda and civic education formed an integral part of the government's program. Vargas himself spearheaded the attack. "In their abundant and verbose promises, our Communists imitate the apostles of Russian bolshevism, omitting to recall, however, how they were able to sovietize Russia," he declared on January 1, 1936. "They, too, called themselves protectors of the working class and they suppressed its liberty, instituting slave labor; they promised land and despoiled the peasants of their harvests, forcing them to work for the state under the yoke of a ferocious dictatorship . . ." In a letter to Aranha days later, he explained that the "Communist virus contaminated us earlier and with greater intensity than one could imagine" and that simple repression would be insufficient to overcome it. The Brazilian people needed "healthy stimuli of a moral and ideological nature," he declared, pointing to his speech and informing the ambassador that he was coordinating the efforts of the Ministry of Education, the Army General Staff, and the League for National Defense to inculcate the proper values in the public.35 The details of the role of the Ministry of Education in this endeavor are not clear, but the minister, Gustavo Capanema, in March 1936 inaugurated a series of public lectures on the theme of "The Great Guiding Principles of National Education," and the first speaker was Amoroso Lima, who read a paper on "Education and Communism." The following month the ministry set up a special committee to censor children's literature to prevent the dissemination of subversive ideas.36 Military leaders eagerly joined in the civic campaign. General Newton Cavalcante, the regional commander in the Northeast, was also president of the Brazilian boy scouts federation, and in that capacity he announced that he was elaborating an ambitious program of education and social action against communism. Chief of Staff Pessoa offered combat on two fronts. In the secret instructions that he sent to regional commanders in January, he recommended they organize within units special "nuclei of counterpropaganda and resistance" that should seek to spread civic and patriotic ideals among the troops. After leaving his post in February, the same month that Minister of War Gomes appointed a committee to "orient counterpropaganda" within the ranks, Pessoa placed anticommunism at the top of the agenda of the League for National Defense, of which he was president. In April he reported that the league was sponsoring a poster contest to select material for use in its cam-

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paign, and subsequently he chaired a series of lectures on antiCommunist themes.37 Cardinal Leme threw the weight of the church behind the civic movement, inaugurating in May the first antiCommunist exhibition in Brazil. Vargas, for his part, continued to encourage these activities, letting pass no opportunity to criticize the USSR and Brazilian Communists and keep the perceived danger before the public eye. "The agents of subversion and disorder persist in their diabolical plans . . . ," he warned on Independence Day. "Let us harbor no doubt about the methods and goals of those endeavoring to transform us into a colony of Moscow."38 The relationship of the press with the government was rapidly becoming an ambiguous one because of the rigor of police censorship, but on the issue of communism the major dailies were one with the authorities, applauding and exhorting the administration. The Correio da Manhã, for example, hailed Vargas' New Year's Day speech and urged him to not only punish the "Kremlin's agitators" but mobilize the clergy, press, and schools in a nationwide patriotic crusade. One of its editorialists suggested in February that the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Labor coordinate a program of counterpropaganda, "principally at the level of the common people, in workers' centers, and in the barracks." Late the following month the same newspaper admonished the government to press forward with "decisive and energetic" measures to eliminate the Communist threat. The ardor with which the Correio and other newspapers formerly critical of Vargas now displayed solidarity with him was so striking that one observer privately labeled them "new Christians" who were acting in regard to the Communist challenge "as if the tribunals of blood were operating in the editorial offices." It was with considerable justification, therefore, that Vargas in July praised the "soldiers of the pen" for their contribution to the defeat of the "plan drafted and financed by foreigners to transform Brazil into a colony of Moscow." The press, of course, enthusiastically joined Vargas in his condemnation of the Soviet Union. The Jornal do Brasil in midyear scorned recent Comintern radio broadcasts to South America that had emphasized the supposedly humanitarian aspects of the Soviet system. "For that very reason the Soviets allow hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children to die of hunger every year," it exclaimed with sarcasm. Other analysts hammered on the Soviet threat to Western civilization. "War may come tomorrow," one columnist wrote in September, "but the dilemma is inevitable: either bolshevism will destroy civilization, or civilization will liquidate bolshevism." Assailing the Kremlin and its policies, the Diário Ca-

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rioca agreed that the USSR was becoming an increasingly greater "danger to the rest of the world."39 The administration considered Plínio Salgado's Ação Integralista Brasileira (AIB) a useful instrument for clarifying public opinion and mobilizing support, and had done so for at least a year prior to the intentona. Late in 1934 the American military attaché had reported the obvious when he wrote of the AIB that "public authorities welcome its help in discouraging communism," and statements by national leaders in ensuing months bore that out. General Monteiro publicly endorsed registration of the party in February 1935, arguing that unlike communism it was nationalistic and should be allowed freedom to proselytize. After he proscribed the ANL in mid-1935, Vargas himself defended the AIB against demands from liberal sectors that it be outlawed as well, declaring that the greenshirts were not engaged in subversive activities. General Pessoa later candidly acknowledged that the administration had regarded Integralism as an "antidote" to communism. He admired the "splendid civic campaign" mounted by Salgado and noted the Integralists' active participation in League for National Defense ceremonies. The greenshirts, too, defended the church and were defended by it—indeed, "large numbers of Brazil's Catholic intellectuals, militant laymen, priests, and bishops worked actively in the movement, often holding high political offices"—and preached the virtues of duty, obedience, and hierarchy. All of this made them valuable allies, and Pessoa met occasionally with party officers to offer counsel regarding their antiCommunist endeavor.40 When the revolts broke out in November 1935, Salgado sent a telegram to Vargas offering the services of 100,000 greenshirts for defense of the state, but Vargas and the high command did not intend to arm them. They did, however, want to exploit the movement's potential, and it was more than coincidence that the president's public declarations after the intentona frequently contained reference to the AIB's key trilogy. On November 27, 1935, for example, he declared that national traditions of "religion, fatherland, and family" militated against public acceptance of communism, and in his New Year's address he proclaimed that Brazilian nationality rested on the "family and sentiments of religion and fatherland." The instructions that Pessoa sent to army commanders that month included the recommendation that they employ Integralists in their programs of counterpropaganda and civic education.41 Federal sympathy for the AIB became pronounced as the antiCommunist campaign gathered steam. The leader of the movement

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in Bahia visited Rio de Janeiro in February 1936 and found the party "triumphant" there. "The various nuclei are functioning enthusiastically, openly holding weekly meetings without the slightest impediment from federal authorities; on the contrary," he wrote, "[they are] protected by those authorities." Integralism had strong backers in the military. The most outspoken of them in senior officer ranks was General Cavalcante, with whom Salgado made a "pact" during this period that obligated the general to defend the AIB in government councils. Pessoa, of course, used Integralist spokesmen in the program he directed as head of the League for National Defense, inviting prominent figures in the party, such as Dom Helder Câmara, to give public lectures.42 Vargas' speeches in mid-1936 seemed to have an increasingly Integralist tone. In May he called for a national effort to reinforce the "ties of family, religion, and state," and on Independence Day he insisted on the point: the Reds wanted above all to "annihilate the fatherland, family, and religion." Said one greenshirt in a telegram to the chief executive, "When the highest authority of the Republic speaks like this, we Integralists applaud because it is our language." The president of the National Commission for Repression of Communism defended the AIB in the Chamber of Deputies, praising Salgado's attitude toward communism, and Muller, at the special police conference, sponsored a resolution in favor of a constitutional amendment proscribing communism, then successfully fought an amendment to his resolution that would have included Integralism in the proposed ban.43 Congressional opponents of the greenshirts bitterly protested the favoritism shown by the government toward the AIB, but as the American military attaché noted, since the administration viewed Salgado's followers as a "possible bulwark" against communism, any official steps to curb them were unlikely.44 The encouragement given to Integralism, like other elements in the government's anti-Communist blueprint, reflected a marked advance toward an ideology of national security that stemmed from the conviction of national leaders, steel-like after the intentona, that Brazil faced an unprecedented assault on its institutions. When Oswaldo Aranha wrote privately to Vargas in mid-1936 criticizing the extent of the repression and suggesting that the Brazilian police and military authorities might be exaggerating the menace, Vargas reproved his longtime friend and political ally, admonishing him to have no "illusions" about the gravity and importance of the November events. Moscow had attributed such significance to the revolts, he reminded Aranha, that it had dispatched specially trained and ex-

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perienced Comintern agents to help prepare them.45 The battle was thus joined and had to be waged on all fronts, both internal and external. That was how policymakers in Rio de Janeiro saw the situation, and as a result, while they relentlessly pursued Communists at home, their representatives manned the barricades abroad, seeking to contain the threat.

5. The Battle on the External Front (1935-1937)

of November 1935 was a decisive event in the history of Soviet-Brazilian relations because it confirmed the worst fears of anti-Communists, whether conservative or liberal, and made prophets of those who had been warning that the Stalin regime was intent on promoting class warfare and subversion in Brazil. The intentona produced, therefore, a dramatic intensification of hostility toward the USSR, with sharp reverberations in foreign policy as the Vargas government vigorously pressed its anti-Soviet program. The La Plata region was the first line of defense. To protect Brazil's southern frontiers, Itamaraty worked assiduously to erect new barriers to Soviet influence in the area. At the same time Brazilian diplomacy faced troublesome challenges in trying to protect Brazil's image in other countries, especially the United States, Great Britain, and France, where leftist groups mounted strident attacks on Rio de Janeiro because of its campaign of repression. The verbal combat reinforced Brazilian convictions regarding Soviet intrigue and encouraged cooperation with the antidemocratic states in Europe. The Vargas administration thus endorsed the cause of General Francisco Franco in the Spanish civil war, seeing in the Nationalist revolt a crusade against Moscow's machinations, and developed an intimate association with Fascist Italy and particularly Nazi Germany, whose Gestapo proved an eager partner in Brazil's antiCommunist drive. THE COMINTERN'S PUTSCH

Even before the insurrection had run its course, Brazilian authorities concluded that the Soviet Union was responsible for the bloodshed. On the afternoon of November 25, 1935, Foreign Minister Macedo Soares told the British ambassador that the uprising had been "financed from Moscow," and he referred to "a large sum of money" that the Soviet legation in Montevideo supposedly had received recently for subversion in Brazil and Argentina. The next day

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in London, Ambassador Régis de Oliveira carried out Itamaraty's instructions to inform the Foreign Office that the ''trouble was of Communist origin and was due to propaganda from Moscow." Days later Macedo Soares was emphatic: 'The trail leads directly to Moscow," he assured the German minister.1 In ensuing months the foreign policy of the Vargas government became an active instrument for protection of the state against the perceived Red siege. Macedo Soares was a tireless overseer of that process, which was not new, but which now gained a unique dimension of commitment. Symptomatic of the foreign minister's zeal were the redoubled efforts of his protégée, Odette Carvalho e Souza, who, within days of the November revolts, was preparing a new series of memoranda on the Communist menace.2 These studies were fruit of an idea that had been germinating in Macedo Soares' mind for some time and which he now decided to act upon: the creation within Itamaraty of an anti-Communist intelligence center. In January 1936, therefore, he instructed her to set up what subsequently bore the name of Servico Especial de Informações (SEI), or Special Intelligence Service, with the task of studying communism in all its dimensions, particularly "its infiltration into our country and the means to combat it in a practical and efficient manner." One of the first steps taken by Carvalho e Souza was to establish or intensify an exchange of information with Théodor Aubert's International Entente, the pro-Deo League in Geneva, and the Anti-Comintern Bureau in Berlin. Macedo Soares also allocated special funds to the legation in Stockholm to purchase Communist publications and to secure information on Soviet activities,3 material undoubtedly intended for Carvalho e Souza, who began organizing files on Communist agents and elaborating further special reports, frequently at the request of the army high command.4 One idea debated at Itamaraty during this period was that of promoting more formal anti-Communist cooperation among South American police forces. There had been receptive signals months before the intentona, as president Arturo Alessandri of Chile broached with Ambassador Gilberto Amado the possibility of a united continentwide front vis-à-vis the Communist threat, and both Amado and his colleague in Asunción urged Itamaraty to take the first step by sponsoring an international police conference. The solidarity displayed by other governments during the November crisis—Alessandri sent Vargas a telegram of support condemning the "odious" events—rekindled the idea, and Macedo Soares' staff suggested that such a conclave might be useful. The foreign minister chose not to pursue the idea, however, probably because the two countries most

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important in his plans, Uruguay and Argentina, seemed disposed to cooperate fully regardless.5 Indeed, the major triumph for Brazil's anti-Soviet diplomacy came in Uruguay. On November 26, 1935, before Prestes launched the revolt in Rio de Janeiro, Macedo Soares informed the embassy in Montevideo that Moscow, working through Yuzhamtorg in that city, was responsible for the uprisings in the Northeast and instructed the chargé to urge the Terra administration to shut down the Soviet trade agency. The chargé that same day took the matter up with the Uruguayan foreign minister, José Espalter, who was sympathetic but said he would need proof of Soviet involvement in the turmoil in Brazil. Ambassador Lucillo Bueno, in Brazil when the revolts began, returned hastily to his post and in ensuing weeks made a break between Uruguay and the USSR his main priority. Câmara Canto, the commercial secretary and Vargas' eyes and ears in the embassy, had a long talk with Terra on December 13 about Soviet activities. Pointing to the sudden mobilization of Communists in Uruguay who were distributing handbills attacking Brazil, he attributed it to "Russian instructions" and pressed Terra to close both Yuzhamtorg and the Soviet legation. The Uruguayan leader was receptive but repeated that he could move only if he had evidence of links between Russian authorities and the events in Brazil. Bueno kept the pressure on and reported to Macedo Soares on December 23 that the local police chief and the army chief of staff favored a break with Moscow. Two days later the Brazilian envoy joined those two officials for a decisive meeting with Terra, Espalter, and the minister of war. The chief of police produced evidence that the Russian legation weeks before had bought Brazilian currency at local banks and issued several bearer checks, and this removed Terra's doubts. He told Bueno now that if Itamaraty gave him a formal note stating its case, he would sever relations on grounds of continental solidarity.6 Armed with a document that Itamaraty quickly transmitted, Terra announced the break on December 27. The official note that Espalter sent to Aleksandr Minkin, the Russian minister, declared that there was no difference between the Comintern and the Soviet government and that Rio de Janeiro intended to initiate a "drastic campaign against revolutionary communism" and had requested Uruguay's cooperation. Espalter mentioned the "bearer cheques for large sums" that Minkin had issued and said that the government of Brazil was convinced "that the Soviet legation at Montevideo is a centre of the Communist activity which has just been responsible for such bloodshed in that country."7 The Terra government thus took its dramatic step almost solely

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on the basis of statements made by Itamaraty, a gesture that elicited warm official and personal praise from Vargas. The Brazilian press, too, exulted over the Russian defeat, applauding Montevideo and seizing the occasion to warn anew of Moscow's imperialistic ambitions in South America. Expressing relief that Montevideo was no longer a "dangerous center of Soviet expansion," the Jornal do Brasil hailed the rupture as a possible first step in building an anti-Soviet front in the La Plata basin, a hope echoed by the Diário de Notícias, which clamored for a multilateral effort against the "infernal danger" of Soviet propaganda. When the Uruguayan ambassador returned to Rio de Janeiro after consultation with his government, two carioca newspapers organized a hero's reception that included fireworks and an open-car parade down Rio Branco Avenue to the congressional building, where Macedo Soares and other dignitaries welcomed him. Francisco Campos, secretary of education for the Federal District, gave a congratulatory address in which he vehemently attacked the USSR. The crowds, Macedo Soares later informed Ambassador Bueno, displayed "indescribable enthusiasm." 8 Soviet authorities reacted with angry indignation to the Uruguayan move. Until mid-December they had maintained a reserved attitude toward the events in Brazil and the accusations emanating from Rio de Janeiro. On December 15 Izvestiya broached the subject, though only to score Brazil as a country ripped by imperialistic rivalry between the United States and Great Britain, one where "feudal slavery reigns up to the present day" and one whose history was merely a "long series of insurrections and revolutions." The unexpected action by the Terra government, however, opened up a bitter diplomatic conflict. Minkin, in a note to Espalter on December 28, tartly rejected the accusations, denying that he had aided the rebels in Brazil or that there was any connection between the Comintern and the Soviet government. When Espalter sent his note back because of its "unsuitable" language and because the Uruguayan government no longer considered him an accredited diplomat, Minkin dashed off a futile note of protest on December 30 demanding proof of his wrongdoing. That same day Pravda denounced the "comic-opera gesture" by the "provincial shysters from Montevideo" who engaged in "small-town twaddle" to justify their policy. The Vargas regime, said the Soviet writer, was engaging in "provocative lies" about the USSR in order to divert attention from its internal problems. "And the rulers of Uruguay, those self-important buffoons, petty office-boys of the Brazilian reactionaries, . . . hasten to carry out their orders . . . ," he declared. An official of the Soviet Foreign Office remarked to the American ambassador the following

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day that Uruguay's arguments had such a "flimsy basis'' that the Soviet government could not understand "how an intelligent person could have made them." 9 The Kremlin had no choice but to accept Montevideo's decision, and while Minkin prepared to abandon his post, Moscow abolished Yuzhamtorg as well. The Soviet foreign ministry nonetheless opted to challenge Uruguay publicly at the League of Nations, probably on the assumption that a good offense was the best defense, but perhaps also to propagandize at the expense of Brazil, a nonmember. The prospect of a confrontation embarrassed Uruguayan authorities because, as Bueno reminded Macedo Soares, they had acted on simple statements made by the Brazilian government. Lacking concrete proof of official Soviet involvement in the insurrection, the Terra administration ran the risk of appearing frivolous in the eyes of world opinion, and it appealed again to Itamaraty for evidence.10 It was also impossible for Itamaraty to document Moscow's complicity, but Théodor Aubert stepped forward with a suggestion to Brazilian authorities: Montevideo could best blunt the Soviet attack by insisting on an investigation of the relationship between the Kremlin and the Comintern and of the USSR's role in subversive movements abroad. His Entente, Aubert said, would be happy to provide information to bolster Uruguay's case. Itamaraty relayed that message, along with memoranda prepared by Carvalho e Souza, to Montevideo, recommending that the government there establish direct contact with the Entente. Macedo Soares, on January 17, 1939, also sent instructions to Brazilian diplomatic missions in other South American countries to promote support for Uruguay at the League of Nations. Vargas, meantime, had sent a personal letter to Terra and enclosed a memorandum by Carvalho e Souza on the ties between the Comintern and the Stalin regime. He offered to furnish "any other elements" that Uruguay might need for "complete proof" of Minkin's involvement in the Communist conspiracy in Brazil, but as Macedo Soares was forced to confess in a telegram to Bueno on January 17, the Brazilian government really did not know what legal arguments Montevideo might employ in Geneva. Perhaps, he pondered, the Uruguayan delegation could simply state that the League had no authority in the matter of a sovereign decision. And, he reiterated, the opportunity should not be lost to hammer on the note of Soviet intromission in the internal affairs of other countries.11 Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet commissar for foreign affairs, led the attack before the council of the League later that month. He accused the Terra government of having acted whimsically and in violation

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of the League Covenant. Rejecting the charge that the Soviet legation in Montevideo had financed the insurrection in Brazil, he caustically declared that the latter's history had been "an uninterrupted chain of internal disorders, risings, mutinies, revolutions, conspiracies, upheavals and coups d'état. . . ." Vargas himself had used force to gain power in 1930, he said pointedly and then with sarcasm, "I hope that at least that revolt is not attributed to the Soviet Union." The Uruguayan representative, Alberto Guani, gave a lengthy rebuttal in which he perforce limited himself to repeating the arguments contained in his government's original note to Minkin, which provoked a further outburst from Litvinov, who denied even that Communists had participated in the disorders in Brazil.12 The Brazilian consul general in Geneva worked behind the scenes to mobilize the support of other Latin American delegates, but the upshot of the episode was that the Council simply heard the debate and took no action, unable to interfere in an internal decision by the Uruguayan government and unwilling to alienate the Soviet Union. In Brazilian eyes, the incident was merely additional evidence of Soviet duplicity and further reason to persist in its hands-off policy toward the Geneva organization, from which it had withdrawn a decade earlier. "The influence of Russia," Vargas remarked in midJanuary, "is what I see as most alarming about the policy of the League of Nations." 13 The Argentine delegation in Geneva was the most helpful to Itamaraty during the debates, an attitude in keeping with the longstanding cooperativeness of the Justo government in matters relating to communism. The events of November 1935 had caused consternation to authorities in Buenos Aires, who obviously would have felt threatened by a Marxist regime in Brazil. Orlando Leite Ribeiro, a friend of Filinto Muller who served as commercial secretary in the embassy, called on President Justo on November 27 and found him "worried" and anxious for news from Rio de Janeiro. Reports of the collapse of the revolt caused visible relief in Argentine policymaking circles, and Foreign Minister Carlos Saavedra Lamas quickly offered Itamaraty whatever assistance might be necessary to combat communism. In conversation with Ribeiro a few days later Justo had warm words of praise for Vargas' firmness in the face of the insurrection and said that he intended to adopt precautionary measures of his own.14 The Buenos Aires police now began a phase of more intense cooperation with Brazilian authorities, which the latter welcomed because, as Ribeiro reminded Muller, Communists fleeing Brazil

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would probably head for Argentina. Sylo Meirelles had been sighted "several times" in Buenos Aires prior to the revolts, he recalled. At first Ribeiro was not impressed with the efficiency of the porteño police, but their disposition to help was striking. Rodrigues Alves, who had been ambassador to Argentina in the 1920s and was there now for the Chaco peace talks, spoke to Lamas and came away convinced that negotiating a formal anti-Comintern pact would be relatively easy. "We need urgently to coordinate our defense with neighboring countries, creating a kind of cordon sanitaire against that new plague," he argued in a letter to Macedo Soares. Information that the embassy received from the Argentine police on ties between local Communists and Brazilian comrades encouraged bilateral goodwill, and following the Soviet-Uruguayan clash in Geneva, when Macedo Soares sent his Argentine colleague a message of appreciation for the attitude taken by the Argentine delegation there, Lamas stressed the convenience of a united South American front vis-à-vis the Red threat.15 Rio de Janeiro could count on official sympathy in Buenos Aires, but the Left in Argentina, on a war footing after the arrest of Rodolfo Ghioldi in January 1936, sharply attacked the Vargas government in a campaign apparently orchestrated by Communists still at large in Brazil. Some of Prestes' agents, at any rate, wrote to him in February reporting that they had asked comrades in Argentina to launch a war of words on Rio de Janeiro as a means perhaps of forcing the release of Ghioldi. The latter and his brothers were prominent figures in Argentine radical politics—one was in Moscow and the other was a socialist congressman. Knowing that Ribeiro and Muller were old friends, the congressman called on the attaché early in March to express concern about his brother's situation in the light of the publicity surrounding Ewert's accusations of torture. Given the influence of the Socialist Party in Argentina, Ribeiro thought it politic to give assurances that Ewert's "cretinous" statements did not accurately describe Brazilian police methods, and in a subsequent letter to Muller he suggested that Ghioldi be handled with care and deported as soon as possible to Argentina, "where he will be arrested immediately." Muller replied with reassuring statements apparently directed at the Ghioldis; Ribeiro, in any case, took the letter to the family home early in April, where he read it aloud to relatives and a group of Socialist congressmen in order to demonstrate Muller's "generous heart" regarding the political prisoners. To reinforce the effects of his message, Muller sent a second cordial letter that same month.16 At the official level the joint anti-Communist endeavor proved

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mutually advantageous. Muller advised the Argentine ambassador in Rio de Janeiro, Ramón Cárcano, in May that he wanted to send Captain Miranda Correia of the carioca DOPS on a confidential mission to Buenos Aires—the objective of the trip is not known, but clearly it was linked to the question of communism—and porteño authorities promptly expressed a keen interest, promising to maintain "absolute secrecy" regarding the visit. Muller also furnished information to Cárcano on Communist activities; on one occasion in mid-1936 the Argentine police, following a lead supplied by Rio de Janeiro, discovered a Communist cell in Buenos Aires and arrested over a hundred people. When asked late that year by the Correio da Manhã about a possible South American police conference to devise more efficient ways to combat communism, the Argentine minister of interior was categorical; reflecting the spirit and interests of his government, he called such a meeting "indispensable." The conference was never held, but the two governments continued their antiCommunist cooperation throughout 1937. Early that year, a private organization was formed in Buenos Aires called Argentine Social Defense Against Communism, and Carvalho e Souza's SEI at Itamaraty established liaison with it. The Brazilian embassy then attentively watched its progress in ensuing weeks. Muller had no difficulty enlisting the support of the Argentine police for special tasks he assigned to Ribeiro, tasks that were not recorded but that surely involved surveillance of suspects; the director of the Department of Investigation in Buenos Aires assured Muller of "ample cooperation" in these endeavors.17 General Justo personally encouraged such collaboration. "Communist action is an international danger that is in the interest of all of us to confront," he stated in a telegram to Vargas in October 1937, "and we are ready to give to Brazil and its worthy president all the cooperation it may need. . . . " In fact, when João Alberto Lins de Barros, the former tenente and former police chief in Rio de Janeiro, became chargé d'affaires in Buenos Aires days later, Foreign Minister Lamas again raised the issue of a formal bilateral pact against "terrorism" as a first step toward a multilateral accord in the Southern Cone. "The projected agreement refers to terrorism instead of communism for easier acceptance here and [in] other countries of South America," Barros informed Muller, underscoring the "absolute necessity of secrecy in order to avoid a scandal, especially in the foreign press."18 Because of the vital role assigned to the United States in Brazil's general foreign policy strategy, policymakers in Rio de Janeiro were

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greatly encouraged by the sympathetic response of the Franklin Roosevelt administration to their anti-Communist drive. Initially, Macedo Soares had hoped that Washington might be persuaded to break with the Kremlin, but the futility of that notion quickly became obvious. The Vargas government then concentrated its efforts on convincing American authorities and public opinion that Brazil was a target of Soviet intrigue and that the internal war on communism was unavoidable and was being conducted humanely. The foreign minister thus made a point of cultivating the goodwill of the State Department by keeping Ambassador Gibson informed of developments and by arranging for him full access to the PCB documents seized by the police.19 The State Department was particularly interested in materials that would document the participation of American citizens in the uprisings and Moscow's responsibility for the turmoil. Proof of direct Soviet involvement was, of course, lacking, but Gibson forwarded to Washington copies of everything the police discovered. Since local authorities had only the "most primitive" means of making copies, the ambassador persuaded a local American firm to loan him a modern photostat machine, which he installed in the embassy late in January 1936. Among the documents he received were enciphered messages found among Ewert's papers; one of them, which Brazilian technicians could not decipher, he relayed to Washington suggesting that perhaps the Department of Justice or Naval Intelligence could help. He discounted the argument that Minkin had financed the revolt, especially after receiving from his colleague in Montevideo copies of documents furnished by Uruguayan officials that showed that Yuzhamtorg had disbursed only $22,000 to the Soviet diplomat—and this some weeks before the intentona.20 Police authorities cooperated with the embassy in the matter of the political prisoners, and in the case of "Harry Berger," the embassy ended up helping to identify him. Since the prisoner possessed an American passport and refused to furnish any information about himself, Gibson obtained permission for his assistant, Theodore Xanthaky, to talk with "Berger" on the night of January 14. The DOPS officer who accompanied Xanthaky to the headquarters of the Special Police told him that the Communist agent was "in pretty bad shape; that he had been given no rest for the past eight days." Even so, he and his wife had withstood the punishment and revealed nothing, a fact confirmed by the chief jailor, who remarked to Xanthaky that the two were "fanatics" in their resistance and that he "took his hat off to them." On being ushered into the cell, Xanthaky saw immediately the signs of mistreatment. "He was

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worn out and had marks on his arms and back showing that he had been severely beaten," Xanthaky later reported to Gibson. After a few minutes, "Berger" admitted to the American official that he was really Arthur Ewert and that the woman arrested with him was his wife Elise. He said that he had been a Communist for "almost thirty years" and that the Comintern had sent him to "direct the political work in South America" at the beginning of the decade, which was when he had met Prestes. He mentioned his work in Shanghai and stated that he was a "political friend" of Earl Browder, secretary of the American Communist Party. When Xanthaky asked who had financed his stay in Brazil, Ewert readily acknowledged that Browder had sent him funds. "He stated that the [alleged] action of the Soviet Legation in Montevideo in the recent uprisings is a myth, that he never saw Minkin, . . . and that neither the Legation nor the Yumtorg [sic] contributed one cent toward the movement." Ewert was concerned about his wife and their future; he asked Xanthaky to try to have her treatment improved and mentioned, in the hope that the embassy could arrange matters, that if he were deported he would not want to be sent to Germany, "as that would be like jumping from the frying pan into the fire."21 Following that conversation, Xanthaky was escorted to the cell of Elise Ewert. "The woman was obviously so glad to speak to someone who was not approaching her either with a whip or a menace that she spoke quite freely," he wrote afterward. She told him that she had been tortured in an effort to extract the names and addresses of contacts but vowed never to reveal them. Following the meetings with the prisoners, Xanthaky told Miranda Correia "in detail" what they had confided to him, stressing to the DOPS chief the "great necessity for keeping this matter entirely confidential." If the police softened their treatment of the couple, Xanthaky pondered, perhaps the Ewerts would be more cooperative. After talking with his assistant and reading a written report from him, Gibson sent a dispatch to Secretary of State Cordell Hull. "His chief work in Brazil," the ambassador said of Ewert, "had been working hand in hand with Prestes building up the Communist Party, the eventual purpose being to take over Brazil, lock, stock and barrel through the Aliança Nacional Libertadora."22 Further talks with the German agents elicited no important information. "Berger says he has made a careful study of revolutionary possibilities in South America," Gibson reported to Washington, "and that he is convinced that the existing regime is tottering and can be overthrown, that communist and allied forces are steadily gaining in strength and that within a short time, perhaps five or ten

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years at most, the whole of South America will be converted into one big system of communist governments." Despite her apparently candid conversations with Xanthaky, when Elise Ewert gave a formal deposition to the police on April 7, she revealed only that she was a Communist and had arrived in Brazil with a false passport. She denied knowing Prestes or Olga Benario and declared that she had no knowledge of the events of November 1935.23 Xanthaky early in February also received permission to see Victor Barron. During their first conversation Barron, who was "obviously in an advanced state of tuberculosis," alleged that he had come to Brazil primarily for reasons of health, denied being a Communist, knowing Prestes, or having been involved in the conspiracy against the government, saying that he had admitted to all this only because he had been tortured. Xanthaky and Gibson understandably were skeptical. For one thing, Barron had been in Brazil for several months "with no apparent means of support, but living well, owning a car purchased here, and obviously in funds." His passport, furthermore, showed that he had traveled extensively, with stays in Holland and Uruguay, "both important centers of Communist work." Whatever the truth of Barron's statements, Gibson was concerned by the torture, and he pressed Muller about it. The police chief first scoffed at the charge but then acknowledged that there had been "third-degree" treatment. The ambassador admonished him about the "seriousness of manhandling American citizens" and received assurances that it would cease and that Barron would receive medical assistance. "I am frankly troubled as to how to handle this case," Gibson confided to Hull. "The Communist pot is boiling here and if there is any way of establishing that Barron is not involved I think it is urgent that we get him out of the picture," he said. "He is apparently either unwilling or unable to help us; his story does not ring true and as matters now stand the police are justified in entertaining grave suspicions."24 Further conversation with Barron over the next few days and the investigation undertaken by the Department of State in the United States yielded the truth about the young Communist, and Hull sent a telegram to Gibson on February 10 informing him that since Muller had promised to stop the physical mistreatment of Barron, there was no need for the embassy to involve itself further.25 Barron's shocking death a month later was a potentially volatile development. Did he break away from his guard and jump through the window, as the police maintained? Or was he a victim of defenestration? The Left in the United States had its answer, and the furor it helped to generate seemingly threatened to undermine the public relations

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efforts of the Vargas government by diverting attention from what Brazilian leaders saw as Soviet-inspired savagery. Ambassador Aranha in Washington bore the brunt of leftist attacks on his government. Jealously protective of Brazil's image in the United States, he already had campaigned to impede publication of unfavorable stories by American reporters covering events in Brazil, particularly those filed by John White of the New York Times. Immediately after the uprising, White had rejected the official version of events, writing that the movement had not been Communist but "socialistic and strongly nationalistic." He also claimed that Brazilian authorities had executed over 160 prisoners. Vargas himself complained to Aranha in mid-December about White's coverage, and Aranha quickly contacted Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the Times editor in chief, who invited the ambassador to lunch with him and his staff in New York on December 30. "The conversation was friendly, the discussion at times a bit heated," Aranha later informed Vargas. The Brazilian envoy accused White of long-standing animosity toward the Vargas government, said that the reporter's recent stories had been inaccurate, and contended that the revolts indeed had been Communist inspired. Sulzberger conceded nothing, however, telling Aranha that White was sending his dispatches from Buenos Aires because of press censorship in Brazil. He said that the report on executions had come from a source considered reliable, rejecting the argument that his reporter was motivated by hostility toward the Brazilian government. Aranha persisted, later sending Sulzberger copies of some of the captured Communist documents and reaffirming his objections to White's reporting. "His work is that of a communist, because the text of his writings is to be found in the primer of Moscow," he declared in a letter to Sulzberger on January 7,1936. White nonetheless continued to file reports that irritated Brazilian officials, and there was little they could do, except take solace from the moral support of Ambassador Gibson, who sent the State Department a study prepared by his staff that addressed specifically the coverage of events by the Times and refuted White's interpretation. It was clear to the embassy that "Soviet-inspired forces have been actively working to destroy the regular governments in South American countries," and it was equally clear that the Vargas administration was "without question entitled to the utmost possible sympathy and support from all enlightened countries."26 However uncomfortable or embarrassing the issue of Times coverage was, it was overshadowed by the difficulties arising from the question of political prisoners. The news of Barron's death coincided with a public appeal by Comintern propagandists to "all honest

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men" to campaign for the release of Prestes27 and furnished leftist activists in the United States with a double issue. Groups calling themselves the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners, the American League Against War and Fascism, and the Joint Committee for the Defense of the Brazilian People began a series of demonstrations in front of the Brazilian consulate in New York in mid-March and also began bombarding the embassy in Washington with letters and telegrams. On March 19 a delegation of protesters went to the embassy to deliver an aggressively worded petition, and a member of the ambassador's staff "very spiritedly" told them to go demonstrate at the Soviet embassy for the release of the "1 million 200 thousand" political prisoners in the USSR. Aranha, too, engaged in a face-to-face discussion with the group, "mocking everything," but the episode and the general wave of protests led him to suspect that the Comintern still had designs on his country. "This riffraff must be expecting something from the action of their accomplices in Brazil," he cautioned Vargas.28 Of greater potential significance, the House of Representatives passed a resolution calling on the State Department to furnish information about the Barron case, particularly the alleged omission of Gibson in not giving protection to him, a charge that a group of distinguished liberals and fellow travelers, including Sherwood Anderson, John Dos Passos, Theodore Dreiser, Lillian Hellman, and Upton Sinclair, had made public in the New York and Washington press. Congressman Vito Marcantonio on the floor of the House flatly accused the Vargas government of having tortured and then murdered Barron.29 Aranha was alarmed and warned Macedo Soares that the episode was creating a "very bad impression" in the American public mind and causing him "painful embarrassment," but the solidarity of the Roosevelt administration dissipated his anxieties and those of Itamaraty. Secretary Hull addressed a letter to the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs late in March reaffirming the official version of Barron's death, explaining that Gibson had done everything proper to protect his rights and person, and pointing out that Barron had been involved in an attempt to overthrow a friendly government. Other State Department spokesmen denied the accuracy of Marcantonio's charge, and Roosevelt himself, at a banquet late that month, assured Aranha that he understood the necessity for energetic measures against the Communists in Brazil. In fact, Roosevelt added, it was more important than ever that Vargas "hold the government." As for Barron's death, Aranha reported that FDR had said simply that it was not up to the United States to investigate the matter. The ambassador was also buoyed by the fact that

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only the ''typically Communist newspapers" persisted in attacking Brazil. After the initial impact of the protests, that became the view, too, of the consul general in New York. "In my opinion, American opinion is concerned very little about the situation of the Communists in Brazil and with the measures taken against them," he wrote. "The few hundred persons who have been active in that regard are all members of Communist associations, acting on order from higher circles of the party."30 A second surge of protests and demonstrations in midyear revived Aranha's preoccupation, however. On June 7 he sent an anxious telegram to Vargas warning that Leocádia Prestes, the rebel's mother, who had been in Spain when her son was arrested and then had gone to France, planned to journey to the United States to help mobilize opinion against the Brazilian government. Referring to rumors that Ewert would be deported to Germany, Aranha alerted Vargas that a "great Communist demonstration" was being planned to try to block his deportation. Nine days later Leocádia Prestes and one of her daughters did call at the American consulate in Paris to request a visa. When asked by the consul general why she wanted to go to the United States, she replied that she had received no news of her son and wanted to be nearer to him. "I don't know if he is well or sick, alive or dead," she said, displaying irritation at the American official's persistent questioning about her stay in the USSR with her son earlier in the decade. The State Department turned down her bid for a visa, but the demonstrations and protests that Aranha feared took place in the middle of the month. Various groups sent petitions to him and the Department of State demanding the release of Prestes and Ewert and the opening of an inquest into Barron's death. A committee of "intellectuals" called at the embassy, while manifestos attacking the Vargas government were distributed, leaving an exasperated Aranha to explain to Itamaraty that, "given the practice of this country," he had been powerless to prevent such protests.31 Leftwing criticism of Brazil diminished in intensity in the following months, but Aranha remained concerned about the country's image in the United States and at one point in 1937 suggested that Vargas allocate special funds for a public relations campaign to combat the "exaggeratedly socialist, even Marxist ideas" that seemed to pervade American polities.32 Brazilian diplomats in western Europe waged their own struggles against local leftists during this period. Madrid, until the outbreak of the civil war in July 1936, was one focal point of anti-Vargas agitation. Protests against the "fascist hangman" of Brazil became fre-

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quent in the weeks that followed Prestes' arrest, and on May Day the police had to surround the Brazilian embassy in order to prevent violence. Late that month sixty Spanish congressmen belonging to the Popular Front sent a telegram to Vargas demanding the release of Prestes and all other political prisoners, a development that provoked, according to the British embassy in Rio de Janeiro, an "explosion of indignation" in Brazil. The presence of Prestes7 mother and sister in Spain stimulated leftist agitation against Brazilian authorities, and both women participated in demonstrations.33 The problem for Brazilian diplomacy was relatively short lived, however, since the revolt led by General Franco plunged Spain into a bloody fratricidal conflict that absorbed national attention. In France, under the Popular Front government of Léon Blum, the atmosphere was equally favorable for left-wing militancy. Brazilian observers for some time had watched with dismay the freedom allowed radical groups in that country, which seemed to be a radiating center of subversive influence in western Europe. Two weeks after the intentona Ribeiro advised Muller that Argentine authorities had learned that the "main directors of the Communist movement in Brazil were installed in Paris and from there had supervised or organized the whole uproar," information that had a ring of truth to it in view of subsequent developments. "The Communists are already forming committees, true extraparliamentary soviets, which they aim to use to monitor the government's activity," a member of the Brazilian embassy in Paris wrote to Hildebrando Acioly, head of the Political Department of Itamaraty, in May 1936. One observer in Rio de Janeiro harshly criticized the Popular Front government because it was "supported or dominated by extremists who obey Moscow's directives," and Ambassador Souza Dantas, dean of the diplomatic corps in Paris, reached the same conclusion, describing to Itamaraty in August the weakness of the government vis-à-vis the radical Left. "The General Confederation of Labor, which is in the hands of the Communists, is presently the strongest authority and unhappily it obeys Moscow," he wrote.34 To make the situation worse in Brazilian eyes, France had signed a mutual assistance pact with the USSR in 1935 and ratified it in March 1936, an act that had a visible impact on public opinion in Brazil, where people had a "really diabolical idea" of the Soviet Union, according to the French embassy. That pact represented a "monstrous suicide" for France, the Brazilian commercial attaché in Paris privately wrote to Vargas in April, and would contribute to a new world war of which the Kremlin would be the only beneficiary. Another private correspondent of the president's in the French capi-

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tal went even further. "The one who gives orders here is Stalin. . . ," he declared. 'The Blum government does not have the minimum strength to oppose Moscow's designs." The sympathy that Paris displayed for the republican cause in Spain after the onset of civil war there confirmed the suspicions of many Brazilian analysts, and then at the end of the year Ambassador Moniz de Aragão reported from Berlin that the Comintern had decided to establish in Paris a new center of propaganda for South America. It was not Spain but France that represented the most fertile soil for communism in Europe, the minister in Switzerland concluded.35 Souza Dantas faced inevitable pressures because of the political prisoners in Brazil. He was showered with letters and telegrams of protest, while demonstrators converged on the embassy to register their complaints. When Moniz de Aragão received a telegram from a French group protesting the deportation of Benario and Elise Ewert, Souza Dantas told him not to pay any attention to "that rabble" and boasted of his firm handling of protesters. At the beginning of 1937, as the trial of Prestes drew near, French leftists launched an intense propaganda campaign against the Vargas regime. The ambassador who thought that Leocádia Prestes was behind the sudden mobilization of protesters, informed Itamaraty that he had arranged for local publication of articles favorable to Brazil in order to counteract Communist criticism. Later that year the Ministry of Justice in Rio de Janeiro wanted detailed information on the activities of Prestes' mother and sister, so Itamaraty suggested to Souza Dantas that he employ a private detective. That he declined to do, but within days he forwarded a special report on the two women. "They . . . are very active with French Communists," he confirmed, explaining that the prefect of police had shown him the files on them, which derived from surveillance conducted not because they were Communists but simply because they were foreigners. "Communism here is . . . the creed of a legal political party, with broad representation in the Parliament. . . ," he pointed out. "Thus you will understand not only the ease with which Leocádia and Lygia Prestes can carry out their activities in Paris but also the difficulties I would have if I tried to monitor their moves."36 London was another active theater in Brazil's propaganda war with the extreme Left. The British government, of course, presented no obstacle to Brazilian diplomacy; on the contrary, it had been helpful to Brazilian authorities in the anti-Communist struggle both before and after the intentona. As Ambassador Régis de Oliveira observed in December 1935, "England's interest is to enhance the prestige of the government that guarantees protection of its capital and profit

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remittances without delay, which would not happen in a soviet regime." Confirming that, Undersecretary of State Robert Vansittart offered to furnish Rio de Janeiro with all the information he received on Communist activities in Brazil. It was from the British that the carioca police obtained the leads that resulted in the arrest of the Ewerts later that month, and apparently there were other instances of cooperation. "Our relations with England are fine. . . ," Vargas advised Aranha in January 1936. 'The English ambassador, in very secret character, has provided us with good intelligence on the undertakings of the Moscow government." On the eve of the session of the Council of the League of Nations that month, the Foreign Office took the initiative of trying to persuade Litvinov not to raise the issue of Uruguay's severance of relations with the USSR, pointing out candidly that Moscow ought to expect complications because of its practice of interfering in the internal affairs of other countries.37 The battle between the Brazilian embassy in London and British Communists was joined as soon as news broke of Prestes' arrest. Obviously part of the campaign orchestrated by the Comintern, the British section of the League Against Imperialism four days later fired off its first letter of protest to Régis and then on March 19 lodged its first complaint with the Foreign Office, charging that sixteen thousand people had been jailed in Brazil. At the same time, twenty-seven members of Parliament sent a collective telegram to Vargas calling for Prestes' release, while the British Communist party's Daily Worker sharply attacked Brazilian authorities. Within a month the British postal service was daily channeling to the embassy stacks of angry letters and telegrams. So numerous were the communications containing threats to the person of the ambassador that he felt compelled to bring the matter to the attention of the Foreign Office.38 An episode involving a trio of Britishers, apparently Communists or fellow travelers, who went to Brazil to investigate the situation of the political prisoners added fuel to the fire. When Lady Christine Hastings, her private secretary, Richard Freeman, and Lady Marion Cameron arrived in Rio de Janeiro by boat early in March 1936, they announced the purpose of their visit and soon were detained by the police, who restricted the women to their hotel for a few hours and incarcerated Freeman for three days. The three were then, as Vargas euphemistically put it, "delicately invited to return to London by the first ship." Once back in England, the small group quickly exploited their experience. Lord Hastings wrote to the Manchester Guardian complaining of police harassment of his wife in Brazil and horrors they supposedly had seen, in prisons there, while Freeman

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published an article in the Daily Worker claiming that Ewert was only a "specialist in colonial problems" who had gone to Brazil to study that country and had not been involved "in any shape or form" in its politics. The following month Freeman also published articles in the official journal of the Comintern praising Prestes and calling attention to Ewert's plight. Lord Hastings then returned to the attack with a letter to the London Times in July commenting on the victims of torture that his wife allegedly had seen. Minna Ewert, the sister of the Comintern agent, also used the Times as a forum to discuss the suffering of her brother and sister-in-law.39 Brazilian authorities mounted an energetic counterattack, led by Vargas himself. Thinking mainly of the agitation against his government by Communists in Great Britain he had caustic words for his adversaries. "They had the audacity to try to make a spectacle of us before the civilized world, through preposterous questioning in parliaments and by committees of sensationalist inquests, recruited from among the international friends and accomplices of the Bolshevik creed," he exclaimed in a speech on May 10. Writing to Aranha late that month, he vented his irritation. "Communists from the world over . . . continue to bombard me with threatening telegrams and letters demanding the release of Prestes and his henchmen," he groused. At the beginning of June, Filinto Muller reinforced the president's speech with a press note challenging the campaign of "lies" mounted by Communists in other countries to depict Brazil as a "semibarbaric country and our leaders as men devoid of any humanitarian sentiments." Instead of the 16,000 people allegedly in jail for involvement in the November rebellion, he said, there were only 638.40 On the front line Régis sought to repel enemy attacks and gain some ground. An old-guard diplomat at the end of his career—he had been in London since the 1920s and was dean of the diplomatic corps—he was out of touch with socioeconomic realities in Brazil, which gave to his shock and outrage over leftist criticism a dimension of ingenuousness. He vigorously rejected the protests, refusing to receive delegations at the embassy, and publicly denying the charges of torture. "The Communist prisoners in Brazil are being treated with every possible humaneness. . . ," he wrote to the London Times in July. That same month he delivered to the Foreign Office a report he had received from Muller about the "systematic campaign of discredit" launched at this government by the Communists. "To these reports I give a most emphatic denial: they are entirely untrue and without foundation and are only calculated to give a false impression," he declared.41

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The Foreign Office privately scorned the complaints of British Communists and their appeals for official pressure on Rio de Janeiro. "The revolutionaries were out to make a revolution of the bloodiest kind," one Foreign Office analyst noted. "Mercifully they failed. It is not for us to protect them from the results of their own acts." Any formal intervention, moreover, might adversely affect relations with the Vargas government. "The Brazilians are a very proud and sensitive people," he pointed out, "and would not welcome our advice as to how to deal with revolutionaries in their own country any more than we should welcome theirs in regard to our treatment of Indian revolutionaries." According to a Foreign Office memorandum of July 3, British authorities possessed "unimpeachable but particularly confidential" information that the Comintern was responsible for the anti-Brazilian agitation since Prestes' arrest, which reinforced London's inclination to ignore the protests. That same month in the House of Commons, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden abruptly rejected a suggestion that the government investigate to see if the Ewerts were still alive, saying that they were not British subjects and the matter was an internal Brazilian affair. In subsequent conversation with Régis, Eden told him not to worry about the attacks by the extreme Left "because the British Government and sensible opinion in the country, knowing as they do their real purpose, do not attribute the slightest importance to them." 42 In Italy and Germany there were no Communist critics to challenge Brazilian diplomats. The governments of those two countries, moreover, had special reasons to value relations with the Vargas regime even before the Communist putsch in Brazil forged a new common bond. In Italy's case, Rio de Janeiro not only had refused to join in the international outcry about its aggression in Ethiopia but had rejected an appeal from the League of Nations for economic sanctions against Rome and instead eagerly had sought and obtained contracts to supply coffee and meat to the Italian armed forces. When Adalberto Guerra-Duval, whose reports from Berlin in the early 1920s had helped to shape official perceptions of Soviet policy, presented his credentials to Benito Mussolini as the new Brazilian ambassador late in 1935, the Fascist leader expressed delight with Rio de Janeiro's attitude toward sanctions and vowed never to forget the gesture of solidarity.43 Brazil's stern anti-Soviet, anti-Communist agenda created a new mutual interest. The Duce sent Vargas a personal telegram on December 1, 1935, expressing his "sincere admiration" for the Brazilian chief executive's "personal courage and firmness" during the

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revolt, and later that month he sent another message to Vargas claiming that Moscow was behind Geneva's efforts to have sanctions imposed on Italy, a signal that probably reinforced Rio de Janeiro's suspicions regarding the League. The two governments in ensuing months made various gestures of goodwill toward one another— Guerra-Duval was the only Latin American envoy in Rome invited to attend the act of incorporation of Ethiopia in May 1936—and the Brazilian navy awarded a contract for submarines to Italian shipbuilders. Mussolini remarked to his ambassador to Brazil in October that he hoped Vargas would remain in power because his government constituted a barrier to communism in South America, and when Luís Simões Lopes, a member of Vargas' staff and future civil service commissioner, visited Rome that month he saw ample signs of such sympathy. "Brazil is considered in Europe to be the no. 1 enemy of communism in America. . . , the hope of the antiCommunists," he wrote.44 Berlin's interest in Brazil was primarily commercial, and in this regard German planners were especially pleased. The confidential clearing agreement of November 1934 had resulted in a trade boom that saw Brazil replace the United States in 1935 as a supplier of cotton to the Reich and supplant Argentina as Germany's major commercial partner in South America.45 The simultaneous transformation of the Vargas government into the harshest anti-Communist regime in South America added another dimension to the relationship that promised dividends to both countries. German authorities naturally welcomed Rio de Janeiro's invigorated campaign against Soviet influence following the intentona, and when Moniz de Aragão presented his credentials as minister plenipotenciary in January 1936, Adolf Hitler asked him to transmit his warm congratulations to Vargas for having crushed the rebellion and said that he personally was following with great interest Brazil's efforts to eradicate the Communist threat. "Der Moment ist estscheidend, es geht auf Leben oder Tod" (The moment is decisive, it is a matter of life or death), the Führer added, urging Brazil to "have no pity" toward Communists. 46 The image that the Brazilian foreign policy elite held of the two European dictatorships, particularly Nazi Germany, as a strategic wall in the path of Soviet expansion sharpened dramatically after the Red putsch. Moniz de Aragão in January 1936 called Itamaraty's attention to reports of an imminent pact between Berlin and Tokyo aimed at the USSR and explained with satisfaction that this would be in keeping with the Reich's determined effort to build defenses against Moscow, "especially since Communist propaganda visibly is

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gaining ground in France and Czechoslovakia." The response of Germany and Italy to the civil war in Spain enhanced enormously their status, in the Brazilian official mind, as the major barrier standing between Soviet hordes and civilized society. Both Rome and Berlin began dispatching war material to the Nationalist forces, and Italian troops were fighting alongside Spanish rebels by November. That same month Berlin joined Rome in proclaiming their notorious "Axis," signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Tokyo, and then, along with Rome, extended diplomatic recognition to Franco, even though he had not yet captured Madrid.47 What all this meant was that the Axis was determined to "prevent Moscow from burning and bloodying Europe by its crimes in Spain," Aragão declared. "The two countries are ready for anything, including going to war," Simões Lopes added.48 Brazilian observers tended to applaud Axis intervention in Spain because they agreed with the Italo-German interpretation of the crisis. Moscow, of course, did involve itself in the Spanish conflict and gradually exercised marked influence over Republican policies. For the first month the Kremlin limited itself essentially to moral support, but then opted for direct participation, sending military advisers and, in September 1936, the first consignment of weapons. That same month a leftist coalition government of Republicans, Socialists, and Communists was installed in Madrid under the leadership of the radical socialist Ernesto Largo Caballero and soon began receiving substantial numbers of Soviet tanks, trucks, planes, and pilots, while the Comintern busied itself with the recruitment of volunteers for the famous international brigades.49 Brazilian analysts, then, believed that they had good reason to view the civil war as an expression of Soviet intrigue and long-range subversion. The Chamber of Deputies decided to put its opinion on record in September by approving a resolution proclaiming sympathy for the Nationalist cause, and the press was emphatic in its support for the rebels in what seemed to be a momentous contest. The struggle in Spain "will decide the destinies of Christian civilization in the West," cried the Correio de Manhã; indeed, if Franco did not win, exclaimed the Jornal do Brasil, Spain would become a "colony of Russia" and Western civilization would be menaced by the Kremlin's "bloody ambitions."50 Brazilian diplomats echoed those sentiments. Ambassador Alcibíades Peçanha and his staff in Madrid were horrified by the atrocities committed against the Spanish clergy by Republican militiamen, and such brutality confirmed official judgments in Rio de Janeiro about the nature of the challenge in Spain. Threats by Com-

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munists on the life of the Brazilian consul in Valencia deepened the sense of outrage at Itamaraty, and Macedo Soares, who was openly pro-Franco, came down in favor of recognizing Nationalist belligerency, since the ideology of the Republic deserved Brazil's "complete rejection." In September he urged Peçanha to abandon Madrid, explaining that when the Nationalists triumphed the embassy probably would be besieged by individuals seeking asylum; Brazil, he affirmed, had no business "defending or protecting Communists who deserve neither our pity nor our respect." Aragão saw the Spanish conflict as one between civilization and the forces of "anarchy and disorder under the direct supervision of the Comintern in Moscow",· he warned that if a "Muscovite" regime were set up in Madrid, another would "immediately" be established in Paris. His somber reports strengthened the foreign minister's conviction. Souza Dantas agreed that more than an internal question, the civil war represented a "struggle to the death between . . . pure nationalism and Muscovite internationalism." Macedo Soares' successor in mid-1937 succinctly summed up the government's image of the Republican regime when he remarked simply that it was "an expression of Moscow."51 The Spanish crisis created new opportunities for anti-Soviet cooperation between Brazil and the Axis. Macedo Soares failed to persuade Vargas to grant belligerency status to the Nationalists in August 1936, but that was only because the chief executive was reluctant to pursue a policy that diverged patently from that of Roosevelt. The foreign minister did help block a proposal by Uruguay for Latin American mediation, arguing that recognition of belligerency should precede any mediatory effort. Vargas, furthermore, authorized a secret shipment of "important quantities" of coffee and sugar to the Nationalist armies, eliciting in October a warm message of appreciation from Franco, who promised to respect the Brazilian leader's wish that the matter be kept confidential. Both Rome and Berlin were anxious for Brazil to set an example for other Latin American states and join them in extending diplomatic recognition to Franco in November—Brazil was the Latin American country "most directly interested in the struggle against communism," the German foreign minister reminded Aragão—but Itamaraty was able only to secure Vargas' authorization to declare that Brazil would do so once the Nationalists occupied Madrid and established de facto control in Spain. In the meantime, Itamaraty again moved to block a move, this time by Mexico, in the spring of 1937 to obtain interAmerican backing for mediation, and that summer it attempted once more to promote collective recognition of Nationalist bellig-

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erency, abandoning the idea only in the face of strong signals that Washington was not interested.52 Berlin was disappointed by Rio de Janeiro's failure to make the final political gesture it wanted in the Spanish case, but it found cause for keen satisfaction in another development in their bilateral relations: intimate cooperation between Brazilian authorities and the Gestapo. When the German minister, Arthur Schmidt-Elskop, called at Itamaraty early in December 1935 to congratulate Macedo Soares on the quick suppression of the revolt, the foreign minister remarked that he intended to have Aragão enter into contact with the appropriate German agencies that could supply material on "Communist machinations," and Berlin was encouraging. Indeed, when he reached his post Aragão discussed the situation with Gestapo officials and immediately began receiving information, albeit frequently of dubious value. On January 3, 1936, for example, he relayed to Itamaraty a report that the Comintern planned to intensify its agitation in northern Brazil because it thought that its agents could more easily elude the police in that region. Four days later he telegraphed that the "official German secret service" had informed him that Prestes had taken refuge in the Soviet legation in Montevideo and then had embarked for the USSR with a false passport. The Führer himself gave his blessing to this collaboration when he talked with Aragão late that month. Stressing the need for an international "defensive entente against the Red invasion from Moscow," he told the Brazilian diplomat that Germany's experience in anti-Communist work could be of value to Brazil and that the Vargas government would have "his most decided support."53 It proved relatively easy, therefore, for Aragão to arrange with the Gestapo a regular flow of intelligence to Rio de Janeiro. Early in February, once "Harry Berger" had admitted his real identity as Arthur Ewert, the Gestapo supplied the embassy with photographs, police files, and fingerprints of the Ewerts, warning him that they were an "extremely dangerous couple." The German police, Aragão informed Macedo Soares, were anxious to keep their cooperation "strictly confidential" and hoped that Brazilian authorities would give no publicity to the origin of the materials. That same month the Gestapo offered to decipher or decode any Communist documents that the Brazilian police might have captured, and in ensuing weeks it passed along information on meetings of the Comintern and the latter's decision to dispatch new agents to South America to determine why the insurrection had failed and to rally Communist parties in the region for a renewed propaganda drive. Soviet ships were

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carrying small arms to Spanish ports for transshipment to South America, said the Gestapo in April, recommending that the Brazilian police watch anyone traveling to the region on a French or Spanish passport. It was the Gestapo that, using newspaper photographs supplied by Aragão and supposedly after checking twentyfive thousand photographs and sixty thousand file cards, established the identity late that month of "Maria Prestes" as Olga Benario, a 28-year-old Munich-born Communist "of the Israelite race," who was an "extremely active and efficient" Comintern agent "of great intelligence and courage." On the basis of that information the carioca police began formal deportation proceedings against Benario the following month. At high levels of the Nazi hierarchy Brazil's active participation in the anti-Communist struggle was a source of considerable satisfaction. Heinrich Himmler's right-hand man, Reinhard Heydrich, who supervised the work of the Gestapo and Sicherheitsdienst, reported in mid-April on the exchange of information and boasted of the results. Then in June when Aragão presented new credentials, this time as ambassador because the two governments had agreed to elevate their legations to the category of embassies in recognition of the unprecedented mutual importance of their bilateral relationship, Hitler renewed his pledge to cooperate in any way possible to help Brazil combat communism. Assure Vargas of his "unchanging and highest feelings of friendship for Brazil," he told Aragão.54 Under the stimulus of the Führer's interest, the Gestapo's cooperativeness became increasingly pronounced in ensuing weeks. Aragão in mid-July sent a long dispatch to Itamaraty containing the Gestapo's intelligence on a recent meeting convened by the Comintern in Holland at which Communists from Brazil were present. The parties in South America, according to German sources, had received "strict instructions" to do everything they could to prevent the deportation of Benario and Elise Ewert to Germany. Itamaraty reciprocated by forwarding to the Gestapo copies of the enciphered telegrams exchanged by Moscow with the former Soviet legation in Montevideo, which Uruguayan authorities had supplied, and by passing along, as well, copies of police records on Prestes, Ewert, and other Communist prisoners.55 The German police, in turn, provided additional information on Comintern activities and plans, biographical data on Communist agents, and warnings about specific individuals in Brazil. When Rio de Janeiro received reports about a possible Communist uprising in August 1937, it was to the Gestapo that it turned for possible confirmation. The German police, "al-

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ways helpful and ready to give all possible assistance," thought revolutionary action was possible in Brazil, Aragão replied, "not as a movement to occur on this or that date, but as a constant and possibly immediate threat, markedly aggravated . . . by the intensification of contacts . . . recently between Communists in Brazil and the III International." 56 During 1936-1937 there were also direct contacts between the police agencies of the two countries. Early in 1936, shortly after he arrived in Berlin, Aragão discussed with Wilhelmstrasse officials the idea of a working arrangement between the Gestapo and the DOPS, and the following month he reported to Itamaraty that the Nazi police authorities had responded by suggesting a "secret agreement" with the DOPS. The Germans suggested that Rio de Janeiro take advantage of the forthcoming Olympic Games in Berlin to include a few police agents in Brazil's delegation so they could study personally "how the task of defense of the public and social order is managed in Germany." Using the Olympic contingent as a cover, the Gestapo pointed out, would avoid discovery of the operation by "Russian spies." There was a delay on the Brazilian side, perhaps because the police were absorbed in the immediate task of ferreting out enemies of the regime, but Filinto Muller in September called on Schmidt-Elskop, who now held the rank of ambassador, to discuss the deportation of Benario and Elise Ewert and the "handling of the Communist question in general." He told the German diplomat that the two police forces should strengthen their cooperation and suggested that the Gestapo send specialists to Rio de Janeiro to work with his department "and eventually also with the Argentine and Uruguayan police authorities."57 The idea of a German police mission to Brazil subsequently was abandoned in favor of a trip to the Reich by Miranda Correia, the head of the DOPS. Schmidt-Elskop enthusiastically supported this idea, pointing out to the Wilhelmstrasse that the Brazilian army officer always had been "emphatically friendly toward Germany" and that he "understands and welcomes our anti-Semitic attitude." The Gestapo saw such a visit as an opportunity to create new bonds with the Brazilian police and even suggested that it might be a propitious occasion to sign a formal anti-Communist agreement. That was a step that Rio de Janeiro was reluctant to take, Miranda Correia indicated to Schmidt-Elskop before sailing for Europe in March 1937, but he said that if various other countries should enter into such an understanding, his government would join them. In the meantime, he explained, the high command was particularly eager for informa-

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tion on how the German army combated communism in the ranks. On alerting the Wilhelmstrasse to the captain's imminent arrival, Aragão repeated that, saying also that Miranda Correia wanted to study the Reich's counterespionage effort. The Gestapo showed the captain what Aragão subsequently labeled "exceptional attention," allowing him to tour its training schools, laboratories, and other installations, "even the secret ones." For the ambassador, the visit of the DOPS chief represented a major stride toward the kind of understanding with the Gestapo that he long had championed. "Specialized, as it certainly is, in the repression of communism and espionage," he pondered, "a joint program with that organization . . . could not help but have maximum beneficial effects in the struggle against Red activity in our country."58 On his return to Rio de Janeiro, Miranda Correia made a "voluminous report" to the army high command59 and later was decorated by the German government.60 Itamaraty, meanwhile, had broadened its political cooperation with Berlin by participating more actively in the work of the AntiComintern Bureau, an official anti-Communist propaganda agency in the German capital. Urged by Théodor Aubert, Macedo Soares authorized Aragão in November 1936 to accept an invitation from the bureau to attend the First Secret International Anti-Communist Conference that month. The ambassador sent a member of his staff, who was impressed by the unusual security measures: the director of the bureau instructed the participants to gather at the Munich station, without telling them where the conclave would take place. At the appointed hour they were transported in two buses, disguised as Olympic vehicles, to a small town on a lake some forty-five miles outside Munich. "As a precautionary measure, England, France, and Czechoslovakia were not invited in view of the close relations those countries maintain with the Soviets," the Brazilian diplomat reported. After hearing talks by various specialists and the "most candid praise" of the Vargas government, he returned to Berlin enthusiastic about the potential value of more systematic collaboration with the bureau. At the close of the conference, a spokesman for the bureau sent a telegram to Vargas praising his "energetic and inflexible" policy toward communism, and in ensuing weeks the bureau furnished the Brazilian embassy with copies of its publications and by mid-1937 was pressing Itamaraty about putting it into contact with anti-Communist groups in Brazil.61 Rio de Janeiro obviously placed considerable value on German cooperation in the battle against Communist subversion. Indeed,

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any weapon was welcome in confronting what, despite the ground gained by the government since November 1935, loomed in official thought as a still serious national problem. The military high command went even further, judging communism to be a clear and present danger and all the more so because of the political effervescence that swept Brazil in 1937.

6. Coming of the Estado Novo (1937)

in Brazilian politics that opened in 1935 was finally resolved in November 1937 when Vargas and military leaders decided to close the political system and erect an embryonic national security state, which became known as the Estado Novo (New State). The driving force behind the conspiracy that resulted in that eight-year dictatorship was the army high command, led by General Eurico Dutra and General Góes Monteiro, whose preoccupation with the national situation had deepened progressively throughout the year. In the South, the defiant governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Flores da Cunha, was openly challenging federal authority and counted on what was thought to be a formidable military force in the state militia. Early that year, moreover, the presidential campaign had begun, with elections scheduled for January 1938. In the view of many senior commanders, this produced an intolerable situation because neither of the two main candidates—José Américo de Almeida and Armando de Salles Oliveira—was persona grata to them. Almeida was the representative of the "revolutionary" family constituted in 1930 but was suspiciously demagogic, while Oliveira was governor of São Paulo, the state that had been the backbone of the pre-1930 system and that had rebelled against Vargas in 1932. Underlying military disgruntlement was a deep disenchantment with the liberal constitutional structure of the country and with the civilian political class in general, both of which army leaders saw as contributors by omission to what they seemed most to fear: Soviet-inspired subversion. THE SEVERE CRISIS

That danger, as a result of the severely disruptive impact of the intentona on the Communist movement in Brazil, actually was minimal in 1937. The failure of the uprising had generated bitter internal dissension in the PCB, and the wave of repression, especially

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the regime's success in tracking down the special Comintern emissaries and various party directors, compounded the confusion and disunity. Moscow was unable to provide much concrete guidance, although PCB chiefs still at large were anxious to reassure themselves. Remnants of the Central Committee had gathered in Bahia in 1936 and decided that one of them, Eduardo Xavier, who had been party to the murder of young Elza Fernandes, should go to Moscow to deliver a report on the situation. In midyear he stowed away on a steamer to France; after a delay of four months, he secured funds and a false passport from the French Communist party and continued his journey, reaching Moscow in January 1937. He conferred with Comintern officials, giving a critical account of the PCB's performance in November 1935 and not sparing Prestes for his role in the decision to launch the revolt. All that the Comintern could do was send Xavier back to Brazil a few months later with instructions for the PCB to eschew a sectarian, revolutionary program and instead adhere to the popular front strategy. On his trip home, Xavier crossed paths in Le Havre with Honório de Freitas Guimarães, another member of the Central Committee, who was on his way to Moscow for consultation and who subsequently returned to Brazil with similar orders. A new party secretariat, meanwhile, on its own had adopted the policy of attempting to forge an antifascist, anti-Vargas front, but that effort left the party further weakened as an acrimonious feud between the São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro branches over which of the presidential candidates to support developed into a full-scale schism by year-end.1 Despite the state of war and the extensive sociopolitical control that it signified and despite the objective weakness of the Communist movement, senior military officers remained markedly uneasy over the perceived Red threat. In October 1936, for example, one admiral complained privately that the government was not paying sufficient attention to "Communist intrigues," and he worried about what he thought was extensive infiltration of Brazilian society. According to the admiral, "much worse than the Communists now under arrest. . . are those in disguise or under cover who still exist in great numbers, even occupying high official position." Góes Monteiro during this period attentively followed what he regarded as a grave subversive menace. He spoke at length with Vargas in August 1936 about the national situation, and his first topic of discussion was the "need to give permanent combat to Bolshevik infiltration." The following month he also urged Minister of War João Gomes to prepare for the contingency of another Communist uprising. After

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his appointment as inspector of southern military regions in January 1937, he discovered in São Paulo signs of the ever-present threat, and in a message to the new minister of war, General Dutra, he warned that "communism is actively at work," that Communists there maintained "clandestine liaison with elements in Rio, even in the prisons," and that there was "infiltration of a certain gravity" in the paulista state police. Monteiro's assignment in the South was to set up defenses against any possible military move against the government by the disaffected Flores da Cunha, who had broken politically with Vargas in September 1936, and whom the high command suspected was tolerating Communist activities.2 Ironically, it was the appointment of Macedo Soares to the post of minister of justice in June 1937 that opened the decisive phase of the political crisis. He had resigned as foreign minister the previous December in order to promote his own presidential candidacy but had found little support and remained in political limbo until Vargas recalled him to the cabinet. Because the leaders of the 1935 revolt had already been tried and sentenced, Macedo Soares, before accepting the portfolio, extracted from Vargas a commitment to lift the state of war and restore constitutional guarantees. This accommodation did not reflect any change in Macedo Soares7 views of communism but stemmed from the conviction that the worst had been dealt with and that the fight against subversion could be waged effectively within the constitution. After taking office on June 3, therefore, he began immediately to prepare the ground for a return to constitutional normality. While Filinto Muller organized at his request a list of all the political prisoners in Rio de Janeiro, he held a series of meetings with congressional leaders and reached a modus vivendi: in exchange for ending the state of war, Congress would cooperate with the administration in every way necessary for the preservation of the social order and for bringing to justice all those implicated in the intentona. Macedo Soares also called in the editors of carioca newspapers to request their cooperation once censorship was abolished. The press, he remonstrated, should avoid spreading rumors, exploiting strikes, and making commentaries that might generate friction between the armed forces and civil society. As for the political prisoners, he pointed out to a somewhat incredulous Muller that the end of the state of war on June 18 would force the government to release all who had not been formally accused, including those who were under preventive arrest. According to the disgruntled police chief, Macedo Soares then stated that, "in order to create a friendly atmosphere" for the administration, he preferred to release them

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early. Before the formal end of the state of war, therefore, he ordered that 345 prisoners be set free.3 Macedo Soares also gave early attention to the situations of Prestes and Ewert. On the day he began his duties, in fact, Sobral Pinto, the lawyer who had defended the two revolutionaries, wrote him a letter informing him of the treatment they had been receiving. "Harry Berger has been reduced to the humiliating condition of a rabid dog," the attorney declared, describing Ewert's improvised "cell" beneath a stairway. "Deprived of fresh air, light, and movement, he reads nothing, neither newspapers, nor books, nor magazines . . . ," Sobral Pinto continued. "They do not even give him a bed and blankets." Although Prestes' quarters were better, he had been living in the "same rigorous isolation" and only recently had been allowed to write and receive letters, said Sobral Pinto. Macedo Soares knew of the lawyer's reputation for integrity, but he was skeptical and decided to pay a visit to the prison where Prestes and Ewert were being held. On leaving the facility, he told a reporter that both men were being treated well, but in truth his Christian conscience had been deeply offended by what he had discovered: Prestes in solitary confinement since his arrest, and a now skeletal, visibly demented Ewert caged up like an animal. Macedo Soares therefore immediately issued orders for the transfer of both prisoners to the House of Correction, where conditions supposedly were better—and then telephoned Sobral Pinto to apologize for having doubted his version of the situation. A suddenly buoyant Sobral Pinto dashed off a letter to Ewert's sister assuring her that her brother's suffering was going to end because of the intervention of Macedo Soares, a "practicing Catholic" and "much more generous man than his predecessors."4 The question of the political prisoners, more than anything else, created an irreparable breach between Macedo Soares, on the one hand, and military leaders and Muller, on the other. The chief of police, in fact, simply refused to obey the order to shift Prestes and Ewert to the House of Correction, and on June 18, the day the state of war was lifted, he sent a report to Vargas in which he complained bitterly about the release of suspects. Dutra, too, was outraged by the unexpected liberality of Macedo Soares and wrote him a letter on June 26 candidly expressing his concern about the benevolence being shown toward the enemies of the state, a policy he saw as the "shortest road to a new and even more dangerous explosion." Three days later the minister of war sent a secret circular to all regional commanders and directors of army departments, reminding them that communism was the "most redoubtable" danger the nation faced and criticizing Macedo Soares.

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To pardon is our tendency in the face of consummated facts. To pardon errors is perhaps a virtue; but to pardon crimes is not justice. True justice must be inflexible toward the lamentations and false tears of the criminal. It is necessary not to forget. Those who one day betrayed the trust of their leaders and companions tomorrow will again strike from behind, with greater perfidy. . . . The doors of the prison open, as a result of imperfect and faulty judicial processes or a naive and unwary sentimentalism, they go about arrogantly brandishing the impunity they were granted. Having blamed the minister of justice, in so many words, for having aggravated the problem of subversion, Dutra admonished army leaders to maintain "constant surveillance" of suspected subversives and take "immediate and merciless" steps to crush any Communist activity.5 In a lengthy reply to Dutra on June 27, Macedo Soares defended his action, explaining that the president of the Tribunal de Segurança Nacional had informed him that it was unable to move more expeditiously in the disposition of the untried prisoners, which implied, after sixteen months of restrictions on constitutional rights, the prolongation sine die of the state of war. He could not acquiesce in an indefinite suspension of constitutional guarantees just because the legal machinery of the state, including police agencies, was inefficient, he told Dutra. "I personally verified the extremely bad moral and material situation of a multitude of prisoners, most of whom had not been tried and frequently not even mentioned in the various inquests," he continued, adding that the "brutalities of all kinds" inflicted on the prisoners made martyrs of them. The best way to attack the problem and defeat the "propaganda directed and financed by Moscow" would be to modernize and equip adequately the police and judicial agencies, he suggested. And if Congress should decline to vote the necessary funds for that purpose or if "the military command should judge it impossible to function in a constitutional regime," he concluded, then Brazil would have "descended from the level of a free American republic to that of the barbaric peoples of certain regions of Africa."6 The contents and tone of that letter, undoubtedly interpreted by Dutra as defiant, ensured a more serious clash between the minister of justice and army leaders. The cases of Prestes and Ewert became a symbol of the divergence. Their transfer to the House of Correction would require time and patience, since Muller, an army officer who enjoyed the wholehearted backing of the minister of war, remained intransigent in his insubor-

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dination. Muller assuredly thought his position was strengthened by a made-to-order report filed by two psychiatrists designated to examine both prisoners. Prestes reacted violently to the idea and refused to cooperate, but Ewert, probably desperate for human contact, submitted. The doctors' report, drawn up for Muller on July 1, was damaging. They registered his listless, emaciated condition and his complaints that he sometimes felt paralyzed and that the electric shocks he had received made him feel strange vibrations. "It is to be noted, however, that he gave us this information, underscoring it with a smile, without showing the slightest emotion, which raises doubts about its accuracy," they wrote. "In fact, the attitude that he displayed during the two visits that we made and the question he asked of one of us as to whether the examination was a mental one . . . can only corroborate the suspicion of simulation." In the judgment of the two psychiatrists, the prisoner was neither mentally nor physically ill. Informed of the report and properly shocked, Sobral Pinto on July 3 addressed a letter to Cardinal Leme, requesting his intercession. The humaneness of Macedo Soares could not overcome the "unyielding harshness" of Muller, who seemed determined to complete "his sinister work of not allowing Harry Berger to leave his claws alive," he said. Five days later the attorney also delivered a letter to Vargas, pleading for execution of Macedo Soares' order. This pressure had a partial effect: that same day Prestes was transferred to the House of Correction, where, the rebel leader later recalled, his situation "improved a great deal."7 Ewert remained in his pen. Dutra, in the interim, had counterattacked, dispatching another letter to Macedo Soares on July 10 protesting freedom of the press, which had resulted, he said, in the release of information on measures related to national security and in intolerable criticism of the armed forces. The minister of justice already had sent to the Chamber of Deputies a draft press law that would eliminate the problems cited by the general, and he so notified Dutra, but the latter and his colleagues were not satisfied. On July 31, after a meeting with Góes Monteiro, who was now army chief of staff, Dutra sent another circular to army commanders alerting them again to the Communist threat, and three days later he joined Muller and Navy Minister Henrique Guilhem in asking Vargas to arrange a summit conference with Macedo Soares. At that encounter Dutra and the police chief sharply stated their grievances about the freeing of political prisoners and the suspension of the state of war. Macedo Soares defended his policy, objecting that the indefinite prolonging of discretionary rule would not promote social peace and arguing that he was

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seeking only to equip the courts and police to combat subversion more efflciently. He left the meeting, however, deeply impressed by the vehemence of the military spokesmen and convinced that to assuage their resentment he would have to produce results quickly. The very next day, therefore, he sent a letter to the president of the Chamber of Deputies urging him to expedite passage of various bills, including a press law, one extending the period of detention for persons implicated in police inquests, and one providing special credits for police reorganization. He informed the congressman of his meeting with Dutra, Guilhem, and Muller and candidly warned him of the seriousness of the situation. The fact that the "patriotic sincerity" of military leaders could not be doubted gave an "extraordinary gravity" to their views, he said.8 What perhaps most clearly illustrated the depth of the divorce, not to say antagonism, between the high command and the civilian political class was that Macedo Soares himself remained viscerally hostile toward communism. Indeed, at this very time he was endeavoring at the private level to strengthen social defenses against Communist subversion. Discussions with a group of like-minded friends, including several army officers, politicians, and clergymen, had revealed a consensus on the need to adopt measures that would prevent a civil conflict similar to that raging in Spain. Macedo Soares, consequently, took the lead in establishing a private organization, Defesa Social Brasileira (DSB), or Brazilian Social Defense, designed to serve as a paramilitary auxiliary of the government. To draft a charter Macedo Soares formed a small committee consisting of himself, Odette Carvalho e Souza, who now held the rank of consul and was on leave from Itamaraty to serve on his staff at the Ministry of Justice, Deputy Chief of Staff Estevão Leitão de Carvalho, the navy's director of personnel, and Filinto Muller. According to a press note he distributed on August 20, the group's discussions centered on ways to protect society against "Red organizations."9 At the end of that month Macedo Soares transformed the committee into the executive council of the DSB. With the Spanish experience in mind—"Spain offers the vivid and startling panorama of the days we would experience if the Communist horde should win here," read a draft manifesto—the group elaborated a plan of action that included offensive and defensive measures. In addition to launching a "very strong counterpropaganda" campaign that would highlight the "disasters" that communism had inflicted on Russia, the DSB directors intended to create espionage and counterespionage services based on "cells in all public agencies and large private estab-

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lishments (particularly industries, factories, and schools) for the surveillance and neutralization of Communists, anarchists, or those suspected of being such." To assist in public defense in case of a Communist uprising, the DSB planned to administer physical training to its supporters at the local level "for street combat," organize militia cells in residential areas, and establish caches of arms and ammunition. 10 Despite the rigorous anticommunism of the minister of justice, however, the chasm between at least key elements of the high command and the general civilian political community had become unbridgeable. The question of the political prisoners had become a knot in the military throat that precluded any reconciliation. In mid-September the release of Pedro Ernesto, the former mayor of Rio de Janeiro who had been implicated in the events of November 1935, exacerbated military disgruntlement.11 Newton Cavalcante, now commandant of the strategic Vila Militar—the main garrison in the Rio de Janeiro area—gave public voice to the hardliners' disenchantment: in a stern order-of-the-day he spoke of "drowning in blood" all Communists who threatened Brazilian institutions and warned, in a sarcastic reference to Macedo Soares, that his troops would not allow the "magnanimous liberality of our democratic laws" to impede the war on subversion. On September 22, during a ceremony at São João Baptista cemetery in Rio de Janeiro to honor the legalist soldiers killed during the intentona, Cavalcante was the speaker designated to represent the army, and he seized the occasion to reiterate his criticism of the tolerant attitude of Macedo Soares. "The body of laws that we judged our greatest line of defense unfortunately has transformed itself into the cover that our enemies use to organize the decisive attack against Brazil . . . ," he exclaimed. "The Army, however, . . . affirms peremptorily to Brazil: We know, Brazil, who they are, where they are, and how they act. . . . Following their steps, watching their attitudes and gestures, your Army, Brazil," he pledged solemnly, "is only awaiting the decisive and opportune moment to set marching against the tartar plague a forest of whetted bayonets. . . . " The general ended his oration by underscoring the need to "unleash a war without respite and to the death" against communism and vowing never to permit the "Muscovite Jew" to dominate the nation.12 The hostility of the high command toward those who, like Macedo Soares, were trying to preserve a liberal democratic framework was thus spilling over into public, a dangerous sign. What Macedo Soares and many congressional leaders did not realize was that for a sufficient number of senior army officers,

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liberal democracy had become the problem, not the solution. Indeed, a military-political conspiracy was now under way to close the system and radically modify the structure of government. General Monteiro spearheaded the movement to abolish the prevailing political system and replace it with one that could better manage threats to national security. The chief of staff, in truth, had longed for dictatorship at least since November 1935, and favorable conditions were now rapidly emerging, catalyzed by the suspension of the state of war and release of scores of political prisoners. There were two potentially serious obstacles to a dictatorship that would have to be won over or neutralized: Governor Flores da Cunha and Ação Integralista Brasileira. The first step toward effective removal of those possible difficulties and toward paving the way for the projected golpe was to restore the state of war. Plínio Salgado's effort to keep his greenshirts on the alert against the perceived Communist threat provided Monteiro with a useful instrument for mobilizing additional public and military support and justifying the suspension of constitutional guarantees. A member of Monteiro's staff, Major Olímpio Mourão Filho, happened to be head of the AIB's secret service. Charged by Salgado with preparing special instructions to Integralists to not allow the presidential campaign to divert their attention from the Communist problem, Mourão decided to be inventive and cast the document in the form of a Communist plan for a new revolt, whimsically signing it "Bèla Kun." Then, remembering that one of his anti-Semitic Integralist friends customarily referred to the well-known Hungarian revolutionary as "Bèla Cohen," he inserted the latter name—which, in the hands of a typist, was shortened to "Cohen." The document finished but not distributed, the major decided to impress a neighbor, General Álvaro Manante, an intimate friend of the chief of staff, with the greenshirts' watchfulness and showed it to him. Mariante asked to borrow the document to peruse and apparently made a copy of it for Monteiro before returning it. The chief of staff, Machiavellian to the core, saw in the document the weapon he needed. Within days a rumor spread throughout the General Staff that a secret Comintern plan had been intercepted. When Mourão investigated and discovered the true nature of the "Communist" document, he quickly sought out Monteiro to clarify the matter, but the general curtly cut off the conversation, bluntly telling the major to remain silent.13 Monteiro then sent copies of the apocryphal document to Vargas, Dutra, and Muller, and the latter alerted the president of the Cham-

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ber of Deputies.14 By the latter part of September word was circulating publicly that the General Staff had discovered plans by Moscow for another bloody uprising. Macedo Soares knew that military sentiment against the constitution was building rapidly, and he hoped that by making a personal appeal to the high command he might be able to convince it that the national charter could be revised without a radical modification of the system. He therefore asked Dutra to invite several generals to meet with him at the Ministry of War. Some of his comments he knew the generals wanted to hear. "Within present constitutional norms, the federal government cannot guarantee the legal order, the military order, the social order, the political order," he declared. But the real message that he transmitted was that basic liberties could and should be preserved. "Brazil needs a strong government within a framework of essential and intangible rights"—which meant, he said, "representative democracy, federalism, and juridical order." He capped his remarks with a dramatic appeal: "Nothing of violence, nothing of oppression, nothing of despotism." In notes that he made for his talk he discreetly had eliminated direct reference to the abuse of military power, and Monteiro, who was present, later remembered that Macedo Soares had assured the generals that a majority in both houses of the legislature would support a revision of the constitution.15 The bid by the minister of justice for time and moderation on the part of the high command was nonetheless tardy. On September 27 Monteiro and Dutra, who was now also committed to military intervention, called in three colleagues who occupied strategic commands—General Almério de Moura (First Military Region), General Cavalcante (Vila Militar), and General José Coelho Neto (army air corps)—and the chief of police to define a course of action. They all had seen the Cohen Plan, so Dutra came straight to the point: the Communist menace was more grave than ever, but "using various pretexts the Ministry of Justice . . . does nothing" and the laws, in any case, were useless. "They have served only to set free those whom the police caught in the very act," he groused. This meant that it was up to the military to take action. "The armed forces, particularly the army, . . . constitute the only force capable of saving Brazil from the catastrophe about to explode . . . ," he exclaimed. The animus of the group toward the civilian political class, especially the Congress, was patent, and their impatience with legal impediments to suppression of the perceived threat was equally strong. Cavalcante pointed to the Cohen Plan and said that he had evidence that Communists were putting it into effect at the Vila Militar. "It obviously is their firm intention to

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liquidate the army itself," he pondered, speaking harshly of politicians and the ''Communist group in Congress itself." Coelho Neto agreed that the Chamber of Deputies was replete with "weak and incapable" politicians, while Monteiro claimed that congressmen were the "ones mainly responsible" for the nation's dire situation. He cynically added, as evidence of politicians' deviousness, that some of them were even attributing to him responsibility for the Cohen Plan. The group had no trouble reaching a decision on the necessary course of action. Cavalcante was especially stern in his recommendation: the armed forces must act, "even outside the law" if required, and the intervention to thwart the Communist plot should be "exclusively military," with "no political element, no civilian element" involved. The army air corps chief spoke openly of a "coup d'état" but recommended that Vargas be retained as head of state, and Dutra concurred, insisting that the president's authority be strengthened. Muller also argued that military leaders should remain "out of the government" and simply reinforce its powers. He went on to suggest that the new regime avoid trials for suspected subversives and instead place them in work camps. Cavalcante wanted to go further, although he was not specific and simply urged the employment of "violent means" to crush communism.16 As soon as the conclave ended, Dutra sent enciphered telegrams to regional commanders informing them of the decision to change the system; according to Monteiro, "almost all" of them quickly replied with messages of solidarity. Both generals then went to the Ministry of Navy to enlist the cooperation of Admiral Guilhem.17 The conspirators agreed that the first step in executing their plan should be to have a state of war reimposed, so the next day Dutra and Guilhem went to Catete Palace to advise Vargas of the generals' decision. The president concurred but asked for a formal, written document outlining the reasons for the request. On September 29 the two military ministers sent him a long memorial, referring to the "plan of Communist action discovered by the Army General Staff," assailing existing laws and legislators, pointing to the release of political prisoners ("There they go, in the shadows, treasonously, cowardly plotting new aggression more violent than the first"), and calling for a new state of war. Vargas immediately sent a request to the Chamber of Deputies, a move made necessary, Itamaraty informed Brazilian diplomatic missions, by the General Staff's alarming discovery. Meanwhile, the high command had the official government radio program, "Brazil Hour," inform the nation of the Cohen Plan, and on October 1 the National Propaganda Department published a summary: the Communists intended to take advantage

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of the presidential campaign to foment discord and ultimately to incite the masses to violence, endeavoring to stir up their passions even "in a clearly sexual sense," so they would loot, burn, and murder. The Chamber of Deputies had little choice but to authorize, on October 2, a ninety-day suspension of constitutional guarantees.18 Not all prominent actors in the security community were convinced that a return to a state of war was necessary or that the Cohen Plan represented what the General Staff apparently thought it did. Captain Frederico Mindelo, the state police chief in Pernambuco, for example, discreetly questioned its significance after perusing the copy that Muller sent him. "Do you think it's possible that a conspiracy of such proportions could proceed in absolute secrecy with nothing turning up that at least would indicate the beginning of its execution?" he asked skeptically in a letter to Muller on October 4. Yet there were no signs at all of any serious Communist plotting in Recife, he pointed out, and in that regard the reports that the new regional army commander had been sending to Dutra were inaccurate. The commander had been basing his estimates of the situation on information supplied by greenshirts, Mindelo explained, and for Plínio Salgado's followers "whoever is not, or does not want to be, an Integralist is a Communist." 19 In Rio de Janeiro, nonetheless, the threat was taken seriously, and the order of the day was repression. To supervise the state of war, Vargas appointed a three-man Comissão Superintendente do Estado de Guerra (CSEG), consisting of Macedo Soares, Cavalcante, and Admiral Dario Leme de Castro. At its first meeting on October 8, Cavalcante secured approval of a basic program of action that included the immediate arrest of anyone who "had made, makes, or may make" Communist propaganda; the establishment of "agricultural colonies" for the internment of less dangerous Communists, armyrun "concentration camps" for the reeducation of youths who had become involved with Communists, and a concentration camp "along Boy Scouts lines" for the indoctrination of the children of imprisoned Communists; and initiation of a nationwide counterpropaganda campaign in schools and factories. Following the meeting the three men met with reporters. "Of one thing you can be quite certain: in this hour, whoever is not against communism is a Communist," the admiral told them. "We have to abolish such vague concepts as extremism," Cavalcante added, "and say clearly that we are against Russian communism, Soviet communism, bolshevism." In a memorial the troika subsequently sent to Vargas, it urged special laws to strengthen the authority of the central government and "sanitize" Brazilian society in order to enable the nation to resist

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the "subterranean, dissolvent, anarchic, and tenacious" work of Comintern agents.20 At the third meeting of the CSEG on October 13, Cavalcante proposed the closing of the offices of the so-called Democratic Unions, which had been established by university students who supported the candidacy of Armando de Salles Oliveira, the detention of their directors and "recognizably Communist members," and confiscation of their archives—a measure that Macedo Soares and the navy representative quickly endorsed. A week later the general directed his criticism at masonic lodges—which should be banned, he said, because he had read somewhere that masons had criticized fascism without mentioning the need to combat communism as well. "This is how they strengthened Marxist ideas in Spain," he argued. Accepting Cavalcante's succinct indictment, his colleagues agreed to take steps to shut down the lodges.21 Checking Communist propaganda was a priority goal of the CSEG, and the best weapons, in addition to imprisonment of its practitioners, seemed to be counterpropaganda and civic education. One of the commission's first steps, therefore, was to call in Lourival Fontes to map plans. Fontes, the self-avowed fascist who had helped the Centro Dom Vital to set up guidelines for the Catholic Workers' Circles early in the decade, was director of the National Propaganda Department, an agency of the Ministry of Justice created in 1935. Besides its own press service that twice a week furnished articles to over a thousand publications, the department controlled the "Brazil Hour" program as well as the government's National Agency, a wire service that supplied newspapers with material that, according to one daily, painted the "horrors that take place in Russia." Fontes told Macedo Soares and his military associates that he could arrange dissemination of the administration's anti-Communist message by over fourteen hundred newspapers and sixty-two radio stations. In the following days the "Brazil Hour" featured anti-Communist talks by labor officials, and the National Agency issued a new series of articles attacking Soviet policies and practices. Late in October the troika took up the subject directly with the editors and representatives of over thirty carioca newspapers, urging them to cooperate, as Cavalcante put it, in offering "combat to communism with all intensity."22 Schools and labor organizations were primary targets of the CSEG's plans. Minister of Education Gustavo Capanema met with the commission on more than one occasion to discuss a program of anti-Communist instruction in public schools. The recently appointed interventor in the Federal District confirmed the CSEG's

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fears when he stated, during its session of October 16, that Communist propaganda in the district's schools had reached "alarming" proportions. The commission thereupon decided to send orders to similar commissions that had been set up in the states to accelerate counterpropaganda programs in schools and factories. In consultation with Capanema, the CSEG agreed that a hierarchy of committees, composed of eminent intellectuals, should be established from the federal to the municipal level to supervise the educational campaign. The latter, Capanema recommended, should consist of short, daily anti-Communist talks in all schools. After discussions with Capanema, Francisco Campos, secretary of education in the Federal District, issued guidelines on the daily prelections to administrators of educational departments. They should have both a strong civic content and an emphasis on the right to own property, said Campos, and be carefully worded so as not to arouse students' curiosity about Marxist theory Authorities in the state of Rio de Janeiro and in São Paulo quickly followed suit.23 Minister of Labor Agamenon Magalhães threw the considerable weight of his department behind the program. Since his ministry practically handpicked union leaders, obtaining agreement, as he did in a personal meeting with union spokesmen on October 21, to conduct the anti-Communist talks in all commercial and industrial establishments proved easy. A week later he met with nearly a hundred union presidents to lecture them on Communist indoctrination techniques and to review counterpropaganda plans. In the meantime, he said, he had held a conference with the directors of all employers' associations in the Federal District to enlist their cooperation. In addition to the daily prelections, which were to be given by plant or shop managers and section chiefs, as well as by workers' representatives, the employers agreed to put up anti-Communist posters and distribute books and pamphlets to their workers. One particular anti-Soviet tract caught the minister's attention, and he ordered five thousand copies printed for free distribution to unions and factories.24 Local authorities and civic groups in other areas of the country imitated federal moves. In Recife, for example, the Catholic Workers' Circle cooperated with employers and the regional army command in organizing a series of talks on communism to be given not only in factories and at workers' meeting places, but also in army barracks; in the far North, too, presidents of employers' associations, labor leaders, and plant owners assembled in Belém to define a similar program.25 The CSEG early turned its attention to the problem of suppressing Communist propaganda broadcasts. The Comintern had a special

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program transmitted from the USSR to South America, and the commission initially hoped to jam the signals. A communications specialist informed it, however, that this would require the importation of expensive equipment and also the creation of some way to control ham radio operators, which was not feasible. Press censorship was a different matter. Macedo Soares assured the Brazilian Press Association early in October that the CSEG would concern itself only with press commentaries that might undermine measures necessary to combat subversion, and over the next few days he drafted instructions for the application of censorship throughout the country. In the document that he sent to state authorities on October 16, he urged particularly close monitoring of foreign wire services, especially telegrams from "Moscow, Madrid, or even Paris," in order to bar any item that "directly or indirectly provokes sympathy for communism." He went on to specify that the ban applied to anything, whether written or photographic, "praising the Soviet regime or men representing that regime" or publicizing "victories won by troops who defend Bolshevik regimes, such as the government in Valencia, in Spain."26 For Cavalcante the expression "fight against communism" was an elastic one: he boasted to his colleagues on the CSEG that he had ordered a newspaper editor who had published an article he judged offensive to the army detained and taken to the Vila Militar, where he had forced the journalist to read and reflect on the Cohen Plan before releasing him. Both the general and Admiral Leme de Castro advocated censorship of books as well. When Cavalcante complained at a meeting on October 20 of one particular book written in the "most immoral of styles," Macedo Soares and the admiral agreed to recommend to Muller that it be seized and its author arrested. Six days later Capanema met with the commission to discuss the possibility of censoring the book publishing trade and departed promising to submit a list of "inconvenient" volumes, so that, with the CSEG's approval, Muller could have existing copies confiscated. On October 28 it was a local magazine's turn: the General Staff wanted it banned because it was propagating Communist ideas, Cavalcante reported, and Macedo Soares and Leme de Castro concurred.27 Significantly, the commission took steps to protect the AIB, pressuring the anti-Integralist governor of Bahia, for example, not to interfere with its propaganda campaign, and also issuing instructions to the press not to criticize Integralist doctrine.28 These measures were adopted on the initiative of Cavalcante, a confidant of Plínio Salgado, and in part reflected the decision of the high command and Vargas to bring the AIB into the conspiracy both to neutralize the

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military potential of the greenshirts and to help create an atmosphere propitious for a closing of the political system. Integralism had emerged as a potent force in national politics by 1937. Following a party plebiscite in which 850,000 greenshirts had registered their choice, Salgado in midyear had entered the presidential race, calculating that there were perhaps 500,000 registered voters in the AIB,29 this when the total electorate totalled only three million. All observers, including the American embassy, agreed that Integralism had extensive support in military circles (although the exact dimensions of that support are obscure).30 By this time it was clear to objective analysts that Vargas was actively "courting" the AIB. When Bahian authorities intensified their harassment of greenshirts during voter registration, he issued an implicit rebuke, saying that the party had never caused problems for his administration. The AIB contained "eminent" individuals, among them good friends of his whose activity, he said, he viewed with "maximum sympathy."31 The suspension of the state of war days later permitted the Integralists greater freedom to campaign, eliciting applause from party officials and protests from their opponents.32 The following month the Superior Electoral Tribunal ruled that the governor of Bahia had no legal right to keep Integralist offices closed, and the Tribunal de Segurança Nacional rejected his request for authority to make preventive arrests, ordering him instead to release Integralist prisoners. After a personal meeting with Vargas late in August, Salgado publicly commanded his followers to place themselves at the disposal of the federal government.33 As the conspiracy at the top gained definition, the administration and the AIB moved closer together. On the president's order, Francisco Campos, a key civilian plotter, met with Salgado twice in September to discuss the new constitution that he had drafted for promulgation after the golpe and to assure the Integralist führer that the AIB would form the nucleus of a new national political movement. On the night of September 30, after Vargas had requested the Chamber of Deputies to restore the state of war, Police Chief Muller escorted Salgado to the home of General Dutra to draw the greenshirts more firmly into the web. The minister of war had praise for party leaders and expressed gratitude for their cooperative attitude; for his part, Salgado pledged the AIB's full support. To help prepare the ground for the dictatorship, Salgado published an article on October 2 calling for radical reform of the constitution. Days later Vargas himself met privately with the Integralist leader at the home of a mutual friend. Like the minister of war, the chief executive expressed satisfaction with the AIB's work, acknowledging that it had

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reinforced the administration's nationalistic, anti-Communist program. The portfolio of education in the new cabinet, he said, would be reserved for the party. Salgado emerged from the meeting greatly heartened. "I had the impression that a National Union was going to be formed with Integralism as its core . . . ," he remembered.34 The conspirators chose November 15 as the date for the golpe from above, and in the days preceding it they maneuvered to remove or neutralize remaining obstacles. Assured of Integralist backing and the support of strategic military commands, Vargas on October 14 requisitioned the military police of São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul, where Flores da Cunha was making suspicious military moves. At the same time, regional commanders in the South deployed units so as to contain a possible uprising by gaúcho troops and prevent their linking up with allies in São Paulo. Flores da Cunha opted not to resist the encirclement and resigned his office. He went into voluntary exile on October 18, and the next day Vargas decreed federal intervention in Rio Grande do Sul, appointing the regional army commander as interventor.35 There remained one further hindrance to eliminate: Macedo Soares, who had become persona non grata to the conspirators because of his constitutionalist scruples. Because of his well-known, militant anticommunism, they were reluctant to dismiss him from his post, so they opted for the tactic of provoking friction in order to embarrass him and, hopefully, force his resignation. Cavalcante, abetted by Muller, led the attack during sessions of the CSEG, making an issue of the fact that Macedo Soares had ordered Prestes transferred to the House of Correction, where he was not being guarded with sufficient rigor, according to the general's complaint. The difference of opinion over that decision degenerated, under obvious orchestration by Cavalcante, into petty quarreling over other questions. Vargas and Dutra on October 21 discussed their intention to remove Macedo Soares from the cabinet, but Cavalcante seemed obsessed with getting rid of him without delay. At the weekly session of the CSEG on October 27, the general recommended that the director and chief of guards at the House of Correction be fired— prompting an energetic refusal from Macedo Soares.36 Ironically, while the plotters jockeyed to eliminate Macedo Soares as a bothersome political impediment, he was actively engaged in launching Defesa Social Brasileira as a means of placing the nation on full-scale alert against Communist subversion. It was on October 30, only three days after his latest clash with Cavalcante, that the DSB was officially inaugurated in a public ceremony at Itamaraty Palace. Cardinal Leme, who had addressed an audience the previous

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month on the danger of Brazil's becoming another Spain and then had issued a pastoral letter vigorously condemning "atheistic communism," presided over the ceremony, which was attended by the navy minister, the head of Vargas' Military Household, the president of the Senate, and other dignitaries. The admiral who became the DSB's secretary general explained to the press that its fundamental goal was to "combat dissolvent Bolshevik doctrine vehemently" through counterpropaganda and education, but that it also intended to prepare the people for street fighting. Macedo Soares, Leitão de Carvalho, another general, two admirals, and the Senate president constituted the executive council of the DSB, which opened its membership to the public and within two weeks had some two thousand enlistments.37 Macedo Soares nonetheless had to go. At a meeting of the CSEG on November 3, Cavalcante went straight for him personally, accusing him of negligence in the matter of Prestes' transfer, repeatedly casting doubt on his word, attacking him for having ordered the release of political prisoners in June, and, finally, challenging him to withdraw from the commission. Two days later Macedo Soares submitted his resignation from both the CSEG and the cabinet. Vargas already had decided to replace him with Campos, and the ceremony of transferring the portfolio simply took place ahead of time on November 9.38 The possible reaction of the United States to the golpe was a source of concern, so Vargas on November 8 wrote a letter to his friend Aranha, alerting him to the imminent changes so that he could prepare American authorities. Neither of the two main presidential candidates had any popular support, he argued, and the Communists were taking advantage of the situation to redouble their efforts. In the face of this grave national confusion, the constitution left the government "anemic" and ill equipped to defend the nation against "Communist infiltration," he declared, urging the ambassador to reassure the Roosevelt administration that his policy toward the United States would not change.39 Knowing that the coup d'état would occur in a week, Vargas apparently did not intend for his letter to reach Aranha in time for him to marshal and voice beforehand bothersome and potentially embarrassing objections.40 The golpe actually was nearer at hand than originally planned: when liberal opponents discovered what was afoot and appealed to the army to defend the constitution, the conspirators moved the date up to November 10. The state governors, with the exception of those of Bahia and Pernambuco, had been brought into line, so there remained the task of informing Salgado of the change in plans. Dutra

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had Muller bring the AIB chief to his residence, where he clarified the situation and received a new pledge of support from Salgado.41 On November 10, while army troops surrounded the Congress building and dispersed the legislators, Vargas promulgated a new constitution and explained to the nation in a radio address the reasons for the overthrow of the system. "In periods of crisis, . . . party democracy . . . subverts hierarchy, threatens the unity of the fatherland, and places the existence of the nation in danger . . . ," he declared, denigrating the electoral campaign as "ridiculous competition" fueled by "bribery and demagogic promises." Worse, he suggested, the "outdated" constitution of 1934, "poured in the classic molds of liberalism," had proved inadequate to meet the challenge of Communist subversion. In his decree promulgating the new charter, he also underscored the "state of apprehension created throughout the country by Communist infiltration, which is daily becoming more extensive."42 The constitution of 1937 was to take effect, and a Congress to be elected, only after it had been ratified by a plebiscite, but it was never submitted to the voters—Vargas simply ruled by decree for the next eight years, selectively applying the articles he found convenient during the indefinite "state of emergency" that he simultaneously proclaimed. Various provisions of the Constitution of 1937, which the high command had scrutinized before the golpe, reflected concern about Communist subversion. The president, for example, was empowered to have members of Congress arrested for conspiring against the "structure of institutions" and the "security of the state." Military officers guilty of the same offense would lose their commissions and posts, while strikes were declared to be "antisocial" and "harmful to labor and capital." The death penalty, moreover, was authorized for any attempt to bring about, "with the aid or subsidy of a foreign state or organization of an international character, a change in the social and political order," or for any effort to "subvert by violent means the political and social order with the aim of taking control of the state in order to establish a dictatorship of one social class."43 On the internal front, the architects of the Estado Novo moved quickly to silence critics. A series of high-level resignations eliminated pockets of resistance within the administrative and military structure. One cabinet member and two governors were replaced, while General Pessoa, the former chief of staff, was briefly arrested and then administratively retired because of a letter he wrote to Dutra protesting the army's role in the implantation of the dictator-

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ship. General Coelho Neto, director of the army air corps, also lost his command because he expressed second thoughts about the necessity of a coup d'état.44 Given the absence of any serious, organized opposition, the government felt confident that it could move quickly to neutralize the Integralist party. State authorities, this time with the encouragement of federal officials, launched a crackdown, breaking up AIB meetings, temporarily detaining party leaders, and seizing propaganda materials. Vargas personally instructed the interventor in Minas Gerais to proceed "with all energy" to suppress any inconvenient Integralist activities. All of this was a mere preliminary to proscription of the party. Late in November, Campos advised Salgado that the regime was going to issue a decree banning all political parties and that his being appointed minister of education depended on complete disbandment of the movement. Vargas himself met with the AIB führer to reiterate that information, and then, on December 2, he signed the decree, formalizing the break with the greenshirts. The party, Campos remarked to an American journalist, had been a valuable ally in the struggle against communism, but there simply was no room for such political organizations in the new order.45 In following weeks there was steady police pressure on Integralists throughout the country, causing a deep schism within the movement between those who favored bowing to the regime's will and those who advocated resistance. The dissident wing entered into a conspiracy with disaffected liberal politicians, and the result was an ill-fated Integralist putsch in May 1938 that effectively eliminated any serious political challenge to Vargas until 1945. The Estado Novo was Brazil's earliest version of a national security state. The justification for the regime was the Communist threat; its raison d'être was to strengthen national defenses along a broad front. The concentration of executive and legislative powers in Vargas' hands greatly facilitated the task of creating an unprecedented apparatus of repression and suppression. There were no legislative assemblies or political parties, and within days of the golpe Vargas restored the system of federal interventors, who would enjoy at the state level the powers he held at the national. In his decree of December 2 on political parties, Vargas declared that the Estado Novo would be in "direct contact with the people" and needed no intermediaries, but clearly no dialogue was intended. Another of his early decrees deprived citizens of the right to seek judicial injunction against any executive decision, whether by Vargas or by interventors.46 Strict press censorship remained in effect until early in 1945, and Muller's police department, including the DOPS, acted without judicial restraint in matters of investigation and repression.

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The TSN now became a permanent institution of the Estado Novo to handle crimes against the state, crimes for which foreign nationality was an "aggravating circumstance"47—a provision clearly aimed at foreign-born Comintern agents. In the international sphere the events in Brazil, coming as they did only two days after Italy had signed the Anti-Comintern Pact and at a time when Western opinion had been polarized because of the civil war in Spain, generated widespread speculation about Vargas' intentions. Mario Pimentel Brandão, who had taken charge of Itamaraty when Macedo Soares resigned almost a year earlier, sent a circular to Brazilian diplomatic missions on November n stating that the Estado Novo represented, in part, the general tendency in many countries, "even the United States and France," toward a broadening of executive powers—an obvious effort to downplay the authoritarian character of the regime—and was a result, too, of the domestic political confusion which "followers of Moscow" had sought to exploit. Consequently, the military and the people had realized that Vargas was the only national leader capable of "saving the country from the risks and horrors of a . . . Bolshevik coup." At their various posts, Brazilian diplomats made use of the circular to justify the new dictatorship and, in some cases, to deflect press criticism. Vargas personally sought to allay American fears, emphatically denying to Ambassador Jefferson Caffery, Washington's new envoy, that the regime had been inspired by the Axis example. He repeated that disclaimer to the foreign press on November 13, but vowed simultaneously to wage war "without quarter" on communism. "Brazil has been threatened constantly from outside and from within," he elaborated in a separate interview with the New York Times. "The Comintern made it a cardinal point to take root in Brazil. . . ." The new constitution was necessary, he said, to equip the state to combat its "insidious campaign." Pimentel Brandão reinforced Vargas' remarks with another circular on November 17 in which he assured Brazilian diplomats, and through them foreign governments, that the government remained dedicated to the "ideals of democracy, peace, and Pan-Americanism."48 The Kremlin expressed its view of events in Brazil through the Comintern. An article in its weekly journal called the Estado Novo the "first fruit of the pact between Germany, Japan, and Italy," while Radio Moscow, according to a Brazilian diplomat who heard the broadcast in Bern, used the "greatest injustices and crudities" in assailing Vargas. Subsequently, Communist analysts decided that it had been United States imperialism that had triumphed in Brazil.49 The exultation in the Axis camp over the Estado Novo was par-

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tially responsible for international suspicions. Both the Italian and German governments, on the eve of the golpe, had taken advantage of Rome's adherence to the Anti-Comintern Pact to urge Rio de Janeiro to join the twenty countries that by then had signed. Count Galeazzo Ciano, the Italian foreign minister, who secretly had been channeling two thousand dollars a month to Plínio Salgado for nearly a year, was particularly keen on Brazil's endorsing the pact because it would "shake the whole democratic system in South America." Axis strategists possibly were encouraged by press commentaries in Brazil about the pact. The Jornal do Brasil on the day the military closed Congress eulogized the anti-Comintern states and declared that Brazil had its place "reserved among the twenty nations bound together for their own preservation." The German embassy in Rio de Janeiro, however, shrewdly recommended caution. "Politically, the Brazilian government's attitude of vigorous resistance to communism is already a connecting link with Germany," the chargé pointed out to Berlin on November 16, but the rumors that Rio de Janeiro would subscribe to the pact were misleading. "Brazilian policy will and must avoid everything that could bring Brazil into direct opposition to the USA and England," he explained. "In domestic politics they will fight bolshevism with every means, but in foreign policy they will avoid connections with European politics."50 The German diplomat was correct. There were no fundamental shifts in Brazil's foreign policy as a result of the establishment of the Estado Novo. The Vargas regime remained firmly attached to the special relationship with the United States and to the idea of hemispheric solidarity. Rio de Janeiro continued to be interested in the political goodwill of the Axis, although there would be a sharp clash with Berlin in 1938 over the issue of Nazi party activities on Brazilian soil. Vargas and his counselors, especially protective of the trade alliance with Germany, avidly pursued expanded commerce with Europe. And Brazilian authorities held fast to their anti-Soviet course, displaying if anything even greater zeal than before.

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as a country under a Red siege hardened substantially during the early years of the Estado Novo. Brazilian Communists remained a dedicated sect, but they were numerically insignificant and were in disarray as a result of the PCB's sharp internal divisions and the government's repressive program. Official perceptions, however, were different, especially in view of the international crisis. Indeed, scrutiny of Soviet maneuvering and expansionism during the period of prewar confusion and then during the first phase of the European war strengthened old suspicions and gave a keen edge to Brazilian disquiet. Their country bloodied once, Brazilian leaders were determined to prevent a repetition of the unsettling events of November 1935. While it relentlessly pursued Communists at home, seeking constantly to improve federal-state coordination, and endeavored to build intelligence-gathering capabilities both within Brazil and in the Southern Cone, the Vargas regime employed propaganda, press censorship, and diplomacy to deliver a sternly anti-Soviet message and help seal the country off from Russian influence. THE IMAGE OF BRAZIL

Evaluating the European crisis in the late 1930s, Brazilian observers saw the USSR as a militarily weak, but politically dangerous, country determined to press forward with what one commentator late in 1937 called its "diabolical plan of world domination." Ambassador Moniz de Aragão made essentially the same point in a dispatch from Berlin in mid-February 1938, and his colleague in Prague, Sebastião Sampaio, echoed that opinion, hailing the tough anti-Soviet posture of the Axis and its anti-Comintern allies. The embassy in Paris saw the hidden hand of Moscow behind the labor turmoil and much of the governmental instability in France, and Soviet pressure on Rumania in connection with Bessarabia struck Brazilian analysts as ominous: the Kremlin coveted that province as a

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"trampoline" into the "heart of Europe," the Correio da Manhã warned. Political experts at Itamaraty in midyear predicted that Moscow would attempt to sabotage any moves by the Western powers toward a general settlement in Europe and argued that the Kremlin wanted to keep the civil war in Spain going in order better to promote subversion on the Continent and beyond. As Ambassador Régis de Oliveira in London put it, the Comintern hoped to take advantage of its influence over the Republican government in Madrid to make the conflict in Spain the first step in a "world Bolshevik revolution."1 The international conduct of the Soviet Union during the tense year that separated the Munich Conference and the German attack on Poland greatly reinforced the Brazilian foreign policy elite's perception of the USSR as a cynical, deceitful state bent on sowing international turmoil. As the German-Czech crisis over the Sudetenland moved toward its denouement in mid-September 1938, Sampaio took skeptical note of the Kremlin's insistence on a firm stand toward Berlin's demands at a time when the Western powers were urging Prague to be conciliatory. Local Communists, "following orders from Moscow," seemed ready to unleash civil war in order to grab control of the government and confront the Reich, he informed Itamaraty on September 10. To observers in Paris it seemed, too, that the Soviet Union actually wanted to provoke a conflict. João Pinto da Silva, the commercial attaché who wrote frequently to Vargas, suggested as much in a letter at the time, while Ambassador Souza Dantas reported officially that a general war in Europe inevitably would lead to an "irruption of bolshevism" on that continent. "The Reds wanted war . . . ," an editorialist for the Jornal do Brasil concluded a week after the Munich accord. "Russia was the engine of the great confusion."2 Brazilian analysts saw various handicaps on the Soviet side. Noting, for example, that the Red Army had been ravaged by the notorious purge trials, they shared fully in the general pessimism in the West regarding Russian military capabilities. Mario Pimentel Brandão, who had gone to Washington in mid-1938 to replace Oswaldo Aranha after the latter was appointed foreign minister, assured Vargas late in October 1938 that the USSR was a "colossus with feet of clay" that was not equal to the demands of modern warfare. His colleague in Switzerland thought any general mobilization would undermine the Stalin regime: not only was the army inefficient, but the peasantry, if given weapons, would probably turn them on the government instead of fighting a foreign enemy. The Jornal do Brasil agreed that conditions were ripe for internal upheaval in the USSR,

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since people there suffered the barbarous effects of a police state and a bankrupt economic system.3 The attitude of the USSR toward the crisis caused by German pressure on Poland was a major question mark of European politics during the middle months of 1939. Following the Reich's absorption of the remainder of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 in flagrant violation of the Munich agreement, London and Paris gave unilateral guarantees to Warsaw, and the stage was set for the reluctant, hesitant courtship of Moscow by both the Hitler regime, which wanted a free hand against Poland, and the two Western allies. Brazilian diplomats in Europe studied Soviet maneuvering between the opposing sides and predictably concluded that Moscow had little interest in contributing to the cause of peace. Indeed, insisted Pinto da Silva in March, the Kremlin contemplated "with greed" the prospect of war among the other countries of Europe. Brazilian foreign policy experts recognized that the resistance of eastern European nations to military cooperation with the Red Army was a stumbling block in the Anglo-French-Soviet talks—those states feared being "contaminated by the Bolshevik virus," Souza Dantas noted sympathetically—but their general tendency was to attribute the slow progress of the negotiations to Soviet Machiavellianism. "How far Moscow's bad faith will go is difficult to foresee," the chargé in Warsaw pondered. His counterpart in Berlin pointed to the obvious: the Kremlin was playing the Allies off against the Nazis. To the liberal, antiVargas Diário de Notícias, it was clear that Stalin's regime of "violence, terror, and liberticide" would string the West along, while to another carioca daily, it was surprising that there might be "anyone in the Old World who still believes in the word of Soviet Russia." Hints of the seemingly impossible—a Russo-German understanding—only strengthened Brazilian skepticism. Stalin wanted to see the rest of Europe plunged into war, the equally anti-Vargas Diário Carioca editorialized, in order to impose Soviet tyranny over the "ruins of our Christian civilization."4 Actual signing of the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact on August 23 nonetheless had a stunning effect. Souza Dantas railed at the Kremlin's "bad faith and duplicity," and at the embassy in London there was similar shock over Moscow's "despicable" conduct. What worried Régis de Oliveira was the broader implication of the unexpected turn of events. "While the other European countries battle one another in a ruinous and destructive war, Russia, its force intact, will spread revolution throughout the world," he predicted. The chargé of Berlin also cautioned that the Nazi-Soviet understanding might represent the opening phase of a "new and vast" plan of

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conquest, and Souza Dantas added that the first step would surely be the liquidation of Poland. Aware that the end of Polish independence was near, the Jornal do Brasil scored Stalin for his "diabolical game" and warned that Moscow still plotted international subversion.5 On September 1 the Wehrmacht invaded Poland, and sixteen days later units of the Red Army moved into eastern Poland in accordance with a secret protocol to the Nazi-Soviet agreement. The comments of Brazilian observers were caustic. What else could be expected from a "regime made of miserable deeds and treacheries" that existed only to undermine "orderly and Christian" life elsewhere? the Correio da Manhã asked rhetorically. Seizing the occasion to blast the Comintern, the Jornal do Comércio forecast intense Soviet military pressure on adjacent states, and the Jornal do Brasil agreed that the "jackal" Eurasian nation had now added the armed forces to the Comintern as instruments for its expansion. The Kremlin's territorial ambitions constituted the "greatest of all threats" facing the world, exclaimed the Diário Carioca. Raging at the "brutality" of Soviet policy, Souza Dantas feared that further "evil deeds" were in store for other countries, and the view from London was equally grim: the war would eventually transform itself into a "duel to the death" between the USSR and the West, Régis predicted.6 When Moscow, following the formal partition of Poland with Berlin, immediately put pressure on the Baltic states, forcing them to cede air and naval bases, Brazilian analysts watched with indignation and growing disquiet. The Kremlin had adopted the "policy of the oil tanker" in order to fuel the flames of war in Europe, one editorialist declared. Recalling Moscow's "sweet promises" to the working classes of Europe, General Manoel Rabello, former regional army commander in Recife in 1935 and now a member of the Supreme Military Tribunal, called Vargas' attention to the contrast offered by Soviet "imperialism." The minister in Holland filed a report two days later in which he also warned of a general expansionist thrust by the "bloodthirsty regime" headed by Stalin. The conquest of Poland was complete, "but the process of expansion by the Muscovite Bolshevik is only beginning," he predicted. From the legation in Bucharest a similar assessment reached Itamaraty: Stalin wanted to extend frontiers of the USSR "beyond even what the most frenetic ambition of the most megalomaniac czars could imagine."7 Soviet aggression against Finland at the end of November confirmed Brazilian suspicions and provoked public and private outrage. In a series of telegrams the legation in Helsinki described to Itamaraty the ruthless incursions by Soviet aircraft. "Favored by the good weather, they undertook innumerable raids on a large number of

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Finnish cities and villages, dropping the greater part of the bombs on places entirely devoid of strategic or military importance, even using their machine guns on civilians and killing men, women, and children without distinction," it reported in mid-January 1940. At his post in London, Régis de Oliveira vigorously condemned Moscow's "scandalous" attacks, which he regarded as "even more brutal" than the Nazi invasion of Poland and based on pretexts "even more grotesque" than those used by Berlin. Cyro Freitas-Valle, Foreign Minister Aranha's cousin who recently had taken charge of the embassy in Germany, scorned the USSR as a "brutal aggressor against a country that. . . enjoyed universal sympathy." Souza Dantas, too, excoriated Moscow for its "insidious" policy. "Finland has become a valiant barrier of Western Christian civilization against the invasion of the barbarous hordes from the frontiers of Asia," he wrote at the end of December 1939. In Brazil the press opened up a sustained barrage of caustic criticism. The Jornal do Brasil stressed the Kremlin's hypocrisy: instead of the "bird of peace," the USSR loomed as one of the "beasts of prey, ferocious and insatiable." In successive editorials the Jornal do Comércio attacked the "ferocious criminals" in Moscow and the "brutality and cynicism" of their aggression, sentiments that the Correio da Manhã voiced with equal vehemence. Finland was an example of what the West could expect from "Soviet barbarity" if the Kremlin realized its long-range goals, the Estado de São Paulo added. The Diário de Notícias also expressed profound alarm over the "imperialistic ambition" revealed by the Stalin regime. "We need to destroy it in its sinister labyrinth," it cried. "We need to exterminate it without pity.8 The tenacious resistance offered by the Finns placed in bold relief the inefficiency of the Red Army, and Brazilian commentators eagerly seized upon the fact to ridicule Communist propaganda about its invincibility. The destruction of the "Russian bogey" was a major consequence of the Winter War, the ambassador in Lisbon ventured on December 31, 1939, and Souza Dantas concurred. "The legend of the Marxist fortress thus collapses like a house of cards," he wrote that same day. The Rio de Janeiro press devoted repeated editorials to that theme in January. "Napoleon knew that the Muscovite soldier was not worth anything," the Jornal do Brasil declared on January n . "The Bolsheviks, however, were able to make him worse." Scorning the "wretched" quality of Soviet commanders, the minister in Bucharest noted that the discovery that the USSR was a "colossus with feet of clay" was encouraging a spirit of resistance throughout eastern Europe.9 It was not until March that Soviet forces managed to overcome Finnish defenses, and Moscow then dictated a

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peace settlement so harsh that, in the words of the chargé in Helsinki, it left the "whole Finnish population weeping in sorrow." Finland now lay vulnerable to the "inevitable contagion of Bolshevism," Souza Dantas lamented.10 The Russo-Finnish conflict was a marginal episode in the broader scheme of things, but it seemed part of an ominous pattern. Ambassador Hildebrando Acioly at the Vatican cautioned that the Soviet appetite in northern Europe had not been satiated, while FreitasValle in Berlin pointed to the Balkans as another likely target of Soviet expansionism. In a private letter to Aranha, Moniz de Aragão, who had replaced Régis de Oliveira in London, confirmed that there were signs of a German-Soviet plan to divide the Balkans into respective spheres of influence. From Helsinki and Rome came corroborating reports of extensive Soviet military activities from the Gulf of Finland to the Black Sea.11 The wake of the Wehrmacht's drive through western Europe brought dramatic reinforcement for the anti-Soviet views of the Brazilian foreign policy elite. As France was being forced to capitulate to Germany in June 1940, Soviet troops occupied the Baltic states and then a week later compelled Bucharest to hand over Bessarabia, thus sacrificing one-fifth of Rumania on the "Stalinist altar" and leaving that country, the Brazilian minister there feared, open to complete sovietization. And what that meant, the chargé in Helsinki somberly indicated, could be seen in the case of the Baltic states, where Moscow was effecting "complete destruction of the social, moral, political, and economic order." Formal annexation of those states by the Soviet Union in August seemingly confirmed that intention.12 In following weeks, as the Battle of Britain raged, Moscow seemed to be feverishly strengthening its armed forces all along the USSR's vast western frontier. Its immediate objectives were unclear, but the perceived long-range goals of the Stalin regime remained unchanged. "Russian policy continues to be that of stirring up the fire as much as possible," Acioly wrote, "so that the war will last so long that, in the end, the belligerents will find themselves so weakened that the Soviets can easily take advantage of the general misery." At her new post in Bern, Odette Carvalho e Souza advanced the same argument in articles for the Correio da Manhã, and the international analyst for the Jornal do Comércio also underscored the Kremlin's callously manipulative strategy. Freitas-Valle, in communications to both Itamaraty and Vargas, gloomily depicted the Soviet Union as a vulture waiting to pounce on the carcasses of the vanquished. The chargé in Paris drew Itamaraty's attention to the persistent belief there that the two sides would exhaust themselves, leaving the

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USSR as the only real winner and in a position to spread communism throughout Europe. Indeed, it was in the Kremlin's interest to remain neutral until the war ended, noted one editorialist, so it could then unleash the Red Army on a prostrate West.13 In the period following the implantation of the Estado Novo, myriad signals that Brazil remained a special target of Soviet intrigue sharpened official alertness in Rio de Janeiro. Only eight days after the November 1937 golpe, Pimentel Brandão, then acting foreign minister, relayed to Minister of Justice Francisco Campos a report from Berlin to the effect that the Comintern had dispatched new agents to South America. Special care, Brandão recommended, should be taken with individuals bearing Mexican passports. Macedo Soares, in his capacity as president of Defesa Social Brasileira, reinforced that warning in a letter to Vargas on December 1. The information he passed along probably originated with the International Entente Against the Third International in Geneva; in any case, he cautioned the chief executive that Moscow had authorized terrorist acts abroad and that he, Vargas, was a likely target for assassination. The police, he urged, should be particularly vigilant regarding persons reaching Brazil from Mexico. Three days later the Guatemalan minister strengthened those suspicions when he shared with Itamaraty information that a boat, "in the direct service of the Spanish Republican government and indirectly in that of the government of Moscow," had taken on munitions in Veracruz and was heading for Brazil to supply Communists there, a report that Brandão forwarded to Campos and that the latter immediately relayed to Police Chief Filinto Muller.14 The credibility of such information was enhanced by Brazilian censors' discovery in January 1938 that Spanish Republican postal authorities were placing Communist propaganda leaflets in letters addressed to various post offices in Brazil.15 What were the intentions of international communism toward Brazil? Brazilian observers were not certain, but the signals made them uneasy. The Comintern, Pimentel Brandão wrote to Campos and Muller early in March 1938, had given instructions to its emissaries in South America to proceed "with the greatest energy" in executing their missions and had sent "important agents" to São Paulo. "Brazil and the whole of Latin America . . . offer a vast field of action for the Bolsheviks," Carvalho e Souza declared late that month, "and nothing will deter them in that destructive labor." With a report from Ambassador Baptista Lusardo in Montevideo on alleged Communist plans for renewed propaganda warfare in Brazil, another piece of the puzzle fell into place. Perhaps, pondered Aragão

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in July, Moscow might be preparing another uprising in "some part of South America" to compensate for its foreign policy setbacks elsewhere. Soviet "undermining" of South America was certainly continuing apace, the Correio da Manhã editorialized later that year, calling for a national alert. Indeed, Brazil should not allow the Nazi danger to divert attention from the permanent Soviet threat, admonished a writer for the Jornal do Brasil early in 1939. When the legation in Warsaw telegraphed Itamaraty in March that Comintern agents were embarking for South America, it merely provided another link for the chain of anti-Soviet reasoning in Rio de Janeiro. General Góes Monteiro confided to Vargas his apprehension over the "incessant Soviet contagion" in Brazil, and Minister of War Dutra also cautioned the president-dictator in May that constant vigilance was required. In midyear both Vargas and Muller received reinforcing signals from Santiago and Montevideo: there was "great activity" among Communists in Chile engaged in anti-Brazilian propaganda, while Brazilian Communists in Uruguay were suddenly in possession of funds.16 The course of the European war created favorable conditions for Soviet expansion, causing substantial concern in official circles. In October 1939, two weeks after the formal division of Poland, former DOPS director Pedro Salgado Filho, soon to be Brazil's first air minister, confessed his apprehension that a Soviet Union made bolder by the European situation would have its followers in Brazil launch some "aggressive" scheme, and late that month Muller forwarded to state police agencies a special report by Captain Felisberto Baptista Teixeira, the new head of the carioca DOPS, warning that the war had brought a renewed Communist conspiracy throughout the country. That report convinced the secretary of public security in Santa Catarina, Ivens de Araújo, that the "bloodless victories of Stalinism" in Europe indeed would encourage a growth of the "Marxist virus" in Brazil. From Belém in the far North came more concrete reinforcement for Rio de Janeiro's concern: since the outbreak of the war, local Communists had reactivated their propaganda machine, Police Chief Salvador de Borborema reported in a letter of October 31, a copy of which Muller promptly forwarded to General Dutra. Whatever the circumstances, the Comintern would supply Communists in Brazil with funds and propaganda materials, editorialized the Jornal do Brasil; therefore, since the enemy was "insidious and cruel," constant vigilance was required. Weeks later, in May 1940, that daily accused a seemingly audacious Comintern of wanting to foment war between Brazil and neighboring countries.17

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As the Wehrmacht rolled over western Europe, it set in motion a small flood of refugees to New World countries, a development that dismayed many Brazilian observers because Comintern agents might be among them. At her post in Bern, where she had resumed her cooperation with Théodor Aubert's International Entente, Carvalho e Souza wrote to Muller urging strict surveillance of new arrivals in Brazil. What bothered her the most was, incredibly, the possibility that Communists and Nazis might undertake joint fifth-column operations in South America. Dutra also suspected that within the refugee community in Brazil, there were Communists posing as intellectuals, and in January 1941 he prodded Muller to investigate. A report in midyear from the embassy in Vichy warning that a female Soviet spy probably had reached Argentina and was heading for Brazil could only harden official suspicion.18 Brazilian policymakers also received signals from observers in South America that suggested a resurgent Red menace. Monitoring of the movements of émigré radicals in the La Plata area by Ambassador Lusardo in Montevideo turned up telling evidence in January 1940: intercepted correspondence between exiled Brazilian Communists in Buenos Aires and the Uruguayan capital that indicated Prestes' followers were well organized and engaged in "full conspiratorial activities." He forwarded the information to Vargas and Muller and then redoubled his watchfulness. It was not long before he and fellow sentinel Câmara Canto discovered new signs of Communist intrigue: a flurry of meetings of Brazilian militants in both Argentina and Uruguay. The aggressive animosity toward the Estado Novo displayed by the Communist press in Chile, where the party was legal and an important member of the governing Popular Front coalition, and reports from other posts in South America, such as Lima, where Muller's diplomat-friend Orlando Leite Ribeiro kept him abreast of Communist maneuvering, strengthened the conclusion that the Comintern remained an active, deadly adversary.19 The onset late in 1940 of a coordinated, hemispherewide campaign by leftist groups to mobilize public opinion against the Vargas regime seemed to be conclusive proof of an underground Red network operating against Brazil. The movement began after Rodolfo Ghioldi, the Argentine Communist leader who had helped prepare the intentona, was deported to Buenos Aires in November 1940, a development that coincided with the handing of an additional stiff prison sentence to Prestes for his role in the murder of Elza Fernandes in 1936. Suddenly, from one end of the hemisphere to the other, there was a chorus of protests against the Vargas regime,20 driving home

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what seemed to be the point that Brazil was a special target of the international Communist conspiracy. Convinced that their country figured prominently in the Kremlin's plans and taking advantage of the closed political system, federal authorities pressed the anti-Communist campaign with renewed zeal after establishment of the dictatorship. Indeed, if anything the regime became even harsher in its treatment of Communists. Operating now with a completely free hand, Muller, on the very day of the November 1937 golpe, ordered the arrest of the director of the House of Correction on charges that he had been careless in managing Prestes' confinement; to replace him, Muller designated Lieutenant Victorino Caneppa, who apparently had gained a reputation for brutality as superintendant of a work farm. The torture of Ewert was even resumed at one point, while Prestes again was deprived of reading material, visitors, and usually mail. Ewert's sister, writing from Mexico, in vain appealed to Vargas in June 1938, pointing out that her sister-in-law was in a concentration camp in Germany and urging that her brother be deported to Mexico, where President Lázaro Cárdenas supposedly had agreed to grant him asylum. Impassioned complaints by Sobral Pinto, the lawyer defending the two Comintern agents, were equally fruitless and even counterproductive, since he found himself under temporary detention that month for "disrespect for authorities." 21 As the formerly robust Ewert's health seemed to be failing rapidly at year-end—he weighed just 114 pounds in January 1939—Sobral Pinto addressed a poignant but futile letter to Campos protesting the mistreatment of the German revolutionary, who had become "just a poor lunatic!" Five months later Caneppa acknowledged that Ewert was "gravely ill and very weakened" and that he displayed "symptoms of mental imbalance." The Ministry of Justice now ordered psychiatric examination of the prisoner; however, he was not transferred from the House of Correction, and his physical condition continued to deteriorate until he was moved to a new psychiatric annex in January 1940. His derangement led during this time to pathetic behavior. He violently resisted psychiatric and physical examinations, calling guards and doctors alike "torturers," "cowards," and "murderers." He would pace his cell at all hours of the day shouting angrily and then "crying out, as if he were in despair." He began filling his shoes with water before putting them on, pouring water on his bed, and placing whatever objects were at hand in a bathtub full of water. At other times he would sit staring endlessly at the ceiling in a semicatatonic state. Although intravenous feeding did help bring his weight up to 132 pounds by

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mid-1940,22 little was done to improve his mental condition, and there was no official interest in doing more. As for Prestes, the attorney informed Campos that he was being kept in a "narrow cell," without being allowed even to talk to his guards. Consulted by the minister of justice, Caneppa said simply that Prestes was a "bad prisoner, whose behavior in this prison has been the worst possible." When subsequent protests proved unproductive, Sobral Pinto turned to Aranha, complaining in October 1939 that he had been allowed to see his client only three times since proclamation of the Estado Novo and then only in the presence of either Caneppa or guards. At the same time, General Manoel Rabello attempted to secure Vargas' intervention, arguing in a letter October 12 that to keep Prestes incommunicado in a cell next to that of Ewert, literally a madman, was tantamount to trying to drive Prestes insane as well. The latter himself wrote to Caneppa in December protesting his and particularly Ewert's "tragic situation," reasoning that it made no sense for the regime to make martyrs of them. "What would the government lose in having Berger placed in a hospital where he could receive the treatment he needs?" he asked. This pressure did bring temporary results at the turn of the year, when Caneppa transferred Ewert to a new psychiatric wing of the House of Correction.23 Meanwhile, in the weeks following the November 1937 coup d'état, there had been a renewed mobilization of internal security forces. The radical Left was badly splintered, disorganized, and numerically insignificant, but policymakers viewed matters through a prism formed in November 1935. "The struggle against communism," Vargas publicly vowed in December, "will be intensified until it reaches maximum efficiency." That same month he opened a special credit of $300,000 for anti-Communist measures, and Federal District policy and military authorities redoubled their efforts to ferret out subversives. Nearly a hundred suspects were taken into custody immediately, and in January 1938 DOPS agents in Niterói and Rio de Janeiro broke up a Trotskyite cell, arresting forty people and seizing a printing press. The commander of the First Military Region, alarmed by reports of Communist activities in Espírito Santo, sent an officer to investigate; he returned in February warning of an "impressive expansion" of communism there, which provoked further arrests. Then in April another Trotskyite group was discovered in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and its members were imprisoned. The head of the carioca DOPS at that time, Israel Souto, informed Muller in May that the three main Communist cells known to be operating in the Federal District had been crushed,24

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but in the eyes of those responsible for state security, communism was a cancer that had metastasized. Indeed, intelligence analysts on the staff of General Monteiro took careful note at this time of what seemed to be efforts by Communists to refurbish their image by exploiting propagandistically the regime's anti-Integralist drive after the May 10 putsch, and they urged heightened vigilance. As part of his permanent alert, the commander of the Military Police at this same juncture had a special Guide for Combat Against Communism prepared for distribution to his troops. The government armed itself with a new national security law in mid-May that, although its timing connected it with the abortive Integralist revolt, was intended as a weapon against Communists as well. The harshest in the country's history, it provided the death penalty for any attempt to overthrow the regime or to promote civil war and mandated long prison sentences for antigovernment propaganda, including incitement of "hatred among social classes." Despite the shattering of the Communist movement, the carioca DOPS by August 1938 had scented a "vast conspiracy" against the regime in which, Souto cautioned Muller, Reds were playing a prominent role. Souto's successor, Felisberto Baptista Teixeira, doggedly pursued the leads and in February 1939 optimistically informed Muller that he hoped soon to net the members of the PCB's political bureau.25 The reinvigorated anti-Communist drive extended into the states as well. Part of the special credit opened by Vargas went to state governments—Pernambuco received the lion's share26—and Muller sought to bring about more effective coordination of countersubversion measures throughout the country. The real solution to the problem, he thought, would be the creation of a federal police force. Since Rio Grande do Sul guarded the southern flank against Communist infiltration via the La Plata region, he had sent a member of his staff to Porto Alegre at the time of the November 1937 golpe to examine the operations of both the civil and military police there to determine how quickly they might be federalized. The Military Police, his assistant reported at the end of the month, had produced "excellent results" under the leadership of Major Aurélio da Silva Py because all of its personnel were dedicated to the idea of "stern combat against communism," but the civil police force was practically useless.27 His hope of creating a single nationwide police organization did not bear fruit, but the restoration of the system of federal interventors gave Muller additional clout vis-à-vis state agencies, and he used it to impose at least a close coordination of repressive measures and regular exchange of information.

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The content of communications from state authorities probably had little impact on the siege mentality that prevailed in police and military spheres in Rio de Janeiro—any message on the subject of communism could reinforce official suspicions. Broadly speaking, what the government heard from state officials reflected the objective fact that the radical Left posed no threat to the regime. The newly appointed interventor in Pernambuco, former labor and justice minister Agamenon Magalhães, wrote to Dutra early in January 1938 assuring him that he was intensifying the hunt for Reds, among other things by purging the public schools. But the overall situation in the state was "excellent" from the standpoint of public order. Etelvino Lins, who was in charge of public security in that state, thus had little to report to Muller in mid-1938 except the arrest of one lone Communist carrying propaganda materials. Weeks later he informed Muller that everything was tranquil: any international news that might provide political ammunition for Communists was being carefully censored, he said, while workers were being kept in line by union bosses under his control—as he euphemistically put it, Pernambucan workers enjoyed the "healthy orientation" of leaders "in permanent contact with us." Major Silva Py in Porto Alegre was categorical: the situation in Rio Grande do Sul was "absolutely calm," he announced in July, there being neither "signs nor possibility" of any threat to public order. The secretary of public security in Santa Catarina was equally sanguine because, he told Muller, "I have complete control of the social and political life of the state in my hands"; from Piauí in October came similar news.28 But any information, however vague, that suggested Communist activity gave, in Muller's eyes, another meaning to the apparent calm reported elsewhere. To reinforce his preoccupation, he received such messages as the one from the DOPS office in Curitiba advising him that local police had seized "thousands" of Communist propaganda leaflets and detained a "great number" of suspects. The state security chief in Ceará, moreover, alerted him in August to an upsurge of conspiratorial activities involving Communists and other dissidents, which seemed to confirm the warning note sounded by the DOPS in Rio de Janeiro. There were, additionally, reports of a resurgence of bands of religious fanatics in the interior of Bahia, a disturbing development because the formation of guerrilla units in the northeastern backlands had been part of the Comintern's pre-1935 plans. Muller therefore urged Bahian police at one point to interrogate leaders of such bands rigorously in order to determine if they had "Communist mentors." Pressed by Muller, Police Chief Borborema in Belém obviously wanted to demonstrate his zeal. Al-

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though noting that things were peaceful in his district, he informed Muller in June 1938 that his agents had confiscated a "small quantity" of Communist bulletins that had reached the city presumably on ships of the Lloyd Brasileiro line from Rio de Janeiro. Muller hastened to relay the information to Dutra, Monteiro, and Catete Palace. And even though Borborema reported "absolute tranquility" throughout the state of Pará, by year-end he had concluded that "everything indicates that the Communists are activating their propaganda," and in February 1939 he even found a few suspects to round up.29 It was the security forces in São Paulo, however, who were on the trail of flame behind the smoke. Early in January a DOPS undercover man shadowing a suspect was led to the interim secretary of the PCB executive committee, who was in the state capital to organize a regional committee. The paulista police decided to keep the broadening circle of suspects under surveillance until finally in May the DOPS officer in charge of the case received permission to close the net. The raids began on May 27 and resulted in the detention of twenty-two active party members.30 With the outbreak of war in Europe in September 1939, Muller put his department on alert and admonished state security forces to be especially attentive, but the anticipated upsurge of Communist activities failed to materialize, at least in the states. The fact was, of course, that there were few Communists around to be mobilized. "Of communism, thank God, there is no sign of life in our state," Ivens de Araújo informed Muller from Santa Catarina in December. In Porto Alegre, according to Silva Py, there was no evidence of increased antiregime agitation except by a "few isolated Communists" who were politically impotent. The police chief in Fortaleza had nothing important to transmit in response to pressure from Muller, and his colleague in Piauí also reported that, "despite the rigorous watchfulness we maintain, we have been unable to discover here any sign of renewed Communist organization."31 Of the outlying areas, it apparently was only in Belém and São Paulo that there were any indications of noteworthy radical activity. The calm prevailing in the states was nonetheless more apparent than real to authorities in Rio de Janeiro, where sporadic arrests and development of new leads regarding the hiding places of PCB directors kept the level of suspicion and anticipation high. Brutal torture of detainees produced information that led to the capture of PCB leader Lauro Reginaldo da Rocha and several other top party officers early in 1940. Those detentions "destroyed the Party's national leadership and its remaining supportive apparatus in Rio."32 Despite the obvious crushing of the Communist organization in the federal

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capital, police spokesmen there insisted on the need for a sustained alert. "Never . . . has the Communist danger in Brazil been greater than at this moment," DOPS chief Teixeira actually declared in an official report to Muller made public in mid-April. At that juncture the police in Belém arrested the Communist who, on orders from Prestes, had strangled Elza Fernandes four years earlier. This turn of events brought the far North once again into focus as a theater of Communist activity. Borborema, although complaining that his men were ill equipped and poorly trained for countersubversion, sent frequent reports to Muller in 1940 on the detention of Communists and confiscation of printing presses and propaganda materials. Everything indicated, he wrote late in August, that a nationwide antiregime movement was being prepared. Meanwhile, underscoring that the problem apparently was indeed a national one, the police in Rio Grande do Sul early in May had imprisoned an individual initially thought to be a "dangerous agent of the Third International." The next decisive blow, however, fell in São Paulo, where DOPS agents at the end of June began months-long surveillance of suspects that culminated in raids in March 1941 that netted over thirty PCB members, a printing press, and thousands of propaganda leaflets.33 In a report to Comintern representatives in Buenos Aires at this time, a special PCB emissary, João Falcão, a member of the party's regional committee in Bahia, painted a grim picture of conditions in Brazil. Police infiltration of unions and factories was extensive, he recalled saying, and there was a "climate of intolerable terror . . . that led the working class and people in general to dread any ties with Communists." If he erred in attributing, implicitly, workers' reticence toward communism solely to official coercion and intimidation, he did draw attention to a focal point of the regime's concern about subversion. The intense industrialization of the era—an average annual growth rate of 11.2 percent during 1933-193934—had been accompanied by accelerated expansion of the industrial working class, which numbered nearly 800,000 at the end of the decade, an increase of more than 250 percent in twenty years. As the 1930s drew to a close, there were over 1,100 legal (i.e., officially recognized) unions.35 Vargas' long-standing program of co-optation and control had yielded important dividends, and with the Estado Novo he simply broadened and intensified it. The constitution of 1937 stipulated that labor was a "social duty" and guaranteed workers the protection of the state. One of his first moves, in the spring of 1938, was to activate special commissions charged with drawing up proposals for nationwide minimum wage scales. The primary goal underlying this and the whole range of labor welfare measures adopted

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up to that time was, of course, to bolster the resistance of workers to Communist propaganda. Vargas implicitly recognized this when he declared in April 1938, with his eye on the pending minimum wage law and on the various other steps taken to improve labor's lot, that his program had enabled workers to ward off all attempts at "demagogic infiltration" by "preachers of exotic theories."36 The welfare and social security legislation on behalf of workers during the Estado Novo was voluminous, but the highlight was the minimum wage law of May 1940.37 The regime's priority, however, was control of the working class. The official grip on the trade union movement had been firm before November 1937; indeed, in the aftermath of the intentona there had been a purge of union leaders, a process facilitated by the secret police agreement of November 1936 that obligated Federal District and state police forces to investigate carefully all candidates for union offices and report suspicious individuals to the Ministry of Labor.38 That the regime intended to tighten further its hold on organized labor was evident from the constitution of 1937, which provided that only state-recognized unions could legally represent workers and declared strikes to be antisocial. A commission was appointed in 1938 to propose revisions in the unionization law, and by early 1938 its recommendations were ready. Seeking ways to shield labor organizations from the "contamination" of malefic influences, such as the "infiltration of perturbing ideologies," the commission assured the minister of labor that its proposals constituted a "most rigorous preventive and repressive system."39 Vargas issued a decree-law in July 1939, based on the commission's recommendations, that abolished the existing legal unions and prohibited plural unionism, permitting only one union per occupational category in a particular geographic zone. The law gave the Ministry of Labor another instrument of coercion by requiring that all union budgets have its approval, and in mid-1940 the chief executive sought to extend the government's control over union finances by instituting a special tax, equivalent to one day's wage per year, to be paid by all workers for the maintenance of the relevant union, regardless of whether they belonged to it. Twenty percent of the revenues from that tax was reserved for the ministry, which then utilized the money to finance union welfare programs. In addition to close supervision of union elections and finances, the ministry also retained the legal right to intervene in the internal affairs of a union whenever conditions impeded its normal functioning,40 an elastic provision that gave the government broad repressive powers. The information is sketchy, but it seems clear that security au-

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thorities continued to support the Catholic Workers' Circles as valuable allies in the struggle against communism. A leader of the circles in Santa Catarina, Father Alberto Kolb, assured Muller in August 1938 that he was actively combating "any and all subversive elements" in labor ranks and would keep authorities informed of any problems. Muller not only gave modest financial aid to the priest, but he urged the federal interventor in São Paulo to assist Kolb's efforts to counteract "dissolvent social doctrines" in the labor sphere. Early in 1940 Muller traveled to Joinville to attend the inauguration of a special pavilion bearing his name at the workers' center directed by Kolb, and he continued to provide a financial subsidy to the priest. A letter to Muller from the police chief of Porto Alegre in mid-1940, introducing a Jesuit clergyman who helped run the Workers' Circles in that capital and who had proved a "dedicated auxiliary" of the state police,41 strengthens the conclusion that directors of the Workers' Circles cooperated closely with the authorities in the anti-Communist program. Effective repression, and in a broader sense national security, required intelligence and counterintelligence capabilities. This aspect of the question had become a matter of substantial concern to Brazilian military leaders by the end of the 1930s as they scrutinized the worsening international situation and the myriad domestic challenges the regime faced—the maneuvering of émigré liberals who had established headquarters in Montevideo and Buenos Aires, the plotting by alienated Integralists, the increasingly suspicious activities of Nazi agents in southern Brazil, and the perpetual machinations of Communists. More than anything else, perhaps, the perceived Communist menace had contributed to a blurring of distinctions between external and internal security in elite thinking, although during 1938-1942 the "ethnic cysts"—the unassimilated foreign communities, especially German ones—occupied a salient position in Brazilian strategic thought as a source of potential threat. That there was no external-internal dichotomy in military conceptions of national security by the late 1930s is evident from a confidential report by Góes Monteiro early in 1938 on the activities of the Army General Staff. "War today is total" and requires complete mobilization of national energies, he wrote. That being the case, "national defense" was likewise a mission that transcended the purely military area to include civilian sectors as well. "Because of its complexity," he explained, "the problem of national defense must perforce have repercussions outside the confines of the army, involving all departments of public administration." Effective de-

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fense, he argued implicitly, required civic education and propaganda—and by extension, censorship—efforts to "regulate Brazilian economic life" so as to increase and accelerate production, and measures to improve working-class conditions. Here, in effect, was an all-encompassing concept of national security, a justification for government tutelage of society, which seemed all the more necessary given that traditional political elites ("the more educated classes") were imbued with an out-of-date liberalism ("enslaved by the theories of last century").42 In other words, the state, in order to defend the nation, had to discipline and tutor society, and that, in turn, meant it needed information on both external and internal enemies. The chief of staff thus underscored the necessity of creating a Serviço Secreto de Informações (SSI), or Secret Intelligence Service, not only to gather foreign intelligence but to monitor domestic developments as well. "The internal situation of the country requires continual measures of vigilance in the civil and military spheres in order to avoid unpleasant surprises," he explained, adding that the problem of personnel was a critical one for an SSI because its success in forming a "body of specialized agents" in peacetime would largely determine its efficiency in an emergency. The General Staff drew up guidelines for the organization and functioning of the SSI, and these General Dutra endorsed, though budgetary limitations prevented full implementation.43 Monteiro nonetheless moved forward, and in the early months of 1938 the "head of the SSI" within the G-2 section of the General Staff sent him "consecutive" reports on Communist activities.44 As part of the embryonic politico-military intelligence and counterintelligence organization, the General Staff tried to prod regional army commands into systematizing and intensifying the gathering of sociopolitical information. It started with the First Military Region, the most critical one in terms of regime stability, issuing instructions on counterintelligence procedures. In turn, that command elaborated a "Secret and Special Surveillance Plan" and established a Regional Surveillance Service to execute it. Regional G-2 then began to organize files on suspicious individuals and study the "agitated social and political situation," particularly as it affected troops. However, as Monteiro foresaw (and as the regional commander informed Dutra in February 1938), the officer in charge of the service was struggling with "enormous" difficulties arising from the lack of agents and other resources.45 Despite the problems, military leaders continued to stump for improved counterintelligence capabilities. General Dutra in January

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1939 urged Vargas to provide funds to create an even more powerful SSI than originally conceived, this time under the name of General Security Service, which would be in charge of all counterespionage and antisubversion activities throughout the country. Major Henrique Holl had done a preliminary study of the subject for Dutra, so Vargas asked the major to evaluate the project. What Dutra had in mind, said Holl, was General Staff control over "political and social police forces" across the nation—and this he deemed ill advised. For one thing, it would eliminate the "political intelligence services" that were then functioning "on a small scale" at the level of regional military commands, said Holl, implying that those services should be retained. But more importantly, the proposal seemed to call for a merger of intelligence functions with an operational or repressive mission. The major suggested Muller's Federal District police "discreetly" supervise the work of state police forces, but he advised against assigning such a function to an organ (the General Staff) not equipped by training, resources, or experience to perform it well. Leave police work to the police and let intelligence serve operations, he concluded.46 Monteiro did not get his full SSI or General Security Service because of budgetary problems, but the question of foreign-inspired intrigue remained a paramount concern to decision makers in Rio de Janeiro. At a meeting of the Conselho de Segurança Nacional in July 1939, Foreign Minister Aranha listed "counterespionage" as one of the regime's most pressing tasks, and the high command obviously concurred. Monteiro had to make do with the "almost stingy funds" he had available to keep his embryonic SSI in place, but by early 1940 he had recruited a "reduced number" of secret agents and established lines of communication and methods of cooperation with additional regional commands and state police. In his budget for the year, he managed to secure a special allocation for that program.47 Dutra, for his part, created a "Military Secret Service," with Holl as its chief, to monitor sources of potential internal challenges to the Estado Novo. In mid-1939 the major began submitting regular domestic intelligence bulletins to the minister of war. In the first report, he argued that the threat posed by the foreign communities in the South was less than that represented by democratic, antiregime propaganda. Six weeks later he suggested that the anti-German tone of the Brazilian press was American-inspired, and he sharply criticized the DOPS agent in Paraná for his alleged harshness toward the German-speaking community in that state, accusing him of "leftist, or even Communist, tendencies." The outbreak of war brought an intensification of plotting by liberal émigrés in Buenos Aires who

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were trying to establish a "civil-military united front" to include Integralists and Communists, Holl reported at the end of September. He gave an address in the Argentine capital that supposedly served as a meeting place for Brazilian Communists and noted that Major Carlos da Casta Leite, who had played a prominent role in the 1935 uprising and later had fought for the Spanish republic, was eagerly awaited by the community of exiles in Buenos Aires, who wanted his cooperation in their conspiracy against the Estado Novo.48 Filinto Muller was an eager collaborator with the somewhat amorphous intelligence community. In addition to his steady correspondence with state police authorities and the establishment of permanent liaison with the General Staff and Ministry of War, in 1938 he began disbursing discretionary police funds to help finance counterintelligence work by some regional army commands. The commander of the Fifth Military Region, for one, wrote him in February from Curitiba thanking him for monies received for the region's "secret service" and indicating that the aid was timely because the crackdown on Integralists was stimulating Communist activism; later that year the same general acknowledged receipt of additional funds, which he had used for his counterintelligence program.49 During this early phase of the Estado Novo, Muller also helped to build up a loosely knit, informal intelligence network in the capitals of Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile. In Montevideo the undercover work was coordinated by Ambassador Lusardo, the gaúcho politician and former police chief of the Federal District (1931-1932), whom Vargas summoned for diplomatic duty precisely to monitor the activities of exiled dissidents. On taking charge of the embassy late in December 1937, Lusardo found an extremely favorable official atmosphere in Uruguay. Gabriel Terra still had several months remaining of his presidency, and he was succeeded in mid-1938 by his brother-in-law; both men were sternly anti-Communist and were active collaborators in Lusardo's mission. The new envoy thus had no difficulty contracting the services of Uruguayan policemen as observers and informants. "I obtained the most precise information with ease," he later recalled. "They gave it to me." 50 The ambassador kept up a steady flow of intelligence to Vargas, Muller, and occasionally Aranha, transmitting confiscated Marxist propaganda materials, warning of travelers to Brazil who were "intimately linked to Communists," and discussing the activities of exiled Communists.51 Muller, for his part, sent special funds to underwrite the "politico-police surveillance" carried out by Lusardo's agents. The DOPS chief in Porto Alegre, Plínio Milano, visited the La Plata region in May 1940 and was impressed by Lusardo's counterintelli-

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gence operation. "The Embassy rigorously monitors all the exiles," he reported, adding that it possessed a "luxury of detail" on their movements.52 Buenos Aires was the main arena of émigré activities, and there the official mood was equally receptive to the idea of anti-Communist collaboration with Brazil. Not only were authorities cooperative, the new chargé d'affaires, João Alberto, wrote to Muller a week after the November 1937 golpe, but he found "even a great deal of sympathy" for the political shift in Brazil. Proof of the commitment of the Argentine government to the anti-Communist cause was its proposal, made just days earlier, for a secret bilateral pact against communism. Muller, in February 1938, sent one of his chief subordinates, Superintendent César Garcez, to Buenos Aires to explore further that possibility. The head of the Chilean political police also attended the meetings in the Argentine capital, and Garcez returned to Brazil late in April announcing that the three police departments had agreed to establish a Continental Police Bureau that would monitor radical sociopolitical movements in the Southern Cone. Hopefully, he told the press on April 21, other South American governments would join in that "great work of social defense." There is no indication that any formal agreement or pact was ever approved at the diplomatic level, but the Brazilian and Argentine police intensified their exchange of information and other forms of cooperation. Napoleão Alencastro Guimarães, sent to Buenos Aires by Vargas to handle the "security service of the Estado Novo" there, assured Muller in midyear that the Garcez mission had been thoroughly successful.53 Late in 1938, apparently as part of the cooperative arrangement with the porteño police, Muller assigned an undercover policeman, Paulo Brasil, to Buenos Aires, recommending to Guimarães that he keep his contacts with the special agent outside official channels. "I don't want Paulo to appear at the embassy," Muller explained, "so that he won't be 'made' by Brazilian Communists there." Brasil returned to Rio de Janeiro in February 1939, his assignment apparently having been temporary, and Guimarães was insistent on the need for a replacement. "Buenos Aires, it cannot be repeated too often, is the center of Communist activities . . . the aim of which is to spread disorder in our country and in the other American nations," he reminded Muller. Weeks later the chief of police sent a member of his staff to Buenos Aires to look the situation over and confer with Guimarães, but, undoubtedly for financial reasons, he found it impossible to designate a permanent replacement for Brasil at that juncture.54

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Guimarães soldiered on with limited resources and promises from Muller, as well as the active cooperation of the porteño police. "They are all very friendly toward me and are always ready to assist me," he informed Muller on July 22. With that missive he forwarded copies of correspondence between comrade Costa Leite in France and Communists in Buenos Aires. Early in August he again pressed Muller for funds and another agent, confiding that he had recommended to Ambassador Rodrigues Alves that he not broach the matter with Foreign Minister Aranha, whose discretion he doubted and who was, in any case, too liberal for Muller and his associates. The police chief did arrange a small budget later that year for Guimarães' undercover tasks, but the latter's departure for Washington in 1940 weakened the operation in Buenos Aires. After his visit in May, Milano urged that the "secret service of the Brazilian police" in Montevideo be duplicated in Argentina, where it was "indispensable"; to plug the gap temporarily, Muller had his agent in Santiago make additional trips to Buenos Aires. But the real need was another coordinating agent, and it is not clear if Muller found one. He corresponded later that year with his man in the Chilean capital about a candidate, venturing that with "200 or 300 pesos a month" the man could recruit the necessary subagents.55 Santiago was another important outpost in Muller's line of defense. He eyed the Chilean situation uneasily, describing it in November 1938 as a "great ill for South America" and one that might deteriorate into the "anarchy of bolshevism." The official atmosphere that Popular Front politics in Chile created for the clandestine efforts of Estado Novo representatives was decidedly different from that in Uruguay and Argentina. Observing the movement of Communists from capital to capital in the Southern Cone, Lusardo admonished both Vargas and Muller early in 1939 that a surveillance post should be set up in Chile, which perhaps explains the transfer of Leite Ribeiro from Buenos Aires to Santiago. Ribeiro had spent several years in Argentina performing various tasks, among them the unofficial one of monitoring anti-Estado Novo activities. He found in Santiago another attaché, Trindade Cruz, who was serving Muller in a similar capacity, and together they made useful contacts, despite the fact that Chilean agents kept them under surveillance. The Chilean army general staff would be a cooperative source of information, Ribeiro thought, and he also recruited a former policeman with experience in anti-Communist work. The challenge seemed to be assuming new dimensions; Communist elements were intensifying their anti-Brazilian agitation, and there recently had been an influx of returning volunteers from Spain. There was talk,

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too, of a meeting that Costa Leite might have presided over, and apparently, Ribeiro told Muller, other Brazilian Communists planned to gather in Chile, making it one of their headquarters.56 Cruz corresponded with Muller in crude code, using the nom de guerre "José" for the police chief. Late in July 1939 he commented on the political wars between the Left and Right in Chile, reported the continued arrival of Spanish civil war veterans, and suggested that Muller keep a close eye on the ships of a certain steamship company that was favored, he said, by Communists for clandestine contacts and mail deliveries in Brazil. Signing his letter "Alvares," Cruz informed Muller in August of a recent labor congress in Chile at which a socialist delegate from Argentina had excoriated Muller and the Vargas regime. A suspicious Mexican delegate planned to travel to Brazil, he cautioned. From that report Muller also learned that Cruz had established contact with Guimarães in Buenos Aires. Additional communications reached Rio de Janeiro from Valparaiso addressed to "Zeca," presumably another code name used by Muller, and signed "Victoriano." The content was similar to those of reports sent by Cruz, with the same general message: Chile rapidly was emerging as a radiating hub of radical influence in the Southern Cone.57 Ribeiro's unexpected transfer by Itamaraty to Lima in December 1939 left Cruz and "Alvares" on their own. Cruz in 1940 apparently made various trips to Buenos Aires, and it was with him that Muller corresponded regarding improvement of operations there. The efforts of Brazilian authorities to enhance counterintelligence capabilities both in Brazil and in adjacent countries appear to have been reasonably successful. Communist leaders, at any rate, showed a wary respect for the regime's network of agents and informants. When Domingos Brás, the only member of the PCB's Central Committee still at large in February 1941, dispatched João Falcão to consult the Comintern's South American Bureau in Buenos Aires, he admonished him to exercise extreme caution so as to avoid the "secret service" in southern Brazil and along the Uruguayan border. When Falcão reached Montevideo, he learned from a contact in the Uruguayan Communist party that a Brazilian comrade had been killed recently near the border, presumably by security police cooperating with Brazilian authorities. The Uruguayan urged Falcão to steer clear of one particular hotel in Montevideo because it was a "focal point of espionage by Filinto Muller's secret police." The PCB emissary arrived in Buenos Aires in March and immediately sought out Ghioldi to present a detailed report on the situation in Brazil, stressing the police-state atmosphere. Ghioldi decided to arrange a

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meeting of the bureau to discuss that report; in the meantime, he insisted that Falcão not contact any other Brazilians "because Buenos Aires was infested with Vargas' spies." Days later Falcão was summoned to a conclave of the bureau—a Russian representative of the Comintern was present—and repeated his report. The bureau's instructions were for him to return to Brazil and help reconstruct the party, "brick by brick," using the Bahian regional committee as a foundation. "We should by all means avoid contact with the party organizations in Rio and São Paulo, which the CI [Communist International] believed infiltrated by the police because of so many and so frequent arrests of their directors," Falcão remembered the bureau's having stressed. Those fears seemed vindicated when Falcão, on his way back to Bahia, passed through São Paulo at the precise time the local DOPS was making its latest roundup of PCB members.58 In a speech delivered a year after establishment of the Estado Novo, Vargas candidly acknowledged that the only country toward which Brazil bore animus was the USSR. While manning the barricades and waging a secret war in the Southern Cone, therefore, his government aimed a steady barrage of hostile propaganda at Moscow. Axis hopes that Rio de Janeiro would join the Anti-Comintern Pact went unfulfilled, but Brazilian authorities were keenly interested in German cooperation in the propaganda field. Justice Minister Campo sent an intermediary to sound the new German ambassador, Karl Ritter, in that regard in December 1937, then himself confidentially broached with Ritter the possibility of Berlin's assisting him to set up an anti-Comintern exhibit in Rio de Janeiro, explaining that Vargas was "very desirous" of such aid. The government would like propaganda materials, said Campos, and also wanted to send agents to Germany to study more thoroughly the Reich's anti-Communist methods. The Wilhelmstrasse consulted the Ministry of Propaganda, which responded with enthusiasm and then late in January 1938 flashed a green light to Ritter. Discussions then proceeded at the diplomatic level—the government did not intend to reveal the origins of the materials used, Itamaraty assured Berlin—and the exhibit eventually opened that year.59 Meanwhile, federal authorities prosecuted the war of words against Moscow with vigorous determination. A typical contribution of Lourival Fontes' National Propaganda Department was a pamphlet published in 1938, 20 Years of Tragic Experience: The Truth about Soviet Russia, which sternly excoriated the Stalin regime and Soviet system. In the year of the Anschluss and Czech-German crisis that led to the Munich Conference, the author of the tract could declare,

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after pointing to the Comintern's apparent activism in South America, that the "Red creed, spread everywhere by agents of the Comintern, . . . represents the most serious cause of international unrest at the present time." Carvalho e Souza, Itamaraty's expert on communism, brought out that same year a fat volume, Komintern, in which she warned of the "constant danger" of Communist insurrection; moreover, throughout 1938 she continued her personal crusade, with the blessings of Itamaraty, by writing anti-Soviet articles for the Correio da Manhã. Vargas' new minister of labor, Waldemar Falcão, who took up his duties two weeks after the proclamation of the Estado Novo, also published a book in 1938, Against AntiChristian Communism, which included speeches he had made attacking Soviet doctrine and policies.60 The Federal District police had a publicity department that set anti-Soviet propaganda as one of its primary tasks. "The Brazilian government. . . had just assumed leadership of the war against communism in South America," it proclaimed in a communiqué issued late in November 1937, a week after it had announced a special series of articles aimed at countering the "hundreds of thousands of lies" emanating from the Kremlin. The articles, printed in the carioca press, assailed Communist doctrine and propaganda, stressed that the workers' democracy was in truth a savage dictatorship, publicized the purge trials, and scored the Kremlin's campaign against organized religion. In a special pamphlet released in March 1938, police publicists emphasized that the pre-1917 role of the Soviet dictator within the Russian Communist party had been to raise money by stealing it from banks.61 An extraordinary thing about police propaganda and a practice that suggests the depth of Filinto Muller's antagonism toward the Communists was that he actually went so far as to forge documents and have them published as intercepted materials. The head of the publicity department, one Colaço Veras, revealed this in a confidential talk with a German propaganda agent named Otto Oehlke in January 1938. The contact at that juncture originated in Muller's apparent decision to build on his past cooperation with the Gestapo and pursue an independent understanding with Reich propaganda authorities. Veras, self-described as an intimate friend of the chief of police, was his go-between with Oehlke, who handled antiComintern publicity in Rio de Janeiro for Berlin. Presumably to impress Oehlke with his superior's anti-Communist zeal, Veras made a candid confession: "I have in my possession notes in the chief's handwriting; 'Communist' documents that we publish and that never came from Communist sources," he said. "Revelation of this

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fact would send my chief to hell." In Muller's name, Veras pointed out that for foreign policy reasons Brazil could not link up with the Axis (i.e., sign the Anti-Comintern Pact), nor could the carioca police cooperate officially with the Anti-Comintern Bureau in Berlin. "For us," Veras complained, "there are only two powers: American capital and the American fleet." What Muller wanted, therefore, was an informal, secret arrangement for the transmission of antiCommunist materials. Oehlke drew up two memoranda on his talks with Veras for Ambassador Ritter, who forwarded them to Berlin.62 What came of the demarche is not known. With the creation of the Departamento de Imprensa e Propaganda (DIP), or Department Press and Propaganda, in January 1940 the regime further centralized management of its verbal war against the USSR. The DIP cooperated closely with the police in publicizing what it considered the evils of communism and the Stalin regime and in underscoring the methods of the Comintern. The trial of Prestes and other PCB leaders in April 1940 for the murder of Elza Fernandes was occasion for a well-orchestrated propaganda blitz crowned by a DIP-produced documentary short, released in May, which showed the exhumation of her remains and the confessions of Prestes' comrades.63 Acerbic press criticism of the barbarity of "Red Russia" and the "cold ferocity" and "revolting moral insensitivity" of the local Communists helped to build the climate of opinion that the government sought. A year later, following the crushing of the São Paulo branch of the PCB, Fontes promoted widespread publicity, personally attending the press conference at which Muller announced the development and encouraging newspapers to exploit this latest evidence of Communist tenacity—assistance that elicited warm praise from the chief of police.64 The anniversary of the 1935 uprising in Rio de Janeiro became the major single occasion for official anti-Soviet and anti-Communist demonstrations. Ceremonies were held on that specific anniversary for the first time in 1938, and they quickly were institutionalized. Typically there were speakers representing the army, navy, and the government at what became the annual congregation at the São João Baptista cemetery. Góes Monteiro spoke for the army in 1939, assailing the "handful of lunatics, trained by foreign agents," who had attempted to implant communism in Brazil at the behest of the "monsters" who controlled the USSR. For his part, General Dutra issued a special order-of-the-day in which he called for a permanent alert against a permanent threat. Campos spoke for the administration that year and again in 1940; on the latter occasion, a mausoleum to hold the remains of the officers who had died in 1935 was

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inaugurated at the cemetery, with Vargas and the entire cabinet in attendance. General Firmo Freire do Nascimento, head of the presidential Military Household, voiced the sentiment of the army high command when he called for a "barrier of steel" to spare future generations the "infectious virus" of communism.65 In the face of leftist criticism of the Estado Novo in adjacent countries, Muller took his counterpropaganda campaign to the international level. A Chilean congressman who was taking a strong stand against communism in mid-1940 seemed to be a useful ally, so the police chief arranged to send him anonymously a copy of the official DOPS report on the intentona in the hope it would provide ammunition for the congressman's campaign. The noisy protests launched in November by the radical Left, particularly in Argentina and Chile, against the lengthening of Prestes7 sentence brought a prompt response from Muller. He had packets of documents and photographs prepared showing that the Communist rebel had received a fair trial and forwarded them to the diplomatic missions in Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Santiago, and Lima to be used to counter the leftist propaganda. Early in 1941 he urged Vargas' brother, who served as informal liaison between the police and Catete Palace, to have favorable press clippings distributed in neighboring countries so that the "liars who serve the Third International will stop spreading so many falsehoods about the prisoner Luís Carlos Prestes." Campos, too, worried about the regime's image abroad—Brazil was being depicted as the "black sheep of America," he complained to Vargas—and insisted in mid-1941 on a more intensive public relations effort in the Southern Cone.66 Censorship was another important weapon in the crusade against bolshevism. The police department, in charge of monitoring the press until January 1940, sought to suppress anything that might be construed as favorable to Russia or communism—at the same time that it blessed articles that attacked the Soviet Union. The hostility demonstrated by the major dailies toward the USSR thus reflected not only editorial, but official, sentiments. The transfer of responsibility for censorship to Fontes and the DIP obviously spelled no change in policy. The decree that Vargas signed on December 30, 1939, establishing the new agency made it a crime to attempt to discredit civil or military authorities and to publish anything with the goal of provoking "social class conflicts,"67 a provision clearly aimed at the Communists. Although open advocacy by Communists in the printed media was out of the question, there were a number of reporters on the staffs of influential newspapers who were party members or fellow travelers; therefore, the PCB was able to have ad-

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dressed, albeit with great caution and discretion, issues of significance to it. Censorship muffled Communist propaganda but did not eradicate it. The party scored one significant triumph when it gained editorial control of Diretrizes, an important monthly political review, which first appeared in March 1938 under the direction of fellow traveler Samuel Wainer. Communists and sympathizers were frequent contributors, and Astrojildo Pereira, a charter member of the PCB, sat on the editorial council. PCB spokesmen recommended to Wainer that the review champion a united, antifascist front and maneuvered him into allowing secret party member Octávio Malta to determine the editorial position. Wainer later confessed that he had been "controlled" by the Communists during this period, and it was because of them that Diretrizes softened its criticism of Nazi Germany after Moscow and Berlin announced their nonaggression pact in August 1939. Police censors kept a watchful eye on the review, especially after it carried an article on the Spanish civil war that pointed to popular resistance to Nationalist armies; in fact, they began requiring Wainer to submit all articles for clearance prior to publication. He made a strategic move by persuading the poetess-wife of Lourival Fontes to accept appointment to the review's editorial council, which extended its life beyond original expectations. Wainer also aired the views of more conservative writers, and he cultivated high administration figures, such as Minister of Education Gustavo Capanema, whom he invited to do a piece late in 1939. Muller warned Capanema that the PCB's Political Bureau recommended the review to party faithful. "That magazine does not candidly defend Marxist points of view because the police would not allow it," Muller informed Capanema, "but almost all of its articles are channeled toward creating a clearly leftist climate."68 Another monthly magazine, Seiva, launched in Bahia in December 1938, was actually a PCB project, planned by the regional committee and edited by João Falcão. To throw censors off the scent, the committee decided that the magazine should take the form of a literary review and include articles by conservative writers. While publicly shouldering responsibility for Seiva, Falcão continued his clandestine work, sending reports written in secret inks to the South American Bureau in Buenos Aires, and for some time he managed to avoid problems with the DOPS and keep clashes with censors within manageable bounds.69 Obviously the Vargas regime sought during this period to keep Brazil insulated from contact with the Soviet Union. Middle-level analysts at Itamaraty in 1938 discreetly lamented the lack of more

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direct information on Soviet policy, but at no point did they contemplate proposing a restoration of any official ties. The boycott against suspicious visitors was rigorously maintained: when the embassy in Buenos Aires sounded Itamaraty in June about granting visas to two Russian entertainers who wanted to go to Brazil, it denied permission, a step applauded by Muller. There likewise was no serious thought, at high levels, of relaxing the ban on trade. Macedo Soares cautioned Vargas in the early weeks of the Estado Novo that the Comintern used exporters as a conduit for smuggling propaganda materials into other countries, but the warning was superfluous. The appearance of Carvalho e Souza's Komintern was occasion for public reaffirmation of the regime's arguments against commerce with the USSR, and when the São Paulo Industrial Federation wanted to respond to a bid from a Soviet representative in New York in July 1938, Itamaraty refused authorization. General Dutra spoke for the high command in taking a resolute stand against the idea of trade with the USSR. Any such contact, he told Vargas in May 1939, would have the "gravest consequences" for the nation. The uncertainty prevailing in traditional European markets because of the international crisis led coffee exporters in Santos to query Itamaraty in June about possible shipments to the Soviet Union, but Itamaraty's response was simply to instruct the embassy in Berlin to watch Soviet commercial trends and report on any developments that might spell financial benefit for Brazil. The war subsequently crippled Brazil's trade with Europe, leading a commercial expert in Berlin to suggest to Vargas in December that the USSR might become an "excellent customer" for coffee, cotton, and rubber; however, Vargas apparently never replied to his request for permission to contact Soviet authorities.70 At the international level, one prewar issue on which Rio de Janeiro could demonstrate its hostility toward Moscow was the Spanish civil war. The Vargas regime delayed recognizing the Nationalist government but only because, as the American embassy correctly surmised in September 1938, it did not want to "displease" Washington. In the meantime, Itamaraty lodged sharp protests with Republican authorities, whom Brazilian observers saw as minions of the USSR, about such things as the transmission of Communist propaganda materials through the mails, threatening to sever postal ties. Muller urged state officials to keep Republican consuls under surveillance because they were "dangerous" to Brazilian institutions.71 Rio de Janeiro in March 1939 finally extended recognition to Franco, whose triumph it regarded as a major blow to the Kremlin's plans. One fundamental problem now facing the Spanish govern-

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ment, said the Brazilian chargé, was that the population of Madrid had been "profoundly corroded by Marxist poison."72 A cardinal principle of Vargas7 foreign policy during 1939-1941 was to avoid taking open sides in the European quarrel, but when it came to the USSR, there was no neutrality. The Russo-Finnish war created an opportunity to take a stand, albeit a small one, and the regime did not hesitate. While the press attacked Soviet imperialism and applauded its expulsion from the League of Nations, Aranha, on instructions from Vargas, called in the Finnish minister to express Brazil's moral solidarity with Finland, making that gesture public on December 5, 1939. Later that month Aranha released a communiqué stating that Brazil had joined in a collective protest by Latin American governments against Soviet aggression, and in mid-January 1940 he assured the League of Nations that Rio de Janeiro would lend "all its prestige to any initiative by private parties aimed at supporting Finland." Two weeks later Vargas made a material gesture of support by donating ten thousand sacks of coffee to the Finnish Red Cross.73 As they watched events unfold in Europe in 1940, Brazilian officials became increasingly fearful of the long-range consequences of European turmoil and pondered possible diplomatic steps to help prevent Soviet expansion. Ambassador Freitas-Valle in Berlin was so concerned, even before the "phony war" yielded to blitzkrieg, that in private communications to Brazil he expressed hopes for a compromise settlement—"a peace at any price," he candidly put it to Vargas in February—in order to prevent an eventual Soviet tidal wave, an argument he repeated to Aranha early in March. The ambassador recognized the danger of German suzerainty over Europe, but the option, he suggested in another letter to Aranha in April, was the "risk, which seems inevitable, of the bolshevization of this country and with it perhaps all Europe." The Soviet Union's absorption of the Baltic states in midyear and other signals of its expansionist ambitions removed any doubts Freitas-Valle had about the somber alternatives: "Either Germany will win or communism will dominate Europe," he wrote forcefully in August.74 To the policymakers in Rio de Janeiro, the march of events was equally unsettling. "I am beginning to fear for our fate, given the attitude of Russia, which seems to be that of matching the appetites and plans of the 'Eurasian Axis,'" Aranha wrote privately in October. Earlier that year, Freitas-Valle had informed both Itamaraty and Vargas that he had learned that Franklin Roosevelt himself was alarmed by the possibility that communism would spread across a prostrate Europe. Could that mean that the American leader might be willing to step in to try to bring the war to a negotiated conclu-

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sion? Vargas hoped so, and when his ambassador in Washington, Carlos Martins Pereira e Souza, went home on leave in December, the chief executive discussed the matter with him and decided to have Martins discreetly broach with the State Department the possibility of American mediation. On his return to Washington, Martins talked to Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Undersecretary Sumner Welles, telling them of Vargas' concern about the Soviet threat. Both American officials, however, quickly dismissed the idea of peace moves, and the subject was dropped.75 The cautious attempt to encourage mediation by Washington reflected official preoccupation in Rio de Janeiro with the likely fate of Europe—and by extension the Western Hemisphere—if the Red Army at some point stood facing a devastated, impotent Europe. To Brazilian policymakers the USSR represented a permanent threat to civilization, as events in Europe during the first three years of the Estado Novo seemed to have demonstrated. The period had been a grave one, and in their view, it had become all the more dangerous because of the Kremlin's determination to spread subversion throughout the world. Had Moscow not callously attempted to perpetuate the civil war in Spain? Had the Stalin regime not cynically taken advantage of European distress in 1939, even to the point of combining with Nazi Germany to dismember Poland? Did not Soviet aggression against Finland and annexation of the Baltic states, as well as the grabbing of Rumanian territory, reveal Moscow's real intentions? The tenacious proselytizing by Communists inside Brazil, their efforts to exploit the stresses engendered by the war, and the systematic anti-Estado Novo propaganda drive spearheaded by Communists in other South American countries confirmed the official judgment that the government had acted judiciously in intensifying its preventive and repressive campaign. Indeed, in mid-1941 it seemed inconceivable to the Brazilian foreign policy elite that anything but a tough anti-Soviet stance would best serve national interests. Adolf Hitler's Operation Barbarossa and its aftermath forced a painful reappraisal of that conviction.

8. Global Conflict and Rapprochement (1941-1945)

World War had an unexpected impact on BrazilianSoviet relations. The furthest thing from the minds of Brazilian policymakers in mid-1941 was a reconciliation with the Soviet Union, but wartime circumstances propelled the Vargas government in that direction. Rio de Janeiro's severance of relations with the Axis after Pearl Harbor and its declaration of war in August 1942 were milestones in a program of intense cooperation with the United States that began in 1940 and culminated in the dispatch of an expeditionary force to Italy in 1944, making Brazil the only Latin American country to contribute troops to the European theater. That collaboration brought unprecedented rewards in the form of wide-ranging, preferential material and political support from Washington.1 The dividends paid by the special relationship with the United States dramatically bolstered Brazil's military and economic position in South America and markedly raised the level of international ambition of Brazilian strategists, who saw at hand the day their country would be recognized as South America's voice in world councils. The conflict, however, had an even more momentous effect on the international status of the USSR, whose surprising military prowess brought it enormous influence in Allied forums. The Kremlin, moreover, abolished the Comintern in 1943, apparently jettisoning its interventionist foreign policy. The Vargas regime, as a consequence, while remaining firmly anti-Communist, was compelled to reassess its policy toward the Soviet Union in order to protect Brazil's postwar position, a process encouraged by the growing domestic pressures for political liberalization. THE SECOND

The Russo-German conflict profoundly influenced Brazilian perceptions of the USSR. The general expectation, when the Wehrmacht invaded that country on June 22, 1941, was that the Red Army would be easily defeated. Only two months before, one edi-

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torialist had predicted that Soviet forces would be "crushed in a few weeks" if they had to battle the Reich; indeed, stated another observer a week before Barbarossa, the Stalin regime would disintegrate for lack of popular support if it came to war. The initial reaction to the German attack was hostility and scorn for the Soviet Union. Given the dire state of the USSR—"its army without officers, its industry without efficiency and organizations, . . . a grim regime based on tyranny and the terror of mass executions"—what could be expected of it on the battlefield? the Diário de Notícias wondered on June 24. "The army, composed of irregular troops, with no discipline, without the courage that usually only an ideal gives, is nothing more than a confused band of janissaries," agreed another analyst. The early reports from Ambassador Freitas-Valle in Berlin told of a German confidence that was convincing, and subsequent communications indicated that Berlin was having considerable success in mobilizing support throughout Europe for its titanic crusade.2 Within a month, however, the news reaching Rio de Janeiro suggested an incredible tenacity and combativeness on the part of Russian troops. The embassy in Berlin on July 29 called Itamaraty's attention to the Red Army's "bloody defense and furious counterattacks," while Ambassador Souza Dantas in Vichy, after talking to French officers back from an observation tour of the front, reported that they had been struck by the "fanaticism" and bravery of Soviet units. Ambassador Carlos Martins in Washington marveled at the "unprecedented display of Muscovite armed might," and the legation in Helsinki noted the ferocity and persistence of the Soviet air counteroffensive. Almost daily headlines in the carioca press in ensuing weeks suggested the same story: a seemingly superhuman resistance by the Soviet Union. The Red Army stopped the first German offensive short of its objectives, thwarting the invaders at Leningrad and launching a counterattack at Moscow in the winter of 1941-42 that drove them back from the Soviet capital. For the Diário Carioca, the Battle of Moscow represented a "death sentence" for the Reich, and the Correio da Manilã's headline on January 11, 1942, announced: "German Army Withdrawal Assumes Character of True Defeat."3 The Wehrmacht's second offensive, launched in mid-1942 and dramatized by the investment of Stalingrad, kept international attention riveted on the eastern front. Brazil broke relations with Germany and Italy in August, and the carioca press cautiously exulted in the stubborn defense put up by Soviet troops. "Russian resistance has increased and is being consolidated on all fronts," the Jornal do Brasil proclaimed in August. Seven weeks later the editor-in-chief of

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the Correio da Manhã, Pedro Costa Rego, wrote solemnly: "There is nobody in the world who does not recognize the moving bravery of the Russian soldier, and all revere the value of Russia's military organization." Indeed, confided the financial attaché in New York in a private letter written in November, as Soviet troops were enveloping the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad, the "epic resistance of the Russians compels admiration even from a hardheaded, old-fashioned bourgeois like me." In January 1943, as the Red Army was crushing the last German pockets at Stalingrad, a diplomat in Madrid stressed to Vargas the staggering losses of the Wehrmacht in the East. "The resistance offered at Petrograd [i.e., Leningrad], Moscow, and Stalingrad has astonished the world," he pondered. The surrender of the remnants of the Sixth Army early in February led one editorialist in Rio de Janeiro to hail Stalingrad as an "expression of indomitable resistance." 4 Following Stalingrad came the relief of Leningrad and then the great tank battle at Kursk. The USSR was now the "most feared power in Europe," Ambassador Martins ventured in August 1943, after the German attackers at Kursk had been driven back. "Its extraordinary military power is fruit of its immense demographic wealth and economy, and its surprising industrial and warmaking organizational capacity," added Vasco Leitão da Cunha, a future foreign minister. The Soviet high command, determined to drive the Wehrmacht out of Russia, next launched in October what the Diário Carioca called the "greatest offensive in history," and from that point on the Red tide was inexorable. "The successes achieved by the Russian army in recent times have been on such a scale," one observer commented in February 1944, "that public opinion regards them as the culminating events of the present war, relegating to a secondary plane the developments on other fronts throughout the world." From his vantage point in London, Ambassador Moniz de Aragão watched with grudging admiration as Soviet forces moved relentlessly through eastern Europe that spring and summer. "The Soviet armies, with an extraordinary effort, have not only liberated almost all of Russian territory," he pointed out in September, "but they are expelling the Germans from southern Europe and have already reached the eastern borders of the Reich."5 If Soviet belligerency modified Brazilian perceptions of the USSR's internal cohesion and military capabilities, it also led to another development with significant political implications: the integration of the Soviet Union into the Anglo-American war effort. An analyst for the Jornal do Brasil wondered late in June 1941 at the alacrity with which Washington and London moved to show solidarity with Mos-

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cow, and the contradictory character, but strategic necessity, of the emerging alliance was a frequent theme of dispatches from Martins that summer. Neither the subversive program of the American Communist Party nor the "incongruity" of supporting a brutal dictatorship in the name of liberty were preventing the Franklin Roosevelt administration from adopting a "policy of immediate moral and political aid to Russia with the promise of material assistance," he reported at the end of July. As Soviet resistance exceeded expectations, the White House accelerated shipments of Lend-Lease materiel, and public opinion in the United States began abruptly to moderate its former antagonism toward the USSR. Aid to the unexpected ally, Martins commented in September, was "endorsed by the most respected and discreet authorities in the country." American belligerency after Pearl Harbor resulted in massive assistance to the Soviet Union and what Martins labeled in June 1942 a "complete military alliance" between Washington and Moscow. The Kremlin's decision in May 1943 to abolish the Comintern seemingly removed a major impediment to even fuller coordination of Allied strategies. American public opinion, wrote the consul in New York, hailed that act as a contribution to victory "surpassed only by the heroism of Russian troops" and one that would dilute conservative opposition to greater aid to the USSR. When Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Sir Anthony Eden journeyed to Moscow in October of that year for a wellpublicized conference with their Soviet counterpart, V. M. Molotov, Brazilian observers "enthusiastically" welcomed the display of wartime unity. "The United Nations have won the greatest battle of the war at Moscow," exclaimed one editorialist. The historic meeting of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at Teheran the following month indeed suggested that a new era in international politics might be at hand.6 But what was the foundation of this unexpected alignment of forces? Coordinating war policies was one thing and reconciling profound political, social, economic, and ideological differences was another. The Brazilian foreign policy elite was deeply impressed by Soviet military prowess and recognized that Moscow had a rightful place in secret Allied councils, but it also realized that it was a marriage of convenience—if not a shotgun wedding. The Kremlin, after all, had not undergone a radical transformation of character simply because the Wehrmacht had invaded. To be sure, how could "Muscovite ideology" be reconciled with the Atlantic Charter? the chargé in Washington asked in mid-1942. From Helsinki in the spring of 1943 came a message that seemed in character: Radio Moscow had threatened the Finnish people with being "wiped off the face of the

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earth," a threat given credibility by discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest where Soviet troops had massacred Polish army officers. Protests by the Polish government-in-exile prompted the Kremlin to sever relations with it and set up a puppet regime instead. Costa Rego, who had been sounding an alert about Soviet expansionism, criticized Moscow for the "scandalous injustice" of its policy toward Poland—which recalled German methods at Munich, he declared in April. The chasm separating the USSR from the West was the subject of frequent reports by Martins, who warned in August that the Kremlin wanted to dominate Europe and was thus pursuing goals "diametrically opposed" to those of Washington and London. "The zones of antagonism and friction between Russia and the Anglo-American powers can no longer be hidden or dissipated," Lourival Fontes, the former censorship director, cautioned Vargas. The London embassy repeatedly stressed Soviet obstructionism, suspiciousness, and expansionist impulse, pointing to the case of Poland in January 1944 as an example of Moscow's seeking "imperialistic hegemony" over neighboring states. Stalin, the ambassador in Madrid put it in midyear, "dreams of a mission for Russia today analogous to that of France during the Revolution."7 What did all this mean for Brazil? From the outset authorities in Rio de Janeiro worried about the internal repercussions of Soviet participation in the war, fearing a potentially dangerous upsurge of Communist activities. Both Aranha and the secretary general of Itamaraty expressed their uneasiness in that regard to the British ambassador almost as soon as word arrived of the German attack on the USSR in June 1941. As Soviet resistance stiffened, reports from some regions of Brazil—the far North, for example—of sudden "great enthusiasm and elation" among Communists, who were intensifying their propaganda effort, heightened disquiet in policymaking circles. Filinto Muller put his department on extended alert and admonished state police about the need for close coordination of security measures. The police chief in São Paulo made a trip to the federal capital in August to confer with Muller, declaring later that their two organizations were now fully integrated for the battle against "extremism." Notes from Itamaraty relaying information that suggested a recrudescence of Communist agitation in neighboring countries and continued Comintern interest in Brazil reinforced concern within Ministry of Justice agencies. "The Communist danger today is greater than ever because the war . . . may transform itself into revolution at any moment," Muller publicly warned in mid-November.8

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Minister of War Dutra's preoccupation with the perceived Red challenge bordered on obsession. In mid-July 1941 he urged the Ministry of Justice to stop the "scurrilous infiltration" of Communist propaganda materials from Argentina and Uruguay, and then in October he sent a special circular to army commanders calling attention to a revival of radical activities. The following month, on the anniversary of the intentona, he addressed a bulletin to the troops insisting on obdurate resistance to communism. "The slightest compromise," he admonished, "is weakness, is treason, is a crime." General Salvador Obino, official spokesman for the army at the annual ceremony, was markedly harsh in his condemnation of Moscow's "satanical work of destruction," which he judged "much more dangerous" than any other external pressure facing Brazil.9 Continued discussion within the security community of the need to improve the state's counterintelligence capabilities reflected the rising level of concern. Through Napoleão Alencastro Guimarães, the regime's former special observer in Buenos Aires, who had been transferred to Washington the previous year, Muller early in 1941 had requested copies of American legislation on counterespionage and found the material he received "very useful" for his operations. Hoping to gain additional insights into Comintern techniques, he also asked Guimarães to secure a copy of a book by a former Comintern agent that contained references to Arthur Ewert, and in November he asked for volumes on American intelligence services. Meanwhile, the Conselho de Segurança Nacional (CSN) had endorsed General Góes Monteiro's long-standing proposal for an expanded Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) as an adjunct to the Army General Staff with sufficient resources to set up a "system of active counterespionage. The Conselho balked, however, at his concept of an SIS that not only gathered intelligence but controlled operational forces too. Monteiro sent instructions to regional commanders in October 1941 on the organization of SIS branches, telling them to maintain close liaison with police and postal authorities and authorizing wiretaps on suspicious individuals. Encouraged by the support he was now receiving and ever given to schemes involving greater state monitoring of society, the chief of staff by year-end was thinking of an even broader "Secret National Security Service" with responsibilities for not only intelligence and counterespionage work but propaganda and other unspecified tasks as well. Dutra, meanwhile, called on Muller to help organize a "system of surveillance and intelligence" in northeastern cities to counter the activities of Communists and other dissidents.10 Although desire and intentions outstripped means, the Ministry of Justice was anxious to cooperate in

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building a more efficient security apparatus. In response to the CSN's recommendation that it devise a system of "active counterespionage in closest coordination with the military ministries," at the end of 1941 the ministry set up a National Security Section to coordinate its internal security operations and serve as a liaison with the war and navy ministries.11 Muller remained particularly concerned about Brazil's defense perimeter in the La Plata area, where Communist-inspired agitation regarding Prestes had intensified with the German invasion of the USSR. Days after the onset of hostilities on the eastern front, he wrote to Ambassador Lusardo in Montevideo urging him to be more aggressive in attempting to impede leftist demonstrations against Brazil. The carioca police chief was upset because the Uruguayan government had not cracked down on the agitators—"The echo of the Communist and petty liberal propaganda made against us there is a loud one," he complained—so while the DIP allowed the Brazilian press to criticize Uruguayan authorities, he prodded Lusardo to make further demarches regarding what he saw as a scurrilous Comintern maneuver. "The vile methods used by the Communists to achieve their execrable goals . . . no longer surprise me," he wrote early in 1942. "They display an unmatched lack of scruples and resort to any means to impose their repudiated ideology." Muller also continued his efforts to strengthen relations with the Uruguayan and Argentine police, sending César Garcez on a second trip to the La Plata region in August 1941. Two months later the new head of the carioca DOPS, Eurico Bellens Porto, went to Buenos Aires on a weeks-long mission of consultation. In response to a request for technical assistance from Paraguayan authorities, moreover, Muller dispatched two officers, one a DOPS detective, on what turned out to be an assignment that lasted several months. The two Brazilian agents developed extensive contacts in Paraguayan police and military circles, which facilitated an exchange of information between Muller and his counterpart in Asunción on the activities of political exiles and the movement of suspected Communists.12 Soviet success in stopping the initial German invasion short of Moscow, coupled with the rapid consolidation of the AmericanRussian alliance following Pearl Harbor, seemingly gave strong impetus to Communist activities at home, a development scrutinized with mounting disquiet by the army high command in the early months of 1942. In a memorandum to Vargas late in February, Dutra declared that communism was one of the main problems facing the army, and by midyear, after months of newspaper headlines about the heroism of the Red Army, his sensitivity to perceived leftist

Global Conflict and Rapprochement (1941 -1945) propaganda seemed to reach new levels. His frustration bubbled over in June. In a lengthy letter to the chief executive he asked him to give "special attention" to the Communist threat, complaining that the "corrosive work of Communist propaganda . . . , under the excellent pretext of the war, . . . is daily gaining greater expression, volume, and aggressiveness." The situation, he concluded, was "truly grave and serious."13 In the face of this pressure, the government moved to tighten the reins. Muller confided on June 17 that he was about to launch a "great campaign" against Reds throughout the country, and with Vargas7 counsel, he coordinated measures with Major Olinto de Almeida França, the secretary of public security in São Paulo, who went to Rio de Janeiro for consultation regarding the "energetic" anti-Communist drive in the offing. Dutra put regional commanders on alert with a secret personal note on June 18, underscoring the upsurge of Communist propaganda and venting in scathing terms his animosity toward the "pseudo social leaders" and "literary hacks" who were serving the "same malignant Soviet organization that, as in 1935, is ably preparing the bolshevization of Brazil." The projected crackdown amounted only to closer monitoring of the press and further curbs on public rallies and demonstrations. Muller's unexpected resignation early in July as a result of a sharp clash with Leitão da Cunha, then acting minister of justice—an incident that resulted, too, in the resignations of Francisco Campos and DIP chief Lourival Fontes—slowed execution down; however, Vargas was careful to appoint an army colonel, Alcides Etchegoyen, to replace Muller, and as the new director of the DIP he designated a major who had served as head of the army's secret service the previous year. Muller's experience was not lost to the anti-Communist cause: Dutra quickly made room for him on his staff, and shortly thereafter, undoubtedly because of his alertness to signs of Communist infiltration of labor unions, Muller was appointed director of the National Labor Council. Meanwhile, security forces kept a tight watch over suspected antiregime groups. At year-end, after receiving reports from commanders in both the far North and far South about pro-Soviet activities, Dutra again took the matter up with Vargas.14 Those responsible for state security exaggerated the dimensions of the challenge, but the evolution of the war had given strong impetus to the activities of Communists, whose primary task was to rebuild a shattered party. Prodded by the Comintern's South American Bureau, which still believed that the organizations in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo had been heavily infiltrated by the police, João Falcão and his comrades in Bahia had taken the lead in promoting the crea-

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tion of a secretariat for the Northeast to serve as the kernel of a rebuilt national party; but less than two weeks later, shortly before Christmas 1941, the police in Salvador and Recife crushed the regional committees in those two capitals, arresting most of the members and driving the remainder into hiding or, like Falcão, into exile. Brazil's break with the Axis in January 1942 and ensuing incidents on the high seas between German submarines and Brazilian ships, however, rapidly catalyzed public opinion against Nazi Germany, opening up new opportunities that the bureau wanted to exploit. As a consequence, Communists living in exile began filtering back into the country to aid in revived organizational and agitational efforts. Vargas' declaration of war in August led to the return of scores of exiled Communists, including many Spanish civil war veterans. Several party members have recalled their attempts to take advantage of Brazil's belligerency to promote their cause. The turning of the tide on the eastern front in the early months of 1943 understandably was a fillip, and through such organizations as the National Student Union, the newly formed Sociedade dos Amigos da America (SAA) or Friends of America Society, and a resurrected and much more liberal League for National Defense, Communist activists pressed their propaganda campaign ostensibly on behalf of the United Nations but aimed also at weakening the dictatorship at home. Their efforts were not coordinated on a national basis, since the party remained a seriously divided one, with rival regional groups claiming to represent it. A start was made toward a new national structure in August 1943 when fourteen delegates met to set up a National Committee and proclaim Prestes as its secretary general. Even so, effective party unity would have to wait until the war was over.15 It was thus with an eye as much on Soviet progress on the battlefields as on any concrete signs of a serious internal threat that Brazilian leaders assessed the problem. Dutra cautioned that Stalin's gesture of dissolving the Comintern in May 1943 was probably just an opportunistic move designed to mask continued Soviet intrigue abroad, and subsequent reports from regional commanders seemed to confirm that suspicion. The American embassy, impressed late that year with the "renewed" attentiveness of Brazilian authorities to Communist activities, correctly attributed it to fear that the advance of the Red Army in Europe was resuscitating the menace of domestic subversion. Pondering the implications of the USSR's growing military power and rising international status, a colonel on the General Staff was convinced by 1944 that the war might well carry the "virus" of "pro-Moscow sympathy" to South America. Góes Monteiro, whose poor health recently had forced him to take on the

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less demanding responsibilities of delegate to the Inter-American Political Defense Committee in Montevideo, worried constantly about the sociopolitical repercussions of the war. In an atmosphere seemingly full of "disguised Bolshevik propaganda," Uruguay's reestablishment of relations with the USSR and the subsequent arrival of the new Soviet minister, along with "numerous foreign agents," struck him as particularly ominous, and he pressed both Vargas and Aranha to strengthen internal defenses. The military attaché in Montevideo gave a confidential lecture to officers in Brazil in midyear, elaborating on Monteiro's warning: the "General Staff for communism in South America" was now operating in the Uruguayan capital. Mexico seemed to be another dangerous bridgehead for Soviet-fomented subversion. Earlier that year Ambassador Martins had cautioned Vargas that the Soviet diplomatic mission in that country was engaged in spreading communism throughout the hemisphere. The Brazilian embassy in Mexico City sent a corroborating dispatch in May 1944, a communication that Vargas passed on to Dutra, who seized the occasion to vent his never-ending anxiety about the "widespread and progressive expansion of Communist propaganda" in Brazil. The press, film, and radio were lending themselves to the conspiracy of the Communists, who had infiltrated student and civic groups, as well, he complained. In general, the situation was similar to "that of Spain in the months that preceded the civil war," he exclaimed. A month later the army leader sent another lengthy document to Vargas attacking the "progressive complacency" of government agencies vis-à-vis the threat. "The situation . . . is very similar to that which preceded the Communist revolt in November 1935. . . ," he warned solemnly.16 Given their perceptions of Communist techniques and priorities, federal authorities saw in censorship one of their chief defensive weapons. In the early stages of Barbarossa, the DIP attempted to muffle the reverberations of Soviet belligerency, instructing the press in July 1941 to handle cautiously news from the eastern front so as not to bolster the communist movement in the Americas. Brazil is neutral in the case of Great Britain, the DIP office in São Paulo told local editors, "but a belligerent country in the case of Russia." As a result—if the example of the Jornal do Brasil was typical—the press in ensuing weeks devoted headlines to the Russo-German war but engaged only infrequently in editorial comment. But the briefest of notices bothered someone like Dutra, who called in January 1942 for more rigorous censorship of the press and "repressive and preventive action" against all publicity favorable to "extremist" regimes. Five months later he wrote at length on the subject to Vargas, re-

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monstrating about the need for "greater, more intense, and better coordination of the Government's monitoring activities in everything related to the press and to publicity so that Communist propaganda, veiled or open, is forbidden in all publicity outlets in the country. . . ."17 The press was circumspect in any case, but it did slowly indulge in cautious praise of Soviet military prowess, especially after Brazil's entry into the war, which coincided with the star of the battle for Stalingrad. The Red Army's stand there, furthermore, encouraged a higher degree of tolerance on DIP's part regarding printed materials favorable to the Soviet military effort. "Various restraints on the coverage of Russian news . . . have been gradually lifted," the American embassy reported in February 1943, "and today not only is the press allowed to print praising articles and headlines . . . but admiring editorial comment is likewise allowed." That situation obtained throughout 1943 and early 1944, much to the dismay of Dutra, who railed about Communist influence on the press and insisted again on greater controls. The DIP did admonish the newspapers during this period to be "discreet" in their treatment of Soviet victories, avoiding any "sensational" headlines,18 which perhaps explains why the antiregime Diário de Notícias suddenly ceased devoting its main headline to the Red Army in mid-May 1944, after having done so for four months on an almost daily basis. The DIP also suspended one carioca newspaper because it printed passages from a manifesto attributed to Prestes.19 The publications suspected of sympathy for left-wing politics came under the closest scrutiny. The monthly "literary" review Seiva, established by the PCB's regional committee in Bahia in 1938 and edited by Falcão, triggered official wrath in mid-1943 when it carried an interview with General Manoel Rabello, president of the SAA. Rabello had aroused the resentment of military hardliners because of his complaints about the treatment of political prisoners, and his critical remarks to a Seiva reporter, a young Communist named Jacob Gorender, about the high command's handling of preparations of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force were intolerable. The result was that Gorender and Falcão were immediately arrested and the magazine was permanently closed. During this period Samuel Wainer, the left-wing editor of Diretrizes, waged his own "truceless struggle" with the censors. Early in 1943 when he requested permission from DIP to publish a piece by Mauricio Goulart, who had been imprisoned in the aftermath of the intentona as an ANL activist and recently had become Wainer's partner, the reaction was swift: the projected article was sympathetic to political dissidents, and Goulart

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would have to sever his connections with the journal or it would be proscribed. When Wainer became bold enough to publish an interview with Fernando Lacerda, a pioneer in the PCB who had spent several years in Moscow, without submitting the article for prior approval, his punishment was stern: a month in jail. The hammer fell for good in July 1944, when he asked censors to allow him to publish an article on one of Prestes' lieutenants during the march of the Column in the 1920s. Within hours Wainer received word from DIP headquarters that Diretrizes would no longer receive its quota of newsprint. Understanding the implications, he sought refuge in the Mexican embassy and subsequently went into voluntary exile in Argentina.20 The printed word, less accessible to a semiliterate mass audience, apparently bothered the DIP less than motion pictures. Since American films dominated screen time in Brazilian theaters, censors carefully excised scenes showing Russian leaders or Red Army exploits from American newsreels, which were being viewed by some 700,000 Brazilians each week by mid-1942, and they banned altogether Hollywood's feature films dealing with the USSR. In October 1942, for example, the DIP ordered scenes of Churchill in Moscow with Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov cut from a newsreel, and the following month it insisted on eliminating a sequence showing the Soviet defense minister and Soviet troops with German prisoners. The head of DIP's motion picture division explained to American officials that the newsreel could be shown in its entirety to "any Brazilian military audience but no civilians." Early in 1943 Major Coelho dos Reis, director of the DIP, refused to permit exhibition of both a "March of Time" short on the Soviet war effort and a MetroGoldwyn-Mayer short entitled The Russian People, and in following months he held firmly to that policy. At one point in October the DIP removed seventy-five feet of a newsreel on the rebuilding of Stalingrad, and only after the American embassy applied pressure did the DIP relent sufficiently to authorize scenes of the Moscow conference of foreign ministers and the Teheran Conference of the Big Three. But at the same time censors were adamant regarding the lifting of scenes of Secretary of State Hull speaking to Congress about his recent trip to Moscow because they contained short cut-ins of Soviet troops in combat.21 Hollywood's rosy portrait of the Soviet Union and its people in feature films provoked strong objections from Brazilian censors. In 1943 they banned, for example, Warner Brothers' Mission to Moscow, an apology for the Stalinist Terror of the late 1930s. At the end of that year the DIP also prohibited showing of RKO's The North

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Star, a film based on a Lillian Hellman script that had been approved by Moscow's embassy in Washington before production. Starring Walter Huston and Dana Andrews, the movie offered a romanticized view of Ukrainian peasants-turned-partisans, which Brazilian authorities found politically inconvenient. The head of RKO's Brazilian operations, Bruno Cheli, screened the film privately for Dutra and other military leaders but was unsuccessful in persuading them to order its release.22 MGM's The Story of Russia, a musical romance set against the wartime background, which starred Robert Taylor and was based on a screenplay by two writers who were members of the American Communist Party, met with a similar reception by the DIP in 1944.23 Would it allow The Battle of Russia, one of the documentaries in Frank Capra's "Why We Fight7' series produced for the War Department? Washington queried in June 1944; only for an official showing at the United States embassy was the tardy answer. An American information specialist summed up the censorship situation in general late that year by noting the continued existence of a "strong official taboo" regarding anything "faintly" sympathetic to communism.24 Treatment of imprisoned Communist leaders was another barometer of the regime's intentions. In the spring of 1943, when PCBmember Roberto Morena completed a two-year sentence imposed by the TSN, Police Chief Etchegoyen simply decided arbitrarily to keep him in preventive detention.25 The tribulations of Ewert and Prestes continued throughout the war. At the end of 1941 the Ministry of Justice had refused again to move the demented German revolutionary to facilities where he could receive better psychiatric care, agreeing with Gustavo Capanema, whose cabinet portfolio included both education and public health, that there was insufficient security at the Judicial Insane Asylum for an individual so "dangerous to public order." The only thing that was done, as a result, was to have a psychiatrist visit him in the squalid House of Correction.26 His sister's efforts to secure permission to see him were futile, although the DOPS did allow an official of the American embassy to visit Ewert in 1942; all the diplomat could do was report that the Comintern agent was mentally ill.27 Prestes was kept in relative isolation—"It would be better and more honorable to shoot him," General Rabello sympathetically opined during a session of the Supreme Military Tribunal in June 1942—and after he succeeded in smuggling a letter to Montevideo for publication there, his treatment deteriorated. In the letter he labeled Filinto Muller a "Gestapo agent" and called on Vargas to eliminate the "fifth column" in his own government. Outraged, his

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jailors placed Prestes in what his lawyer later termed a "regimen of monstrous incommunicability." Justice Minister Alexandre Marcondes Filho in May 1943 refused to allow Prestes to be transferred to a penal farm because his presence might spark a "relighting of the Communist flame" among comrades there, transforming the farm into "a Communist cell able to broadcast, through visitors, the Red creed to the general population."28 In the face of continuing appeals for Prestes7 release by leftist groups throughout the hemisphere, the government remained defiant. Aranha suggested to Marcondes Filho in November 1943 that he prepare a pamphlet on Prestes' crimes that Itamaraty could send to its diplomatic missions to counteract the Communist propaganda those appeals contained. The inclination of the minister of justice was to defy the protesters. When several Uruguayan law professors sent him a letter about Prestes, he wrote tartly to Ambassador Lusardo that he did not intend to make an official reply because neither "a few professors, nor the faculty of the Montevideo Law School, nor those of all the schools in Uruguay, nor the whole Uruguayan people, nor those of all the countries of America nor of the world have the right to ask Brazil for an accounting about something related to its internal affairs." In response to a request by Sobral Pinto, Marcondes Filho did agree to allow Prestes7 sister and daughter, who had been handed over to his mother by the Gestapo shortly after birth and whom he had never seen, to go from Mexico to Brazil. Marcondes was persuaded to do so by one of his advisers, who suggested that the sister outside Brazil was "polarizing activities against Brazilian authorities77 and that the daughter, as long as she remained abroad, would serve as a "banner and source of intrigue for agitators throughout the hemisphere.7729 Central to the regime7s anti-Communist program was the idea that wherever communism raised its nefarious head, it had to be forcefully dealt with. What worried security analysts in particular was the appearance of civic or patriotic associations that wittingly or unwittingly served as Communist front groups. Of these they judged the most dangerous to be the Sociedade dos Amigos da America. Its president, General Rabello, had aroused resentment and suspicion among military hardliners with his complaints about the treatment of Prestes. Late in December 1942, a week before inauguration of the SAA, Rabello wrote to the chief of police offering to consult the department about the political antecedents of any applicant for membership, but the potentially beneficial results of that initiative were undermined by a speech he gave in São Paulo in January 1943 in which he labeled communism a "bogey and imaginary

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hobgoblin," a remark that generated an acerbic behind-the-scenes debate with Dutra, who angrily protested to Vargas. Rabello energetically defended himself, berating the minister of war for his "obstinate and morbid preoccupation with seeing the Communist danger everywhere," but the director of the paulista DOPS warned the chief executive in January and again in April that the SAA was shielding dangerous enemies of the state whose aims were "visibly subversive." A trip to São Paulo by Rabello in May to launch the local chapter of the SAA banked the flames. At a political rally he attended, the "fireworks" were provided by a law student in an inflammatory speech. "Brimming with references to the Soviet paradise, the heroes of Stalingrad and such it brought down the house," the American consul reported. "Every mention of the USSR was followed by a demonstration." Rabello's speech the following month in Bahia criticizing the regime's war effort outraged the high command and led Dutra to conclude that the SAA and its president were Communist.30 The more liberal elements in the government supported the SAA—Foreign Minister Aranha himself was one of its vicepresidents—causing postponement of the confrontation, but by early 1944 pressures from security managers for a dramatic blow had become intense. The regime girded for battle by enhancing its repressive capabilities. Vargas in March 1944 signed a decree that provided for a restructuring of the carioca police, creating a Departamento Federal de Segurança Pública (DFSP) in place of the former Civil Police of the Federal District. The DFSP's Political and Social Division, an expanded DOPS and still popularly referred to by that acronym, was given broader liaison and coordinating functions vis-à-vis state political police. The sternly anti-Communist Colonel Coriolano de Góes, who had supervised the campaign against radicals during the Washington Luís administration before the Revolution of 1930, became head of the DFSP, and in July the equally severe Major Frederico Mindelo, the former state secretary of public security in Pernambuco, took up his duties as director of the DOPS, promising to be "inflexible" in rooting out subversion.31 A wave of arrests followed that same month, and Vargas next was persuaded, in August, to authorize proscription of the SAA, a move that prompted Aranha's resignation as foreign minister.32 That measure seemed more than justified to the security community when the DOPS office in Recife forwarded intelligence in September 1944 on a possible terrorist plot by Brazilian Communists. Marcondes Filho immediately alerted state authorities, advising them that the alleged plan called for assassinations and promotion

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of "generalized anarchy." Three days later he sent a circular to all interventors requesting regular reports on the "social and political order" so that the DFSP could collate the information and keep state security agencies up to date on developments across the nation. The authorities in Rio Grande do Sul, São Paulo, and even Pernambuco found no evidence of imminent trouble from the Communists, but they pledged greater vigilance. The view from the federal capital, however, was more somber. For Filinto Muller, from his post on the National Labor Council, the "Red threat" at that juncture was more immediate than ever, as Communists were infiltrating "everywhere." The DOPS kept suspected conspirators under close surveillance during this period, and at year-end Coriolano remarked to a member of the American embassy that he intended to detain "at least 300 known Communists" once the war was over to prevent anticipated disorders. Former SAA members were a prime target of police vigilance because they were engaged in an "insidious campaign of subversion," the police chief informed the minister of justice early in 1945.33 Wartime circumstances thus exacerbated official mistrust and disquiet regarding the USSR and its apparent influence inside Brazil. However, as policymakers broadened the country's participation in the Allied war effort and reaped the material rewards of solidarity with Washington, their conception of Brazil's future international role expanded to include that of spokesman for South America. To play that enlarged role, which was based on a special relationship with the United States, some accommodation with Moscow would probably be necessary. Just a few weeks after the Nazi attack on the USSR, as American engineers were building air bases in northeastern Brazil to use to ferry Lend-Lease equipment to British forces in the Middle East and as American naval units patrolled the South Atlantic from Brazilian ports, Ambassador Caffery noted the "anomalous" situation: the Vargas regime was cooperating increasingly with the United States while displaying "constantly growing apprehension" over the unexpected resiliency of the Red Army. It took less than four months of the Russo-German conflict to convince Ambassador Martins that the "Anglo-Russian-American alliance will preside over the processes, conditions, and results of peace,"34 and that idea took rapid root in Rio de Janeiro as the AmericanRussian rapprochement was consolidated after Pearl Harbor. Brazilian leaders understandably were cautious, and in that they apparently were encouraged by the State Department. When Martins confided to Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles in May 1942

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his concern about the possible impact on South America of Washington's entente with the Kremlin, Welles recommended that the Brazilian government maintain its hands-off approach to the USSR until events had demonstrated whether Moscow was sincere in its protestations of goodwill toward the West. The Vargas regime, in any case, would not have moved hastily. When the Soviet envoy in Washington, former commissar Maxim Litvinov, quizzed Welles in August about rumors that Washington had counseled Rio de Janeiro not to reestablish relations with Moscow, Martins expressed amazement on being informed. His government "would not for a moment consider such a step," he told Welles. Vargas confirmed that he planned to continue his "discreet and reserved" attitude in the matter. As a result, when Soviet diplomats in some European posts made small gestures of cordiality toward Brazilian envoys after Rio de Janeiro entered the war, inviting them to various functions, Itamaraty's somewhat ambiguous instructions were that Brazilian representatives could maintain cordial personal relations, but not official ones, with Soviet counterparts.35 The decision by Vargas and the high command to prepare for eventual military participation in the war, a process that culminated in the expeditionary force to Italy, was made early in 1943 and thus coincided with the valiant stand at Stalingrad and the definitive stemming of the German tide in the East. As these developments took shape, Brazilian leaders slowly began to modify their views toward the USSR, not, to be sure, in terms of their unshakable abhorrence of the Soviet system, but with regard to the political convenience of détente. Forging a consensus was not easy. Army commanders, particularly, were reluctant to consider a normalization of relations with Moscow. On the other hand, civilian authorities, especially at Itamaraty, were interested in at least reconnoitering the terrain, and all the more so because other countries were making overtures toward the Kremlin. Various Latin American states restored official ties at the end of 1942, and Aragão reported from London that the Argentine embassy there was urging Buenos Aires to do likewise. In January 1943, furthermore, the Uruguayan foreign minister passed through Rio de Janeiro on his way home from Washington and told the press that his government intended to reestablish relations with Moscow because the USSR was one of the "strongest bulwarks" of the Allied camp. To a growing number of analysts in Brazil, all of this meant that following suit might be unavoidable, a point Martins made to Welles.36 The abolition of the Comintern in May 1943 swayed additional civilian observers. An editorialist for the Jornal do Brasil, in the ex-

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citement of the moment, went so far as to label Moscow's gesture the "event of greatest transcendence in international politics up to the present day," while the viscerally anti-Communist Diário Carioca hailed the end of the "international cycle" of the Bolshevik Revolution and proclaimed that "broader understandings" were now possible between the USSR and the West. The Diário de Notícias also spoke of "new perspectives" for closer cooperation among the Allies, and the Correio da Manhã foresaw "an atmosphere of greater trust among the United Nations." More significantly, the government-owned A Noite agreed that the liquidation of the detested organization constituted a "great step" toward clarifying "certain doubts" about collaboration with the Soviet Union.37 In diplomatic circles similar sentiment grew steadily. Pondering Brazil's postwar international position from his post as representative to the French National Liberation Committee in Algiers, Leitão da Cunha in June 1943 commented privately to the undersecretary at Itamaraty that if Brazil aspired "to play a worldwide role and not exclusively one in America," it had to cultivate the special relationship with the United States, strengthen ties with France, Great Britain, and Portugal—and start preparing a rapprochement with the USSR. A few weeks later, during a meeting of a special committee created by Vargas to study postwar problems, the head of Itamaraty's Political Department argued that the government should endeavor to "win immediately" the goodwill of Moscow in order to guarantee a place for Brazil in postwar organizations. Carlos Figueiredo, Brazil's representative on a United Nations committee in Washington, studied international trends and by November had reached the same conclusion. "Russia is increasing, day by day, its political prestige on the European continent and throughout the world in general," he pointed out in a private letter to Vargas. "Brazil should, therefore, . . . begin thinking about how to get on the good side of that power." Lourival Fontes, on a cultural mission in the United States, made the same point. "It is no longer possible to ignore the Russian factor or combat futilely its presence in world councils," he explained to the chief executive. "Its ascendancy at the peace table is ensured by the victorious contribution of its arms."38 The conferences at Moscow and Teheran in the fall of 1943 served as the catalyst for the first demarche by Rio de Janeiro regarding an understanding with the USSR. The interest shown by Itamaraty and the press in the meeting of Hull, Eden, and Molotov in Moscow was so keen that the State Department was led to inquire if the Vargas government was considering a reconciliation with the Kremlin. "No, not yet," Aranha explained to Caffery on November 9, but the for-

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eign minister, with Vargas' approval, did issue a public statement applauding Allied unity. A message from Hull to Aranha on the results of the conference apparently reinforced concern in Rio de Janeiro that events might be passing Brazil by. There was a "fine outlook" not only for successful prosecution of the war, but for postwar harmony "on a broad international basis," said the secretary of state. "All that remains . . . is for the peace-loving countries to take the lead in forwarding this broad program." Was this a hint that Washington now thought Brazil should reassess its policy toward the Soviet Union? While Brazilian policymakers asked themselves that question, the carioca press drew the obvious conclusion from AngloAmerican-Soviet cooperation. "The cement for the foundation of world peace," wrote Assis Chateaubriand, "is in the bloc formed by the British Empire, the United States, and Russia." And Brazil, urged the Correio da Manhã, should act to "integrate itself" into that bloc. An indirect signal that the Kremlin might be receptive—"Radio Moscow announced yesterday that the Soviets wish to have diplomatic and commercial relations with all South American countries," the Helsinki legation reported39—provided encouragement, and the gathering of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin in Teheran at the end of November removed any doubts that Vargas had about the political wisdom of preparing the ground for a rapprochement. As the Brazilian leader viewed it, Washington's good offices were indispensable. Not only was there the possibility of an embarrassing rebuff by Soviet authorities, but perhaps more importantly, the army high command remained hostile toward everything Soviet. Although Vargas was not willing to discuss the latter consideration with American officials, he undoubtedly reasoned that if he could gain leverage, in the form of a "suggestion" or even "pressure" from the United States, he could more easily overcome military resistance. In Aranha's absence, he had Pedro Leão Velloso, the undersecretary for foreign affairs, broach the matter with Caffery on December 9. The chief executive, Velloso said, had concluded that the "time has probably come" to restore diplomatic ties with Moscow. "Vargas does not want to take the initiative himself, however, and wants to know if we have any pertinent suggestions," Caffery informed the State Department. "He is anxious to avoid being placed in an undignified situation." Two days later, without waiting for a reply, Vargas himself summoned the American envoy. "You know about our past Communist troubles, and you know what the opinion in government circles as well as among the public has been about the Soviet [Union]," he told Caffery. "When President Roosevelt thinks the time has come for us to recognize the Moscow government, I know that he will say

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so," Vargas continued. "Obviously, I would want to take no initiative myself, and in the event he agrees, I would probably want him to take such steps as he might think opportune to bring about the establishment of diplomatic relations between Brazil and Moscow in a manner that would not put Brazil in an undignified position." The response from Washington, however, was to send the ball back into Brazil's court. After consulting FDR, Hull replied to Caffery's messages on December 28. "You should point out that the President believes this question to be one in which the predominant considerations are the factors of direct concern to Brazil which only the Brazilian Government can evaluate," said Hull, pledging "all appropriate assistance" whenever Vargas reached a decision, but reiterating that "the determining factor must be the peculiarly Brazilian aspects of the matter." The Brazilian chief executive obviously was not ready, or able, to act on his own. On learning from Caffery of Roosevelt's polite refusal to shoulder responsibility for effecting a Russo-Brazilian reconciliation, he told the ambassador that he planned to take "no immediate steps," but would do so "in due course."40 Aranha wanted to hasten the process, but he perforce had to move with great caution. When Ambassador Carlos Lima Cavalcanti in Mexico City invited his Soviet colleague to a reception at the Brazilian embassy in January 1944, the international press quickly surmised that Brazil intended to reestablish relations with the USSR, a development that led Aranha to reprove Lima Cavalcanti and deny his request for authorization to accept an invitation to dine at the Soviet embassy. "The reestablishment of our relations with Russia may be inevitable," Aranha informed another diplomat, "but the question is not yet mature." That incident and a query from a repatriated Freitas-Valle about how he should deal with Moscow's local embassy at his new post in Ottawa provoked a reappraisal of the question. On March 6 an Itamaraty circular instructed Brazilian diplomats to avoid official contacts with Soviet officials without express authorization and to keep unofficial encounters to a minimum—although the latter could be a useful way of gathering information about Soviet intentions.41 At the same time, however, Aranha, to familiarize himself with the full background, had his staff research the origins of the original rupture. Then in February, during a visit to São Paulo, he floated the balloon of rapprochement, stating in a speech that the question of normalizing relations with Moscow was an internal matter that would be resolved "sooner or later" because ideological differences should not preclude political intercourse between the two countries.

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The DIP did not allow the press to divulge his remarks,42 this perhaps a function of military resistance, but the international press did, prompting an offer from the Mexican foreign minister to act as a go-between. But it was Washington's influence that Aranha and Vargas wanted. Early in March, therefore, Ambassador Martins discreetly raised with Hull the possibility of an American initiative. The answer was the same as that given weeks earlier: the United States government left to Brazil's "exclusive judgment" the attitude to take, although Roosevelt was ready to help whenever Vargas wanted to act. A restoration of relations with the Soviet Union was in Brazil's national interest, an impatient Aranha wrote privately later that month, and was merely a "question of time and opportunity" 43 In ensuing weeks the Kremlin sent various signals apparently to encourage Brazilian leaders. The new Soviet minister to Uruguay, Sergei Orlov, stopped over in Brazil on his way to his post and told the press that his government was eager to enter into official relations with all Latin American countries and that the principle of nonintervention would guide its policy in that regard. Once in Montevideo, Orlov lost little time in having a member of his staff sound both Monteiro and the Brazilian chargé about a rapprochement. The Soviet official prefaced his remarks to the general with praise for Brazil and the Vargas government and then stressed the necessity for postwar cooperation between the two countries. Ambassador Lusardo a few weeks later reported Orlov's comment to the local press that Moscow saw great possibilities for trade with Latin America and that he was empowered to begin negotiations with governments there regarding questions of relations with the USSR. Meanwhile, the Brazilian minister in Stockholm had informed Itamaraty that the Soviet envoy in that capital was "visibly" seeking to cultivate his friendship, and Lourival Fontes in New York called Vargas' attention to other signs of "goodwill" toward Latin America on the part of the Kremlin, which seemed to be "courting" the region and would, he felt confident, do everything it could to allay Latin American suspicion. In seeming confirmation of that appraisal, Moscow's ambassador in Mexico City, Constantin Oumansky, spoke to Lima Cavalcanti with "complete frankness" about Moscow's desire to restore diplomatic ties with Rio de Janeiro and said that Vargas had only to indicate where he wanted to hold talks for that purpose.44 Estado Novo decision makers did not respond to those overtures, but pressures for a resolution of the problem mounted progressively during the last few months of 1944. The first contingent of the expeditionary force sailed for Italy at the end of June, and its entry into

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combat dramatized the anomaly of military partners who did not maintain official relations with one another. In Brazil's case, that meant with a battlefield ally whose armies were overrunning eastern Europe on their way to Germany and whose postwar influence would be enormous. Monteiro in July unnecessarily pointed out to Aranha that the USSR would emerge from the war as one of the movers and shakers of international politics, and Freitas-Valle, from his vantage point in Canada, became increasingly impatient, wondering "how can we continue to ignore Russia?" After all, he wrote privately to Velloso, Aranha's replacement as foreign minister, "it is on her moves that the future depends." There was also the fact that one Latin American country after another was moving toward an understanding with the Stalin regime, threatening to leave Brazil in semiisolation in that regard. In September it was the Bolivian congress that called for reestablishing relations with the USSR. When asked by La Paz for an opinion, Itamaraty replied that it was "indifferent to the question especially since there already are other Soviet diplomatic missions on the continent and they will tend to increase." Then in December the Chilean government announced that it was going to restore ties with Moscow, and Venezuela soon followed suit. There was, too, the example of France for Brazilian policymakers to study: Charles de Gaulle in December traveled to Moscow to sign an alliance that, in the words of the Brazilian ambassador in liberated Paris, was "desired by all parties, from conservatives to Communists," and one that, according to an envious private commentator, was presciently designed to further the interests of France at the peace table.45 The question of representation on the Security Council of the future United Nations organization was a matter of great importance to Brazilian strategists and an additional element in the motivational mix that prodded the government toward a rapprochement. The State Department initially supported Brazil's bid for a permanent seat, but when Undersecretary of State Edward Stettinius, Jr., put the question to his Soviet and British colleagues at the Dumbarton Oaks conference in August 1944, they firmly opposed granting such status to any but the Big Four and possibly France.46 Department analysts thus realized that it was "highly important" for Brazil to have Moscow's endorsement "or at the very least" its neutrality, and Stettinius, now secretary of state, made certain that Brazilian authorities understood that. Ambassador Martins well appreciated that the Russian question—especially, he thought, the deteriorating relations among the Big Three—hindered Brazil's cause, and analysts at Itamaraty also underscored the handicap of not having diplomatic

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relations with Moscow. The Kremlin's interest in Brazil, "the key to the South American continent," was largely political, one pondered. "Our immediate benefit would be, above all, the defense of our interests in the postwar world . . . ," he emphasized. "Our claims, which could find a strong ally in Russia, . . . will certainly need that support, without which they will run the risk of being frustrated."47 There was still uneasiness within the high command—Dutra late in December argued forcefully against allowing the Soviet news agency Tass to open an office in Rio de Janeiro and in January 1945 passed along to Vargas reports warning of "Communist mobilization throughout Brazil"48—but the arguments in favor of rapprochement were telling ones. Vargas during this period found domestic political reasons to reinforce foreign policy considerations. Throughout much of Latin America at this time there was a movement, propelled in large part by the certainty of Allied victory and by Washington's interest in democratization, toward more open politics.49 In Brazil's case, diverse sectors of society—the intelligentsia, including student groups, more liberal-minded army officers, politicians who had been marginalized after 1937, newspaper editors, and the urban middle class in general—chafed under dictatorial rule, which had by then lasted seven years, and their disgruntlement forced Vargas to think of liberalization. Even the military leaders responsible for the Estado Novo recognized the inevitable. Late in October 1944, after making an inspection visit to the expeditionary force in Italy, Dutra acknowledged to Vargas the incongruity between Brazil's international and national situations—that is, the country's active partnership in the Allied coalition doing battle against fascism in Europe while being governed itself by a dictator—and concluded that "democratic representative institutions" should be restored. A few days later Monteiro, home on leave, spoke to Vargas with equal candor about the need to end the dictatorship, warning him that discontent with the regime was widespread. Late in December, furthermore, Dutra sent a letter to the chief executive recommending that he not wait until the end of the war to hold presidential elections. In the face of this pressure, Vargas sent his minister of justice to work drawing up a liberalization program in consultation with the two generals. At the end of that month he publicly promised to restore political liberties, and in February 1945 the DIP abandoned press censorship. At the same time he issued a decree guaranteeing that within three months he would set a date for presidential and congressional elections.50 The regime's liberal adversaries made no secret of their desire for a normalization of relations with Moscow, the Left obviously wanted

Global Conflict and Rapprochement (1941 -1945) such a move, and Vargas apparently believed that it would be popular with labor. This, at least, was what "sources close to President Vargas" told the American embassy in December 1944.51 The outburst of interest in things Soviet after the abolition of censorship created an impression of public support for a reconciliation. "When the lid was taken off . . . there was an explosion of Russian news, Russian films, Russian music, and Russian propaganda generally," wrote the new American ambassador, Adolf Berle, Jr., a few weeks later. "The Avenida Rio Branco [in downtown Rio de Janeiro] was fairly lined with moving picture theaters displaying everything from Russian news films to Mission to Moscow. . . . " Another previously banned Hollywood product, RKO's North Star, was also booked by several cinema houses. Inevitably, there were now public demands for a rapprochement with Moscow. While student leaders urged recognition of the Stalin regime, former president Arthur Bernardes, head of the Republican party and a dedicated adversary of the Estado Novo, declared that an understanding with the Kremlin was vital to the conduct of postwar diplomacy, an argument endorsed by the liberal press. The Diário Carioca, an embittered enemy of the regime, couched its demand in terms that contrasted sharply with its past editorial position. "At this moment Brazil is an ally of Russia," it declared. "The brave soldiers of Marshal Stalin are fighting for the same principles, the same ideals, the same goal."52 Moscow sent out insistent signals through its Mexican embassy to facilitate a rapprochement. First there was Ambassador Oumansky's conversation with Lima Cavalcanti late in November 1944, and then in January 1945 the Mexican ambassador to Moscow passed through Teheran, where, "in a commissioned sermon," he praised Russia's allegedly fraternal intentions to the Brazilian chargé and stressed Soviet admiration for Brazil. The following month a "high Soviet authority" in Mexico City broached the matter with Fontes, who had replaced Lima Cavalcanti as ambassador. The Soviet official, according to Fontes, firmly guaranteed that his government would not interfere in any fashion with Brazil's domestic affairs. The day after Fontes communicated the content of that discussion to Itamaraty, the Diário Carioca published an interview with Oumansky in which he chided Rio de Janeiro for its hesitancy. "While other South American countries have already recognized, and others are in the process of recognizing, our government, overcoming the prejudice of the Bolshevik spectre," he declared, "Brazil maintains an attitude that is not very cordial." Moscow, he insisted, believed in selfdetermination and would not involve itself in the internal politics of Allied countries.53

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While Brazilian leaders studied Moscow's peace offers, Stettinius passed through Rio de Janeiro in mid-February on his way back to Washington from the Yalta Conference. Roosevelt was convinced, he told Vargas, that Moscow was sincere in its desire for international cooperation. "Vargas then asked what her policy would be relative to spreading her philosophy," Stettinius later wrote. "I said that all this points to the fact that she has too many problems at home to spread communism throughout the world." The Brazilian chief executive next candidly asked Stettinius what attitude he thought Brazil should adopt toward the USSR, and the secretary of state admonished him "that no time should be lost" in establishing normal relations and that FDR "would be delighted to sponsor such a relationship." Eleven days later Stettinius, in Mexico City for the Chapultepec Conference, recommended to Velloso, who headed Brazil's delegation, that Rio de Janeiro act before the conference scheduled for San Francisco in May to draw up the United Nations charter, and he offered to serve as intermediary.54 The realization that a decision to reestablish relations with the USSR would be not only beneficial to Brazil's international standing but also popular in the increasingly liberal domestic political atmosphere and would have the high command's acquiescence—the ever politically active Monteiro told the press at the end of January that he favored a normalization—removed Vargas' doubts. On March 2 he wired Velloso saying that the time had come to make an official move and suggesting that the matter be handled in Washington. In a press interview that same day, Vargas explained the decision. "Today Russia is one of the great Allied powers, fighting for the same cause," he said. "Brutally attacked, it gave a splendid demonstration of its warmaking capacity, defending the homeland and crushing the invader. It has indicated a desire to reestablish relations with Brazil," he continued. "Its relations with other countries where it had diplomatic representatives have been correct. The Comintern, an international propaganda agency, cause of disquiet and mistrust on the part of other nations, has been dissolved." Furthermore, he pointed out, since the two governments would have to deal with one another in peace talks, "it is impossible to continue ignoring Russia." In Washington on March 13, Velloso, through the good offices of the State Department, met with Ambassador Audrey Gromyko to set the process in motion. During the ensuing days the details of formal notes were worked out, and on April 2 the Soviet envoy and Ambassador Martins met to effect the exchange.55 The general reaction in Brazil to the reestablishment of ties with

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Moscow was positive. Prestes, whose treatment in prison had improved markedly in recent weeks, spoke for the extreme Left in sending Vargas a telegram of congratulations for his gesture toward the "heroic Soviet people," and the liberal press hailed the development in surprisingly encomiastic terms. Emphasizing Moscow's "loyal cooperation" with the Allies, the Correio da Manhã placed the USSR among the "powers that merit universal confidence," while O Jornal told its readers that the restoration of relations was a "culminating event for Brazil's international position." General Dutra, now avidly pursuing the presidency, in an interview announcing his candidacy found it politically expedient to label the rapprochement a "natural and desirable event." Both General Rabello, in the name of a resurrected SAA, and the president of the League for National Defense wired Vargas their enthusiastic endorsements of the reestablishment of relations. Various observers pointed to what seemed to be potential economic benefits. An editorialist for the Diário de Notícias announced that "very broad horizons" for trade were now opened, and the Jornal do Brasil predicted that the diplomatic understanding would contribute on a "large scale" to Brazil's commercial expansion. "The panorama is vast and promising," another analyst exclaimed. "We are confronted with a market practically virgin to us." Velloso, too, declared that he anticipated a "naturally voluminous trade" to develop quickly between the two countries. On the Soviet side, Foreign Minister Molotov expressed official goodwill. "I am certainly convinced," he said in a telegram to Velloso, "that the friendly relations between our two peoples will be increasingly stronger and will develop, in the future, with complete success."56 The reestablishment of relations indeed seemed to signal the close of the anti-Soviet phase in Brazilian foreign policy. The Vargas regime, assessing Brazil's national interests and responding in part to domestic pressures, decided to abandon a policy dating back nearly three decades and open the door to direct dialogue with Moscow. But even with a highly centralized foreign policy decision-making structure, it had taken the administration two years after the point at which it was apparent that the Axis would not win the war to overcome its own doubts and particularly the visceral resistance of army leaders. What took place in April 1945 was clearly a marriage of convenience, and its duration, as far as Brazilian policymakers were concerned, would depend on Moscow's international conduct and the attitude of Communists in Brazil.

9· Cold War Antagonisms (1945-1947)

THE Russo-BRAZILIAN honeymoon was short lived. Indeed, the onset of the Cold War quickly revived deep-rooted fears on the part of the Brazilian foreign policy elite. Soviet obstructionism in Germany and its politicomilitary pressure on Eastern Europe in general inevitably provoked a vigorous reaction from the United States. The proclamation of the Truman Doctrine in 1947 was a clear sign that new battle lines had been drawn. Bitter propaganda by Soviet authorities and Brazilian Communists against Western nations—particularly the United States, the country around which Brazilian policymakers constructed their foreign policy strategy—seemed to them an ominous indication of Soviet intentions. Coupled with widespread labor unrest in Brazil, stimulated and exploited by a resurgent and hostile PCB, the Kremlin's attitude rapidly convinced Brazilian leaders that it had reverted to a program of subversion abroad. The result was an atmosphere in Brazil reminiscent of the mid-1930s. The opening of the political system placed government strategists under constraints that the regime of Getúlio Vargas, who was ousted by the military in October 1945, had not faced; however, the new administration of General Eurico Dutra reasserted "historic" policy toward the USSR, launching an intense anti-Communist campaign that once more drove the PCB underground and led to an acerbic diplomatic confrontation with Moscow. For a short time after their diplomatic reconciliation, Moscow and Rio de Janeiro enjoyed correct, if not particularly cordial, relations. At one point during the San Francisco Conference the Soviet foreign minister invited Pedro Leão Velloso and Ambassador Carlos Martins to the Soviet consulate for a private conversation. "Molotov said he hoped that relations would develop considerably, now that the war was over," Velloso reported, "[and that] direct communications would be easily established to benefit our bilateral trade." A few

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weeks later Velloso gave a press interview in which he spoke of a probable intensification and broadening of contacts with the USSR provided, he said, neither country sought to intervene in the internal affairs of the other. But would the Kremlin respect its pledges in that regard? That was the key question to Brazilian observers, and they soon discovered a disquieting answer in the harsh occupation policies of the Red Army and the obvious intrigue of the Stalin regime in Poland, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. By August the same editorialists and commentators who had welcomed the rapprochement in April were becoming critical of Soviet policies and questioning relations with the USSR. The Diário Carioca thus warned of problems ahead, and the Correio da Manhã also predicted "dangers and difficulties" in the political sphere and disappointment in the commercial. Assis Chateaubriand, still owner of the country's largest chain of newspapers, was blunt in his condemnation of Moscow: "Nothing identifies Brazil with Russia."1 At the diplomatic level the old suspicions quickly resurfaced. The ambassador to the Czechoslovakian government-in-exile warned of Soviet pressures on Prague in midyear, while the naval attaché in Washington informed Vargas that most Americans seemed to expect another war "in a very short time" because of Moscow's expansionism. "Everyone is starting to despair of the possibility of wholehearted Anglo-Russian-American cooperation for the preservation of peace," Ambassador José Moniz de Aragão, still at his post in London, glumly informed Itamaraty in September. The periodic clashes that Freitas-Valle, Brazil's representative on the United Nations Preparatory Commission, had with the Soviet delegation during this period led him to emphasize Moscow's distrustfulness as a major obstacle to international harmony.2 Brazilian pessimism deepened progressively in 1946 as confidential assessments by officials in Europe reinforced the message conveyed by press accounts of the turmoil there: the USSR was an intractable, rapacious power, and the Cold War threatened to become a permanent feature of international life. The military attaché in Paris, General Angelo Mendes de Moraes, wrote a series of letters to Góes Monteiro, once again minister of war, describing the "very grave situation" created by Soviet intrigue in France and elsewhere in Europe. A midyear report by General Anor Teixeira dos Santos, head of Brazil's military mission to the Allied Control Council in Berlin, drove home the point that any hopes of real cooperation between the West and the Soviets were chimerical. Soviet occupation authorities, he said, were systematically obstructing Anglo-Ameri-

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can efforts to bring peace and stability to central Europe by placing a "true curtain" across their zone of Germany, which they continued to plunder. The dominant sentiment in policymaking circles in Rio de Janeiro was that the Allies should act resolutely to impede Soviet expansion. Monteiro at one point was dramatically candid in conversation with William Pawley, the recently appointed American ambassador to Brazil. "The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the second on Nagasaki, the third and fourth on Bikini," he noted, and then added, "the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth might well be dropped on Russia." The new foreign minister, João Neves da Fontoura, expressed his anxiety about Moscow's conduct to American and British diplomats in April, remonstrating about the need for a tougher stand vis-à-vis the Kremlin. At the Paris Peace Conference in August, he had a "quite cordial" talk with Molotov, but then listened in dismay as the Soviet official "violently" assailed the United States. That and other demonstrations of Moscow's bullying diplomacy led Fontoura to the conclusion that the negotiations were being deliberately "torpedoed" by Moscow so that it could continue to pillage the areas of Europe that its troops controlled. Velloso had a similar experience the following month at the UN Security Council—with Washington's support, Brazil had been elected at the first General Assembly to a nonpermanent seat—and was shocked to hear the Soviet delegate charge "in bad faith" that American forces occupied Brazil, an accusation he vehemently rejected. Weeks later when Raul Fernandes, a member of the delegation in Paris and soon to become Fontoura's successor, returned to Rio de Janeiro, he openly expressed his concern about Soviet duplicity and labeled Molotov and his counselors "real shysters." 3 The reports from the new embassy in Moscow did nothing to lessen suspicion and growing antagonism in Rio de Janeiro. Mario Pimentel Brandão, the interim foreign minister in 1937-1938, opened the embassy in June after a train trip across a devastated Europe that left him shocked by the "sordid" spectacle of homeward-bound Soviet troops carrying the spoils of war from the cities they had sacked. "I never saw anything like it in my life!" he exclaimed in his first dispatch. On July 2 he sent Itamaraty his impressions of Moscow, which he found ugly, bleak, and dirty, and of its inhabitants, whom he saw as sad, bedraggled, and "four centuries behind" in matters of hygiene. More importantly, he was disturbed by the secrecy and confinement at the Foreign Ministry, where visits, appointments, and conversations were tightly controlled and monitored. But he appears to have made a sincere effort to carry out his tasks in a professional manner. When he presented his credentials to the head of the Praesidium of

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the Soviet Supreme Council four days later in a sober, businesslike ceremony, he told the Soviet official that he came on a "mission of cordiality and good faith." In subsequent reports to Itamaraty he stressed the wartime sacrifices of the Russian people, applauded their heroism, and said he would try diplomatically to disabuse Soviet policymakers of their conviction "that Latin America lives in fear of American imperialism." His communications, however, rapidly became somber and pessimistic. By September he had come to the conclusion that the official mind in Moscow was "subterranean, destructive, diabolical, sneaky, hypocritical, sly, and dissembling." The Kremlin was keeping over half the Red Army in eastern and central Europe, he noted in November, and "plunder and slavery" were all that the nations "under its boots" could expect.4 An ugly incident in December brought forcefully home to the Brazilian government and people the character of the Stalin regime. Pimentel Brandão and his small staff, because of the lack of accommodations in Moscow, were lodged in a hotel where they had cramped quarters and were required to take their meals in an adjoining restaurant where the food frequently was "repugnant," said the ambassador. He and his subordinates apparently had more than one difference of opinion with the manager of the hotel—he bore the guests no goodwill—prior to the events of December 8. That evening one of Pimentel Brandão's subordinates, João Batista Soares Pina, had an argument with the maître d'hôtel that degenerated into physical blows and ended up involving the hotel manager as well before policemen arrived and subdued the diplomat. "Pina's hands and feet were tied," the American embassy in Moscow learned, "and he was not only beaten up but bitten by one of the Russians." When Pina was untied, he went into a rage and hurled at hotel employees every object he could lay his hands on. As a result, not only did the Soviet Foreign Ministry send Pimentel Brandão a curt note demanding Pina's withdrawal and payment of one thousand dollars in damages but the hotel manager insultingly informed the ambassador that from then on he would have to pay for his room in advance. "We should never have accredited a mission to this country," he railed in a message to Itamaraty, "without the guarantee and formal promise, on the part of this government, that it would not treat us as Turks and Chinese were treated in the 15th century. . . ."5 When the incident became known in Rio de Janeiro, there was a vigorous public outcry. Crowds gathered in the streets, sang the national anthem, and demanded a crackdown on Communists at home. One Christian Democrat congressman called for a severance of relations with the USSR, arguing that there was no advantage in

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tolerating a nation that "beats up diplomats, devours small countries, and maintains a ferocious dictatorship." What indeed could Brazil expect from a "regime of barbarism and tyrannical oppression"? an editorialist for the Correio da Manhã asked, while another daily declared that there was no common ground to sustain relations between the two governments. At the very least, a prominent senator proposed at the turn of the year, the Soviet ambassador should be expelled from Brazil. Fernandes, now foreign minister, issued a note to the press on January 20, 1947, refuting Moscow's version of the incident, "categorically" rejecting its demand for indemnity, and blaming the episode on Soviet treatment of foreign representatives. Kremlin strategists fueled the controversy by allowing the Soviet press to denounce the "slanderous fabrications" of the "reactionary" newspapers and "fascists" in Brazil. Subsequent reports from Pimentel Brandão on the character of the Soviet system strengthened the conclusion at Itamaraty that a harmonious relationship with Moscow was not feasible. "The Russian people live locked up behind a wall of steel much more hermetic than that of China," and any attempt to escape is a capital offense, he pointed out in one dispatch. "The goal of Soviet law is, exclusively, that of intimidating, punishing, inspiring terror of disobedience."6 Domestic events strongly influenced official attitudes toward the USSR. The political climate in Brazil during the middle months of 1945 was effervescent as national attention focused on the presidential elections the regime had scheduled for December 2. Vargas promoted the formation of two political parties—the Partido Social Democrático (PSD), which put up Minister of War Dutra as its candidate, and the Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro (PTB), or Brazilian Labor party. The liberal opposition banded together in the new União Democrática Nacional (UDN) to back Brigadier Eduardo Gomes, who had been wounded while fighting rebels at the Military Aviation School in November 1935. As part of the redemocratization program, Vargas in April decreed an amnesty for political prisoners, including Luís Carlos Prestes and Arthur Ewert. While still in prison, Prestes had issued manifestos and instructions to his followers urging them to support the government in the war against fascism, and this, along with the initial enthusiasm over the reestablishment of relations with Moscow, contributed to the Communists' sudden respectability. Even General Dutra, promoting his own candidacy, came out in favor of legalizing the PCB, affirming with a cynicism born of political ambition that this was the only attitude "proper for a man of responsibility in public life."7 The PCB now joined vigo-

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rously in the political fray, launching in April the Movimento Unificado dos Trabalhadores (MUT), or Unified Workers' Movement, as an instrument for infiltrating labor unions and as a lobby for the legalization of the party. In this fluid and volatile atmosphere, the issue of communism became another weapon in the opposition's arsenal. While openly rejecting the candidacy of both Dutra and Gomes, Prestes praised Vargas' new democratic orientation and soon joined certain sectors of the PTB in calling for the convening of a constitutional assembly before the holding of presidential elections. This demand implied postponement of the balloting and Vargas' continuation in power at least until the new constitution was ready. The Communist leader later explained that the party and the government became "tacit allies" because Vargas, in his view, represented a better guarantee than Dutra or the UDN that Communists would enjoy political freedom. Gomes and his associates, resentful of the years-long suppression of civil liberties and unshakably convinced that the dictator was plotting to perpetuate his own rule, were determined to oust him, preferably by coup d'état, before the elections. They were alarmed by the joint campaign of the PCB and the so-called queremistas (from queremos Getúlio, or "we want" Getúlio) in the PTB for an immediate constitutional assembly, seeing in that alliance a signal both of dangerous working-class mobilization and proof of Vargas' lust for power. As a result, UDN directors intensified their conspiratorial activities, especially with the armed forces, preparing the ground for a move against Vargas. Dutra, for his part, became progressively bitter toward Vargas as the presidential campaign continued, stubbornly blaming the chief executive for his own lack of popular appeal. Furthermore, despite his public approval of the PCB's emergence from clandestinity, Dutra privately seethed at that development and several times called Vargas' attention to military disquiet in that regard. Monteiro's terms for accepting the portfolio of war when Dutra resigned in August reflected the generals' concern over both Vargas' intentions and communist activities: Vargas had to pledge that the elections would be held on schedule "and that the government would avoid any links with the Communist Party."8 The extent of the high command's concern about communism was revealed by Monteiro when, on taking up his new duties, he set to work preparing a special plan to defend the government against an uprising. A subsequent report by the army's secret service warning of the PCB's propaganda efforts and its infiltration of various sectors of society seemed to justify his uneasiness, which other commanders shared. General Teixeira dos Santos, then in charge of coastal

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artillery, sought out Monteiro in September to complain of Communist propaganda and the PCB's involvement in the agitation for a constitutional assembly, and the commander of the First Military Region late that month issued a confidential bulletin blaming the party for the political crisis. From his post in the far South, General Henrique Teixeira Lott wrote Monteiro in mid-October pointing to local Communist maneuvering and voicing disgruntlement over Prestes' open campaigning throughout the country.9 By this time the conviction that the Communists were endeavoring to subvert the electoral process had spread throughout the senior officer corps— along with serious doubts about Vargas' own commitment to handing power over to a successor. It was in an atmosphere of tension, uncertainty, and growing political antagonisms that Vargas on October 28 decided to appoint his brother to the post of chief of police. That move crystallized military opposition, which had been strengthened by the recent return of officers from service with the expeditionary force who were outspoken advocates of redemocratization. The following day Monteiro, with the encouragement of both Dutra and Gomes, assumed control of the armed forces and ordered Vargas deposed. Prestes sent word to the chief executive urging him to resist and promising to mobilize popular forces to defend the government, but Vargas, whose firm anticommunism had not abated, opted to go quietly into semiexile in Rio Grande do Sul. With rare exception the generals in Rio de Janeiro applauded Monteiro's action, certain that he had prevented a Machiavellian plot to keep Vargas in power and perhaps had avoided Communist-inspired turmoil. Army officers, in fact, immediately took it upon themselves to begin arresting members of the PCB, including Prestes, and suspected union leaders, a development that prompted ultimately successful demarches by the American embassy to secure the release of the prisoners.10 The PCB won its battle for legalization in November, when it was registered by the Superior Electoral Tribunal. The party then put up a non-Communist engineer as its candidate in the December 2 presidential elections. The commander of the First Military Region summed up prevailing sentiment within the senior officer corps when he commented somberly to the British military attaché that if the PCB candidate should win the elections, he would never take office. Once Vargas instructed the Labor party to support Dutra, the former minister of war handily defeated his liberal opponent, but the dramatic development was the strong showing of the PCB candidate, who received 10 percent of the overall votes and 28 percent of the ballots cast in the Federal District. Prestes, furthermore, was elected

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senator, and the party also won fourteen seats in the Constitutional Assembly, one of them to be occupied by Gregório Bezerra, a key figure in the uprising in Recife in 1935.11 Buoyed by success at the polls, the Communists boldly increased the tempo of their agitation in 1946, concentrating on the working class. The party's offspring, MUT, was active throughout the year exploiting popular unrest over the rising cost of living to mobilize opposition to the Dutra administration and either convert union leaders or replace them with Communists or fellow travelers. A wave of strikes in the early months of the year was partly a result of MUT's campaigning and caused an obvious deepening of official apprehension.12 The complaints of non-Communist strikers that MUT emissaries were trying to divert discussion of their bread-and-butter demands to the question of class conflict reinforced government perceptions of the MUT as a dangerously subversive challenge.13 A Ministry of Labor official visited São Paulo late in February to investigate labor unrest there, meeting separately with manufacturers, union leaders, and state security police. Although the three groups differed in their perceptions of the underlying cause of labor-management conflict, they all agreed that MUT had been exploiting the situation for the Communists' own purposes, a judgment confirmed by the carioca DOPS.14 PCB agitators, according to official reports, were responsible for a series of violent incidents that year. In May the party staged a rally in downtown Rio de Janeiro in defiance of police instructions to hold it in an outlying beach district. Former army captain Agildo Barata, who had sparked the 1935 revolt in the federal capital, was one of the leaders of the rally, which degenerated into gunfire when the crowd refused a police order to disperse, leaving two persons dead and several wounded.15 A week later a potentially more serious incident occurred when Communists, seizing upon a wage dispute between owners and employees of a Canadian public utilities company, attempted once again to touch off a general strike. According to authorities, a "militant of the Moscow creed" gained control of a workers' meeting and incited them to take to the streets, where they overturned and burned trolley cars before the police restored order. The DOPS had what it thought was conclusive evidence that the street turmoil was to have been the initial step in a "terrorist plan" that called for the assassination of high government officials, paralysis of the city by destruction of electrical and transport facilities, and then general anarchy.16 The PCB's disruptive campaign extended to the states as well. At the key port of Santos, on the São Paulo coast, Communists appar-

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ently gained control of the dockworkers' union and then instigated a boycott of Spanish vessels as a protest against the Franco regime. Police intervention led to arrests and the closing of the union, but Communists then attempted to set off a general strike. Warning Dutra that the PCB was behind the trouble, the minister of labor recommended harsh measures to suppress it. The Communists failed in their effort to bring about a general work stoppage but did continue to hinder the unloading of Spanish ships.17 Communist agitation in the Northeast became a source of grave concern to military commanders in Recife. General Mario Pinto Guedes wrote to Monteiro at least twice in May 1946 about what he regarded as an imminent threat. "Everyone here observes unrest, fear of terrorist plans, and the expectation of sabotage," he commented on May 25. Union leaders in the Pernambucan capital complained directly to Dutra about Communist infiltration, and the federal interventor in December also called the president's attention to the PCB's "systematic" subversion. From the far South came similar word from labor leaders and the regional military command, and the federal interventor in the state of Rio de Janeiro added his voice to the chorus late that year.18 The overall growth of the PCB that year was remarkable. "I am informed by our own staff," Ambassador Pawley wrote to President Harry Truman in August, "that there is hardly a town in Brazil of over 1,000 inhabitants that does not have a Communist office. . . ." At the end of 1946, as the party prepared for state and supplementary congressional elections, it had an estimated 180,000 members and controlled two publishing offices and eight daily newspapers. The elections of January 1947 were another rude blow to anti-Communist forces: the PCB won forty-six seats in fifteen state legislatures, captured two more places in the federal congress, and placed more representatives, among them Agildo Barata, on the municipal council of Rio de Janeiro than any other party.19 In the face of the PCB's challenge, the government for months had been engaged in an intensive drive to stem Communist expansion, gradually mobilizing wider sectors of the police, judicial, and military apparatuses, as well as recruiting private assistance. The administration began its counteroffensive in earnest by proscribing the MUT in May 1946, allotting more funds to the new National Propaganda Department and, with an eye on the example of the Truman administration, starting a purge of the federal bureaucracy. Military leaders in particular championed a relentless pursuit of Reds in government positions. Monteiro privately grumbled that "democratic

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scruples" were preventing the country from girding for the battle he thought necessary—the Communist threat in Pernambuco, he told the regional commander, could be managed "only through force." In one of his last acts as minister of war, he urged Dutra to allow him to cashier all fellow travelers in the officer corps, placing on the agenda an issue that his successor, General Canrobert Pereira da Costa, made a priority later that year. Along with his naval and air force colleagues in the cabinet, Canrobert sent Dutra a joint memorandum in mid-November requesting special legislation that would permit the expulsion of Communists from the armed services. The president quickly endorsed the petition and sent a draft law to Congress five days later, requesting speedy passage in order to thwart the Communists' plan of "slow and subterranean destruction." Military resolve was strengthened days afterward when the PCB announced plans to commemorate the anniversary of the intentona. Canrobert and other army leaders were incensed, and in their name he sent a letter to Dutra saying that the army was ready to take whatever steps the president judged necessary to prevent that "affront." Dutra, for his part, had the minister of justice send a circular to all federal interventors instructing them to prevent any Communist demonstrations.20 Control of the working class remained an official priority, so successive presidential decrees in the early months of 1946 restricted the right to strike, forbade unions from engaging in partisan politics, and imposed a loyalty check on candidates to union office.21 But government strategists thought in terms of prevention as well as repression. Suggestive of thinking at least in some high military circles was a memo written by Air Minister Armando Trompowsky addressing Communist infiltration of the armed forces. Giving efficient combat involved more than indoctrination and the identification and the removal of subversives, he argued. Military planners had to respond in practical fashion to the needs of enlisted men by providing better meals, medical assistance to their families, expanded educational opportunities, and housing. The services could help tackle the problem in society at large, he continued, by engaging in what later would be called civic action projects, such as building roads, helping distressed communities, and airlifting medical supplies to remote settlements. It was also vital that the government bring the cost of living under control—"Lenin exploited inflation to promote communism in Russia," he recalled—and that it develop a broad program of workers' benefits, including profit sharing, low-cost housing, better public transportation, extended medical coverage, and opportunities for training and education.22

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Civilian policymakers were thinking along similar lines. In mid1946 the government enlisted industry's aid in launching what it hoped would be a long-range program for checking Communist infiltration of labor ranks. The major step in this regard was establishment of the Serviço Social da Indústria (SESI) in July. Senator Roberto Simonsen, the São Paulo entrepreneur who was industry's leading spokesman, collaborated closely with Ministry of Labor officials in starting the SESI, and he inaugurated the paulista advisory council of the new agency in July. Condemning the "revolutionary violence" preached by "extremists," he announced that the SESI intended to utilize education and welfare measures to help Brazilian workers "cross with dry feet the Red Sea of oppression and inhuman totalitarianism." Already the SESI had signed agreements with various institutions and groups, among them Catholic labor and youth organizations, to set up crash training courses for the SESI's future social workers, civic instructors, and union advisers, said Simonsen. During its first year of operation, the SESI in São Paulo enrolled seventy thousand workers in its social services, which included free legal aid, ambulatory medical and dental posts, and the distribution of lunches, as well as literacy and civic courses.23 The security implications of the SESI were obvious. For one thing, a representative of the Ministry of War sat on its National Council, and as part of its "social defense" service, it planted "confidential agents" in factories and communications facilities, such as railroads. The Ministry of Labor, moreover, threw its weight behind the SESI's activities by instructing its regional delegates to act "rigorously" in making it clear to union leaders that they were forbidden to affiliate with "international organizations."24 A companion step to the establishment of SESI was the formation in December 1946 of the Liga Brasileira de Defesa Democrática (LBDD), the Brazilian League for Democratic Defense, an organization reminiscent of the short-lived Defesa Social Brasileira created in 1937. Minister of Justice Costa Neto publicly announced the event, declaring that the government could only "applaud, stimulate, and assist" the new civic association dedicated to combating antidemocratic ideas. In a confidential circular to federal interventors, he explained that the LBDD was intended to be national in scope, and although it had no official character, federal agents should not only aid it but if necessary "take the initiative" of setting up local chapters. The interventors, therefore, should proceed "with all urgency" to promote civic rallies as a means of generating interest in the league. On January 7, 1947, former foreign minister José Carlos de Macedo Soares, a founder of the DSB and now interventor in São

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Paulo, presided over the inaugural session of the state branch of the LBDD, a meeting attended by numerous prominent citizens, including Simonsen, the archbishop of São Paulo, and General Estevão Leitão de Carvalho, who had been one of the charter members of the DSB. That same day Simonsen sent a report to Costa Neto advising him that the first class of twenty-five SESI "social educators" had completed their training and planned to start work on a joint "antiCommunist campaign" with the LBDD.25 As they analyzed the problem and weighed solutions, Dutra and his counselors inevitably began thinking of outlawing the PCB once more. In June 1946 the minister of navy hinted to Ambassador Pawley that the chief executive was contemplating that step, and the following month, apparently to prepare the ground, Dutra summoned congressional leaders to Guanabara Palace to hear Police Chief José Pereira Lira sum up a multivolume report on the Communist threat that he had just submitted to the president. The PCB, Lira subsequently told reporters, was actively engaged in the "systematic preparation of civil war," and to that end it maintained "schools of sabotage" in Brazil. A few weeks later a "high official" of the police department, who previously had supplied information that proved reliable, predicted to one of Pawley's assistants that the party would be disbanded before promulgation of the new constitution in September. Dutra, he explained, already had discussed with members of the Superior Electoral Tribunal the possibility of canceling the PCB's registration. The Brazilian informant then frankly told the American diplomat that the police anticipated resistance by some Communist congressmen and planned to seize the opportunity to kill them. During this period Dutra himself on several occasions spoke "with much candor" to Pawley about his fears with regard to Communist activities, and his complaints to Fontoura about subversion convinced the foreign minister that he was thinking of drastic action, even if it led to a rupture with Moscow. Dutra's close military advisers, especially General Alcio Souto, head of the Military Household and secretary general of the Conselho de Segurança Nacional, advocated forceful measures. Early in January 1947, in fact, Souto told Pawley over dinner that the government foresaw "early outlawing" of the PCB. The chief of police was also present, and he and Souto both expressed regret about what they considered to be Washington's lack of vigor in dealing with the Communist threat at the international level.26 Late in January, to gather further material for the government's legal case against the PCB and also to identify Communists in federal and state posts, Costa Neto sent instructions to federal inter-

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ventors to forward "urgently" reports on Communist activities, the individuals involved, and the countermeasures adopted. The reports, prepared typically by labor ministry delegates or police agents, frequently discounted the idea of any serious radical menace, but undoubtedly the influential ones were those such as the one from Bahia telling of a "frightful" proliferation of Red organizations there. Pernambuco authorities complained that 70 percent of the unions in that state were under Communist control, while the DOPS chief in Minas Gerais estimated that one in twenty civil servants was a Communist.27 Investigations of unions in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo revealed an alarming picture. "The situation in Santos is extremely grave," a labor ministry secret agent reported, "and if immediate measures to block the Communists' action are not taken, they will seize control of all the unions." The carioca police department warned in a report to Dutra that nearly four thousand Communists held public positions in the Federal District, and the American military attaché shared the view that the threat from the Left was grave, estimating that perhaps 10 percent of the enlisted men in the army were Communists.28 Late in February the administration took the decisive step, formally requesting that the Superior Electoral Tribunal cancel the registration of the PCB and thus render it illegal. While the tribunal debated, Dutra in April banned the party's youth organization—to the applause of the archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, who warned of the "fifth column" within Brazil's borders. Foreseeing a violent reaction to the anticipated decision of the tribunal, public authorities adopted defensive measures. Minister of War Canrobert ordered tightened security against possible sabotage at federal munitions plants, and early in May, with a decision on the PCB imminent, the carioca DOPS prepared a list of individuals to be watched and front groups to be closed when the moment came. On May 7 the tribunal issued its judgment: the PCB was a foreign party and as such could not be registered in Brazil. That same day Dutra decreed the dissolution of the PCB-organized National Labor Confederation.29 The tribunal's decision touched off a nationwide crackdown on Communists. Minister of Justice Costa Neto quickly alerted state authorities to the momentous ruling against the PCB, and then on May 9 he instructed them to prevent all Communist activities, even private meetings. Throughout the country police agents moved quickly to occupy party meeting places, search private residences of known or suspected Communists, and confiscate documents. Some six hundred party cells in the federal capital and nearly five hundred in São Paulo were among those closed. Resistance was negligible.

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Prestes had told the National Committee earlier that year that the administration "would not dare" to proscribe the PCB and it therefore had not prepared for that contingency, according to Leôncio Basbaum, again a member of the party's inner circle. "Thus the party really found itself disarmed theoretically, psychologically, and politically . . .," Basbaum wrote in explanation of the PCB's passivity. Prestes, despite his senatorial immunities, opted to go into hiding.30 Government agents misread the intentions of the Communist leader and predicted a few days after the ban that the PCB would now seek to spark another insurrection. As a consequence, the police intensified their surveillance of party officials in ensuing weeks, while the Ministry of Justice successfully countered the party's legal appeals and blocked its efforts to register under another label. The administration also moved to have the mandates of Prestes and his comrades in Congress revoked. In this connection, General Souto and Minister of War Canrobert recruited UDN stalwart Juracy Magalhães, ironically the former governor of Bahia who had been persona non grata to Dutra and the other conspirators in 1937, to act as a "sniper" in the debates, which ultimately produced the desired results.31 Forcing the PCB outside the law was only part of the task, as Dutra and his advisers envisioned it—there remained the source of the problem. In their view, the continued presence of a Soviet diplomatic mission on Brazilian soil only facilitated the subversive work of Moscow's local agents and thus made the threat to internal security all the more grave. Government strategists may have exaggerated the dimension of the Communist challenge, but they obviously were correct in considering the PCB an instrument of Soviet foreign policy. Basbaum, in whose home Prestes lived for the first ten months after he left prison, later confessed that the party during this period "felt unable to sneeze without asking Moscow for permission," and that subservience was reflected in Prestes' public comportment. The first public rally he attended after being set free, held late in May 1945 in a soccer stadium, was occasion for delirious homage to the USSR, and in mid-July he gave a speech fulsomely praising Stalin and the Red Army. In Vargas' inner circle at this time there was ample awareness that "Prestes and his friends were following the Moscow line and probably could not break away," and Vargas himself implicitly expressed concern in that regard when he queried Pawley's predecessor, Adolf Berle, Jr., about Soviet policy and the Kremlin's methods of infiltrating other societies through local Communist parties. Re-

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ports from the Brazilian embassy in Washington early in 1946 about Soviet intrigue inside the United States, and then about discovery of the extensive espionage ring in Canada, reinforced official suspicions of both Moscow and the PCB; meanwhile, Prestes fanned the flames with public statements to the effect that, in the event of war between Brazil and the USSR, he and his followers would side with the Soviets. His repetition of those remarks in the Constitutional Assembly in March 1946 outraged anti-Communist sectors. Monteiro was "particularly incensed," reported the American embassy, and his successor-to-be General Canrobert publicly scored Prestes as a sectarian serving "Russian interests."32 The arrival of the Soviet ambassador, Jacob Suritz, in May 1946 was additional grist for the mill because Prestes was waiting to greet him as he stepped off the ship. "At the wharf," Foreign Minister Fontoura recalled, "there was everything: a shouting of vivas, fireworks, sectarian speechmaking—things that caused great displeasure in all circles, mainly in military spheres. . . . " Dutra not long afterward complained to Fontoura about Suritz and the PCB, and the result of the episode was an "icy atmosphere" between the administration and the Soviet embassy that grew steadily colder as Brazilian Communists intensified their pro-Soviet, anti-American propaganda.33 Brazilian authorities, moreover, possessed secret information that gave an ominous overtone to the PCB's campaign against the government and the United States. In August 1945 radio monitoring experts, coached by an American technician named Robert Linx, had discovered clandestine signals emanating from stations apparently in the USSR that were transmitting blind to stations in Brazil. Linx had been sent to Brazil in 1942 by the Federal Communications Commission to assist Brazilian agencies in tracking clandestine German radio posts and had been responsible for erecting a monitoring system that he considered almost equal to those of the United States and Great Britain at the time.34 The Soviet signals, Linx was convinced, represented the "initial stages of the establishment of an espionage system," since the procedures employed closely paralleled those used by the Germans during the war. Encouraged by the State Department, Linx and his colleagues carefully monitored the transmissions in ensuing weeks, and in May 1946, the month Suritz arrived, Brazilian specialists managed to get bearings from various points along the coast that indicated that the signals were being transmitted from the Soviet occupation zone in Germany. Nothing more apparently came of the matter, but Brazilian mistrust of Soviet intentions toward Brazil seemed dramatically vindicated, and the development contributed to Dutra's ever-growing hostility toward

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Suritz and the PCB. Significantly, when the president spoke to Fontoura about Prestes' welcoming of Suritz at the docks, he accused the Communists of "political espionage" on behalf of the USSR.35 Other incidents soon followed that strengthened official suspicion about Soviet undercover activities in Brazil. Early in August the carioca DOPS arrested a civilian employee of the ministry of War, a Communist, who handled mail there. Under interrogation he confessed to removing official correspondence and taking it to a PCB contact for reproduction before delivering it.36 That same month Police Chief Pereira Lira made public another item in the government's thickening brief against Moscow and its local allies, charging that a member of the Soviet legation in Montevideo had disembarked in Porto Alegre using a false identity and disguised as a sailor. Lira did not spell out the suspected objective of the alleged clandestine visit, but the implication was that it had been for purposes of espionage or some other form of antiregime activity. Ambassador Suritz issued a press note denying the accusation, but Lira publicly reaffirmed it— leading the Soviet envoy to counter with a second note and also a complaint to Itamaraty. Later that year the police department submitted a report indicting the Soviet embassy as a "true espionage center" that controlled PCB activities.37 Official animosity toward the Kremlin and the PCB was so unshakable that the Dutra administration displayed no interest in normal relations with the USSR; indeed, from the outset it tenaciously adhered to the traditional policy of minimizing contacts with the Soviets. Suritz had no entrée to Catete Palace, and at one point in mid-1946, when he protested to Fontoura about anti-Soviet commentaries on the official "Brazil Hour" daily radio news program, the foreign minister informed Dutra, who admonished him not to give any explanations to the Russian diplomat. The latter, said Dutra, was conspiring with Brazilian Communists, and he personally attached little importance to Suritz's remaining in the country. According to Fontoura, General Souto was "even more intransigent" than the president in his antagonism toward the Soviet embassy. There obviously could be no question of official interest in promoting trade with the USSR in those circumstances. Various Brazilian firms contacted Pimentel Brandão in Moscow about commercial possibilities, but in response he cautioned a sympathetic Itamaraty that any Soviet commercial office in Rio de Janeiro would become, if not a "fifth column" agency, then certainly a "center of proselytism and diffusion of the Red creed." Itamaraty also rejected a bid by the Soviet Foreign Ministry for an agreement on tourism. Political analysts argued forcefully that there was no tourist traffic from Brazil to

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the USSR, nor were there any authentic Soviet tourists who might go to Brazil. The Stalin regime, they pointed out, carefully controlled all travel to the West, and the only individuals who might come as tourists would in fact have a "disguised political function."38 Moscow had handled Rio de Janeiro's hostility with a "forbearance" that surprised some foreign observers, allowing the Soviet press to engage in "little criticism" of Brazilian policy.39 But the outlawing of the PCB provoked a sharp reaction from the Soviet press, which in turn strengthened the growing conviction in Brazilian government circles that formal ties with the Kremlin brought only disadvantages. In a message to Pimentel Brandão intended for relay to Soviet authorities, Foreign Minister Fernandes protested about the "clearly tendentious, when not false," reports carried by Soviet newspapers, especially a story that the proscription of the PCB had sparked widespread opposition in Brazil. "The future of our relations with Russia is dependent upon the attitude of that government toward the Brazilian Communist party," Fernandes pointed out in a subsequent telegram. "So long as the Soviet government makes that party the instrument of propaganda for an ideology and a policy contrary to the interests of Brazil, its form of government, and the Brazilian way of life," he continued, "it is evident that our relations with that government cannot be normal."40 The possibility of Soviet military assistance, however discreet, for another insurrection was a key element in the growing schism between Rio de Janeiro and Moscow and in Brazil's eager cooperation with the United States in elaborating a collective security pact for the hemisphere. The administration not only agreed to host a special inter-American conference for that purpose, but Dutra himself endeavored to persuade Truman of the necessity for placing the issue of Communist infiltration of the Americas near the top of the agenda. Brazilian disquiet sharpened considerably when indications surfaced in July 1947 that a Soviet ship had made a clandestine drop of arms and ammunition somewhere on the southern coast of Brazil. Canrobert quickly ordered a contingent of troops and a warplane to the suspected locale,41 and even though no concrete evidence was discovered, the antagonism of Brazilian policymakers toward the USSR deepened further. The administration therefore welcomed the inauguration of the inter-American conference in August—Truman traveled to Rio de Janeiro for the opening ceremony and met with an enthusiastic reception—and worked assiduously for its success. Brazilian authorities would have liked a greater specific focus on the Soviet threat, but as Monteiro remarked to Secretary of State George Marshall during the proceedings, it would be "a little dangerous" to

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tackle the subject given the more moderate views of some Latin American delegations. Still, he told Marshall, the Communist menace was "more serious than the Fifth Column had been during World War II,"42 so Brazilian policymakers were more than pleased when the conference resulted in a reciprocal assistance treaty. Acrid exchanges between Brazilian and Soviet delegates at the United Nations signaled the imminence of crisis. "Russian insults are violent and their language is like that of Hitler," Aranha, who had just been elected president of the General Assembly, wrote late in September to Hildebrando Acioly, secretary general at Itamaraty. "It's not possible to imagine a heavier atmosphere," he added in a letter to Fernandes. "Only war could be worse."43 Ambassador João Carlos Muniz, who had been consul general in Geneva during the Russo-Uruguayan confrontation at the League of Nations in 1936 and was now head of the delegation in the General Assembly, had a sharp clash with his Soviet counterpart at this time, and Soviet representatives, angry because of an impasse in voting for new members of the Security Council that jeopardized the candidacy of the Ukraine, denounced Aranha as a "lackey of the State Department."44 Aranha actually was supporting the Ukraine in order to preserve the principle of regional representation, despite the fact that the United States was backing India. Fernandes, however, was so bitterly hostile toward the USSR and so profoundly disturbed by a situation in which Brazil was not siding with Washington in an international forum that he wired Aranha on October 3 instructing him to change the Brazilian vote. In normal circumstances Brazil would defend regional representation, Fernandes explained, but the Soviets had "subverted" the UN Charter and created a state of "veritable diplomatic warfare" in New York. The foreign minister also instructed Brazilian missions in other Latin American countries to urge the respective governments to stand with the "Anglo-Saxon delegates on issues on which they clash with the Slavic group."45 The inevitable rupture with the Soviet Union now occurred. The Literaturnaya Gazeta of Moscow provided the catalyst with a sarcastic attack on Dutra and the Brazilian army on October 4. The author belittled the military prowess of both, declaring that Dutra's career was based on support of the coffee-planting oligarchy and not on professional performance. "In this sense, General Dutra may be said to have been reared on coffee-beans," read the article, whose author then accused Dutra of a "morbid passion for Fascist Germany" before 1942 and implied that the Brazilian Expeditionary Force had not fought well in part because of Dutra's political ambition and the army's consequent involvement in domestic politics. "In those days,

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whilst the Soviet army was fighting on the field of battle, the Brazilian army strictly forbade any Soviet newsreels to be shown," the author continued. "Apparently the famous 'coffee general· was scared of our Red Army men even when they appeared on the screen." The day Dutra was elected president was a "day of national woe" for Brazil, he concluded. "He clamped the mind in fetters. He sent the best of the nation to prison or to the block. He outlawed the Communist party. He filled the whole of Brazil with mourning. . . ."46 An outraged Pimentel Brandão that same day alerted Itamaraty to the "vile aggression" directed against Dutra, and in a subsequent cable he reported, apparently in cold anger, that he had not lodged a protest nor did he think one would accomplish anything but provoke further attacks by the Soviet press. Was he "condemned" to continue being insulted at that "thankless post" when Brazil had no significant interests in the USSR and had lived "with no inconvenience whatsoever" for nearly thirty years without diplomatic relations with Moscow? the ambassador wondered.47 When news of the offensive article reached Rio de Janeiro, the press reacted with caustic scorn. "Russia never gave us anything, never bought anything from us, never sold anything to us, nor is she in condition to supply anything . . .," the Jornal do Brasil editorialized, wondering at the administration's "excessive tolerance" of Soviet provocation. Dutra and Fernandes, in fact, were determined to seize the opportunity. The foreign minister instructed Pimentel Brandão to deliver a note to the Soviet government charging it with responsibility for the attack on Dutra and demanding a guarantee against future public criticism of the chief executive. If the Kremlin balked, Fernandes commented to the American chargé, Rio de Janeiro would break relations. "He added that events had already demonstrated that Brazilian collaboration with Russia was impossible," the American diplomat informed Washington. The Stalin regime had been sending to Brazil "numerous agents and stirring up all kinds of trouble," so his government had "everything to gain and nothing to lose" by severing ties, said Fernandes. In a note addressed to Molotov on October 10 Pimentel Brandão protested the "violent aggression" committed by the Literaturnaya Gazeta. He pointedly declared that since the Soviet press was "strictly and severely" controlled by the government, the offending article could have been written only with the "tolerance" of the authorities and for that Rio de Janeiro wanted an explanation. The incident of the criticism of Dutra, Moscow's decision to resuscitate the Comintern in the form of the Communist Information Bureau, and a decision by the Chilean government to expel Soviet bloc diplomats on the grounds

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that they were engaged in subversive activities—all reinforced Brazilian perceptions of Soviet policy as particularly dangerous. The Jornal do Brasil warned of the "grave threat," while the Estado de São Paulo predicted the "worst" consequences from the new Sovietcontrolled agency.48 Moscow provided Brazilian policymakers with the last ammunition they needed when it scorned Itamaraty's demand for an explanation, abruptly returning Pimentel Brandão's note on the grounds that it was written in offensive terms. The ambassador hoped that his government would now end "once and for all this comedy I have been playing here against my will for sixteen months," and he candidly said so in a private letter to Acioly. "The [Soviet] Foreign Ministry and high officials give signs every day of a neurotic susceptibility, stemming from a universal and pathological fear, that makes it impossible to discuss the most insignificant matter with them," he complained. The ambassador's ordeal was almost at an end. Dutra convened the Conselho de Segurança Nacional on October 15 to secure its endorsement of a break, and immediately following that meeting Fernandes briefed congressional leaders. No advantages of a political or commercial nature had accrued to Brazil as a result of having restored relations with Moscow, he reportedly told them. The foreign minister then enlisted the assistance of the State Department to protect Brazilian interests in the Soviet Union—he had asked Washington for an opinion regarding a possible rupture with the Kremlin but was informed twice that it was a "matter which only Brazil can decide"—and with that achieved, he instructed Pimentel Brandão to deliver another note to the Soviet Foreign Ministry announcing a severance of relations. While the Brazilian press urged the government on, the ambassador carried out his task on October 20. His note, made public the next day by Itamaraty, cited the disparity in treatment of Brazilian diplomats in Moscow and Soviet representatives in Rio de Janeiro, Soviet press criticism of Aranha and particularly of Dutra, and finally the rejection of Itamaraty's formal protest as reasons for the rupture. "The Soviet government thus gave to this lamentable incident a solution that implies contempt for the relations that we earnestly tried to maintain and cultivate," the note concluded.49 The Kremlin responded to Brazil's dramatic initiative with public sarcasm, vented indirectly through the Soviet press. The official news agency, Tass, accused Rio de Janeiro of "cowardly" conduct, while Pravda exclaimed that the "reactionaries" who ruled Brazil presented a "laughable and pitiable picture" in carrying out the dictates of their "foreign masters." On October 25 that daily returned

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to the subject, labeling the Dutra government a "den of fascist criminals" and lackeys of American imperialism. The New Times also scored the "pro-fascist cliques" in Rio de Janeiro for their subservience to "American moneybags." Moscow, furthermore, attempted to have the accreditation of the Brazilian Military Mission to the Allied Control Council in Berlin canceled. At a council meeting at the end of the month, the Soviet representative read a statement condemning Brazil's "reactionary and antidemocratic action" and attributing the severance of relations to the "pressure of internal Fascist groups and external influences." The American delegate, joined by his British and French colleagues, rejected the Soviet bid, arguing that Brazil had been a valuable wartime ally.50 In Rio de Janeiro, meanwhile, news of the formal break had touched off patriotic demonstrations. Angry crowds gathered threateningly at the Soviet embassy, while police agents disguised themselves as demonstrators and led a raid on the print shop and editorial offices of the PCB's official newspaper, smashing presses and equipment.51 The major newspapers were in unison in support of the government, blaming the Kremlin for the turn of events. The Diário Carioca predicted hopefully that all Latin American countries would follow Brazil's lead in severing ties with "a predatory Eurasian power that represents nothing in our intellectual or material life." On October 21 the Senate—with the votes of two interesting novices, former minister of war Monteiro and former police chief Filinto Muller— approved a resolution expressing "unrestricted solidarity" with the administration, and the Chamber of Deputies, after ringing speeches by the leaders of various parties, passed a similar resolution.52 The break with Moscow moved the Brazilian-Soviet relationship back to square one, which was where dominant opinion within the foreign policy elite thought it should be. Indeed, given the longrange trend in elite perceptions of national interests, the period of official relations between the two governments was the aberration. The fragility of those diplomatic links was a result, in large part, of Brazil's lack of commitment to them. Once the Cold War set in and the United States and the USSR found themselves leading bitterly antagonistic blocs, Rio de Janeiro instinctively sided with Washington, an attitude consonant with its diplomatic tradition and the preponderant weight of its economic and military interests. In the case of the Soviet Union, there were no apparent interests that required the protection of a diplomatic mission. The Vargas government, with the reluctant acquiescence of the high command, had reestablished relations with Moscow in 1945 primarily in the belief that So-

Cold War Antagonisms (1945-1947)

111

viet goodwill would enhance Brazil's chances of exercising an influential voice in postwar forums. Rio de Janeiro had gained a two-year appointment to the UN Security Council, but beyond that its ambitions to be treated as a major power proved premature. The EastWest rift meant, in any case, that the Kremlin was not favorably disposed toward any firm ally of the United States. The subsidiary benefit of trade opportunity had not materialized, either, and not solely because of political suspicion in Brazilian policymaking circles. The economy of the USSR had been devastated by the war, and it had little to offer Brazil, where importers logically preferred the products of traditional markets. Indeed, perhaps the major foreign trade goal of the government and business community during the early postwar period was to revive the highly advantageous commercial partnership with Germany.53 Even had the political atmosphere been different, the bureaucratic and logistical obstacles to establishment of significant trade would have been more than formidable. In truth, Brazilian leaders, especially spokesmen for the security community, were not ready to forget the past. General Dutra, after all, had been commander of the First Military Region when the intentona occurred. Both the head of his Military Household, General Souto, and his minister of war, General Canrobert, had been with then Chief of Staff Pessoa in his improvised command post on the night of November 26, 1935, and Canrobert, who at the time was commander of the Artillery School, the next morning had directed fire on rebel positions at the Aviation School. For these men and many others in positions of responsibility, and certainly for the overwhelming majority of the army officer corps, the fact that the Stalin regime had sent agents to attempt to alter by force Brazil's political and social structure and that their abortive revolution had resulted in the deaths of scores, if not hundreds, of Brazilian citizens, was something impossible to overlook. They had overruled their better judgment under pressure of circumstances in 1945, when Western opinion ran strongly against right-wing dictatorships, when growing sectors of the officer corps shared what seemed to be pervasive civilian dissatifaction with the Estado Novo, when there was at least some momentary ambiguity in Moscow's intentions, and when reasons of state apparently required it. But what really had changed? they could ask. The Kremlin seemed still bent on expanding its control over as much of Europe as possible; it had launched a war of virulent propaganda on former Western allies; and it was, Brazilian observers were convinced, once more actively engaged in subversion in Brazil. It was not really necessary to debate the question of whether the PCB was an instrument of Soviet policy—Luís Carlos

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Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917-1947

Prestes and his comrades proudly proclaimed their unswerving fidelity to the Stalin regime. After 1947 successive administrations remained firmly antiSoviet, in part because of the continuing influence of a generation of politicians, diplomats, and military officers prominently associated with the pre-1945 anti-Communist, anti-Soviet crusade. The list of such persons would be long: the more obvious being Vargas, who came back to win the presidency in 1950 and govern until he committed suicide in 1954, and Dutra, who went on to become an "elder statesman" for conservative forces. Filinto Muller's new career as a politician spanned the next three decades, and Plínio Salgado and various of his lieutenants were active in national politics as congressmen into the 1960s and 1970s. Continuity in Itamaraty's antiSoviet orientation was encouraged by Fontoura's return as Vargas' foreign minister during 1951-1953 and his replacement by Vicente Rao, the former minister of justice who had signed the expulsion decrees of Olga Benario and Elise Ewert. Raul Fernandes, moreover, after supervising foreign policy until the end of Dutra's administration, was called back to head Itamaraty for a year following Vargas' death. His successor late in 1955 was none other than Macedo Soares, who remained as foreign minister until 1958 and brought in Odette Carvalho e Souza to run Itamaraty's Political Department. Numerous military officers who had been present to witness the insurrection of 1935 and its effects were on hand to play prominent roles in postwar politics. The omnipresent Góes Monteiro, for example, became chief of the Armed Forces General Staff during the second Vargas presidency, a post in which he was succeeded by Canrobert. Brigadier Eduardo Gomes, who had led the counterattack on the Aviation School in November 1935, became air minister in the mid-1950s. Postwar foreign policy thus would be formulated in the shadow of the intentona comunista, and it would be fourteen years before international and national conditions changed sufficiently to permit a definitive normalization of relations with Moscow.

Notes

Abbreviations Used (For full descriptions, see the Bibliography) ACRJ AEME AEX AHI AMF AN AP APJ CFCE CFCE-PR CM CSEG DC DN DOPS DS EME ESP FM FO FRUS GFM

Associação Comercial do Rio de Janeiro Arquivo do Estado-Maior do Exército Arquivo do Exército Arquivo Histórico do Itamaraty Afrânio de Melo Franco Papers A Noite (Rio de Janeiro) A Pátria (Rio de Janeiro) Afonso Pena Júnior Papers Conselho Federal do Comércio Exterior (Federal Foreign Trade Council) Records of the Conselho Federal do Comércio Exterior, Coleção Presidência da República Correio da Manhã (Rio de Janeiro) Comissão Superintendente do Estado de Guerra Diário Carioca (Rio de Janeiro) Diário de Noticias (Rio de Janeiro) Delegacia de Ordem Política e Social; Delegacia Especial de Ordem Política e Social; Departamento de Ordem Política e Social Department of State Estado-Maior do Exército O Estado de São Paulo (São Paulo) Filinto Muller Papers (British) Foreign Office United States, Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States German Foreign Ministry

224

GV HAP IB JC JCMS MA MG MJ MRE OA OARA

01

OP PCDF PGM PR PRO PSF PSP RFO RG RGFM RMJ RTSN TSN VMF

Notes to Page ix

Getúlio Vargas Papers Hildebrando Acioly Papers Jornal do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro) Jornal do Comércio (Rio de Janeiro) José Carlos de Macedo Soares Papers Ministério da Agricultura Ministro da Guerra; Ministério da Guerra Ministro da Justiça; Ministério da Justiça Ministério das Relações Exteriores Oswaldo Aranha Papers Office of American Republics Affairs O Jornal (Rio de Janeiro) O Paiz (Rio de Janeiro) Polícia Civil do Distrito Federal Pedro de Góes Monteiro Papers Coleção Presidência da República Public Records Office Pedro Salgado Filho Papers Pantaleão da Silva Pessoa Papers Records of the (British) Foreign Office Record Group Microfilmed Records of the German Foreign Ministry Records of the Ministério da Justiça Records of the Tribunal de Segurança Nacional Tribunal de Segurança Nacional Virgílio de Melo Franco Papers

Preface 1. Basic works on United States-Brazilian relations during the first half of the century are E. Bradford Burns, Unwritten Alliance, and Frank D. McCann, Jr., Brazilian-American Alliance. In Portuguese, see Victor Valla, Os Estados Unidos e a influência estrangeira na economia brasileira, and Gerson Moura, Autonomia na dependência. On Great Britain, see Richard Graham, Britain and the Onset of Modernization in Brazil. The only booklength study of broad German-Brazilian relations early in the century is Gerhard Brunn, Deutschland und Brasilien. Stanley E. Hilton, Brazil and the Great Powers, assesses Brazil's relations with the United States, Great Britain, and Germany during the pre-World War II period; his "Brazil's International Economic Strategy, 1945-1960" analyzes postwar GermanBrazilian economic relations. 2. Hilton, "Latin America and Western Europe, 1880-1945"; Werner Baer, "Latin America and Western Europe: Economic Relations through World War II." On German immigration to Brazil, see Kate Harms-Baltzer,

Notes to Pages ix-4

225

Die Nationalisierung der deutschen Einwanderer, and Frederick C. Luebke, Germans in Brazil 3. In addition to the aforementioned books by Burns and McCann, the following articles by Hilton deal wholly or in part with the special relationship: "Brazil and the Post-Versailles World," "Brazilian Diplomacy and the Washington-Rio de Janeiro 'Axis' during the World War II Era," and "The United States, Brazil, and the Cold War." 4. Maria H. Moreira Alves, State and Opposition in Military Brazil. 5. Hilton, "The Armed Forces and Industrialists in Modern Brazil," pp. 646-647, 652-659. 6. John W. F. Dulles, Anarchists; Dulles, Brazilian Communism; Ronald Chilcote, Brazilian Communist Party. 1. Challenge and Response (1917-1930) 1. Theodore H. von Laue, "Soviet Diplomacy: G. V. Chicherin, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs," pp. 236-237. 2. Manuel Caballero, Latin America and the Comintern, p. 10. 3. Robert M. Levine, Pernambuco, pp. 51-53. 4. John D. Wirth, Minas Gerais, pp. 16, 23, 90. 5. Joseph Love, São Paulo in the Brazilian Federation, 1889-1937. 6. Stephen Topik, Political Economy, pp. 129-155; Warren Dean, Industrialization, pp. 83-106. Specifically on labor unrest during 1917-1919, see Moniz Bandeira et al., O ano vermelho; Boris Fausto, Trabalho urbano, pp. 192-216.

7. Michael L. Conniff, Urban Politics, pp. 60-72; Topik, Political Economy, pp. 8-17. On the Prestes Column, see Neill Macaulay, Prestes Column. 8. Octávio Brandão, Combates, pp. 113-114, 170. 9. Sheldon L. Maram, "Labor and the Left in Brazil," pp. 262-263; John W F. Dulles, Anarchists. 10. Astrojildo Pereira, Formação do PCB; Brandão, quoted in Robert Alexander, Communism, p. 93. n . Dulles, Anarchists, pp. 176-178; Chilcote, Brazilian Communist Party, pp. 25-26. 12. Brandão, Combates, pp. 237-238. 13. Rollie E. Poppino, International Communism, p. 72. 14. Chilcote, Brazilian Communist Party, p. 30; Alexander, Communism, p. 95. 15. Brandão, Combates, pp. 301-314. 16. Heitor Ferreira Lima, Caminhos, p. 37; Alexander, Communism, p. 97. 17. Poppino, International Communism, p. 75. 18. Luís Carlos Prestes, "How I Became a Communist," pp. 115-117; Prestes, quoted in Dênis de Moraes and Francisco Viana, Prestes, pp. 33, 37; João Alberto Lins de Barros, Memórias, p. 149. See, too, "Depoimento de Luís Carlos Prestes," in Nelson Werneck Sodré, A coluna Prestes, p. 88.

226

Notes to Pages 4-10

19. Pereira, Formação do PCB, pp. 105-109; Moraes and Viana, Prestes, p. 39; Dulles, Anarchists, pp. 343-345. 20. Leôncio Basbaum, Uma vida, pp. 68-72; Moraes and Viana, Prestes, p. 44· 21. Getúlio Vargas to João Neves da Fontoura, Sept. 9, 1929, GV; Prestes, quoted in Moraes and Viana, Prestes, pp. 46-48; Prestes to Sylo Meirelles and Osvaldo Cordeiro de Farias, Nov. 22, 1929, in Edgard Carone, O tenentismo, p. 336. 22. Barros, Memórias, pp. 222-225; Prestes, manifesto, May 29, 1930, in Abguar Bastos, Prestes, pp. 225-229. 23. Carone, "Uma polêmica nos primórdios do PCB," pp. 15-36; "O relatório Canellas," in Bandeira et al., O ano vermelho, pp. 407-414; Dulles, Anarchists, pp. 201-205. 24. Brandão, Combates, pp. 285-287; Dulles, Anarchists, pp. 269-274. 25. Stephen Clissold, "Soviet Relations with Latin America between the Wars," pp. 15-19; Clissold, Soviet Relations, p. 87; Cole Blaiser, Giant's Rival, pp. 23-25, 28; Aldo Cesar Vacs, Discreet Partners, pp. 3-5; Mario Rapoport, "Argentina and the Soviet Union," pp. 241-242; A. P. Malkov and V M. Marchenko, "Deiatel'nost' 'Iuzhamtorga'," pp. 82-85.1 am grateful to Prof. Thomas Owen of Louisiana State University for translation of this item. 26. Clissold, "Soviet Relations," p. 16; Caballero, Latin America, pp. 25-70. 27. Basbaum, quoted in Michel Zaidan, "Apresentação," pp. 7-8. 28. Clissold, "Soviet Relations," p. 15; Thomas E. Skidmore, "Failure in Brazil," p. 138; Boris Goldenberg, Kommunismus, pp. 35-45. 29. Ferreira Lima, Caminhos, p. 95; Basbaum, Uma vida, pp. 60, 67. 30. Basbaum, Uma vida, pp. 66-68. On the Comintern's "discovery" of Latin America, see Caballero, Latin America, pp. 70-73. 31. Ferreira Lima, Caminhos, pp. 102-104, 107-113; Dulles, Anarchists, pp. 417-418; Brandão, Combates, pp. 379-380. On Guralsky's background, see Branko Lazitch and Milorad Drachkovitch, Lenin and the Comintern, pp. 151, 473, 478, 483. 32. Basbaum, Uma vida, pp. 76, 93-95; Dulles, Anarchists, p. 482; Ferreira Lima, Caminhos, pp. 139, 143, 146-148. 33. Dulles, Anarchists, pp. 417-419, 428-434. 34. Ferreira Lima, Caminhos, p. 238. 35. Russian Foreign Office to Russian minister (Rio), Mar. 18, 1917; Braz. ambassador (Washington) to MRE, Mar. 22, 1917; President Wenceslau Brás to Aleksandr Kerensky, Apr. 9, 1917, AHI. 36. Braz. chargé (Petrograd) to MRE, Feb. 24, 26, 1918, AHI; JC, Feb. 26, 1918.

37. Raul do Rio Branco to MRE, Mar. 28, 1918, Nilo Peçanha Papers; Braz. military attaché (Paris) to General Augusto Tasso Fragoso, fan. 31, 1919, in Tristão de Alencar Araripe, Tasso Fragoso, p. 383; Lucillo Bueno (Copenhagen) to MRE, June 9, 1923, AHI.

Notes to Pages 10-15

111

38. Bueno to MRE, Jan. 6, May 5, 1923, July 15, Nov. 8, 1924, AHI. 39. Adalberto Guerra-Duval (Berlin) to MRE, Aug. 6, Nov. 20, 1920, Feb. 15, Apr. 28, 1922, Jan. 22, Oct. 7, Dec. 2, 1923; Raul Régis de Oliveira (London) to MRE, June 23, 1928, AHI. 40. Jackson de Figueiredo, quoted in Margaret Todaro, "Pastors, Prophets, and Politicians." 41. Paulo Nogueira Filho, Ideais, pp. 130, 360-363. 42. MRE to Chief of Police (Rio), Dec. 3, 1918, Feb. 20, 1919; MRE to MJ, Feb. 7, 1919; MRE to Rio Branco, Feb. 21, 1919; Epitácio Pessoa (Paris) to MRE, May 6, 1919, AHI. 43. Maram, "Labor and the Left in Brazil," pp. 2 6 2 - 2 6 3 . 44. Guerra-Duval to MRE, Dec. 10, 1925; MRE to Guerra-Duval, Feb. 1, 1926, AHI; Cyro de Azevedo, Assumptos internacionaes, pp. 9 - 1 0 ; editorial: "Antes prevenir que remediar,77 OP, Oct. 24, 1926; Col. João Baptista Magalhães to Elmano Cardim, Dec. 24, 1946, João Baptista Magalhães Papers, box 776; Figueiredo to Minister of Justice Afonso Pena Júnior, n.d. [1926], APJ; Todaro, "Pastors, Prophets, and Politicians77; Mônica P. Velloso, "A Ordem: uma revista de doutrina, política e cultura,77 pp. 123-130. For Figueiredo's attentiveness to plots and conspiracies, see his letters to Pena of Mar. 3, 1924, Apr. 18 and May 27, 1925, and various undated memoranda and letters, APJ. 45. MRE to Chief of Police (Rio), Aug. 30, 1927, AHI; editorial: "Propaganda comunista, 77 JB, June 18, 1927; Braz. consul (Rotterdam) to MRE, Jan. 10, 1928; Braz. consul (Montevideo) to MRE, Aug. 29, 1928; Braz. embassy (B. Aires) to MRE, Dec. 4, 1928, AHI; Oswaldo Aranha to Coriolano de Araújo Góes Filho, n.d. [1928], OA ; Braz. min. (Copenhagen) to MRE, Jan. 30, 1930, AHI. 46. Braz. emb. (Washington) to MRE, Mar. 30, 1923, Apr. 16, Aug. 10, 1928; Bueno to MRE, Nov. 8, 1924; Braz. min. (Warsaw) to MRE, Feb. 3, 1925, AHI. 47. DC, Mar. 17, 1945. 48. Amb. Edwin Morgan to DS, Aug. 28, 1926, RG 59, 832.00B/7; British amb. (Rio) to FO, Aug. 31, 1926, RFO file 371, vol. 11802; editorials: "Attenção à praga nefasta77 and "O flagelo communista! 77 OP, Oct. 8, 10, 1926; editorial: "A Inglaterra e a Rússia,77 JB, May 29, 1927. 49. Braz. min. (Prague) to MRE, Dec. 26, 1921; Bueno to MRE, Dec. 2, 1922, March 10, 1923; Braz. min. (Stockholm) to MRE, Feb. 8, 1923; Braz. amb. (Washington) to MRE, March 26, 1923, AHI. 50. Chambre de Commerce du Nord-Ouest (Petrograd) to Câmara de Comércio Internacional do Brasil (hereafter cited as CCIB), n.d. [Oct. 25, 1923], AHI; CM, Dec. 12, 1923; CCIB to MRE, Jan. 27, 1927, AHI. 51. MRE to Braz. min. (Prague), Mar. 7, 1923; MRE to MA, July 23, 1923; CCIB to MRE, Dec. n , 1923, Jan. 27, 1927; Braz. min. (Stockholm) to MRE, May 7, 1923; Bueno to MRE, July 15, 1924; MA to MRE, Jan. 25, 1926, AHI. 52. Boris Kraevsky, interview, A Manhã, Sept. 16, 1926; ACRJ to MRE, Dec. 7, 1926, AHI.

228

Notes to Pages

15-20

53. José P. de Rodrigues Alves to MRE, Aug. 30, 1926; Morgan to DS, Feb. 16, 1927, RG 59, 832.00B/1; PCDF to MRE, Sept. 16, 1931, AHI; Brit. amb. (Rio) to FO, Feb. 19, 1927, RFO 371/12600. 54. Rodrigues Alves to MRE, June 1, 1927, Oct. 2, 1928, AHI; Washington Luís Pereira de Souza to Vargas, Oct. 17, 1928, GV; MRE to ACRJ, Oct. 24, 1929; Instituto do Café (S. Paulo) to MRE, Nov. 13, 1929; MRE to Instituto do Café (S. Paulo), Nov. 26, 1929, AHI; Kraevsky, interview, Izvestiya, Aug. 2, 1928, in Clissold, Soviet Relations, p. 75. 55. MRE, circular, Aug. 27, 1919; Presidential Secretary to MRE, Oct. 16, 1919; State Secretary of Agriculture (S. Paulo) to French consul (S. Paulo), Mar. 3, 1921; Braz. consul (Yokohama) to MRE, Oct. 29, 1924; MRE to Braz. consul (Yokohama), Nov. 1, 1924; Braz. min. (Prague) to MRE, Nov. 6, 1924, AHI. 56. MA to MRE, Mar. 12, 1926; MRE to MA, Mar. 22, 1926, AHI. 57. MRE memo, Nov. 23, 1926; State Sec. of Agric. (S. Paulo) to MRE, n.d. [March 1927], June 6, 1927; MRE to State Sec. Agric. (S. Paulo), May 13, 1927, AHI; editorials: "Immigrantes indesejáveis" and "Immigração polaca," CM, May 7, n , 1927; MRE to MJ, Sept. 9, 1929; MJ to MRE, Oct. 29, 1929, AHI. 58. MRE to MJ, Apr. 7, 1919, RMJ; MJ to MRE, Jan. 6, 1922, AHI; "Convênio Internacional Sul-Americano de Polícia," in Brazil, Coleção das Leis [ . . . ] 1933, vol. 1, pp. 143-145; Col. Carlos da Silva Reis to MJ, Oct. 16, 1926, AHI. 59. Rio Branco to MRE, June 17, 1924, Jan. 21, 1925; Théodor Aubert to Rio Branco, Feb. 17, 1925; Rio Branco to Reis, Oct. 21, 1926; Rio Branco to MRE, Sept. 18, 1933; Washington Luís to MRE, July 15, 1927; MRE to Rio Branco, July 16, 1927; Rio Branco to MRE, Nov. 18, 1927, AHI. 60. Angela M. de Castro Gomes, Burguesia e trabalho, pp.71, 8 1 - 8 3 ; Luiz Werneck Vianna, Liberalismo, pp. 5 8 - 6 2 ; Dean, Industrialization, pp. 158-161. 61. Hermes Pio Vieira, Eloy Chaves, pp. 152, 175-176, 184-187, 2 3 0 234. 62. James M. Malloy, Politics of Social Security, pp. 3 1 - 4 0 , 4 5 - 4 7 . 63. Dean, Industrialization, pp. 165-166. See, too, Marisa Saenz Leme, A ideologia dos industriais, pp. 107-109. 64. Maram, "Urban Labor and Social Change in the 1920s," p. 219; Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro and Michael M. Hall, eds., A classe operária no Brasil, pp. 324-325. 65. Maram, "Labor and the Left in Brazil," pp. 260-261; Carone, A república velha, pp. 239-240. 66. Brazil, Presidência da República, Mensagem [ . . . ] 1920, pp. 1 0 1 103; Brazil, MJ, Relatório [ . . . ] 1920, iv-viii; Brazil, Collecção das Leis [ . . . ] do Brasil, 1921, vol. 1, p. 180, 219-220; Brandão, Combates, p. 227. 67. Brandão, Combates, pp. 227, 247-248, 312-313, 329. 68. Washington Luís to President Afonso Pena, Jan. 2, 1906, May 7, 1907, Afonso Pena Papers; Washington Luís, quoted in José Albertino Rodrigues, Sindicato, p. 68, and Gomes, Burguesia e trabalho, p. 101; Góes Filho,

Notes to Pages 20-26

229

quoted in Brazil, MJ, Relatório [ . . . ] 1928, pp. 159-161; Maram, "Urban Labor and Social Change in the 1920s," p. 218. 69. U.S. military attaché (Rio) to War Dept., RG 59, 832.00B/8; Brandão, Combates, pp. 344-378; editorial: "Os tentáculos moscovitas," JC, Oct. 11, 1929; German min. (Rio) to GFM, Jan. 31, 1930, RGFM, Microcopy T-120, roll 1342, frame 504180.

2. The Debate over Trade and Recognition (1930-1934) 1. For a deposition by one PCB member who went to Moscow for training during the early 1930s, see "João Lopes: Militância e malandragem," in Angela de Castro Gomes et al., Velhos militantes, pp. 98-99. 2. Prestes, "How I Became a Communist," p. 120; Eudocio Ravines, Yenan Way, p. 87. 3. Jan Valtin, Out of the Night, pp. 187, 190-191; Theodor Xanthaky, memo, Jan. 15, 1936, enclosure to U.S. embassy (Rio) to DS, Jan. 16, 1936, RG 84. 4. Prestes, "Carta Aberta," in Bastos, Prestes, pp. 252-266; Basbaum, Uma vida, pp. 9 8 - n o ; Dulles, Anarchists, pp. 482-484, 488; Ministry of Interior (Berlin) to GFM, Mar. 30, 1932, RGFM 3142/504217; Prestes, "How I Became a Communist," p. 121. 5. Jorge Amado, O cavalheiro da esperança, p. 232. 6. Prestes, "How I Became a Communist," pp. 121-122. 7. Dulles, Anarchists, pp. 469-471, 480-484, 487-495, 515; Chilcote, Brazilian Communist Party, p. 38; Prestes, quoted in Moraes and Viana, Prestes, p. 58. 8. Dulles, Anarchists, pp. 516-517; Ravines, Yenan Way, pp. 116, 145146. Ravines is not accepted as accurate by all authors, but his account is consistent with known facts and is more plausible, in the light of subsequent events, than is Prestes' contradictory claim that "there was no orientation from Moscow" regarding the eventual revolt. Manuel Caballero, Latin America, cites Ravines at various points. On the protracted debate in the Comintern's inner circle regarding the popular front issue, see Ε. Η. Carr, Twilight, pp. 124-144. 9. Caio de Melo Franco to Afrânio de Melo Franco, May 14, 1931, VMF; João Pinto da Silva (Madrid) to Octávio Mangabeira, Apr. 12, 1934, Octávio Mangabeira Papers; Luís de Souza Dantas to MRE, Feb. 8, 1934, AHI; C. de Melo Franco to A. de Melo Franco, Feb. 10, 1934, AMF. For similar comments on Communist activities, see Braz. minister (Copenhagen) to MRE, Jan. 22, Feb. 24, Apr. 29, May 4, 1931; Braz. emb. (London) to MRE, Mar. 31, May 19, 1932; Braz. min. (Prague) to MRE, Mar. 8, 1933, AHI. 10. A. de Melo Franco to Baptista Lusardo, May 20, Aug. 3, 1931; Lucillo Bueno to MRE, Feb. 17, 29, Apr. 8, 1932; Braz. emb. (Montevideo) to MRE, Feb. 14, 1932, AHI; Nirceu Santos (Montevideo) to Pedro Salgado Filho, Apr. 15, 1932, PSF, box 71; Braz. emb. (Buenos Aires) to MRE, Aug. 13, 1932, AHI.

230

Notes to Pages 26-33

11. José P. de Rodrigues Alves to MRE, Jan. 8, Apr. 24, June 14, Sept. 29, 1932; French emb. (Rio), memo, Sept. 6, 1932, AHI; Cristiano Buys to Filinto Muller, Oct. 12, 1933, FM. 12. Editorial: "Os frutos do bolchevismo," AN, Jan. 26, 1931; Moniz de Aragão to MRE, Jan. 22, Feb. 24, Apr. 29, May 4, 1931. 13. MRE to Lusardo, Sept. 29, 1931; MRE to PCDF, May 25, 1932; Braz. min. (Vienna) to MRE, Jan. 21, Feb. 22, 1933; Raul Régis de Oliveira to MRE, Mar. 31, May 19, 1932; British emb. (Rio) to MRE, Sept. 14, 1932, AHI. 14. Santos (Montevideo) to Oswaldo Aranha, May 23, June 18, 1931, OA; Braz. emb. (Montevideo) to MRE, Oct. 27, 1931, AHI. 15. Santos to Aranha, May 23, 1931, OA; Bueno to MRE, Mar. 18, 1932, AMF; A. de Melo Franco to C. de Melo Franco, Apr. 21, 1932, VMF; Braz. consul general (B. Aires) to MRE, Aug. 18, 1932, AMF; MRE to PCDF, Aug. 30, 1932, AHI; José Bernardino de Câmara Canto to Getúlio Vargas, Sept. 28, 1932, GV; Câmara Canto to Vargas, Mar. 8, 1933, PR; Câmara Canto to Aranha, Jan. 19, 1933, OA; Braz. consul gen. (B. Aires) to Vargas, May 21, 1933, PR. 16. Salgado Filho to General Firmino Borba, Oct. 16, 1930; Colonel Colatino Marques to Lusardo, Feb. 24, 1931, PSF; Lusardo, interview, AN, Jan. 19, 1931, p. 2; Miguel Costa (São Paulo) to Aranha, Mar. 18, 1931; Pedro de Góes Monteiro to Aranha, June 15, 1931; Federal Interventor (Maranhão) to Aranha, June 20, 1931; Governor Olegario Maciel to Aranha, Aug. 8, 1931, OA. 17. A. de Melo Franco to C. de Melo Franco, Apr. 21, 1932, VMF; Aranha to José Antonio Flores da Cunha, July 4, 1932; First Military Region, Instrução Geral no. 1, July 15, 1932, OA; commander, First Mil. Region to Monteiro, July 28, 1932, AEX; Brit. consul gen. (S. Paulo) to FO, Nov. 10, 1932, RFO 371/15809. 18. Robert M. Levine, Vargas Regime, pp. 39-40; Dulles, Anarchists, pp. 460-464; Rosa M. Barboza de Araújo, O batismo, pp. 88-152. 19. For the argument that Vargas was aware of the concept of human capital and that this influenced his labor policy, see Hilton, "Vargas and Brazilian Economic Development," pp. 764-765. 20. Dulles, Anarchists, p. 462. See, too, James M. Malloy, Politics, pp. 5 1 68; and Peter Flynn, Brazil, pp. 101-103. 21. Robert W. Howes, "Progressive Conservatism in Brazil." 22. Monteiro, quoted in Of, July 7, 1931, p. 1; Monteiro to Vargas, n.d. [Jan. 4, 1934], GV; Waldomiro Lima, quoted in DC, Nov. 5, 1932, p. 8; Vargas, quoted in Heloisa de Souza Martins, O Estado, pp. 29-30. 23. CM, Nov. 11, 1930, p. 2; Danton Coelho (S. Paulo) to Aranha, n.d. [1931], PSF, box 67; Souza Martins, O Estado, p. 54. 24. Margaret Todaro, "Pastors, Prophets, and Politicians"; Howard Wiarda, Brazilian Catholic Labor Movement, pp. 15-16. 25. Círculo Operário Pelotense to Vargas, 1934, PR; Father Leopoldo Brentano to Muller, Sept. 24, 1936, FM. 26. AN, Jan. 19, 1931, p. 2; Lusardo to Aranha, Jan. 31, 1931, OA;

Notes to Pages 33-39

231

Basbaum, Uma vida, pp. 93-104, 111-140; Octávio Brandão, Combates, pp. 401-406; Ferreira Lima, Caminhos, pp. 157-170; Salgado Filho to MRE, Nov. 10, 1931, Feb. 27, 1932, AHI; PCDF to MJ, Nov. 18, 1933, RMJ; DC, May 14, 1932, p. 1; M. Poppe de Figueiredo, Brasil, pp. 124-125. 27. Lusardo to Aranha, Dec. 1, 1930,· Augusto de Lima to Aranha, Oct. 15, 1931, OA; Israel Souto (PCDF) to Herbert Moses, July 25, 1933, FM. 28. A. de Melo Franco to PCDF, Sept. 27, 1932; Salgado Filho to MRE, Nov. 3, 1931; MRE to Salgado Filho, Nov. 9, 1931, AHI. 29. OJ, Mar. 14, 1931, quoted in U.S. emb. (Rio) to DS, Mar. 28, 1931, RG 59, 832.00B/27,· Braz. emb. (B. Aires) to MRE, Oct. 1, 1931; A. de Melo Franco to MJ, Oct. 20, 1931; Salgado Filho, memo, Nov. 27, 1931; MJ to MRE, Dec. 23, 1931; MRE to PCDF, May 17, 1932, AHI. 30. Vargas, decree-law 22.308, Jan. 24,1932, Brazil, Colecão das Leis [. . . ] 1933, vol. 1, p. 142; editorial: "O que é mais urgente," AP, July 9, 1932; Col. Luiz Garcia to Muller, July 25, 1933; Muller to Garcia, July 25, 1933, Feb. 19,1934, FM; CM, Nov. 17,1933, p. 3; Souto to Muller, n.d. [Dec. 1934], Dec. 21, 1934, FM. 31. A. de Melo Franco to Braz. emb. (Montevideo), Apr. 13, 1932; Bueno to MRE, Aug. 18, 1933; MRE to Muller, Aug. 24, 1933, AHI. 32. Bueno to Muller, Nov. 22, Aug. 9, 1934; Souto to Muller, Dec. 30, 1934, FM. 33. Afonso Miranda Correia to MRE, n.d. [June 1933]; MRE to Raul do Rio Branco (Bern), June 28, 1933; Rio Branco to MRE, July 6, 1933, AHI. 34. José Carlos de Macedo Soares (Rome) to MRE, June 6, 1932; MRE memo, Oct. 11, 1937; Odette Carvalho e Souza to Macedo Soares, Oct. 18, 1932, JCMS; Rio Branco to MRE, July 9,1933, AHI; Carvalho e Souza, memo, Dec. 8, 1937, PR. 35. MRE, memo, July 7, 1931; Levi Carneiro to Aranha, Sept. 24, 1931; Aranha to MRE, Oct. 2, 1931; MRE, circular 637, Oct. 10, 1931, AHI. 36. Editorial: "Em defesa da nacionalidade," CM, June 11, 1932; CM, July 2, 1932, p. 3, July 3, 1932, p. 2, July 7, 1932, p. 2; editorials: "Conspiração da pirataria bolchevista" and "À mercê da peste," AP, July 3, 6, 1932; editorial: "Naturalizados e agitadores," CM, Feb. 2, 1934. 37. MRE to Braz. emb. (B. Aires), Sept. 26, 1934, AHI. Macedo Soares requested that the embassy relay the instructions to the missions in Montevideo, Asunción, La Paz, and Santiago. 38. CM, Dec. 5, 1930; Braz. legation (Vienna) to MRE, Mar. n , 1931; Joaquim Eulálio do Nascimento e Silva, memo, Sept. 20, 1931, AHI. 39. CM, Mar. 21, 1931, p. 3; Pedro Costa Rego, "O senso do que é real," CM, Sept. 18, 1931, p. 2; editorial: "Gasolina russa," CM, Oct. 18, 1932. 40. Arthur Bernardes to A. de Melo Franco, Dec. 18, 1930, AMF; editorial: "A mentira communista," OJ, Mar. 14, 1931; Aragão to MRE, March 2, 1931; Braz. legation (Vienna) to MRE, March n , 1931. 41. MRE to Braz. leg. (Vienna), Apr. [?], 1931; Nascimento e Silva, memo, Sept. 20, 1931; MRE to Elias Bessel (S. Paulo), Apr. 27, 1931; MRE to Instituto do Café, July 4, 1931, AHI.

232

Notes to Pages 40-48

42. Aleksandr Minkin to Artur Araújo Jorge, Sept. 25, 1931; Araújo Jorge to MRE, Sept. 19, 1931; MRE to Araújo Jorge, Nov. 23, 1931; Braz. emb. (B. Aires) to MRE, Nov. 24, 1931; ACRJ to MRE, Jan. 5, 14, 1932, AHI. 43. Annibal V. Villela and Wilson Suzigan, Política do governo, pp. 56, 440. 44. Joaquim de Assis Brasil to Aranha, June 29, July 4, 1933, AHI. 45. Bueno to MRE, Aug. 23, 1933; MRE to Vargas, Sept. 2, 1933; presidential secretary to MRE, Sept. 15, 1933; MRE to Bueno, Oct. 25, 1933; Bueno to MRE, Nov. 12, 1933, AHI. 46. A Hora (Rio), Nov. 21, 1933; A Nação (Rio), Nov. 24, 1933; CM, Nov. 21, 1933. 47. Braz. amb. (Washington) to MRE, Nov. 8, 1933; MRE to Braz. amb. (Washington), Nov. 9, 1933; Rio Branco to MRE, Nov. 24, 1933; MRE to Rio Branco, Nov. 25, 1933, AHI; A Nação, Nov. 28, 1933. 48. Flores da Cunha to Vargas, Dec. 6, 1933, PR; A Federação (Porto Alegre), Apr. 12, 1934; Aracy Machado Alves et al. to CFCE, Aug. 15, 1934; Flores da Cunha to CFCE, Sept. 13, 1934, AHI. 49. MRE, memo, May 8, 1934; MRE to Muller, June 14, 1934, AHI. 50. Nascimento e Silva, memo, Apr. 5, 1934, PR; Herculino Cascardo (London) to Vargas, Aug. 24, 1934, GV. 51. CFCE minutes, Aug. 13, 1934, PR. 52. CFCE minutes, Aug. 20, 27, 1934, PR; Nascimento e Silva to MRE, Aug. 27, 1934, AHI. 53. Flores da Cunha to Sebastião Sampaio, Sept. 13, 1934; João Carlos Machado to Vargas and Macedo Soares, Sept. 29, 1934; Machado Alves et al. to CFCE, Sept. 29, 1934, AHI. 54. Carvalho e Souza, memo, Oct. 5, 1934, AHI. 55. Hilton, Brazil and the Great Powers, pp. 43-67. 56. Dulles, Anarchists, pp. 515, 517; Vargas to Aranha, Oct. 16,1934, OA. 57. Macedo Soares, memo, Oct. 1934, CFCE-PR; CFCE, minutes, Oct. 4, 1934, PR; CFCE to Macedo Soares, Oct. 15, 1934, JCMS. 58. Nascimento e Silva to MRE, Oct. 6, 1934; MRE to Nascimento e Silva, Oct. 10, 1934; Macedo Soares to Machado, Oct. 10, 1934; Aranha to MRE, Oct. 10, 1934; Aragão to legal adviser (MRE), Oct. 11, 1934; Political Dept. (MRE) to Macedo Soares, Oct. 11, 1934; Pol. Dept. (MRE) to secretary general (MRE), Nov. 3, 1934; Peruvian min. (Rio) to Macedo Soares, Dec. 19, 1934; secretary, Câmara dos Deputados, to Macedo Soares, Oct. 26, 1934; Macedo Soares to secretary, Câmara dos Deputados, Dec. 1, 1934, AHI. 59. Hilton, Brazil and the Great Powers, pp. 7-8, 12, n o - 1 1 6 . 60. General João Daltro Filho (S. Paulo) to Monteiro, June 6, 1933, PSP; Pantaleão da Silva Pessoa to Vargas, Feb. 21, 1934, GV; First Mil. Region, Instrução Geral no. 3, Apr. 13, 1934, PGM. 61. Captain Severino Sombra to Monteiro, Mar. 7, 1934; First Mil. Region, Memorial no. 2, Mar. 23, 1934; Daltro Filho to Monteiro, Mar. 2,1934; First Mil. Region, Instrução Geral no. 3, Apr. 13, 1934, PGM. 62. Monteiro to Flores da Cunha, Aug. 9, 1930, in Arnon de Mello, "A

Notes to Pages 49-57

233

Revolução de 193o," Of, Oct. 3, 1934, p. 3; José A. Mendonça de Azevedo, Elaborando a constituição, p. 851; Monteiro, interview, OJ, Nov. 5, 1933, p. 1; Monteiro to Orlando Leite Ribeiro, May 15, 1934, PGM. 63. Azevedo, Elaborando a constituição, pp.274, 323, 328, 464; Monteiro, interview, Of, Nov. 5, 1933, p. 4; Monteiro to Vargas, n.d. [Jan. 4, 1934], GV. 64. General Cristóvão Barcellos, speech, CM, Jan. 26, 1933, p. 1; Daltro Filho to Monteiro, Mar. 2, 1934, PGM; Macedo Soares to Vargas, Apr. 11, 1934, GV; editorial: "A liberal democracia e os exércitos," A Defesa Nacional 21 (July 1934): 289. 65. Azevedo, Elaborando a constituição, pp. 527, 574-575; First Mil. Region (Monteiro), Boletim Secreto, Mar. 1933; Sombra to Monteiro, Mar. 7, 1934; Monteiro to Silveira, Feb. 3, 1934, PGM. 66. Pessoa to Muller, Feb. 16, 1933, FM; Pessoa Notebook (1936); copy of Decree no. 23.873, Feb. 15, 1934, PSP. 67. Editorials: "O perigo do communismo" and "Leis novas," CM, Oct. 19, Nov. 10, 1934; Vargas to Aranha, Oct. 16, 1934, OA. 68. Monteiro to Vargas, Nov. 8, 1934, transmitting Estado-Maior do Exército, memo ("Ação Contra o Communismo''), PR. 69. Monteiro to Silveira, Nov. 30, 1934, PGM.

3. Red Rebellion (1935) 1. Levine, Vargas Regime, pp. 69-71. 2. Theodore Xanthaky, "Memorandum of conversation with Arthur Ernest Ewert and Elise Ewert," fan. 15, 1936, enclosure to U.S. embassy (Rio) to DS, Jan. 16, 1936, RG 84, box 1793; PCDF, A insurreição, pp. 37, 44. For insights into Ewert's work in China, see the memoirs of Otto Braun (A Comintern Agent in China, pp. 2-6, 17, 23, 26, 29), who was the Comintern's military adviser to the Chinese Communists while Ewert was there. 3. PCDF, A insurreição, pp. 44, 49; DS to Ambassador Hugh Gibson (Rio), Feb. 10, 1936, RG 84, box 1793; Franz Gruber (i.e., Johann Heinrich Graaf), deposition, Nov. 28, 1939, AEME. 4. Moraes and Viana, Prestes, p. 67; PCDF, A insurreição, pp. 29, 31, 41, 45, 131, 141; Jorge Amado, O cavalheiro, p. 226. 5. Aliança Nacional Libertadora (Cruzeiro, São Paulo), Livro de atas, June 30, 1935, RMJ; Gregório Bezerra, Memórias, p. 234; Arthur Ewert, report, June 21, 1935, PCDF, A insurreição, p. 40; Levine, Vargas Regime, pp. 72-79; Sylo Meirelles to PCB Central Committee, Apr. 14, 1935, in Etelvino Lins (Secretaria de Segurança Pública, Recife), report, 1936 (copy, Apr. 7, 1941), Etelvino Lins Papers (hereafter Etelvino Lins Report); Agildo Barata, Vida, p. 238. 6. Levine, Vargas Regime, p. 79; Hilton, "Ação Integralista Brasileira," p.4. 7. Meirelles to PCB Central Committee, Apr. 14, 1935, Etelvino Lins Report; Ewert, report, June 21, 1935, PCDF, A insurreição, p. 40; Basbaum,

234

Notes to Pages 57-61

Uma vida, pp. 158-159; Levine, Vargas Regime, pp. 77-78. The intercepted PCB instructions for guerrilla warfare are printed in José Campos de Aragão, A intentona, pp. 38-44. 8. Luís Carlos Prestes, manifesto, in Bastos, Prestes, pp. 304-314; Affonso Henriques, Vargas, p. 314; Prestes to Trifino Correia, July 17, 1935, PCDF, A insurreição, pp. 171-172. 9. Skidmore, "Failure in Brazil," pp. 148-149. 10. The speeches, printed in the Comintern's International Press Correspondence, are in U.S. emb. (Rio) to DS, Mar. 16, 1936, RG 84, box 1793. See Caballero, Latin America and the Comintern, pp. 110-111, Dario Canale, "A Internacional Comunista e o Brasil," pp. 130-133, and Ε. Η. Carr, Twilight of the Comintern, pp. 403-427 for comment on the proceedings of the Seventh Congress. 11. Moraes and Viana, Prestes, p. 58. 12. Ibid., pp. 63-64, 68-69; Prestes to Carlos Costa Leite, Oct. 14, 1935, PCDF, A insurreição, p. 65; Ewert, quoted in Odette Carvalho e Souza (MRE), memo, May 15, 1936, RG 84, box 1793; Rodolfo Ghioldi, Termo de Declarações, in TSN, Relatório e acordão, p. 24. 13. Basbaum, Um a vida, pp. 158-159; João Barreto Leite Filho to Prestes, Oct. 26, 1935, Barreto Leite Filho Papers; Moraes and Viana, Prestes, p. 72. 14. Editorial: "O reconhecimento dos Soviets," JB, Feb. 8, 1935; editorials: "Reconhecimento dos Soviets" and "As graves e a propaganda comunista," CM, Jan. 8,16,1935; editorial: "A segurança do Estado," JB, Jan. 20, 1935; editorial column: "Notas e Informações," ESP, Feb. 5, 1935. 15. Editorial: "Propaganda terrorista," CM, Jan. 16, 1935; editorials: "A segurança do Estado," "'Profiteurs7 do comunismo," and "Contra as perturbações da ordem," JB, Jan. 20, Feb. 1, 27, 1935; editorial: "A segurança do Estado," DC, Jan. 22, 1935. 16. Commander, Ninth Military Region, to General Pedro de Góes Monteiro, Dec. 21, 1934; Monteiro to Army Chief of Staff, Jan. 11, 1935, PGM. 17. Pantaleão da Silva Pessoa, "União77 bulletins, Feb. 22, 25, Mar. 22, 1935; Pessoa to Flores da Cunha, Mar. 22, 1935, PSP; Pantaleão da Silva Pessoa, Reminiscências, pp. 133, 182-185; Pessoa to Filinto Muller, June 19, 1935, PSP. 18. Monteiro, interview, Of, Feb. 13, 1935, ρ. 6; Flores da Cunha, quoted in CM, Jan. 22, 1935; Alceu Amoroso Lima, "A lei de segurança," Of, Feb. 5, 1935; Muller, quoted in DC, Feb. 28, 1935, p. 3; José Eduardo de Macedo Soares, "A segurança do Estado77 and "A defesa do Estado jurídico," DC, Jan. 22, 29, 1935, p. 1; editorials: "Críticas sem fundamento," "Legítima defesa," and "Defesa do liberalismo," Of, Jan. 30, Feb. 7, 12, 1935; editorials: "A segurança do Estado77 and "Em defesa do Estado," fB, Jan. 20, Feb. 6, 1935; editorial column: "Notas e Informações," ESP, Jan. 23, 31, Feb. 3, 6, 13, 1935; editorials: "Repressão ao terrorismo77 and "A lei de segurança," CM, Jan. 22, 24, 1935; editorial: "Pela defesa da democracia," DC, Jan. 10, 1935; Law 38, Apr. 4, 1935, RMJ. 19. Pedro Costa Rego, "Leis necessárias," CM, Jan. 19, 1935, p. 2·, MRE to

Notes to Pages 62-67

235

Muller, Mar. 12, 1935, AHI; José Bernardino de Câmara Canto to Vargas, Mar. 16, 1935, PR. 20. MRE to Braz. emb. (Buenos Aires), Mar. 29, 1935; Braz. emb. (B. Aires) to MRE, Mar. 30, Apr. 3, 5, 30, 1935; Orlando Leite Ribeiro (B. Aires) to Muller, May 1, 1935, FM; Amb. Lucillo Bueno (Montevideo) to MRE, June 8, 1935, AHI; Serafim Braga (Montevideo) to Muller, May 30, June 2, 1935, FM. 21. Amoroso Lima to Minister of Education Gustavo Capanema, June 16, 1935, Gustavo Capanema Papers (copy in PR); editorial: "A defesa da ordem pública," JB, June 16, 1935; Lourival Coutinho, O General Góes, p. 262,· Superintendência de Ordem Política e Social (S. Paulo) to Secretary of Public Security, n.d. [1935], PGM; Pessoa to Flores da Cunha, June 17, 1935, PSP; CM, June 25, 1935, p. 1; Vargas, quoted in ESP, July 3, 1935, p. 3. 22. Editorial: "O discurso do Presidente," DC, July 2, 1935; editorial: "Defesa do regimen," Of, July 2, 1935; editorial column: "Notas e Informações," ESP, July 4, 6, 1935; Vargas to Governor Benedito Valladares, July 5, 1935, GV; Muller to Gov. João Bley, n.d. [July 1935]; Bley to Muller, July 4, 1935, FM; Carvalho e Souza to Macedo Soares, Jan. 28, 1936, JCMS. 23. Chief of Police (Florianópolis) to Muller, July 13, 1935; Federal Interventor (Rio Branco) to Muller, July 16, 1935; Chief of Police (Fortaleza) to Muller, July 17, 1935; Secretary of Public Security (Natal) to Muller, July 17, 1935, FM; Augusto Pinto (ANL, S. Paulo), Termo de Declarações, July 17, 1935; Caio Prado Júnior (ANL, S. Paulo), Termo de Declarações, July 17, 1935; Delegado Fabio Lima (S. Paulo), report, Aug. 20, 1935, RMJ; Muller, interview, CM, July 12, 1935, p. 1; Raul Fernandes, quoted in ESP, July 19, 1935, p. 1; editorial: "As declarações do chefe de polícia," CM, July 13, 1935; editorial: "O combate ao extremismo," JB, July 14, 1935; Assis Chateaubriand, "Absentismo criminoso," OJ,July 17, 1935, p. 2; editorial column: "Notas e Informações," ESP, July 21, 1935. 24. Câmara Canto to Vargas, Aug. 31, Sept. 7, 1935, PR; Gruber (Graaf), deposition, Nov. 28, 1935, AEME; Raul Régis de Oliveira to MRE, Oct. 18, 1935, AHI. 25. Bueno to MRE, Nov. 8, 15, 18, 1935, AHI. 26. Pessoa, Notebook (1936); General Mario Ary Pires to director, Army Personnel, Nov. 21, 1958, PSP; Pessoa, Reminiscências, p. 213. 27. Coutinho, O General Góes, p. 269; Eurico G. Dutra, diary, Nov. 14, 1935, in Mauro Leite and Novelli Júnior, Marechal Eurico Gaspar Dutra, p.8. 28. Levine, Vargas Regime, pp. 43-48, 104; João Café Filho, Do sindicato ao Catete, vol. 1, pp. 83-84. 29. General Manoel Rabello to Minister of War, n.d. [1936], PR; Bezerra, Memórias, pp. 239-240. 30. Antonio Carlos Muricy, A guerra revolucionária, p. 10. 31. Levine, Vargas Regime, pp. 106-107; Campos de Aragão, A intentona, pp. 51-52; Hélio Silva, 1935, p. 281. 32. João Galvão, deposition, in Glauco Carneiro, História das revoluções, p. 419; Silva, 1935, p. 281.

236

Notes to Pages 67-75

33. Rabello to Min. of War, n.d. [1936], PR; Levine, Vargas Regime, pp. 114-115; Silva, 1935, p. 288; Etelvino Lins Report. 34. Bezerra, Memórias, pp. 239-244. 35. Frederico Mindelo Carneiro Monteiro, deposition, Silva, 1935, pp. 292-295; Carneiro Monteiro, Depoimentos, pp. 106-120; Etelvino Lins Report; Levine, Vargas Regime, p. 116; Campos de Aragão, A intentona, p. 59. 36. Malvino Reis Neto to Muller, Nov. 24 (three messages), 26 (two messages), 1935, FM; Campos de Aragão, A intentona, p. 59. 37. Campos de Aragão, A intentona, pp. 53, 56; Levine, Vargas Regime, p. 109; Col. Delmiro Andrade (João Pessoa) to Muller, Nov. 27, 1935, FM. 38. Moraes and Viana, Prestes, pp. 68-69; Ghioldi, Termo de Declarações, TSN, Relatório e acordão, p. 24. 39. Prestes to Trifino Correia, Nov. 25, 1935, PCDF, A insurreição, pp. 37, 44; Moraes and Viana, Prestes, p. 75; Barata, Vida, pp. 261-265. 40. Gruber (Graaf), deposition, Nov. 28, 1939, AEME; British amb. (Rio) to FO, Nov. 26, 1935, RFO 371/18469. 41. Pessoa, Reminiscências, pp. 213-216; Pires to director, Army Personnel, Nov. 21, 1958, PSP; Leite and Novelli Júnior, Marechal Eurico Gaspar Dutra, p. 93. 42. Ibid., pp. 93-94; Pessoa, Reminiscências, pp. 217-219; Silva, 1935, ΡΡ· 343-396; Levine, Vargas Regime, pp. 118-120; Barata, Vida, pp. 283298. 43. British amb. (Rio) to FO, Dec. 27, 1935, RFO 371/18649. 44. Victorino Freire, A laje da raposa, p. 59. Dutra informed Freire, an intimate friend, of João Gomes' remark. Góes Monteiro, after talking with Vargas, recorded the president's dismay with the "negligence" of the minister of war. Coutinho, O General Góes, p. 273. 45. Luiz Vergara, Fui secretário de Getúlio Vargas, p. 105.

4. Toward the National Security State (1935-1937) 1. JC, Nov. 30, 1935, p. 3; Tristão de Athayde (Amoroso Lima), "Semana trágica," Of, Nov. 30, 1935; Amoroso Lima to Getúlio Vargas, Nov. 30, 1935, GV; CFCE, minutes, Dec. 2, 1935, PR; JC, Dec. 2 - 3 , 1935, p. 4; DN, Dec. 2, 1935, p. 1. 2. Editorials: "Lição a aproveitar," "Expurgo necessário," and "O Soviet de Natal," DN, Nov. 28, 30, Dec. 1, 1935; editorial column: "Notas e Informações," ESP, Nov. 29, Dec. 6, 1935; Assis Chateaubriand, "Tártaros e mongóes," Of, Nov. 30, 1935; José Eduardo de Macedo Soares, "Pelo Brasil e a todo transe!" DC, Dec. 1, 1935; editorials: "Necessidade de ação," "Unidade e cohesão," and "Dever internacional," CM, Dec. 7, 15, 29, 1935. On Chateaubriand's journalistic campaign for a nationwide antiCommunist program, see José Nilo Tavares, "1935: Reavaliação de análise," pp. 88-90. 3. Vargas to Oswaldo Aranha, Nov. 25, 1935, OA; Vargas to state gover-

Notes to Pages 75-83

237

nors, Nov. 27, 1935, DN, Nov. 28, 1935, p. 1; Vargas, interviçw, Diário da Noite (Rio) Nov. 28, 1935; Filinto Muller, memo, n.d. [Dec. 1935], GV. 4. Ata de uma reunião de generais, Dec. 3, 1935, GV; CM, Dec. 6, 1935, p. 1. 5. CFCE, minutes, Dec. 2, 1935, PR; Vargas, memo, Dec. 7, 1935, GV; Vargas to Aranha, Dec. 14, 1935, OA. 6. John W. F. Dulles, Brazilian Communism, p. 3; Silva, 1937, pp. 125126; MJ, circular, Jan. 2, 1936, GV; CM, Jan. 10, 1936, p. 1; MJ, circular, Jan. 21, 1936, PR; Adalberto Corrêa to Vargas, Feb. 5, 1936, GV; Corrêa, O Brasil inquieto, pp. 168-169; Frederico Buys to Muller, Feb. 17, 1937, FM; Corrêa to Vargas, Apr. 2, 1936, GV. 7. Coutinho, O General Góes, p. 274; MG, Departamento de Pessoal, Boletim Reservado no. 2, Feb. 28, 1936, AEX; Pessoa, Reminiscências, p. 232; Pessoa to João Gomes Ribeiro Filho, Dec. 10,1935, OJ, May 28, 1937, p. 5; Pessoa, circular, Jan. 8, 1936, PSP. 8. Coutinho, O General Góes, p. 274; Monteiro, memo (sent to Vargas, Dec. 20, 1935), PGM. 9. Monteiro to Senator Manoel Góes Monteiro, Dec. 17, 1935, PGM; Coutinho, O General Góes, p. 275. 10. Monteiro, memo, n.d. [1936]: General José Meira de Vasconcellos to Monteiro, May 26, 1936, PGM; unsigned report, July 7, 1936, GV. 11. U.S. consul (Recife) to Ambassador Hugh Gibson (Rio), Feb. 14, Mar. 1, 1936, RG 84, box 1792; Malvino Reis Neto, quoted in Dulles, Brazilian Communism, p. 67; Reis Neto to Muller, Apr. 9, 1936; Frederico Mindelo Carneiro Monteiro (Recife) to Muller, June 21, 1936, FM. 12. British consul (Recife) to Amb. Hugh Gurney (Rio), Dec. 6, 1935, RFO 371/19766; Bezerra, Memórias, p. 247; Gibson to DS, Dec. 6, 1935, RG 59, 832.00/979; Muller to Reis Neto, n.d. [Dec. 1935], FM; Dulles, Brazilian Communism, p. 2. 13. CM, Jan. 7, 1936; Dulles, Brazilian Communism, pp. 6-7. 14. TSN, processo 1381, RTSN; Prestes to PCB National Secretariat, Feb. 19, 1936, PCDF, A insurreição, pp. 36-37; Dulles, Brazilian Communism, pp. 8-9, 10-15. 15. Theodore Xanthaky, memo, Jan. 15, 1936, RG 84, box 1793; Dulles, Brazilian Communism, pp. 9-10. 16. Editorial: "Novas energias!" CM, Jan. 7, 1936; Muller to Judge Edgar Ribas Carneiro, Jan. 21, 1936, CM, Jan. 22, 1936, p. 3. 17. Paulo Cavalcanti, O caso eu conto, pp. 155-175; Dulles, Brazilian Communism, p. 31; Harry Berger (Arthur Ewert), quoted in CM, Jan. 10, 1936, p. 1. 18. Joseph Brodsky, report, Mar. 12, 1936, RG 84, box 1793; Gibson to DS, Feb. 5, 1936, RG 59, 800.00B Barron, Victor A./I. 19. Cordell Hull to Senator Sam McReynolds, Mar. 25, 1936, RG 59, 332.113 Barron, Victor A. 20. CM, Mar. 6, 1936; Moraes and Viana, Prestes, pp. 64-65; Fernando Morais, Olga, pp. 150-152; U.S. consul general (Rio) to DS, Mar. 9, 1936,

238

Notes to Pages 83-89

RG 59, 332.113 Barron, Victor Α.; Fernando de Luna Freire, deposition, Mar. 5, 1936; Miranda Correia to Muller, Mar. 5, 1936, enclosures to Gibson to DS, Mar. 25, 1936, RG 59, 800.00B Barron, Victor; Gibson to DS, July 10, 1936, RG 84, box 1793. 21. Luís Carlos Prestes, deposition, Mar. 9, 1936, Heráclito Sobral Pinto, Por que defendo, pp. 35-36; Prestes, quoted in Moraes and Viana, Prestes, p. 82. 22. Dulles, Brazilian Communism, p. 25; CM, Mar. 12, 31, Apr. 2, 1936, pp. 3, 1, 3, respectively; Silva, 1937, pp. 148-154; Abel Chermont, speech, May 18, 1937, summarized in Gurney to FO, June 6, 1937, RFO 371/20603. 23. Gibson to DS, Mar. 24, 25, 1936, RG 84, box 1792; CM, July 10, 1937, p. 3 (cited in Silva, 1937, p. 212). 24. Dulles, Brazilian Communism, pp. 38-39; Sobral Pinto, Por que defendo, pp. 70-71. 25. Vargas, speech, May 10, 1936, Vargas, A nova política, vol. 4, p. 155; Muller, press note, CM, June 7, 1936, p. 2. 26. DOPS, Auto de Qualificação e Perguntas (Maria Prestes), Mar. 5, 1936; Olga Benario to Prestes, May 18, 19, 1936; DOPS, Auto de Qualificação e Perguntas (Maria Prestes), May 19, 1936; Afonso Henrique de Miranda Correia to Delgado Demócrito de Almeida, May 19, 1936, RMJ. 27. Francisco de Menezes Julien, Carlos Bittencourt de Oliveira, and Paulo Pfaltzgraff, depositions, May 23, 1936; Demócrito de Almeida, report, June 13, 1936, RMJ. 28. Miranda Correia to Hermes Lima, Apr. 29, 1936; Lima to Correia, May 29, 1936, CM, May 30, 1936, p. 3; Lima to Supreme Court, June 3, 1936; Justice Antonio Bento de Farias to MJ, June 10,1936, RMJ; CM, June 18, 1936, p. 5; Vargas and Rao, decree, Aug. 27, 1936, RMJ; José Moniz de Aragão to GFM, Oct. 6, 1936; Aragão to MRE, Nov. 21, 1936, AHI; Olga Benario to Leocadia Prestes, Jan. 1, 1937, Sobral Pinto, Por que defendo, p. 62. 29. Amoroso Lima, Indicações políticas, p. 194. 30. Morais, Olga, pp. 32-37. 31. Dulles, Brazilian Communism, p. 50. On the creation of the TSN and its handling of cases arising from the intentona, see Reynaldo Pompeu de Campos, Repressão judicial, pp. 39-70. 32. Sobral Pinto to Raul Machado, Jan. 15, Mar. 2, Apr. 6, 1937; Euzebio de Queiroz Filho to Machado, Jan. 25, 1937; Sobral Pinto to Agamenon Magalhães, Feb. 13, 1937; Machado to Muller, Mar. 9, 1937, Sobral Pinto, Por que defendo, pp. 74-75, 82, 86, 95. 33. TSN, Relatório e acordão, pp. 165-170; Dulles, Brazilian Communism, p. 79; Campos, Repressão judicial, pp. 54, 66-68. 34. Vargas, speech, May 10,1936, A nova política, vol. 4, p. 153; Reis Neto to Muller, Sept. 10, 1936, FM; Odette Carvalho e Souza, report, Nov. 17, 1936, AHI. 35. Vargas, speech, Jan. 1, 1936, A nova política, vol. 4, p. 141; Vargas to Aranha, Jan. 14, 1936, OA. 36. CM, Mar. 26, 1936, p. 3; Carlos Maul, "O rei está nu," CM, May 14, 1936, p. 4.

Notes to Pages 90-95

239

37. CM, Jan. 11,1936, p. 8; Pessoa, circular, Jan. 8,1936, PSP; MG, Departamento de Pessoal, Boletim no. 12, Feb. 28, 1936, AEX; CM, Apr. 24, Sept. 24, Oct. 3, 8, 1936, pp. 3, 2, 2, 7, respectively. 38. CM, May 30,1936, p. 1; Vargas, speech, Sept. 7,1936, A nova política, vol. 4, pp. 184, 185. 39. Editorials: "O dever supremo da República," "Combate ao comunismo," "Basta, como aviso!" "A propaganda contra o comunismo," and "O depoimento do governo," CM, Jan. 2, 9, Feb. 28, Mar. 31, 1936; Virgílio de Melo Franco to Vargas, May 11, 1936, GV; Vargas, speech, July 16, 1936, A nova política, vol. 4, pp. 174-175; ]B, May 24, 1936; Heitor Moniz, "ARússia e os outros," CM, Sept. 29, 1936; DC, Aug. 13,1936; editorials: "O terror na Rússia," "Situação econômica da Rússia," "Impressões da Rússia Soviética," "A Rússia perante o mundo," "O bolchevismo sem máscara," "As ameaças de guerra européia," and "A Rússia democrática," DC, Nov. 15, Dec. 3, 5,6, 11, 13, 17, 1936. 40. U.S. military attaché (Rio) to War Dept., Oct. 31, 1934, RG 165; Monteiro, interview, Feb. 13, 1935; Vargas, interview, DC, July 2, 1935, p. 2; Pessoa, Reminiscências, pp. 255-256; Pessoa, Notebook (1936), PSP. The quotation regarding the relationship between the greenshirts and the church is from Margaret Todaro Williams, "Integralism and the Brazilian Catholic Church," 433. 41. Plínio Salgado to Vargas, JB, Nov. 27, 1935; Vargas, quoted in Diário da Noite, Nov. 28, 1935; Vargas, speech, Jan. 1, 1936, A nova política, vol. 4, p. 145; Pessoa, circular, Jan. 8, 1936, PSP. 42. Joaquim de Araújo Lima (Ação Integralista Brasileira), circular, Feb. 19, 1936, RTSN, processo 2021, vol. 2·, Plínio Salgado, O integralismo perante a nacão, pp. 122-123; CM, Sept. 24, 1936, p. 2. 43. Vargas, speeches, May 10, Sept. 10, 1936, A nova política, vol. 4, pp. 155-156, 185; Francisco Piragibe to Vargas, Sept. 10, 1936, PR; Annaes da Câmara dos Deputados, 1936, vol. 17, pp. 112-113; Carvalho e Souza, report, Nov. 17, 1936, AHI. 44. Annaes da Câmara dos Deputados, 1936, vol. 25, p. 628; U.S. military attaché (Rio) to War Dept., Oct. 20, 1936, RG 165. 45. Aranha to Vargas, July 22, 1936, GV; Vargas to Aranha, Aug. 6, 1936, OA. 5. The Battle on the External Front (1935-1937) 1. Ambassador Hugh Gurney (Rio) to FO, Nov. 25, 1935; FO, memo, Nov. 26, 1935, RFO 371/18649; Arthur Schmidt-Elskop (Berlin) to GFM, Dec. 4, 1935, RGFM 3142/504283. 2. Odette Carvalho e Souza, memo, Dec. 9, 1935, PR. See, too, her memo "A Internacional Comunista, o Governo Soviético e o Partido Comunista," n.d., AHI. 3. Carvalho e Souza to José Carlos de Macedo Soares, Jan. 28, 1936; Carvalho e Souza to Secretary General (MRE), Apr. 30, 1938, JCMS; MRE to Brazilian legation (Stockholm), Feb. 10, 1936, AHI.

240

Notes to Pages 95-101

4. Carvalho e Souza to Secretary General (MRE), Apr. 30, 1938, AHI. 5. Amb. Gilberto Amado (Santiago) to MRE, Feb. 5, 1935, JCMS; Braz. chargé (Asunción) to MRE, Apr. 9, 1935, AHI; Arturo Alessandri to Getúlio Vargas, Nov. 29, 1935, PR; Political Dept. (MRE) to Macedo Soares, Mar. 9, 1936, AHI; Carvalho e Souza, report, Nov. 17, 1936, JCMS. 6. MRE to Braz. embassy (Montevideo), Nov. 26, 1935; Braz. emb. (Montevideo) to MRE, Nov. 26, 1935, AHI; José Β. de Câmara Canto to Vargas, Dec. 14, 1935, FM; Lucillo Bueno to MRE, Dec. 23, 25, 1935, AHI. 7. Uruguayan Undersecretary of State to Aleksandr Minkin, Dec. 27, 1935, in Clissold, Soviet Relations, pp. 98-99. 8. Vargas to Gabriel Terra, Nov. 27, 1935, PR; editorials: "O Uruguai e a U.R.S.S.," "A América dos americanos," and "A América e os americanos," ]B, Dec. 28, 29, 1935, Jan. 5, 1936; editorial: "Solidariedade continental," DN, Dec. 28, 1935; DC, Jan. 5, 1936. 9. Izvestiya, Dec. 15, 1935, quoted in Brit. amb. (Moscow) to FO, Dec. 17, 1935, RFO 371/18649; Minkin to José Espalter, Dec. 28, 1935; Espalter to Minkin, Dec. 28, 1935; Minkin to Espalter, Dec. 30, 1935; Pravda, Dec. 30, 1935, in Clissold, Soviet Relations, pp. 98-104. 10. Pravda, Jan. 1, 1936, in ibid., p. 105; Bueno to MRE, Jan. 7, 1936, AHI. 11. Théodor Aubert to Macedo Soares, Jan. 7,1936; MRE to Bueno, Jan. 14, 15, 1936; Bueno to Carvalho e Souza, Jan. 16, 1936; MRE, circular, Jan. 17, 1936, AHI; Vargas to Terra, Jan. 10, 1936, GV; Carvalho e Souza, memo, Jan. 10, 1936, PR; MRE to Bueno, Jan. 18, 1936, AHI. 12. Clissold, Soviet Relations, pp. 105-114 contains passages from the official record of League of Nations Council sessions. See, too, Consul General João Carlos Muniz (Geneva) to MRE, Jan. 26, 1936, AHI. 13. Muniz to MRE, Jan. 26, 27, 1936, AHI; Vargas to Aranha, Jan. n , 1936, OA. 14. Orlando Leite Ribeiro (Buenos Aires) to Filinto Muller, Nov. 27, 1935, FM; Braz. emb. (B. Aires) to MRE, Nov. 28, 1935, AHI; Ribeiro to Vargas, Dec. 4, 1935, PR; Ribeiro to Muller, Dec. 7, 1935, FM. 15. Ribeiro to Muller, Nov. 27, Dec. 7, 1935, FM; Amb. José P. de Rodrigues Alves (Β. Aires) to MRE, Dec. 13, 1935, Feb. 3, 1936, AHI. 16. Ribeiro to Muller, Mar. 7, Apr. 4, 25, 1936, FM. President Agustín Justo also wrote to Vargas that year asking that Ghioldi be deported, promising to see that the Argentine Communist created problems "neither for you nor for us," but it was not until 1940 that Ghioldi was released from prison in Brazil. Agustín Justo to Vargas, Dec. 24, 1936, GV. 17. Ramón Cárcano to Muller, May 15, 1936; Muller to Governor José Antonio Flores da Cunha (Porto Alegre), July 13, 1936; Braz. emb. (B. Aires) to MRE, July 24, 1936, AHI; CM, Dec. 23, 1936, p. 3; Carvalho e Souza to Secretary General (MRE), Apr. 30,1938, JCMS; Braz. emb. (B. Aires) to MRE, Jan. 25, Apr. 3, n , 1937, AHI; Jefe de Investigaciones Miguel Viancarlos (Β. Aires) to Muller, Oct. 29, 1937, FM. 18. Justo to Vargas, Oct. 19, 1937, GV; João Alberto Lins de Barros to Muller, Nov. 3, 1937, FM.

Notes to Pages 102-109

241

19. Macedo Soares to Aranha, Dec. 12, 1935, AHI; Amb. Hugh Gibson (Rio) to DS, Nov. 25, 27, 30, 1935, RG 89, 832.00 Revolutions/471, 477, Dec. 6, 1935, 832.00/979· 20. Cordell Hull to Gibson, Jan. 20, 1936, RG 59, 832.00 Revolutions/ 511; Gibson to U.S. minister Julius Lay (Montevideo), Jan. 23, 1936; Gibson to DS, Jan. 23, 24, 1936; Lay to Gibson, Jan. 23, 1936; Gibson to Lay, Jan. 28, 1936; DS to Gibson, Mar. 16, 1936, RG 84, box 1793. 21. Theodore Xanthaky, memoranda, Jan. 15, 1936, RG 84, box 1793. 22. Ibid.; Gibson to DS, Jan. 15, 1936, RG 59, 832.00 Revolutions/507. 23. Gibson to DS, Feb. 7, 1936; Xanthaky, memo, Jan. 17, 1936; RG 84, box 1793; Elise Ewert, deposition, Apr. 7, 1936, RG 84, box 1793. 24. Gibson to DS, Feb. 5, 1936, RG 59, 800.00B Barron, Victor A./I. 25. Hull to Gibson, Feb. 10, 1936, RG 84, box 1793. 26. John White, in New York Times, Nov. 29, 1935, quoted in Levine, Vargas Regime, p. 123; Vargas to Aranha, Dec. 14, 1935, OA; Aranha to Vargas, Jan. 7, 1936, GV; Arthur H. Sulzberger to Aranha, Jan. 3, 1936; Aranha to Sulzberger, Jan. 7, 1936, OA; Aranha to Vargas, Feb. n , 1936, GV; Macedo Soares to Aranha, Mar. 13, 1936, AHI; Gibson to DS, Apr. 2, 1936, RG 59, 832.00 Revolutions/535; Aranha to Macedo Soares, Apr. 17, 1936, OA. 27. Dulles, Brazilian Communism, p. 32. 28. Consul general Luís Faro Júnior (New York) to Aranha, June 11, 1936, OA; Aranha to MRE, Mar. 24, Apr. 3, 1936, AHI; Aranha to Vargas, Mar. 20, 1936, GV. 29. Aranha to MRE, Apr. 3, 1936, MRE. 30. Hull to Senator Sam McReynolds, Mar. 25, 1936, RG 59, 832.00 Revolutions/5 36; Aranha to Vargas, Apr. 22, 29, 1936, GV; Faro Júnior to Aranha, June 11, 1936, OA. 31. Aranha to Vargas, June 7, 1936, GV; U.S. consul general (Paris), memo, July 16, 1936, RG 84, box 1793; Aranha to MRE, June 17, 18, 1936, AHI. Some of the manifestos and petitions are printed in Silva, 1937, pp. 551-554. 32. Aranha to Vargas, July 22, 1936, May 19, 1937, GV 33. Amb. Alcibíades Peçanha (Madrid) to MRE, Mar. 12, 17, 25, Apr. 6, 1936, AHI; Gurney to FO, May 30, 1936, RFO 371/19766; Peçanha to MRE, May 25, 1936, AHI. 34. Ribeiro to Muller, Dec. 7, 1935, FM; Antônio Camilo de Oliveira (Paris) to Hildebrando Acioly, May 14, 1936, HAP; J. Carmo Júnior, "A revolução na Hespanha," CM, Aug. 8, 1936; Luís de Souza Dantas (Paris) to MRE, Aug. 22, 1936, AHI. 35. French chargé (Rio) to Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Mar. 18, 1936, Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Documents Diplomatiques, p. 606; João Pinto da Silva (Paris) to Vargas, Apr. 16, 1936; Gondin da Fonseca (Paris) to Vargas, Sept. 16, 1936, GV; José J. Moniz de Aragão to MRE, Dec. 28, 1936, AHI; A. de Guimarães Bastos (Bern) to MRE, Oct. 25, 1937, PR. 36. Aragão to Souza Dantas, Oct. 16, 1936; Souza Dantas to Aragão,

242

Notes to Pages

110-116

Oct. 20, 1936; Souza Dantas to MRE, Feb. 15, 1937; MRE to Souza Dantas, Sept. 2, 1937; Souza Dantas to MRE, Sept. 11, 1937, AHI. 37. Raul Régis de Oliveira to MRE, Dec. 17, 1935, AHI; Vargas to Aranha, Jan. n , 1936, OA; FO, memo, Jan. 20, 1936; Anthony Eden (Geneva) to FO, Jan. 21, 1936, RFO 371/20342. 38. League Against Imperialism and Fascism to Eden, Mar. 19, 1936, RFO 371/19766; Régis de Oliveira to MRE, Apr. 14, 1936, AHI; FO, memo, July 3, 1936, RFO 371/20342. 39. Vargas to Aranha, May 28, 1936, OA; Manchester Guardian, Mar. 27, 1936; Régis de Oliveira to MRE, Apr. 9, 1936, AHI; "Terror in Brazil," Daily Worker (London), Apr. 13, 1936; Richard Freeman, "Arthur Ewert Is Being Tortured" and "Luiz Carlos Prestes: Cavalier of Hope," International Press Correspondence 16, no. 20 (Apr. 25, 1936), cited in Dulles, Brazilian Communism, pp. 33, 228; London Times, July 10, 18, 1936. 40. Vargas, speech, May 10, 1936, A nova política, vol. 4, p. 154; Vargas to Aranha, May 28, 1936, OA; Muller, press note, CM, June 7, 1936, p. 2. 41. London Times, July 7, 1936; Régis de Oliveira, memo, July 28, 1936, RFO 371/19766. 42. FO, minutes, Mar. 26, July 3, 1936, RFO 371/19766; Régis de Oliveira to MRE, July 27, 1936, AHI. 43. Hilton, "Brazilian Diplomacy," pp. 203-204; Adalberto GuerraDuval to MRE, Dec. 6, 1935, AHI. 44. Benito Mussolini to Vargas, Dec. 1, 1935, AHI; Mussolini to Vargas, Dec. 10, 1935, GV; Guerra-Duval to MRE, May 11, 1936, AHI; GuerraDuval to Vargas, Oct. 5, 1936, Artur Souza Costa Papers; Luís Simões Lopes to Vargas, Oct. 24, 1936, PR. 45. Hilton, Brazil and the Great Powers, pp. 8 4 - 8 8 . 46. Aragão to MRE, Jan. 29, 1936, AHI. 47. Aragão to MRE, Jan. 22, 1936, AHI; Dante Puzzo, Spain and the Great Powers, pp. 5 8 - 6 7 ; John Coverdale, Italian Intervention, pp. 6 6 - 1 2 6 . 48. Aragão to MRE, Nov. 23, 1936, AHI; Simões Lopes to Vargas, Nov. 6, 1936, PR. 49. Coverdale, Italian Intervention, pp. 9 8 - 1 0 9 . 50. JB, Sept. 20, 1936; editorial: "A belligerância," CM, Sept. 3, 1936; ]B, Nov. 10, 1936. 51. Peçanha to MRE, Aug. 11, 1936, AHI; Chargé Luís F. Pinheiro (Madrid) to Acioly, Sept. 5, 1936, HAP; Macedo Soares to Peçanha, Aug. 14, Sept. 11, 1936; Aragão to MRE, Aug. 18, 19, Oct. 13, 1936; Souza Dantas to MRE, Sept. 14, 1936; MRE to Aranha, July 10, 1937, AHI. 52. Vargas to Aranha, Aug. 13, 17, 1936, OA; MRE, circular, Aug. 19, 1936, AHI; Francisco Franco to Vargas, Oct. 29, 1936, GV; Aragão to MRE, Nov. 13, 1936; MRE to Aragão, Nov. 19, 1936, AHI; MRE, memo, Mar. 31, 1937, PR; MRE, circular, Apr. 5, 1937; MRE to Braz. embassies in Washington, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Lima, June 29, 1937; Aranha to MRE, July 1, 8, 10, 1937, AHI. 53. Schmidt-Elskop to GFM, Dec. 4, 1935, RGFM 3142/504282-283; Aragão to MRE, Jan. 3, 7, 29, 1936, AHI.

Notes to Pages 117-127

243

54. Aragão to MRE, Feb. 4, 21, Mar. 26, Apr. 16, 24, 1936, AHI; Reinhard Heydrich to Reich Ministry of Interior, Apr. 17, 1936, RGFM 3142/504341; Aragão to MRE, June 19, 1936, AHI. 55. Aragão to MRE, July 15,1936; MRE to Aragão, Sept. 14, 15, 1936, AHI. 56. Aragão to MRE, Dec. 28, 1936, Feb. 20, May 13, June 18, July 2, 1937; MRE to Aragão, Aug. 6, 1937; Aragão to MRE, Aug. 10, 1937, AHI. 57. GFM, memo, Jan. 17, 1936, RGFM 2373/19024; Aragão to MRE, Feb. 21, 1936, AHI; Schmidt-Elskop to GFM, Sept. 3, 1936, RGFM 231/ 295200-201.

58. Schmidt-Elskop to GFM, Dec. 10, 1936; Gestapo to GFM, Dec. 23, 1936; Schmidt-Elskop to GFM, Mar. 22, 1937; Aragão to GFM, Mar. 18, 1937, RGFM 231/295188-190, 295197-198, 295223, 295219; Aragão to MRE, Apr. 15, 1937, AHI. 59. Minister of Finance to Vargas, June 1941, PR. 60. Diário da Noite, Apr. 5, 1938, p. 5. 61. Macedo Soares to Aragão, Nov. 2, 1936; Aragão to Macedo Soares, Nov. 21, 1936, AHI; Dr. Ehrt (Berlin) to Vargas, Nov. 12, 1936, PR; Aragão to MRE, Jan. n , 15, 27, Aug. 2, 1937, AHI.

6. Coming of the Estado Novo (1937) 1. Dulles, Brazilian Communism, pp. 20, 55, 59-60, 88-107; Eduardo Xavier, deposition, in Angela M. de Castro Gomes et al., Velhos militantes, pp. 139-143. 2. Admiral J. Castro e Silva to Oswaldo Aranha, Oct. 8, 1936, OA; Pedro de Góes Monteiro, handwritten notes, Sept. 14, 1936; Monteiro to Eurico G. Dutra, n.d. [Jan. 23, 1937], PGM. For concern about Flores da Cunha's attitude toward Communists, see General Emílio Esteves to Dutra, Mar. 11, 1937; Dutra, Boletim de Informações no. 1, May 7, 1937; Esteves to Monteiro, May 18, 1937, in Leite and Novelli Júnior, Marechal, pp. 150, 167, 180. 3. José Carlos de Macedo Soares to Vargas, report (hereafter cited as Macedo Soares Report), Nov. 1937, JCMS; Filinto Muller to Vargas, June 18, 1937, GV. 4. Heráclito Sobral Pinto to Macedo Soares, June 3, 1937, Sobral Pinto, Por que defendo, pp. 146-147; Macedo Soares, press statement, Levine, Vargas Regime, p. 141; Macedo Soares Report; Dulles, Brazilian Communism, p. 83; Sobral Pinto to Minna Ewert, June n , 1937, Sobral Pinto, Por que defendo, pp. 150-152. 5. Muller to Vargas, June 18, 1937, GV; Dutra to Macedo Soares, June 26, 1937, Leite and Novelli Júnior, Marechal, p. 246; Dutra, circular, June 29, 1937, Ferdinando de Carvalho, Lembrai-vos de 35!, pp. 161-164. 6. Macedo Soares to Dutra, June 27, 1937, JCMS. 7. Miguel Salles and Tavares de Souza, report (to Muller), July 1, 1937, FM; Moraes and Viana, Prestes. 8. Dutra to Macedo Soares, July 10, 1937, JCMS; Dutra, circular, July 31, 1937, Leite and Novelli Júnior, Marechal, pp. 209-211; Macedo Soares Report.

244

Notes to Pages 127-136

9. JC, Aug. 21, 1937; Estevão Leitão de Carvalho, Memórias, vol. 3, p. 296. 10. Defesa Social Brasileira (hereafter cited as DSB), draft manifesto, n.d.; DSB, Ata da reunião de constituição, Aug. 30, 1937; DSB, Planos de Ação, Sept. 1937, JCMS. 11. Conniff, Urban Politics, p. 156. 12. Newton Cavalcante, order-of-the-day, A Defesa Nacional 24 (Sept. 1937), pp. 413-414; Cavalcante, speech, Sept. 22, 1937, in Ferdinando de Carvalho, Lembrai-vos de 35!, pp. 169-170. 13. Olímpio Mourão Filho, interview, JB (caderno especial), Oct. 26, 1970, p. 3. On the episode, see Hélio Silva, A ameaça vermelha. 14. Muller to Pedro Aleixo, Sept. 13, 1937, FM. 15. Macedo Soares Report; Macedo Soares, draft speech, n.d., JCMS; Coutinho, O General Góes, pp. 306-307. 16. Coutinho, O General Góes, p. 313; Minutes of a Meeting of Generals, Sept. 27, 1937, AEME. See also Leite and Novelli Júnior, Marechal, pp. 232-236. 17. Leite and Novelli Júnior, Marechal, p. 239; Coutinho, O General Góes, p. 314. 18. Dutra and Admiral Henrique Guilhem to Vargas, Sept. 29, 1937, JCMS; MRE, circular, Oct. 1, 1937, AHI; Departamento Nacional de Propaganda, note, DN, Oct. 1, 1937, p. 3; Silva, 1937, pp. 392-398, 403-409. 19. Frederico Mindelo to Muller, Oct. 4, 1937, FM. 20. CSEG, minutes, Oct. 8, 1937, JCMS; Ministry of Justice, memo, n.d. [Oct. 1937], PR; Macedo Soares Report; CSEG to Vargas, n.d. [Oct. 12, 1937], PR. 21. CSEG, minutes, Oct. 13, 20, 1937, JCMS. 22. "Uma campanha de esclarecimento popular contra o comunismo," CM, Oct. 24, 1937, p. 24; CSEG, minutes, Oct. 10, 28, 1937, JCMS; DC, Oct. 31, 1937, p. 4; DN, Oct. 29, 30, Nov. 12, 1937, pp. 3, 3, 4, respectively. 23. CSEG, minutes, Oct. 14, 16, 25, 26, JCMS; CM, Oct. 23, 25, 27, 1937, pp. 1, 16, 14, respectively. 24. CM, Oct. 22, 26, 29, 1937, pp. 14, 16, 14, respectively; DC, Nov. 2, 1937, p. 2. 25. DN, Nov. 4, 5, 1937, p. 3. 26. CSEG, minutes, Oct. 10, 1937, JCMS; Macedo Soares to Associação Brasileira de Imprensa, CM, Oct. 8, 1937, p. 14; Macedo Soares, circular, Oct. 16, 1937, FM. 27. CSEG, minutes, Oct. 13, 20, 26, 1937, JCMS. 28. CSEG, minutes, Oct. 13, 27, 1937, JCMS. 29. Hilton, "Ação Integralista Brasileira," p. 20; AN, June 12, 1937. 30. Plínio Salgado, Discursos, vol. 2, p. 20; U.S. chargé (Rio) to DS, 1937, RG 59, 832.00/1083; A. E. de Souza Aranha to Aranha, Aug. 14, 1937, OA. 31. U.S. chargé (Rio) to DS, May 15, 1937, RG 59, 832.00/1027; Vargas, quoted in Salgado, Perante a nação, pp. 101-102. 32. Integralist municipal chief (Ponte Nova, Minas Gerais) to Vargas, June 25, 1937; Ação Universitária Paulista to Vargas, June 30, 1937, PR.

Notes to Pages 136-144

245

33. AN, July 19, 27, 1937; A Nação, Aug. 22, 1937. 34. Salgado, Perante a nação, pp. 118-120, 123-125; Salgado, interview, ]B, (caderno especial), Oct. 25-26, 1970, p. 3. 35. Leite and Novelli Júnior, Marechal, pp. 247-254. 36. CSEG, minutes, Oct. 27, Nov. 3, 1937; Dutra, diary, Oct. 21, 1937, Leite and Novelli Júnior, Marechal, p. 257. 37. CM, Sept. 7, 1937, p. 2; Sebastião Leme, pastoral letter, JB, Sept. 18, 1937; Leitão de Carvalho, Discursos, p. 15, and Memórias, vol. 3, pp. 296302; CM, Nov. 12, 1937, p. 2. 38. CSEG, minutes, Nov. 3, 1937; Macedo Soares to Vargas, Nov. 5, 1937, JCMS. 39. Vargas to Aranha, Nov. 8, 1937, OA. 40. Dutra, diary, Nov. 5, 1937, Leite and Novelli Júnior, Marechal, p. 258. 41. Salgado, in JB, Oct. 25-26, 1970 (caderno especial), p. 3; Silva, 1937, pp. 445-453. 42. Vargas, proclamation, Nov. 10, 1937, in Vargas, A nova política, vol. 5, pp. 19-32, 37. 43. Constitution of 1937, ibid., pp. 77-79, 93-94. 44. Pessoa, Reminiscências, pp. 251-252; General José Coelho Neto to Dutra, Dec. 2, 1937, FM. 45. Governor Benedito Valladares to Vargas (with marginal notation by Vargas), Nov. 16, 1937, GV; Salgado, Perante a nação, pp. 129-130. 46. Vargas, decree-law no. 37, Dec. 2, 1937; decree-law no. 6, Nov. 16, 1937, in J. C. Dias, Colectânea de Decretos-Leis, vol. 2, p. 33, vol. 1, pp. 37-38. 47. Vargas, decree-law no. 88, Dec. 20, 1937, ibid., vol. 2, p. 129. 48. MRE, circular, Nov. 11, 1937, AHI; Ambassador Jefferson Caffery (Rio) to DS, Nov. 12, 1937, FRUS, 1937, vol. 5, pp. 314-315; New York Times, Nov. 14, 1937; MRE, circular, Nov. 17, 1937, AHI. 49. Dulles, Brazilian Communism, p. 109; Francisco d'Alamo Lousada (Bern) to Vargas, Nov. 27, 1937, PR. 50. José J. Moniz de Aragão (Berlin) to MRE, Nov. 8, 1937, AHI; Galeazzo Ciano, Ciano's Diary, pp. 29-30; JB, Nov. 10, 1937, p. 5; German chargé (Rio) to GFM, Nov. 16, 1937, RGFM 3155/518365. 7. Dictatorship, War, and Internal Security (1937-1941) 1. fosé J. Moniz de Aragão (Berlin) to MRE, Feb. 14, 1938, AHI; Sebastião Sampaio (Prague) to Getúlio Vargas, Jan. 14, 1938, PR; Sampaio to Oswaldo Aranha, Mar. 23, 1938, OA; Ambassador Luís de Souza Dantas (Paris) to MRE, Dec. 30, 31, 1937, Jan. 21, 1938, AHI; Commercial attaché João Pinto da Silva (Paris) to Vargas, Jan. 21, Apr. 13, 1938, PR; editorial: ''Bessarabia," CM, Mar. 16, 1938; MRE, memoranda, May 15, July 28, 1938, AHI; Raul Régis de Oliveira (London) to MRE, June, July, 1938, AHI. 2. Sampaio to MRE, Sept. 10, 14, 17, 1938, AHI; Pinto da Silva to Vargas, Sept. 14, 1938, PR; Souza Dantas to MRE, Sept. 30, 1938, AHI; editorial: 'Interpretamos," CM, Oct. 8, 1938.

246

Notes to Pages 145-149

3. Mario Pimentel Brandão to Vargas, Oct. 28, 1938, GV; Francisco d'Alamo Lousada (Bern) to Vargas, Jan. 18, 1939, PR; editorial: "As democracias e Rússia," JB, Apr. 21, 1939. 4. Pinto da Silva to Vargas, Mar. 25, 1939, PR; Souza Dantas to MRE, Apr. 1, 1939; Brazilian chargé (Warsaw) to MRE, Apr. 30, 1939, AHI; editorial: "Democracia . . . [sic] soviética," DN, July 20, 1939; editorial: "Aliado perigoso," JB, Aug. 10, 1939; editorial: "O enygma russo," DC, Aug. 22, 1939. 5. Souza Dantas to MRE, Aug. 26, 1939; Régis de Oliveira to MRE, Aug. 26, 1939; Braz. chargé (Berlin) to MRE, Aug. 24, 1939, AHI; editorial: "O acordo teuto-soviético," JB, Aug. 25, 1939. 6. Editorial: "A intervenção vermelha," CM, Sept. 20, 1939; editorials: "A posição da Rússia" and "Contra o comunismo," JC, Sept. 21, Oct. 8, 1939; editorial: "Entreato," JB, Sept. 20, 1939; editorials: "A ameaça vermelha" and "Paganismo e christianismo," DC, Sept. 19, 28, 1939; Souza Dantas to MRE, Sept. 27, 1939; Régis de Oliveira to MRE, Sept. 26, 1939, AHI. 7. Editorial: "O sinal do perigo," JB, Oct. 5, 1939; Manoel Rabello to Vargas, Oct. 12, 1939, RMJ; Braz. minister (The Hague) to MRE, Oct. 14, 1939; Braz. min. (Bucharest) to MRE, Oct. 30, 1939, AHI. 8. Braz. legation (Helsinki) to MRE, Nov. 30, Dec. 8, 1939, Jan. 28, 1940; Régis de Oliveira to MRE, Dec. 1, 1939,· Cyro Freitas-Valle to MRE, Dec. 20, 1939; Souza Dantas to MRE, Dec. 31, 1939, AHI; editorials: "Comentário oportuno" and "O assalto à Finlândia," JB, Nov. 30, Dec. 1, 1939; editorials: "A aggressão da Rússia à Finlândia," "Os possíveis planos da Rússia," "A aggressão à Finlândia e a consciência mundial," JC, Dec. 2, 3, 8, 1939; editorials: "A Finlândia e a Rússia" and "Os novos hunos," CM, Dec. 1, 2, 1939; editorial: "O destino da Finlândia," ESP, Dec. 6, 1939; editorials: "O imperialismo communista" and "Um povo-symbolo," DN, Dec. 3, 31, 1939. 9. Braz. amb. (Lisbon) to MRE, Dec. 31, 1939; Souza Dantas to MRE, Dec. 31, 1939, AHI; editorials: "O Brasil e a Finlândia" and "Desespero de causa," DC, Jan. 10, 14, 1940; "Boletim Internacional," OJ, Jan. 3, 1940, p. 2; Assis Chateaubriand, "Exército de massas," OJ, Jan. 24, 1940, p. 4; editorials: "O gigante inerme" and "O Brasil e a Finlândia," JB, Jan. 9, 11, 1940; Braz. min. (Bucharest) to MRE, Jan. 31, 1940, AHI. 10. Braz. chargé (Helsinki) to MRE, Mar. 14, 1940; Souza Dantas to MRE, Mar. 16, 1940, AHI; editorials: "A Finlândia e o bolchevismo" and "As vítimas da guerra," JB, Mar. 15, Apr. 20, 1940. n . Hildebrando Acioly to MRE, Mar. 13, 1940; Freitas-Valle to MRE, Mar. 30, 1940, AHI; Aragão to Aranha, OA; Braz. chargé (Helsinki) to MRE, May 24, 1940; Amb. Pedro Leão Velloso (Rome) to MRE, May 31, 1940, AHI. 12. Braz. min. (Bucharest) to MRE, July 12, 1940; Braz. chargé (Helsinki) to MRE, July 9, Aug. 7, 1940, AHI. 13. Acioly to MRE, Oct. 5, 1940, AHI; Odette Carvalho e Souza, "A esphinge moscovita" and "Provisões e previsões," CM, Nov. 13, Dec. 28, 1940; editorials: "As conversações russo-germânicas" and "A atitude da Rússia," JC, Nov. 15, 24, 1940; Freitas-Valle to MRE, Sept. 27, 30, Nov. 30,

Notes to Pages 149-153

247

1940, AHI; Freitas-Valle to Vargas, Feb. 5, 1941, GV; Braz. chargé (Paris) to MRE, Apr. 1, 1941, AHI; editorial: "Dois . . . [sic] prudentes," CM, May 21, 1941. 14. Brandão to Francisco Campos, Nov. 18, 1937, RMJ; fosé Carlos de Macedo Soares to Vargas, Dec. 1, 1937; Guatemalan min. (Rio) to MRE, Dec. 4, 1937, AHI; Brandão to Campos, Dec. 7, 1937; Campos to Muller, Dec. 7, 1937, RMJ. 15. MRE to Braz. embassy (Madrid), Jan. 4, 1938, AHI. 16. Brandão to Campos, Mar. 3, 1938, RMJ; Carvalho e Souza, "Messianismo rubro," CM, Mar. 22, 1938, p. 4; Muller to Baptista Lusardo, June 18, 1938, FM; Aragão to MRE, July 20, 1938, AHI; editorial: "O incansável bolchevismo," CM, Oct. 25, 1938; Domingos Barbosa, "A dextra e a sinistra," JB, Jan. 12, 1939, p. 5; Braz. leg. (Warsaw) to MRE, Mar. 29, 1939, AHI; Pedro de Góes Monteiro to Vargas, Mar. 26, 1939, GV; Eurico G. Dutra to Vargas, May 5, 1939, AEME; Orlando Leite Ribeiro (Santiago) to Muller, May 26, 1939; José Β. de Câmara Canto (Montevideo) to Vargas, July 9, 1939, FM. 17. Pedro Salgado Filho to "Meu caro general," Oct. 14, 1939, PSF; Ivens de Araújo to Muller, Nov. 4,1939; Salvador de Borborema to Muller, Oct. 31, 1939, FM; editorials: "Novas células comunistas77 and "Mais um capítulo da propaganda comunista," JB, Dec. 10, 1939, May 7, 1940. 18. Carvalho e Souza (Bern) to Muller, May 28, 1940; Dutra to Muller, Jan. 14, 1941, FM; Souza Dantas to MRE, July 28, 1941, AHI. 19. Lusardo to Vargas, Jan. 13, 1940, GV; Lusardo to Muller, Jan. 14, 1940, FM; Câmara Canto to Vargas, Mar. 17, 1940, GV; Lusardo to MRE (for Vargas), Apr. 3, 1940; Braz. emb. (Santiago) to MRE, Aug. 17, 1940, AHI; Muller to Ribeiro, Oct. 26, 1940, FM. 20. Braz. emb. (Santiago) to MRE, Sept. 30, Oct. 18, 1940, AHI; Dulles, Brazilian Communism, pp. 173-174; Braz. emb. (Mexico) to MRE, Nov. 14, 1940, AHI; Braz. emb. (Santiago) to MRE, Dec. 2, 1940; Amb. José P. de Rodrigues Alves (Buenos Aires) to MRE, Nov. 27, 1940, GV; Governor Rafael Inclan (Havana) to Vargas, Dec. n , 1940, RMJ; Aranha to Vargas, Mar. 3, 1941, PR. 21. Dulles, Brazilian Communism, p. 109; Minna Ewert to Vargas, June 9, 1938, RMJ. Sobral Pinto's correspondence with the authorities in 1938 is printed in his Por que defendo, pp. 188-213. 22. Sobral Pinto to Campos, Jan. 26, 1939; MJ to director, Manicômio Judiciário, June 16, 1939; Manicomio Judiciário, Serviço de Assistência e Psicopatas, memo, attached to Min. of Education Gustavo Capanema to Campos, July 25, 1940, RMJ. 23. Sobral Pinto to Campos, Jan. 26, 1939, RMJ; Sobral Pinto to Aranha, Oct. 12, 1939, OA; Rabello to Vargas, Oct. 12, 1939; Victorino Caneppa to Campos, Jan. 5, 1940, RMJ. 24. Vargas, interview, Dec. 25, 1937, Vargas, A nova política, vol. 6, p. 340; Carone, O Estado Novo, pp. 218-222; Dulles, Brazilian Communism, pp. 112-114, 149; Dutra to Campos, Feb. 1938, quoted in Campos to Muller, Feb. 5, 1938, RMJ; Israel Souto to Muller, May 25, 1938, FM.

248

Notes to Pages 154-161

25. Serviço Secreto de Informações (EME) to Monteiro, May 31, 1938, cited in Dutra to Campos, June 1, 1938, RMJ; Polícia Militar (Federal District) to MRE, May 28, 1939, AHI; JB, May 19, 1938, p. 7; Souto to Muller, Aug. 14, 1938; Felisberto Baptista Teixeira to Muller, Feb. 6, 1939, FM. 26. Presidential Secretary Luis Vergara to Federal Interventor Agamenon Magalhães (Pernambuco), Dec. 28, 1937, Agamenon Magalhães Papers. 27. Lineu Chagas de Almeida Cotta (Porto Alegre) to Muller, Nov. 30, 1937, FM. 28. Magalhães to Dutra, Jan. 4, 1937 [1938], Magalhães Papers; Etelvino Lins to Muller, May 9, Sept. 22, 1938; Silva Py to Muller, July 12, 1938; Araújo to Muller, Oct. 12, 1938; Chief of Police Cromwell Carvalho (Teresinha, Piauí) to Muller, Oct. 24, 1938, FM. 29. DOPS (Curitiba) to Muller, Feb. 14, 1938; Muller to Major Oswaldo Nunes dos Santos (Salvador), two messages, n.d. [Oct. 1938?]; Borborema to Muller, June 1, Aug. 30, Sept. 28, Dec. 13, 1938, Feb. 2, 1939, FM. 30. José Gomes to Delegado A. P. Pinto Moreira (DOPS, S. Paulo), Jan. 7, May 27, 1939, RTSN, processo 827, vol. 1. 31. Araújo to Muller, Nov. 4, Dec. 14, 1939; Silva Py to Muller, Nov. 8, 1939; Chief of Police (Fortaleza) to Muller, Nov. 13, 1939; Chief of Police (Teresinha) to Muller, Nov. 23, 1939, FM. 32. Dulles, Brazilian Communism, pp. 156-157. 33. Teixeira, quoted in JB, Apr. 14, 1940, p. 10; Borborema to Muller, Apr. 22, May 28, 30, June 7, Aug. 20, 27, Sept. 3, 1940, FM; editorial: "Mais um capítulo da propaganda comunista," fB, May 7, 1940; Dulles, Brazilian Communism, pp. 168-169; U.S. consul general (São Paulo) to Amb. Jefferson Caffery, Mar. 31, 1941, RG 59, 832.00B/136. 34. João Falcão, O Partido Comunista, p. 105; Annibal V. Villela and Wilson Suzigan, Política do governo, p. 214. 35. Carone, O Estado Novo, p. 120; Kenneth Erickson, Brazilian Corporative State, p. 24; Vianna, Liberalismo, p. 228. 36. Vargas, interview, JB, Apr. 23, 1938. 37. Leme, A ideologia dos industriais, p. 152; Carone, O Estado Novo, pp. 137-138; Vianna, Liberalismo, pp. 235-239. 38. Carvalho e Souza, report, Nov. 17, 1936, AHI. 39. Vianna, Liberalismo, pp. 223-225. 40. Ibid., pp. 232-233; Erickson, Brazilian Corporative State, p. 23. 41. Alberto Kolb to Muller, Aug. 24, 1938, Feb. 19, Sept. 26, 1940; Muller to Fed. Interventor Ademar de Barros (S. Paulo), Feb. 15, 1939; Silva Py to Muller, June 7, 1940, FM. 42. Brazil, EME (Góes Monteiro), Relatório [ . . . ] 1937, p. 13. 43. Ibid., pp. 22-23. 44. Chief, Serviço Secreto de Informações (EME), to Monteiro, May 31, 1938, cited in Dutra to Campos, June 1, 1938, RMJ. 45. Commander, First military Region, to Dutra, Feb. n , 1938, AEX. 46. Major Henrique R. Holl to Dutra, Jan. 9,1939; Dutra to Vargas, Jan. 11, 1939, AEME; Holl to Vargas, Jan. 21, 1939, GV.

Notes to Pages 161-167

249

47. Conselho de Segurança Nacional, minutes, July 4, 1939; EME (Monteiro), Relatório [. . . ] 1939 (typewritten), Feb. 1940, AEME. 48. Serviço Secreto Militar (Holl), Boletim no. 1, July 27, 1939, Boletim no. 10, Aug. 15, 1939, AEME; MG, Boletim de Informações no. 2, Sept. 26, 1939, GV. 49. Gen. José Meira de Vasconcellos (Curitiba) to Muller, Feb. 4, Nov. 4, 1938, FM. 50. Lusardo, quoted in Clauco Carneiro, Lusardo, vol. 2, p. 224. 51. Muller to Lusardo, June 18, 1938, FM; Lusardo to Alzira Vargas (for Vargas), Oct. 17, 1938, GV; Lusardo to Muller, Aug. 10, 1938, Nov. 17, Dec. 21, 1939, Jan. 14, 15, 1940, FM; Lusardo to Vargas, Apr. 4, June 3, 1939, Jan 13, Nov. 23, 1940, GV; Lusardo to Aranha, May 9, 1941, OA. 52. Lusardo to Muller, Dec. 23,1939; DOPS Chief Plínio Milano (P. Alegre) to Silva Py, May 19, 1940; Silva Py to Muller, May 22, 1940, FM. 53. João Alberto Lins de Barros to Muller, Nov. 3,18,1937, FM; JB, Apr. 22, May 7, 1938, pp.4, 1-2, respectively; Napoleão Alencastro Guimarães to Muller, n.d. [June 1938], June 24, 1939, FM. 54. Muller to Guimarães, Nov. 5, 1938; Guimarães to Muller, Feb. 4, June 24, 1939, FM. 55. Guimarães to Muller, July 22, Aug. 2, 1939; Muller to Guimarães, Apr. 8, 1940; Milano to Silva Py, May 19, 1940; Muller to Trindade Cruz (Santiago), Aug. 10, 1940, FM. 56. Lusardo to Vargas, Apr. 4, 1939, GV; Muller to Cruz, Nov. 5, 1938, FM; Ribeiro to Muller, May 26, 1939, GV. 57. Cruz to "José" (Muller), July 25, 1939; "Alvares" (Cruz) to "José," Aug. 5, 1939; "Victorino" to "Zeca" (Muller?), July 11, 24, 1939; unsigned letter (Valparaiso) to (Muller), Nov. 10, 1939, GV. 58. Falcão, O Partido Comunista, pp. 98, 102-103, 105-112. 59· Vargas, speech, Dec. 13, 1938, Vargas, A nova política, vol. 6, p. 147,· GFM, memo, Nov. 30, 1937, in United States, DS, Documents on German Foreign Policy, vol. 5, pp. 815-816; Amb. Karl Ritter to GFM, Jan. 17, 1938; GFM to Ritter, Jan. 24, 1938, RGFM 2446/328719, 328722; MRE to Aragão, Mar. 3, 1938, AHI; Ritter to GFM, June 8, July 12, 1938, RGFM 2446/ 328754; editorial: "Comunismo," CM, Sept. 20, 1938. 60. Brazil, Departamento Nacional de Propaganda, 20 anos de trágica experiência, pp. 28,43; Carvalho e Souza, Komintern, pp. 80-81. For examples of her articles in the CM, see "A 'Internacional do ensino'" (Mar. 13, 1938, p. 2), "Política exterior dos soviets" (Apr. 9, 1938, p. 4), '"Inteligentsia"' (Apr. 17, 1938, p. 4), "Agonia do bolchevismo" (Oct. 5, 1938, p. 4) and "Machiavelismo soviético" (Nov. 12, 1938, p. 4). JB, Feb. 12, 1938, p. 6 mentions the volume by Waldemar Falcão. 61. Serviço de Divulgação da Chefia de Polícia, "Defesa da mocidade," DC, Nov. 25, 1937, p. 2. For examples of the articles, see in DC, "Verdades positivas sobre o 'paraíso soviético'" (Dec. 1, 1937, p. 4), "A criança, a maior victima do comunismo" (Dec. 2, 7, 1937, pp. 2, 12), "A realidade russa" (Dec. 10, 1937, p. 5), "Como a Rússia combate a religião" (Dec. 17, 1937,

250

Notes to Pages 168-175

p. 2). The pamphlet is mentioned in the editorial "Uma informação sobre Stalin," JB, Mar. 5, 1938. 62. Reich Ministry of Propaganda to Ritter, Feb. 1, 1938; Ritter to GFM, Feb. 9, 1938, RGFM 2446/328726-736. 63. DN, May 19, 1940, section 2, p. 12. 64. Editorials: "Ainda o comunismo" and "Um abismo," JB, Apr. 20, 28, 1940; Muller to Lourival Fontes, n.d. [June 1941],· Fontes to Muller, June 23, 1941, FM. 65. Ferdinando de Carvalho, Lembrai-vos de 35!, pp. 179-220. 66. Muller to Ribeiro, Aug. 24, Nov. 23, 1940; Muller to Chargé Oswaldo Furst (Montevideo), Nov. 20, 1940; Muller to Rodrigues Alves, Nov. 23, 1940; Muller to Benjamin Vargas, Jan. 15, 1941, FM; Campos to Vargas, July 16, 1941, RMJ. 67. Decree-law no. 1949, Dec. 30, 1939, JC, Jan. 8-9, 1940. 68. Samuel Wainer, Minha razão de viver, pp. 49-63; Capanema to Muller, Dec. 23, 1939; Muller to Capanema, Jan. 13, 1940, both in Simon Schwartzman et al., Tempos de Capanema, pp. 313-315. 69. Falcão, O Partido Comunista, pp. 47-53. 70. MRE, memo, May 15, 1938; MRE to Muller, June 1, 1938; Muller to MRE, June 2, 1938; Macedo Soares to Vargas, Dec. 1, 1937; Federação das Indústrias Paulistas to MRE, July 15, 1938; MRE to Federação das Indústrias Paulistas, July 29, 1938, AHI; Dutra to Vargas, May 5, 1939, AEME; Centro dos Exportadores de Café (Santos) to Departamento Nacional de Café, May 26, 1939; Departamento Nacional de Café to Ministry of Finance, June 5, 1939; Ministry of Finance to MRE, June 20, 1939; MRE to Braz. emb. (Berlin), Aug. 18, 1939; MRE to Ministry of Finance, Sept. 15, 1939, AHI; Gaelzer Neto (Berlin) to Vargas, Dec. 9, 1939, PR. 71. Caffery to DS, Sept. 26, 1938, RG 59, 732.52/6; MRE to Braz. emb. (Madrid), Jan. 4, 10, 1938, AHI; Lins (Recife) to Muller, Oct. 25, 1938; Muller to Secretário de Segurança Pública (Bahia), Mar. 4, 1939, FM. 72. Braz. chargé (Madrid) to MRE, May 22, 1939, AHI. 73. Aranha, press notes, JB, Dec. 6, 24, 1939; JB, Jan. 10, 1940, p. 6; Secretary General (MRE) to Vargas, Jan. 26, 1940; Departamento Nacional de Café to Minister of Finance, Feb. 20, 1940, PR. 74. Freitas-Valle to Vargas, Feb. 16, 1940, GV; Freitas-Valle to Aranha, Mar. 3, Apr. 2, Aug. 25, 1940, OA. 75. Aranha to João Neves da Fontoura, Oct. 15, 1940, OA; Freitas-Valle to MRE, Jan. 21, 1940, AHI; Freitas-Valle to Vargas, Feb. 16, 1940; Amb. Carlos Martins Pereira e Souza to Vargas, Dec. 31, 1940, GV.

8. Global Conflict and Rapprochement (1941-1945) 1. On Brazil's wartime relationship with the U.S., see Hilton, "Brazilian Diplomacy and the Washington-Rio de Janeiro 'Axis' during the World War II Era" and for a different view, McCann, Brazilian-American Alliance. 2. Editorial: "A Rússia em face do Eixo," DC, Apr. 15, 1941; Urbano Berque, "Invasão da Rússia e 'paz negociada'," CM, June 14, 1941; editorial:

Notes to Pages 175-180

251

"A nova frente—perspectiva britânica," DN, June 24, 1931; Assis Memória, ' Ό colosso moscovita," JB, July 4, 1941, ρ. 5; Cyro Freitas-Valle to MRE, June 23, 24, 25, 28, July 1, 1941; Brazilian chargé (Helsinki) to MRE, June 25, 1941, AHI. 3. Braz. embassy (Berlin) to MRE, July 29, 1941; Amb. Luís de Souza Dantas to MRE, July 24, Sept. 9, 1941; Amb. Carlos Martins Pereira de Souza to MRE, Aug. 6, 1941; Braz. chargé (Helsinki) to MRE, July 9, 1941, AHI; editorial: "Sentença de morte," DC, Jan. 3, 1942; CM, Jan. 11, 1942, p. 1. 4. JB, Aug. 13, 1942, p. 1; Pedro Costa Rego, "A segunda frente," CM, Oct. 8, 1942, p. 2; Eurico Penteado (New York) to Oswaldo Aranha, Nov. 20, 1942, OA; J. S. de Hermes Fonseca (Madrid) to Getúlio Vargas, Jan. 24, 1943, GV; editorial: "Stalingrado," CM, Feb. 3, 1943. 5. Martins to MRE, Aug. 5, 1943, AHI; Vasco Leitão da Cunha (Algiers) to Aranha, Aug. 22, 1943, OA; DC, Oct. 9, 1943, p. 1; Rogerio P. Sampaio, "A tragédia de Caniev," ESP, Feb. 22, 1944, p. 1; José J. Moniz de Aragão (London) to MRE, Sept. 12, 1944, AHI. 6. Unsigned article, "Repercussões políticas da nova guerra," ]B, June 6, 1941; Martins to MRE, June 24, July 5, 21, Aug. 6, Sept. 3, 1941, June 18, 1942, AHI; Oscar Correia (New York) to Aranha, May 26, 31, 1943, OA; Lourival Fontes to Vargas, Nov. 18, 1943, GV; Amb. Jefferson Caffery (Rio) to DS, Nov. 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 16, 1940, RG 59, 740.0011 Moscow/140, 150, 164, 211, 242.

7. Braz. chargé (Washington) to MRE, June 24, 1942; Braz. chargé (Helsinki) to MRE, May 7, 1943, AHI; Costa Rego, "As fronteiras da Rússia," "A Rússia na paz," "A Rússia golpeia a Carta do Atlântico," CM, Apr. 4, 8, 28, 1943, all p. 2; Martins to MRE, Oct. 9, 1942, Aug. 11, Oct. 11, 1943, Jan. 17, Mar. 24, 1944; Braz. emb. (London) to MRE, Mar. 10, Apr. 26, 1943, Jan. 18, Sept. 12, 1944, AHI; Fontes to Vargas, Aug. 20, 1943, GV; Amb. Abelardo Roças (Madrid) to Vargas, Aug. 31, 1944, PR. 8. British amb. (Rio), to FO, June 24, 1941, RFO 371; Police Chief Salvador de Borborema (Belém) to Muller, July 21, Aug. 12, 1941; Muller to Borborema, July 31, 1941; Muller to Police Chief Acácio Nogueira (São Paulo), July 23, 1941, FM; Nogueira, interview, AM, Aug. 10, 1941, p. 3; MRE to MJ, July 15, Aug. 28, Sept. 1, 22, Oct. 7, 1941, RMJ; Muller, speech, Nov. 19, 1941, quoted in Major Hugo Silva to Muller, Dec. 8, 1941, FM. 9. Eurico G. Dutra to Francisco Campos, July 15, 1941, RMJ; MG (Gabinete), memo, Oct. 2, 1941, AEME; Dutra, bulletin, Nov. 27, 1941; Salvador Obino, speech, Nov. 27, 1941, both in Ferdinando de Carvalho, Lembrai-vos de 35!, pp. 221-223, 229-232. 10. Muller to Napoleão Alencastro Guimarães, Jan. 4, Mar. 29, May 24, Nov. 11, 1941, FM; General Francisco J. Pinto (Conselho de Segurança Nacional) to Campos, Aug. 5, 1941, RMJ; Pedro de Góes Monteiro to Dutra, Oct. 15, Dec. 11, 1941, AEME; Dutra to Muller, Nov. 25, 1941, FM. The book Muller sought from the U.S. was Jan Valtin (i.e., Richard Krebs), Out of the Night 11. Secretary, Seção de Segurança Nacional (MJ), to director, Seção de Segurança Nacional, Dec. 15, 1941, RMJ.

252

Notes to Pages 180-186

12. Muller to Amb. Baptista Lusardo, June 28, 1941, FM; editorial: "Atitude estranha," CM, July 11, 1941; Dulles, Brazilian Communism, pp. 173-174; Muller to Lusardo, Aug. 30, 1941, Feb. 2, 1942, FM; AN, Aug. 10, 1941, p. 3; Muller to Colonel Mitshuito Villaboa (Asunción), Oct. 18, 1941; Roldão Gonçalves and Osvaldo A. Walsh (Asunción) to Muller, Nov. 26,1941; Muller to Paraguayan amb. (Rio), n.d. [Nov. 26,1941]; Villaboa to Muller, Dec. 27, 1941, Jan. 16, Mar. 5, June 17, 1942, FM. 13. Dutra to Vargas, Feb. 25, 1942, AEME, June 5, 1942, GV. 14. Muller to Father Dainese, June 17, 1942, FM; U.S. consul general (S. Paulo) to Caffery (Rio), June 17, 1942, RG 59, 832.00B/148; Dutra, circular, June 18,1942, PR; Paulo Brandi, Vargas, pp. 157-158; Dutra to Vargas, Dec. 10, 1942, AEX. 15. João Falcão, O Partido Comunista, pp. 132-142, 175-242; Cavalcanti, O caso eu conto, pp. 186-187; Basbaum, Uma vida, p. 179; Bezerra, Memórias, p. 299. Dulles, Brazilian Communism, pp. 179-200, discusses in detail the impact of the war on Communist activities. See, too, Carone, O P.C.Β., vol. 1, pp. 227-241. 16. Dutra, cited in unsigned memo, n.d. [1943], VMF; Gen. Valentim Benício da Silva to Dutra, Dec. 9, 1943, GV; Caffery to DS, RG 59, 832.00B/ 187; Col. João Β. Magalhães to Monteiro, n.d. [1944], AEX; Monteiro to Vargas, Feb. 26, 1944, GV; Monteiro to Aranha, Feb. 24, Apr. 2, May 16, 1944, OA; Major Augusto Correia Lima, lecture, June 21, 1944, PR; Martins to Vargas, Jan. 22, 1944, GV; Braz. emb. (Mexico City), May 1944, quoted in Dutra to Vargas, May 29, 1944, in Brazil, MG (Dutra), Relatório [. . . ] 1944, p. 15; Dutra to Vargas, June 22, 1944, AEX. 17. Departamento Estadual de Imprensa e Propaganda (S. Paulo), press instructions, July 17, 1941, quoted in U.S. consul gen. (S. Paulo) to Caffery, July 23, 1941, RG 84, box 1825; U.S. consul gen. (S. Paulo) to Caffery, Aug. 7, 1941, RG 84, box 100; Dutra to Aranha, Jan. 9, 1942, AHI; Dutra to Vargas, June 15, 1942, GV 18. U.S. emb. (Rio) to DS, Feb. 3, 1942, RG 59, 832.00B/100; Dutra to Vargas, June 22, 1944, AEX; DS, memo, n.d. [Nov. 1944], RG 59, 832.00B/ 11-2644. 19. Captain Amílcar Menezes (Departamento de Imprensa e Propaganda) to Aranha, June 21, 1944, OA. 20. Falcão, O Partido Comunista, pp. 245-248; Wainer, Minha razão de viver, pp. 64-68. 21. David Lewis (MGM do Brasil) to Caffery, May 21, 1942, RG 84, box 146; Brazilian Committee, Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (hereafter cited Brazil-CIAA) to Francis Alstock (Motion Pictures Division, CIAA), Oct. 13, Nov. 27, 1942, RG 229, box 1283; Alstock to Berent Friele, Feb. 6, 1943, RG 84, box 211; U.S. emb. (Rio) to DS, Mar. 2, 1943, RG 59, 832.4061 Motion Pictures/277; William Murray (Brazil-CIAA) to Friele, Oct. 22, 1943; Brazil-CIAA to Alstock, Dec. 3, 1943, Murray to Friele, Dec. 6, 1943, RG 229, box 1283. 22. Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War, pp. 209-213; Bruno Cheli to Murray, Dec. 3, 1943, RG 229, box 1283.

Notes to Pages 186-191

253

23. Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes to War, p. 215; Brazil-CIAA to Alstock, Feb. 18, 1944, RG 229, box 226. 24. Nelson Rockefeller to Brazil-CIAA, June 13, 1944; Brazil-CIAA to Alstock, Nov. 10, 1944, RG 229, box 226; CIAA Information Committee (S. Paulo) to CIAA (New York), Nov. 13, 1944, RG 229, box 1277. 25. Col. Alcides Etchegoyen to MJ Alexandre Marcondes Filho, Apr. 2, 1943, RMJ. 26. Gustavo Capanema to Campos, Dec. 4, 1941; Campos to Capanema, Dec. 8, 1941, RMJ. 27. Minna Ewert to Aranha, May 18, 1942, PR; M. Ewert to Marcondes Filho, Apr. 15, 26, 1943, RMJ. 28. Manoel Rabello, quoted in Supremo Tribunal Militar, minutes, June 8, 1942; Luís Carlos Prestes to La Razón (Montevideo), Aug. 21, 1942; Her-clito Sobral Pinto to Marcondes Filho, June 1, 1943; Marcondes Filho to Etchegoyen, May 27, 1943, RMJ. 29. Aranha to Marcondes Filho, Nov. 29, 1943; Marcondes Filho to Aranha, Nov. 11, 1943; Marcondes Filho to Lusardo, n.d. [Nov. 1943]; Sobral Pinto to Marcondes Filho, Oct. 31, 1944; Teodoro Arthou, memo, Nov. 20, 1944; Marcondes Filho to MRE, Jan. 27, 1945, RMJ. 30. Rabello to Etchegoyen, Dec. 26, 1942, PR; Dutra to Vargas, Jan. 12, 1943, GV; Dulles, Brazilian Communism, pp. 195-196; Major Hildebrando Mello (DOPS-S. Paulo) to Vargas, Apr. 8,1943,GV;U.S. consul gen. (S. Paulo) to DS, May 24,1943, RG 59, 832.00B/158; unsigned memo, n.d. [1943], VMF. 31. U.S. emb. (Rio) to DS, July 13, 1944, RG 59, 832.00/7-1344. 32. Dulles, Brazilian Communism, pp. 203-204; PCDF, memo, Oct. 13, 1944, RMJ. 33. Marcondes Filho to federal interventors, Sept. 26, 1944; Marcondes Filho, circular, Sept. 28, 1944; Fed. Interv. (Rio Grande do Norte) to Marcondes Filho, Oct. 6, 1944; State Secretary of Public Security (S. Paulo) to Marcondes Filho, Oct. 6, 1944; Magalhães to Marcondes Filho, Oct. 3, 1944, RMJ; Muller to Sérgio Freitas, Nov. 29, 1944, FM; DOPS (Rio), Boletim Reservado no. 100, Sept. 28, 1944, GV; U.S. chargé (Rio) to DS, Dec. n , 1944, RG 59, 832.00/12-1144; Coriolano de Goes to Marcondes Filho, Feb. 26, 1945, RMJ. 34. Caffery to DS, Sept. 11, 1941, RG 59, 810.20 Defense/1477; Martins to MRE, Oct. 9, 1941, AHI. 35. Martins to MRE, May 15, 1942, AHI; Sumner Welles, memo. Aug. 10, 1942, RG 59, 732.61/9; Martins to Vargas, Sept. 4, 1942; Alzira Vargas do Amaral Peixoto (for Vargas) to Martins, Sept. 28, 1942, GV; Sebastião Sampaio (Stockholm) to MRE, Oct. 15, 1942; MRE to Sampaio, Oct. 16, 1942; Aragão to MRE, Oct. 31, 1942; MRE to Aragão, Oct. 31, 1942, AHI. 36. Aragão to MRE, Dec. 4, 1942, AHI; Lusardo to MRE, July 31, 1942, AHI; Correio Paulistano, Jan. 19, 1943, p. 2; Martins to MRE, Feb. 27, 1943, AHI. 37. Editorial: "Fiéis à Carta do Atlântico," JB, May 29, 1943; editorial: "Divisor de duas épocas," DC, May 23, 1943; editorial: "União que se robustece," DN, May 30, 1943; editorial: "A extinção do Terceiro Interna-

254

Notes to Pages 191-197

cional," CM, May 29, 1943; editorial: "A dissolução do 'Komintern7 e a posição do Brasil," AN, May 30, 1943. 38. Leitão da Cunha to Pedro Leão Velloso, June 19, 1943, AHI; Acyr Paes (MRE), memo, Oct. 5, 1943, AHI; Carlos M. de Figueiredo to Aranha, Nov. 4, 1943, OA; Fontes to Vargas, Nov. 18, 1943, GV. 39. Caffery to DS, Nov. 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 16, 1940, RG 59, 740.0011 Moscow/ 140, 150, 164, 211, 242; Assis Chateaubriand, "O Apostolado Soviético no Mundo," OJ,Nov. 6, 1943; editorial: "A troca de mensagens," CM, Nov. 14, 1943; Brazilian chargé (Helsinki) to MRE, Nov. 25, 1943, AHI. 40. Caffery to DS, Dec. 9, n , 1943, Feb. 1, 1944; Cordell Hull to Caffery, Dec. 28, 1943, RG 59, 732.61/15, 17, 20. 41. Amb. Carlos Lima Cavalcanti to MRE, Jan. 20, 26, 28, 1944; MRE to Lima Cavalcanti, Jan. 25, 28, 31, 1944; Aranha to João Neves da Fontoura, Jan. 25, 1944; Political Dept. (MRE), memo, Feb. 3, 1944; MRE, circular, Mar. 6, 1944, AHI. 42. Director, Arquivo Histórico do Itamaraty to Aranha, Jan. 28, 1944, OA. Aranha7s remarks in São Paulo are quoted in Brit. amb. (Rio) to FO, Feb. 26, 1944, RFO, CAB 122/949. ESP, Feb. 25, 1944, carried the speech without including the reference to the USSR. 43. Lima Cavalcanti to MRE, Mar. 4, 1944; MRE to Lima Cavalcanti, Mar. 7, 1944, AHI; Martins to Vargas, Mar. 4, 1944, GV; Aranha to Gen. José Pessoa, Mar. 20, 1944, OA. 44. DN, Mar. 3, 1944, pp. 3, 4; Monteiro to MRE, May 27, 1944; Lusardo to MRE, July 31, 1944; Sampaio to MRE, May 4, 8, 1944, AHI; Fontes to Vargas, Sept. 8, 1944, GV; Lima Cavalcanti to MRE, Nov. 25, 1944, AHI. 45. Monteiro to Aranha, July 10, 1944, OA; Freitas-Valle to Velloso, Nov. 12,1944, Cyro Freitas-Valle Papers; Braz. amb. (La Paz) to MRE, Sept. 19, 1944; MRE to Braz. amb. (La Paz), Sept. 21, 1944; Braz. amb. (Santiago) to MRE, Dec. n , 1944, AHI; DN, Mar. 15, 1945; Braz. amb. (Paris) to MRE, Nov. 27, Dec. 12, 1944, AHI; Pedro Cavalcanti, "A aliança franco-russa e sua repercussão," DC, Dec. 21, 1944. 46. Hull, Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 1678; FRUS, 1944, vol. 1, pp. 731-732, 737, 744; Hilton, "Brazilian Diplomacy," pp. 224-225. 47. DS, memo, n.d. [Nov. 1944], RG 59, OARA, Brazil Memoranda; Edward Stettinius, Jr., to U.S. chargé (Rio), Dec. 18,1944, FRUS, 1944, vol. 1, p. 952; Hilton, "Brazilian Diplomacy," p. 225. 48. MG (Gabinete), memo, Dec. 28, 1944, AEX; Dutra to Vargas, Jan. n , 1945, GV. 49. Leslie Bethell and Ian Roxborough, "Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War," pp. 169-171. 50. Hilton, "Overthrow of Getúlio Vargas," pp. 10-12. 51. U.S. emb. (Rio) to DS, Dec. 13, 1944, RG 59, 732.61/12-1344. 52. Adolf Berle, Jr. (Rio) to DS, May 9, 1945, RG 84, box 26; DC, Feb. 27, 1945; DN, Mar. 2, 1945, p. 3; editorial: "A Rússia," CM, Mar. 15, 1945; editorial: "Relações russo-brasileiras," DC, Mar. 9, 1945. 53. Lima Cavalcanti to MRE, Nov. 25, 1944; Braz. min. (Teheran) to MRE, Jan. 22, 1945, GV; Fontes to MRE (for Vargas), Feb. 27, 1945, AHI;

Notes to Pages 198-204

255

Humberto Bastos, "A Rússia quer estabelecer relações diplomáticas com o Brasil," DC, Feb. 28, 1945. 54. Thomas Μ. Campbell and George C. Herring, Diaries of Edward Stettinius, Jr., p. 263; Velloso to Vargas, Feb. 28, 1945, GV; Dulles, Brazilian Communism, p. 258. 55. Monteiro, interview, Folha Carioca, Feb. 1, 1945; Vargas to Velloso, Mar. 2, 1945; GV; Vargas, interview, CM, Mar. 3, 1945; FRUS, 1945, vol. 9, pp. 223-226; Martins to MRE, Mar. 21, 22, Apr. 2, 1945, AHI. 56. Prestes to Vargas, Apr. 3, 1945, GV; editorial: "O reconhecimento da Rússia soviética," CM, Apr. 3, 1945; editorial: "O reconhecimento da U.R.S.S.," OJ, Apr. 3, 1945; Dutra, quoted in CM, Apr. 4, 1945, p. 3; editorial: "As relações russo-brasileiras," DN, Apr. 5, 1945; editorial: "As futuras relações econômicas russo-brasileiras," JB, Apr. 6, 1945; B. de Aragão, "Possibilidades de intercambio russo-brasileiro," OJ, Apr. 8,1945, section 3, p. 1; Evaldo Simas, "Conversa com o chanceler Velloso sobre a posição internacional do Brasil," OJ, Apr. 15, 1945, section 2, p. 2; Vyacheslav Molotov to Velloso, Apr. 9, 1945, AHI.

9. Cold War Antagonisms (1945-1947) 1. Pedro Leão Velloso to MRE, Apr. 27, June 13, 1945, AHI; J. E. de Macedo Soares, "Atenção!" DC, Aug. 15, 1945; editorial: "Nossas relações diplomáticas com a Rússia," CM, Aug. 22, 1945; Assis Chateaubriand, "Uma única política estrangeira," OJ, Dec. 29, 1945. 2. Ambassador Hugo Gouthier (London) to MRE, June 30, 1945, AHI; Captain João P. Machado (Washington) to Getúlio Vargas, July 4, 1945, GV; José J. Moniz de Aragão to MRE, Sept. 19, 1945; Cyro Freitas-Valle to MRE, Oct. 31, 1945, AHI. 3. Angelo Mendes de Moraes to Pedro de Góes Monteiro, Apr. 20, May 5, June 18, 20, 1946, PGM; Anor Teixeira dos Santos to MRE, June 25, 1946, AHI; Monteiro, quoted in U.S. naval attaché (Rio) to Navy Department, June 16, 1946, RG 59, 810.20 Defense/7-1746; U.S. chargé (Rio) to DS, Apr. 26, 1946, RG 59, 701.6132/2-2646; João Neves da Fontoura (Paris) to MRE, Aug. 2, 6, 1946, AHI; Fontoura to Oswaldo Aranha, Aug. 12, 1946, OA; Velloso to MRE, Sept. 24, 26, 1946, AHI; Raul Fernandes, interview, Folha Carioca, Nov. 12, 1946. 4. Mario Pimentel Brandão to MRE, June 30, July 2, 6,12, Aug. 24, Sept. 18, Nov. 15, 1946, AHI. 5. Brandão to MRE, Dec. 14, 15, 1946, AHI; U.S. embassy (Moscow) to DS, Dec. 28, 1946, RG 59, 701.3261/12-2846; MRE, press note, OJ, Jan. 21, 1947. 6. OJ, Dec. 20, 21, 1946; editorial: "Incivilidade," CM, Dec. 21, 1946; editorial: "Considerações sobre o incidente de Moscou," Diario da Noite, Dec. 20, 1946; OJ, Jan. 1, 1947; New Times (Moscow), Jan. 24, 1947, in Clissold, Soviet Relations, p. 184; Brandão to MRE, Apr. 10, 1947, AHI. 7. Hilton, "Overthrow of Getúlio Vargas," pp. 10-18; Eurico G. Dutra to Atila Soares, Apr. 17, 1945, in Silva, 1945, p. 314.

256

Notes to Pages 205-209

8. Moraes and Viana, Prestes, pp. 103-104; Hilton, "Overthrow of Getúlio Vargas," pp. 16-20. 9. MG (Gabinete), memoranda, June 7, July 5, 26, 1945, AEX, Serviço Secreto de Informações (MG), report, Aug. 1945, PGM; Juarez Távora, Uma vida, vol. 2, pp. 192-195; Henrique Teixeira Lott to Monteiro, Oct. 18, 1945, PGM. 10. Hilton, "Overthrow of Getúlio Vargas," pp. 27-32; Moraes and Viana, Prestes, p. 109; Beatrice B. Berle and Travis B. Jacobs, Navigating the Rapids, p. 557; Adolf A. Berle, Jr., Diary, Nov. 1, 1945, Adolf A. Berle, Jr., Papers; Berle to DS, Oct. 31, Nov. 1, 1945, RG 59, 832.00/10-3145, 11-45.

n . John W. F. Dulles, Vargas of Brazil, p. 281; Moraes and Viana, Prestes, p. 112; Bezerra, Memórias, vol. 2, pp. 10-11. 12. MJ, memo ("Greves verificadas no Estado de São Paulo"), n.d. [July 1946?], RMJ. On labor unrest during 1945-1946, see Carone, A república liberal, pp. 2 0 2 - 2 0 5 .

13. Cecil Borer (DOPS-Rio) to Delegado de Segurança Social, July 25, 1946, PR. 14. Gilson Amado (Ministry of Labor), Notas sobre a situação econômica e social em São Paulo, Feb. 28, 1946; Delegado Fredgar M. Ferreira to director, Divisão de Polícia Política e Social (DOPS-Rio), Mar. 11, 16, 1946; Borer to Chefe do Serviço de Investigações, Mar. 20, 1946, PR. For an assessment of the labor situation and growing Communist influence in São Paulo, see French, "Workers and the Rise of Adhemarista Populism," pp. 6-10. 15. Ferreira to director, DOPS-Rio, May 24, June 22, 1946, PR. 16. Ministério do Trabalho, Boletim Reservado, June 1, 1946; Ferreira, report, June 13, 1946, PR; José Pereira Lima, statement, Of, June 9, 1946. 17. Fontoura to Dutra, Mar. 8, 1946; Minister of Labor to Dutra, May [?], 1946, Ferreira, report, July 8, 1946, PR. 18. Mario Pinto Guedes to Monteiro, n.d. [May 1946], May 25, 1946, RMJ; president, Federação de Empregados de Comércio do Norte e Nordeste (Recife), to Dutra, Oct. 16, 1946, PR; Federal Interventor (Pernambuco) to Dutra, Dec. 19, 1946, RMJ; pres., Sindicato de Carris Urbanos (Porto Alegre), to Dutra, June 21, 1946, PR; General Gustavo Cordeiro de Farias (P. Alegre) to Monteiro, July 28, 1946, PGM; Fed. Interventor (Rio) to Costa Neto, Dec. 30, 1946, RMJ. 19. Amb. William Pawley (Rio) to Harry S. Truman, Aug. 16, 1946, RG 59, 832.00/8-1646; Moraes and Viana, Prestes, pp. 113-114; Departamento Federal de Segurança Pública, memo, Jan. 13, 1947, PR; Chilcote, Brazilian Communist Party, p. 53. 20. U.S. chargé (Rio) to DS, May 23, June 10, 1946, RG 59, 832.00/5-2346; MRE to Braz. emb. (Washington), Apr. 23, 1946, AHI; Moraes and Viana, Prestes, p. 113; Monteiro to Renato Barbosa, May 28, 1946; Monteiro to Commander, Seventh Military Region, Aug. 21, 1946, PGM; MG (Gabinete), memo, Aug. 28, 1946, AEX; ministers of war, navy, and air to Dutra, Nov. 11, 1946, RMJ; Dutra to Congress, Nov. 16, 1946, PR; MG, press note,

Notes to Pages 209-215

257

Of, Nov. 27, 1946; Canrobert Pereira da Costa to Dutra, Nov. 23, 1946, AEX; MJ, circular, Nov. 25, 1946, RG 59, 832.00/11-2746. 21. For general discussion of the administration's coercive program toward labor, see Vianna, Liberalismo, pp. 268-270; Carone, A república liberal, pp. 231-236. 22. Minister of Air Armando Trompowsky, memo, n.d. [1946], RMJ. 23. Roberto Simonsen, speech, July 25, 1946; president, Conselho Nacional do Serviço Social da Indústria, to Dutra, June 22, 1947, PR. 24. Regulamento do Serviço Social da Indústria; unsigned memo to Dutra, n.d. [July 1946?]; Departamento Nacional do Trabalho, circular, Oct. 19, 1946, PR. 25. Of, Dec. 22, 1946; Costa Neto, circular, Dec. 24, 1946, RMJ; Of, Jan. 8, 1947; Simonsen to Costa Neto, Jan. 1, 1947, RMJ. 26. Pawley to DS, June 22, 1946, RG 59, 832.00/6-2246; Pereira Lira, interview, OG, Aug. 13, 1946; Pawley to Truman, Aug. 16, 1946 (with enclosed memo, Aug. 15, 1946), RG 59, 832.00B/8-1646; Fontoura, "Relações diplomáticas com a U.R.S.S.," pp. 95-97; Pawley to DS, Jan. 3,1947, RG 59, 832.00B/1-347. 27. Costa Neto, circular, Feb. 3, 1947; Major Wolmar Carneiro da Cunha (Bahia) to Costa Neto, Feb. [?], 1947; Secretário de Segurança Pública (Recife) to Costa Neto, Feb. 7, 1947; Fed. Interv. (Minas Gerais) to Costa Neto, Feb. 13, 1947, RMJ. 28. Dias de Figueiredo to Costa Neto, Apr. 7, 1947, RMJ; Pawley to DS, Mar. 12, 1947, RG 59, 832.00B/3-1247; DS, memo, Apr. 10, 1947, RG 59, OARA, Brazil Memoranda. 29. U.S. emb. (Rio) to DS, Feb. 19, 1947, RG 59, 832.00/2-1947; Of, Apr. 11, 16, 1947; Pereira da Costa to Departamento Técnico do Exército, Mar. 12, 1947, AEX; Major Adauto Esmeraldo (DOPS) to Chief of Police, n.d. [1947]; Costa Neto, circular, May 7, 1947, RMJ. 30. Costa Neto, circulars, May 7, 9, 1947; Ademar de Barros (S. Paulo) to Costa Neto, May 8, 1947, RMJ; Basbaum, Uma vida, pp. 201-202; Moraes and Viana, Prestes, pp. 115 -118. 31. Presidência da República, Secretaria, memo, n.d. [May 1947]; Seção de Segurança Nacional (MJ), memo, May 19, June 2, 23, 26, 1947; Esmeraldo to Seção de Seg. Nac. (MJ), July 7, 1947, RMJ; Juracy Magalhães, Minhas memórias, p. 123. 32. Berle Diary, May 18, 1945; Berle to Truman, June 25, 1945, Berle Papers; Basbaum, Uma vida, pp. 181, 190; Berle to DS, May 24, 1945, RG 59, 832.00/5-2445; Braz. emb. (Washington) to MRE, Feb. 19, 1946, AHI; Silva, 1945, pp. 336-342; Benedito Mergulhão, O bagaceiro, pp. 11-17; Moraes and Viana, Prestes, p. 115; U.S. emb. (Rio) to DS, Mar. 20, 1946, RG 59, 832.00B/3-2046; Pereira da Costa, interview, O Radical (Rio), Mar. 21, 1946. 33. Fontoura, "Relações diplomáticas com a U.R.S.S.," pp. 95-96. 34. Hilton, Hitler's Secret War, pp. 226, 246, 288. 35. U.S. emb. (Rio) to DS, Aug. 21, 1945, May 22, 1946; DS to U.S. emb.

258

Notes to Pages 215-220

(Moscow), Oct. 15, 1945; DS to U.S. emb. (Rio), Apr. 17, June 17, 1946, RG 59, 800.76 Monitoring/8-2145, 5-2246, 10-1545, 4-1746, 6-1746; Fontoura, "Relações diplomáticas com a U.R.S.S.," p. 97. 36. Pereira Lima to Chamber of Deputies, Nov. 26, 1946, in JC, Nov. 27, 1946; Of, Nov. 22, 1946, p. 2. 37. Pereira Lima, interview, Of, Aug. 23, 1946, section 2, p. 1; MRE to Braz. emb. (Moscow), Aug. 22,1946, AHI; DOPS (Rio Grande do Sul), memo, June 25, 1946; DOPS report, "Síntese: Considerações sobre as atividades do Partido Comunista no Brasil," n.d. [Dec. 1946], RMJ. 38. Fontoura, "Relações diplomáticas com a U.R.S.S.," p. 97; Pimentel Brandão to MRE, Sept. 5, 1946; MRE, memo, Nov. 26, 1946, AHI. 39. Brit. emb. (Moscow) to FO, Jan. 31, 1947, RFO 371/61197. 40. Raul Fernandes to Pimentel Brandão, May 19, June 2, 1947, AHI. 41. Pawley to Secretary of State George C. Marshall, May 3, 1947, RG 59, 711.32/6-947; DS memo, July 24, 1947, RG 59, OARA, Brazil Memoranda. 42. Marshall, memo, Aug. 22, 1947, FRUS, 1947, vol. 8, p. 55. 43. Aranha to Hildebrando Acioly, Sept. 21, 1947, HAP; Aranha to Fernandes, Sept. 25, 1947, OA. 44. JB, Sept. 20, Oct. 2, 1947; Aranha to Monteiro, Oct. 6, 1947, OA. 45. Fernandes to Aranha, [Oct. 3, 6, 1947], quoted in Aranha to Eduardo Gomes, n.d. [Oct. 1947], OA. See, too, Fernandes to Aranha, Nov. 16, 1947, OA. 46. The article is printed in translation in Clissold, Soviet Relations, pp. 185-186. 47. Pimentel Brandão to MRE, n.d. [Oct. 4, 1947], in Brazil, MRE, Ruptura, n.p. 48. Editorial: "Ataques de Moscou," fB, Oct. 7, 1947; Fernandes to Pimentel Brandão, n.d., in Brazil, MRE, Ruptura, p. 11; U.S. chargé (Rio) to DS, Oct. 9, 1947, FRUS, 1947, vol. 8, p. 394; Pimentel Brandão to Molotov, Oct. 10, 1947, in Brazil, MRE, Ruptura, pp. 12-13; editorial: "O Komintern," JB, Oct. 10, 1947; ESP, Oct. 9, 1947. 49. Soviet Foreign Ministry to Braz. emb. (Moscow), Oct. 11, 1947; Pimentel Brandão to MRE, n.d. [Oct. n , 1947], in Brazil, MRE, Ruptura, n.p.; Pimentel Brandão to Acioly, Oct. 16, 1947, HAP; DC, Oct. 16, 17, 1947; DS to U.S. emb. (Rio), Oct. n , 1947, RG 59, 501.BB/10-947; U.S. chargé (Rio) to Fernandes, Nov. 17, 1947, RG 59, 732.61/n-1847; U.S. chargé (Rio) to DS, Oct. 16, 1947; DS to U.S. emb. (Moscow), Oct. 17, 1947, FRUS, 1947, vol. 8, pp. 396-397; Pimentel Brandão to Molotov, Oct. 20, 1947, in Brazil, MRE, Ruptura, n.p. 50. Brit. emb. (Moscow) to FO, Oct. 23, 1947, RFO 371/61197; Pravda, Oct. 20, 25, 1947, in U.S. emb. (Moscow) to DS, Oct. 20, Nov. 13, 1947, RG 59, 732.61/10-2047, 10-2947; unsigned article, "The Old Game," New Times (Moscow), 29 Oct. 1947, p. 15; U.S. Political Adviser (Berlin) to DS, Oct. 31, Nov. n , 1947, RG 59, 740.00119 Control (Germany)/10-3147, 11-1147.

51. DC, Oct. 16, 17, 1947; U.S. emb. (Rio) to DS, Oct. 30, 1947, RG 59, 832.911/10-3047.

Notes to Pages 220-221

259

52. Editorial: "Nossas relações com a Rússia," JB, Oct. 21, 1947; editorial: "A ruptura das relações com a Rússia," CM, Oct. 22, 1947; editorial column, "Notas e Informações," ESP, Oct. 23, 1947; editorial: "Os Estados Unidos e o rompimento com a Rússia," DC, Oct. 23, 1947; Senator Nereu Ramos to Dutra, Oct. 21, 1947, PR,· JB, Oct. 22, 1947. 53. Hilton, "Brazil's International Economic Strategy, 1945-1960."

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Vacs, Aldo Cesar. Discreet Partners: Argentina and the USSR since 1917. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984. Valla, Victor. Os Estados Unidos e a influência estrangeira na economia brasileira: Um período de transição, 1904-1928. São Paulo: Coleção Revista de História, 1972. Valtin, Jan (Richard Krebs). Out of the Night. Garden City, New York, 1942. Vargas, Getúlio. A nova política do Brasil n vols. Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1938-1947. Velloso, Mónica Pimenta. "A Ordem: Uma revista de doutrina, política e cultura." Revista de Ciência Política 21 (September 1978): 117-159. Vergara, Luiz. Fui secretário de Getúlio Vargas: Memórias dos anos 19261954. Rio de Janeiro, 1960. Vianna, Luiz Werneck. Liberalismo e sindicato no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1976. Vieira, Hermes Pio. Eloy Chaves: Precursor da previdência social no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1978. Villela, Annibal V, and Wilson Suzigan. Política do governo e crescimento da economia brasileira, 1889-1945. Rio de Janeiro: IPEA, 1973. Wainer, Samuel. Minha razão de viver: Memórias de um repórter. 8th ed. Rio de Janeiro: Distribuidora Record, 1987. Wiarda, Howard. The Brazilian Catholic Labor Movement. Amherst, Massachusetts, 1969. Wirth, John D. Minas Gerais in the Brazilian Federation, 1889-1937. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977. Zaidan, Michel. "Apresentação." In Astrojildo Pereira, Construindo o PCB (1922-1924), pp. 1-15. São Paulo: Editora Ciências Humanas, 1980. Newspapers

and Journals

A Defesa Nacional (Rio de Janeiro) A Federação (Porto Alegre) A Hora (Rio de Janeiro) A Nação (Rio de Janeiro) A Noite (Rio de Janeiro) A Pátria (Rio de Janeiro) Correio da Manhã (Rio de Janeiro) Correio Paulistano (São Paulo) Daily Worker (London) Diário Carioca (Rio de Janeiro) Diário da Noite (Rio de Janeiro) Diário de Notícias (Rio de Janeiro) Folha Carioca (Rio de Janeiro) Jornal do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro) Jornal do Comércio (Rio de Janeiro) London Times Manchester Guardian

Bibliography New Times (Moscow) New York Times O Estado de São Paulo (São Paulo) O Jornal (Rio de Janeiro) O Paiz (Rio de Janeiro) O Radical (Rio de Janeiro)

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Index

Ação Integralista Brasileira: expansion of, 56, 136; as ally of federal authorities, 91-92, 132, 135-136; proscribed, 140. See also Cohen Plan; Salgado, Plínio Acioly, Hildebrando, 108, 148, 217, 219 Agrarian League of São Paulo (Liga Agrária de São Paulo), 37-38 AIB. See Ação Integralista Brasileira Alberto, João. See Lins de Barros, João Alberto Alessandri, Arturo, 95 Aliança Nacional Libertadora, 66, 67, 69; establishment of, 53-54; growth of, 55; opposition to, 62; proscribed, 63 Amado, Gilberto, 95 Américo de Almeida, José, 120 Amoroso Lima, Alceu: and Centro Dom Vital, 31; endorses national security law, 60; advocates antiCommunist measures, 62, 72; anti-Communist declarations by, 86, 89 Amtorg, 7 Anarchism, 2, 3 Anderson, Sherwood, 106 Andrews, Dana, 186 ANL. See Aliança Nacional Libertadora Anti-Comintern Bureau, 95, 119 Anti-Comintern Pact, 114, 168

Aragão, José Joaquim Moniz de: on Soviet threat, 26-27, 109, 115, 143, 148, 149-150; opposes trade with USSR, 38-39; appointed envoy to Berlin, 113; and GermanBrazilian cooperation, 113 -114, 116-119; becomes ambassador to London, 148; on Soviet military prowess, 176; reports Argentine interest in reconciliation with USSR, 190; pessimism of, regarding Soviet-West cooperation, 201 Aranha, Oswaldo: and secret subsidy for Prestes, 5; concern of, about Communist activities, 13 —, as ambassador to Washington, 46,47, 50, 75, 89, 111, 138; appointed, 44; criticizes repression in Brazil, 92; efforts by, to counter criticism of Brazil, 105-107 —, as foreign minister, 147, 148, 162, 164, 183, 195; appointed, 144; on need for counterespionage capability, 161; and RussoFinnish war, 172; on Soviet threat, 172, 178; and possible rapprochement with USSR, 191192, 193, 194; resigns, 188 —, as minister of finance: appointed, 27; interest of, in relations with USSR, 40, 41 —, as minister of justice, 31, 33, 39; appointed, 27; and anti-

274

Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917-1947

Communist intelligence, 27-28; on Communist threat, 29 —, as president of UN General Assembly: on Soviet bellicosity, 217; attacked by Soviet press, 219 Araújo, Ivens de, 150, 156 Argentina, ix, 94, 113, 161, 185; as perceived center of Soviet activities, 15, 27, 34, 151, 162, 179; anti-Communist cooperation between, and Brazil, 34, 61, 9 9 101, 163, 180; as perceived military threat to Brazil, 47-48. See also Buenos Aires; Yuzhamtorg Assis Brasil, Joaquim de, 40 Associação Brasileira de Imprensa, 33 Aubert, Théodor, 36, 119, 151; furnishes anti-Communist information to Brazil, 17-18, 35, 95; and Soviet-Uruguayan rupture, 98 Bahia, 188; government of, opposes Estado Novo, 56; Communist activities in, 58, 122, 166, 181-182; integralism in, 135; F. Muller and situation in, 155 Barata, Agildo: organizes ANL in Rio Grande do Sul, 56; and intentona, 69, 71; punishment of, 76, 88; postwar activities of, 207, 208 Barreto Leite Filho, João, 58-59 Barron, Victor Allen: arrival in Brazil, 54; as radio operator for Prestes, 58; arrest and torture of, 81-82; death of, 82, 106, 107 Basbaum, Leôncio: and question of PCB-Prestes alliance, 4-5, 23; on Soviet neglect of Latin America, 7-8; victim of purge, 8, 24; on police repression, 32; on preparations for insurrection, 58; on proscription of PCB, 213 Battle of Russia, The, 186 Belém: anti-Communist action by police in, 150, 155-156, 157 Bellens Porto, Eurico, 180

Benario, Olga, 71, 109, 222; accompanies Prestes to Brazil, 55; escapes arrest, 80; as political prisoner, 82, 83; identified by Gestapo, 117; deportation of, 84-87 Berger, Harry. See Ewert, Arthur Berle, Adolf, Jr., 197, 213 Bernardes, Arthur, 12; attitude of, toward rapprochement with USSR, 13, 195; interest of, in anti-Soviet intelligence, 17; repression during presidency of, 19; opposes trade with USSR, 38 Bezerra, Gregório, 55-56, 67-68, 79, 207 Bley, João, 62, 63 Bomfim, Antonio Maciel, 24, 55; advocates armed revolt, 25; and intentona, 58, 59; arrest and sentencing of, 80, 88 Borborema, Salvador de, 150, 155 — 156, 157 Braga, Serafim, 61, 62, 80 Brandão, Octávio: early revolutionary views of, 2 - 3 ; on PCB subordination to Comintern, 6; and purge of PCB, 8; scores Prestes, 9; arrested, 19-20, 32-33 Brás, Domingos, 165 Brasil, Paulo, 163 Brazil: sociopolitical conditions in, 2 - 3 ; and Russian Revolution, 9-10; severs relations with USSR, (1918) 10, (1947) 219; question of trade between, and USSR, 14-16, 37-47; restrictions by, on Soviet immigration, 16-17, 36-37; intelligence activities of, 17-18, 26, 27 (see also Military; Muller, Filinto); 1935 Communist revolt in (see Intentona comunista); relations of, with Italy, 112-113; relations of, with Germany, 113-119; politicomilitary crises in, (1937) 123-139, (1945) 204-206; rapprochement between, and USSR,

Index 189-199; post-World War II relations of, with USSR, 2 0 0 - 2 0 1 , 202-204, 213-216, 217-218, 2 2 9 - 2 2 0 . See also Bernardes, Arthur; Censorship, in Brazil; DOPS; Estado Novo; Foreign policy elite; Itamaraty; Labor movement; Pereira de Souza, Washington Luís; Pessoa, Epitácio; Revolution of 1964; Soviet Union; United States; Vargas, Getúlio Brazilian Industrial Federation (Confederação Brasileira da Indústria), 41 Brentano, Leopoldo, 32 Bueno, Lucillo: on Soviet threat, 10, 26, 28; and question of trade with USSR, 14, 41; anti-Communist activities of, in Uruguay, 35, 61; warns of imminent revolt, 64; and Soviet-Uruguayan rupture, 96, 97, 98 Buenos Aires, 26, 34, 40, 44, 55, 105, 159, 161, 169, 179, 180; Prestes in, 4, 5; as headquarters for Comintern's South American Bureau, 6, 7, 8, 157, 165-166, 170; as headquarters for Soviet trade agencies, 7·, as perceived base of Soviet subversion, 12, 13, 1 5 , 2 7 , 2 8 , 6 3 , 9 9 - 1 0 0 , 101, 151, 162, 163, 164; Vargas trip to, 61; Brazilian intelligence activities in, 163-164, 165 Bukharin, Nikolay, 7 Caffery, Jefferson, 141, 189, 192, 193 Câmara, Helder, 92 Câmara Brasileira de Comércio Exterior, 14, 15 Câmara Canto, José Bernardino, 28, 61, 63, 96, 151 Cameron, Marion, n o Campos, Francisco, 152, 153; antiSoviet attitude of, 97; and antiCommunist propaganda, 134,

275

166, 168; and 1937 politicomilitary conspiracy, 136; becomes minister of justice, 138; and government's break with integralists, 140; and internal security, 149; seeks German propaganda assistance, 166; concern of, about Brazil's image abroad, 169,· resigns, 181 Caneppa, Victorino, 152, 153 Capanema, Gustavo, 170; and propaganda activities of Ministry of Education, 89, 133, 134; and censorship, 135; and political prisoners, 186 Capra, Frank, 186 Cárcano, Ramón, 101 Cárdenas, Lázaro, 152 Carneiro, Levi, 41 Carvalho e Souza, Odette: becomes head of Itamaraty's political department, 22; apprenticeship of, with Aubert, 36; on Soviet threat, 45, 148, 149, 151, 167; as head of Serviço Especial de Informações, 95; and Soviet-Uruguayan rupture, 98; and Defesa Social Brasileira, 127 Cascardo, Herculino, 53, 54, 79 Catholic Electoral League (Liga Eleitoral Católica), 60 Catholic Workers' Circles (Círculos Operários Católicos), 3 1 - 3 2 , 134, 159 Cavalcante de Andrade, Newton: anti-Communist campaign by, 7 8 - 7 9 , 89; relationship of, with Plínio Salgado, 92; antagonism of, toward Macedo Soares, 128, 137; and 1937 politicomilitary conspiracy, 1 3 0 - 1 3 1 ; as member of CSEG, 132-135, 137, 138 Censorship, in Brazil: of press, 15, 20, 33, 51, 123, 135, 140, 1 6 9 170, 181, 183-185, 194, 196; of film, 185-186; abolition of, 196, 197

276

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Centro Dom Vital, 31, 60 Chaco War, 47, 51 Chateaubriand, Assis, 63, 74, 192, 201

Chaves, Eloy, 18 Cheli, Bruno, 186 Chermont, Abel, 83 Chile, 47; Communist activities in, 26, 150; Brazilian intelligence activities in, 164-165; reestablishes relations with USSR, 195; expels Soviet bloc diplomats, 218-219 Church, Catholic, 31-32, 72, 91 Churchill, Winston, 185, 192 Ciano, Galeazzo, 142 Classe Operária, A, 9, 32 Coelho dos Reis, José Antonio, 185 Coelho Neto, José, 130, 131, 140 Cohen Plan, 129, 130-131 Collor, Lindolfo, 30 Colombia, 47 Comintern, 17, 71, 109; establishment of, 1; relations of, with PCB, 3, 6-7, 8; South American Bureau of, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 22, 165, 181; Sixth Congress of, 7; recruitment of Prestes by, 22-23; and intentona, 25, 53, 54-55, 57-58; anti-Vargas propaganda campaign by, 105-106, 109, 141; and Spanish Civil War, 114; Gestapo information on plans of, 116, 117; abolished, 174, 177. See also Ewert, Arthur; Partido Comunista do Brasil; Prestes, Luís Carlos Comissão Superintendente do Estado de Guerra, 132-135, 137, 138 Commercial Association of Rio de Janeiro (Associação Comercial do Rio de Janeiro), 40 Communists, in Brazil: agitation by, 19-20, 28-29, 181-182, 207-208; alleged terrorist plot by, 188-189. See also Aliança

Nacional Libertadora; Partido Comunista do Brasil Conselho de Segurança Nacional, 50, 161, 179, 180, 219 Conselho Federal de Comércio Exterior, 73-74, 75; debates trade with USSR, 43, 44, 45, 46 Conselho Nacional do Trabalho, 18 Constitution of 1937, Brazilian, 139, 157 Corrêa, Adalberto, 76, 92 Correio da Manhã (Rio de Janeiro), 63, 101, 148, 167; opposes Soviet immigration, 17, 37; on trade with USSR, 38; on Soviet threat, 50, 59, 61, 81, 142, 150; urges adoption of anti-Communist measures, 50, 74, 90; on Spanish Civil War, 114; criticizes Soviet policy, 146, 147; and Soviet military prowess, 175, 176; on abolition of Comintern, 191; advocates cooperation with USSR, 192; on reestablishment of diplomatic relations with USSR, 199; critical of Soviet postwar policy, 201, 204

Costa, Miguel, 5 Costa Leite, Carlos da, 58, 162, 164, 165 Costa Neto, Benedito, 210, 211-212

Cruz, Trindade, 164, 165 CSEG. See Comissão Superintendente do Estado de Guerra Curitiba, 155, 162 Daily Worker (London), 111 Defesa Social Brasileira, 127-128, 137-138, 149, 210 Delegacia de Ordem Política e Social, 17, 26, 166; participation of, in repression, 10, 28, 140, 153, 214; establishment of, 19; monitoring of left-wing activities by, 19, 30-31, 62; in São Paulo, 19,

Index 31, 62, 63, 156, 157, 188; treatment of political prisoners by, 186; in Recife, 188; and postWorld War II Communist activities, 207, 212. See also Bellens Porto, Eurico; Miranda Correia, Afonso; Political prisoners; Salgado Filho, Pedro; Souto, Israel Departamento de Imprensa e Propaganda, 168, 180, 181. See also Censorship, in Brazil Departamento Federal de Segurança Pública, 188 Dimitrov, Georgi, 25 DIP. See Departamento de Imprensa e Propaganda Diário Carioca (Rio de Janeiro): demands anti-Communist action, 59, 74; on Soviet threat, 90-91, 145; on Soviet military prowess, 175, 176; on abolition of Comintern, 191; urges rapprochement with USSR, 197; skepticism of, regarding Soviet-Brazilian relations, 201; on Soviet-Brazilian rupture, 220 Diário de Notícias (Rio de Janeiro): calls for anti-Soviet campaign, 74, 97; on Soviet threat, 145, 147; scorns Red Army, 175; and censorship, 184; on abolition of Comintern, 191; on reestablishment of diplomatic relations with USSR, 199 Diretrizes, 170, 184-185 Doctrine of national security, xi-xii DOPS. See Delegacia de Ordem Política e Social Dos Passos, John, 106 Dreiser, Theodore, 106 DSB. See Defesa Social Brasileira Dutra, Eurico G.: and intentona, 65, 70, 71; and overthrow of Vargas, 206 —, as minister of war, 139, 155,

277

156; and 1937 politicomilitary conspiracy, 121, 130-131, 136, 137, 138-139; and issue of political prisoners, 124-125, 126-127; warns of Communist threat, 150, 151, 168, 179, 180-181, 182, 183, 196, 205; and army intelligence activities, 160-161, 179; opposes trade with USSR, 171; calls for press censorship, 183-184; quarrel of, with Rabello, 188; urges redemocratization, 196; on rapprochement with USSR, 199; on legalization of PCB, 204; resentment of, toward Vargas, 205 —, as president: anti-Communist campaign of, 208-209, 210, 211, 212, 216; hostility of, toward Soviets, 214, 215; attacked by Soviet press, 217-218; and severance of relations with USSR, 218, 219 Eden, Anthony, 112, 191 Ernesto, Pedro, 128 Espalter, José, 96, 97 Estado de São Paulo, O, 30, 59, 63, 147, 219 Estado Novo: implantation of, 139-140; characteristics of, 140-141; international repercussions of, 141-142; labor movement during, 157-158; termination of, 196-197, 204-206 Etchegoyen, Alcides, 181, 186 Ewert, Arthur, 100, 111, 112, 179; as Comintern agent in South America, 23; and recruitment of Prestes, 23; and preparations for insurrection, 54, 55, 56, 58, 69; arrest of, 80; mistreatment of, by police, 81, 84, 87-88, 126, 152153, 186; identified by Gestapo, 116; amnestied, 204. See also Xanthaky, Theodore Ewert, Elise, 23, 54, 109, 222; arrest

278

Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917-1947

and torture of, 80, 81; deportation of, 86. See also Xanthaky, Theodore Ewert, Minna, 111, 152, 186

França, Olinto de Almeida, 181 France: representatives of, warn of Soviet intrigue, 11-12, 26; Brazilian perceptions of, 25-26,

Falcão, João: reports to Comintern's South American Bureau, 157, 165; instructed to rebuild PCB, 166, 181-182; as editor of Seiva, 170, 184 Falcão, Waldemar, 167 Fernandes, Elza, 80, 83, 122, 151, 168 Fernandes, Raul: on relations with USSR, 41; opposes ANL, 63; antiSoviet attitude of, 202; protests Soviet press criticism of Brazil, 216; and severance of relations with USSR, 218, 219; returns as foreign minister, 222 Figueiredo, Jackson de, n , 12, 31 First Congress of Public Security, 88-89, 92 Flores da Cunha, José Antonio: supports trade with USSR, 42, 44; backs national security law, 60; as adversary of Vargas government, 70, 121, 123, 129, 137 Fontes, Lourival: and Catholic Workers' Circles, 31; and antiCommunist propaganda, 166, 168; as head of DIP, 168, 169; on Soviet-West antagonisms, 178; resigns, 181; on need for rapprochement with USSR, 191; Soviet contacts with, 197 Fontoura, João Neves da, 202, 211,

Franco, Francisco, 94, 108, 115 Freeman, Richard, 110-111 Freire do Nascimento, Firmo, 169 Freitas Guimarães, Honório de, 80,

108-109

214, 2 1 5 , 222

Foreign policy elite, in Brazil: on Soviet threat, 10-14, 25-29, 59, 60-61, 114, 143-151, 177-178; debates rapprochement with USSR, 41-42; attitude of, toward Axis, 113-114. See also Itamaraty; Military, in Brazil; Press, in Brazil; Vargas, Getúlio

122

Freitas-Valle, Cyro, 175; on Soviet threat, 147, 148, 172; and question of contacts with Soviet diplomats, 193; on need for rapprochement with USSR, 195; clash between, and Soviet representatives at United Nations, 201 Garcez, César, 163, 180 George, Harrison, 54 Germany, ix; trade of, with Brazil, 45, 113; reaction of, to Estado Novo, 142; cooperation of, with Brazil, in propaganda field, 166. See also Brazil; Gestapo Gestapo, 187, 116-119 Ghioldi, Rodolfo: and recruitment of Prestes, 4, 23; monitors PCB for Comintern, 6; and preparations for insurrection, 54, 69; arrest of, 80-81; sentenced, 88; agitation for release of, 100; deported, 151 Gibson, Hugh, 79, 83; and political prisoners, 83, 102-104; and American press treatment of Brazil, 105 Góes, Coriolano de, 13, 20, 188, 189 Gomes, Eduardo, 71, 204, 206, 222 Gorender, Jacob, 185 Goulart, João, xi Goulart, Maurício, 184 Graaf, Johann: sent by Comintern to Brazil, 54-55; as British double agent, 64, 70, 80 Great Britain, ix; warns Brazil of

Index Soviet intrigue, 1 1 - 1 2 , 27; and intentona, 64, 70; cooperation of, with Brazil, 109-110, 112 Gromyko, Andrey, 198 Gruber, Franz. See Graaf, Johann Guaní, Alberto, 99 Guedes, Mario Pinto, 208 Guerra-Duval, Adalberto, 1 0 - 1 1 , 12, 112, 113

Guilhem, Henrique, 75, 126, 131 Guimarães, Napoleão Alencastro, 163, 164, 165, 179 Guralsky, August, 8, 9, 2 2 - 2 3 Guralsky, Ines, 9 Hastings, Christine, 110, 111 Hellman, Lillian, 106, 186 Henriques, Afonso, 57 Heydrich, Reinhard, 117 Hitler, Adolf, 4: interest of, in Brazil's anti-Communist campaign, 113, 116, 117 Holl, Ricardo, 161, 162 Hull, Cordell, 103, 177, 185, 191; and Barron case, 104, 106; rejects Brazilian bid for American mediation of war, 173; on Moscow Conference, 192; on Roosevelt's attitude toward possible BrazilUSSR rapprochement, 193, 194 Huston, Walter, 186 Institute of Coffee (Instituto do Café), 16, 38, 39 Integralism. See Ação Integralista Brasileira Intentona comunista: preparations for, 5 3 - 5 9 , 62, 63; army general staff and, 6 4 - 6 5 , 7 0 - 7 1 ; outbreak and suppression of, 6 5 - 7 1 ; immediate aftermath of, 7 3 - 8 3 , 8 8 - 9 2 ; international repercussions of, 9 4 - 1 1 9 ; impact of, on military attitudes, 121, 122-123, 124, 126, 128, 1 3 0 - 1 3 1 , 1 3 2 135, 137-138, 168-169, 179,

279

1 8 0 - 1 8 1 , 183-184, 208-209, 221, 222; as government propaganda issue, 128, 168-169. See also Prestes, Luís Carlos; Vargas, Getúlio International Entente Against the Third International, 17, 35, 60. See also Aubert, Théodor Italy, 112-113, 142 Itamaraty: anti-Soviet attitude of, 11, 1 2 - 1 3 ; opposition of, to trade with USSR, 15, 16, 3 8 - 4 2 , 4 3 45, 4 6 - 4 7 , 171; and anti-Communist intelligence, 17, 3 3 - 3 4 , 42; opposition of, to Soviet immigration, 3 6 - 3 7 ; and RussoFinnish war, 172; and possible rapprochement with USSR, 190, 191-192, 193-195; and representation on U N Security Council, 195-196; suspicion of, toward USSR, 2 1 5 - 2 1 6 . See also Aranha, Oswaldo; Fernandes, Raul; Fontoura, João Neves da; Macedo Soares, José Carlos de; Melo Franco, Afrânio de; Pimentel Brandão, Mario Izvestiya (Moscow), 97 Jewish Colonization Association, 16 Jornal, O (Rio de Janeiro), 38, 74,199 Jornal do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro): anti-Soviet orientation of, 12, 1 3 - 1 4 , 59, 74, 90, 142, 144, 146, 147, 150; on Soviet military prowess, 175; on Soviet-West cooperation, 176; and censorship, 183; on abolition of Comintern, 1 9 0 - 1 9 1 ; on reestablishment of diplomatic relations with USSR, 199; and severance of relations with USSR, 218, 219 Jornal do Comércio (Rio de Janeiro), 20, 146, 147, 148 Justo, Agustín, 61, 99, 101

280

Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917-1947

Kerensky, Aleksandr, 9, 10 Kolb, Alberto, 159 Kraevsky, Boris, 13, 14, 15, 16 Kun, Bèla, 8, 24, 58, 129; reportedly hiding in Brazil, 33 Labor movement, in Brazil: and strikes, 2, 20, 48, 207; growth of, 2, 157; and Communists, 3, 18, 46, 48, 62, 204-205, 207, 208, 212; government effort to co-opt, 18, 29-30, 157-158, 209; and police repression, 19-20, 30-31, 32, 88, 209, 212; and official antiCommunist propaganda, 134. See also Catholic Workers' Circles; Serviço Social da Indústria Lacerda, Fernando, 185 Lavin, Aleksandr, 40-41 League for National Defense. See Liga de Defesa Nacional League of Nations, 98-99, 172 League of Revolutionary Action (Liga de Ação Revolucionária), 9, 23 Leitão da Cunha, Vasco, 176, 181, 191 Leitão de Carvalho, Estevão, 127, 138, 211 Leme, Sebastião, 31, 73, 137-138 Leme de Castro, Dario, 132, 135 Lenin, V. L, 1, 7, 10, n Liberdade, A (Natal), 68 Liga Brasileira de Defesa Democrática, 210-211 Liga de Defesa Nacional, 12, 60, 89-90, 92, 182 Lima, Heitor Ferreira, 3; on Comintern ignorance of Latin America, 7, 8, 9; on PCB subservience to Comintern, 9; arrested, 33 Lima, Hermes, 85-86 Lima, Waldomiro, 30 Lima Cavalcanti, Carlos, 193, 194, 197 Lins, Etelvino, 155 Lins de Barros, João Alberto: on

Prestes Column, 4; on conversion of Prestes to Marxism, 5-6; and anti-Communist cooperation with Argentina, 101, 163 Linx, Robert, 214 Lira, José Pereira, 211, 215 Literaturnaya Gazeta (Moscow), 217, 218

Litvinov, Maxim, 110; and trade talks with Brazil, 40, 41; attacks by, on Brazil and Uruguay, 9 8 99; and question of Brazil-USSR rapprochement, 190 Lloyd Brasileiro, 38, 39, 156 London Monetary Conference, 40 London Times, 111 Lott, Henrique Teixeira, 206 Luís, Washington. See Pereira de Souza, Washington Luís Lusardo, Baptista: as Federal District police chief, 29, 30-31, 32; and press censorship, 33; and anti-Communist intelligence gathering in Montevideo, 149, 151, 162, 164; on Soviet interest in rapprochement with Brazil, 194 Macedo Soares, José Carlos de, 106; early interest of, in anti-Communist propaganda, 36; warns Vargas about Soviet plans, 149; and Liga Brasileira de Defesa Democrática, 210-211; returns as foreign minister, 222 —, as foreign minister: tightens immigration curbs, 37; opposes trade with USSR, 42, 43-44, 45; on climate of military opinion, 49; anti-ANL action of, 63; urges anti-Communist measures, 75; anti-Soviet diplomatic campaign by, 94-97, 98-102, 115-116 —, as minister of justice: clash between, and military leaders, 123127, 130, 137-138; establishes Defesa Social Brasileira, 127-

Index 128, 137-138; and Comissão Superintendente do Estado de Guerra, 132-135; resigns, 138 Machado, Raul, 87, 88 Magalhães, Agamenon, 75, 87, 134, 155 Magalhães, João Baptista, 12 Magalhães, Juracy, 80, 213 Malta, Octávio, 170 Mangabeira, João, 81 Mangabeira, Octávio, 15, 18 Manuilsky, Dimitri, 8, 9, 24, 25 Marcantonio, Vito, 106 Marcondes Filho, Alexandre, 187 Mariante, Álvaro, 129 Marshall, George C., 216, 217 Martins, Carlos. See Pereira e Souza, Carlos Martins Meirelles, Sylo, 55, 56, 68, 100 Melo Franco, Afrânio de, 25, 26, 28, 36, 38; on communist threat, 29; exchange of information by, with police, 33, 35; and police cooperation with Argentina and Uruguay, 34; opposes trade with USSR, 38, 39, 41, 42; resigns as foreign minister, 42 Mendes de Morães, Angelo, 201 Mesquita Filho, Júlio de, 74 Mexico, 6, 115, 149, 183, 194 Mexico City, 193, 194, 197, 198 Milano, Plínio, 162, 164 Military, in Brazil: on Communist threat, 28-29, 48-49, 122, 153, 154, 179, 201-202, 205-206, 208, 211; anti-Communist activities of, 33, 50-51, 59-6o,75, 76-79, 89-90, 206, 209; intelligence activities of, 50, 64-65, 70, 77, 160-162, 179; and censorship, 135; and post-World War II redemocratization, 196. See also Cavalcante de Andrade, Newton; Dutra, Eurico G.; Monteiro, Pedro de Góes; Pessoa, Pantaleão da Silva; Ribeiro Filho, João Gomes

281

Minas Gerais, 2, 29, 212 Mindelo, Frederico. See Mindelo Carneiro, Frederico Mindelo Carneiro, Frederico, 68, 79, 88, 188 Minkin, Aleksandr: proposes direct USSR-Brazil trade, 39-40; and Soviet-Uruguayan rupture, 96, 97, 98; and alleged financing of 1935 revolt, 102, 103 Miranda Correia, Afonso, 35, 103; and detention of Comintern agents, 80; on Barron's death, 82; and expulsion of Benario, 85; mission of, to Argentina, 101; mission of, to Germany, 118-119 Mission to Moscow, 185, 197 Molotov, V. M., 177, 185, 191; on Soviet-Brazilian relations, 199, 200 Monteiro, Pedro de Góes, 50, 121, 126, 154, 156, 201, 230; monitors radical activities, 29; sociopolitical views of, 30, 48-49, 49-50; becomes minister of war, (1934) 48, (1945) 2,05; on Brazil's strategic situation, 51; on need for national security law, 60; urges proscription of ANL, 62; fears Communist uprising, 65; calls for authoritarian state, 77-78; and integralism, 91; on Communist threat, 122-123, 150, 182-183, 205, 214, 216-217; becomes army chief of staff, 126; and 1937 politicomilitary conspiracy, 129131; on national security, 159160; proposes new intelligence agency, 159-160, 161, 179; on intentona, 168; appointed to InterAmerican Political Defense Committee, 182-183; on Soviet threat, 183; Soviet overtures to, 194; on Soviet influence in world affairs, 195; urges redemocratization, 196; on postwar SovietCommunist threat, 202, 205, 214,

282

Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917-1947

216-217; and overthrow of Vargas, 206; becomes chief of Armed Forces General Staff, 222 Montevideo, 54, 61; as perceived base of Soviet subversion, 12-13, 26, 27-28, 94, 149, 151, 180, 183, 187; as headquarters of Comintern's South American Bureau, 22, 23

Morena, Roberto, 186 Morgan, Edwin, 13, 15 Moura, Almério de, 130 Mourão Filho, Olímpio, 129 Movimento Unificado dos Trabalhadores, 205, 207, 208 Muller, Filinto, 26, 32, 58, 76, 78, 79, 87, 99, 108, 135, 140, 149, 220, 222; and establishment of Serviço Nacional de Informações, xiii; and anti-Communist propaganda, 33; cooperation of, with Argentine police, 34, 101; cooperation of, with Uruguayan police, 35, 61; on need for national security law, 60; on Communist threat, 62-63, 65, 81; and intentona, 68; proposes anti-Communist measures, 75; and political prisoners, 79, 82, 83, 84, 85, 88, 111, 152; and federal-state police relations, 88; attitude of, toward integralism, 92; and Argentine left, 100; cooperation of, with Gestapo, 118; clash of, with Macedo Soares, 123-124, 125-126; and 1937 politicomilitary conspiracy, 130, 131; and internal security during Estado Novo, 150, 151, 154, 155, 156, 171, 178, 181, 189; support of Catholic Workers' Circles by, 159; and wartime police intelligence and liaison activities in Southern Cone, 162-165, 179, 180; seeks German assistance, 167-168; counterpropaganda activities of, 167-168, 169,

180; resigns as police chief, 181; criticized by Prestes, 186 Muller, Lauro, 9 Muniz, João Carlos, 217 Mussolini, Benito, 112-113 MUT. See Movimento Unificado dos Trabalhadores Nascimento e Silva, Joaquim Eulálio do, 39, 43, 46 Natal, 53, 65-66, 66-67, 68, 75-76 National Commission for the Repression of Communism (Comissao Nacional de Repressão ao Comunismo), 76 National Propaganda Department (Departamento Nacional de Propaganda), 131, 133, 166, 208 National Security Law, 60-61, 63 New Times (Moscow), 220 New York Times, 105 Nogueira Filho, Paulo, 11 Noite, A (Rio de Janeiro), 191 North Star, The, 185-186, 197 Obino, Salvador, 179 Oehlke, Otto, 167, 168 Olímpio da Silveira, Benedito, 51 Orlov, Sergei, 194 Oumansky, Constantin, 194, 197 Pacheco, Felix, 13 Padilha, Raimundo, 31 Paiz, O (Rio de Janeiro), 12, 13 Paraguay, 26, 47, 180 Paraná, 161. See also Curitiba Partido Comunista do Brasil (PCB): early years of, 3-4; relations between, and Prestes, 4 - 5 , 9, 24; subservience of, to Comintern, 6-9; as target of police repression, 19-20, 24, 32-33; and preparations for insurrection, 52, 56, 66, 67; disarray of, after intentona, I 2 I - I 2 2 ; dismantling of, during early Estado Novo, 153,

Index 155, 156, 157, 182; efforts to rebuild, 165-166, 181-182; efforts to thwart government censorship, 169-170; resurgence of, 204208; legalization of, 206; proscribed, 212 Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro, 204, 205 Pawley, William, 202, 208, 211 PCB. See Partido Comunista do Brasil Peçanha, Alcibíades, 114, 115 Pereira, Astrojildo, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 170 Pereira da Costa, Canrobert: advocates anti-Communist legislation, 209; anti-Communist action by, 212, 213, 216; scores Prestes, 214; and intentona, 221 Pereira de Souza, Washington Luís: and Soviet threat, 15-16; interest of, in anti-Soviet intelligence, 18; repression during administration of, 20; overthrown, 21 Pereira e Souza, Carlos Martins: and question of American mediation of European war, 173; on Russo-German war, 175, 176; on Soviet-American relations, 177, 178, 189-190; and Brazil-USSR rapprochement, 190, 194, 198 Pernambuco: anti-Communist measures in, 78-79, 154, 155, 189; governor of, opposes Estado Novo, 138. See also Recife Peru, 47 Pessoa, Epitácio, 12, 16, 19 Pessoa, Pantaleão da Silva: organizes Conselho de Segurança Nacional, 48; anti-Communist intelligence activities of, 48, 50, 60, 77; civic activities by, 60, 89-90; becomes army chief of staff, 64; and intentona, 64-65, 70-71; attitude of, toward integralism, 91; opposes Estado Novo, 139-140

283

Pimentel Brandão, Mario, 216; and establishment of Estado Novo, 141; becomes ambassador to Washington, 144; on Soviet military capability, 144; on Comintern threat to Brazil, 149; becomes ambassador to Moscow, 202; criticism of Soviet Union by, 202-203, 204; opposes trade with USSR, 215; and severance of relations with USSR, 218, 219 Pina, João Patista Soares, 203 Pinto da Silva, João, 144, 145 Pius XI, 36 Political prisoners, in Brazil, 79-88, 186; numbers of, 79, 83; mistreatment of, 81-84, 186; international repercussions of, 105-107, 108, 109, 110-112, 187; and 1937 politicomilitary crisis, 123-127, 128, 130-131, 132, 137. See also Barron, Victor Allen; Ewert, Arthur; Ewert, Elise; Ghioldi, Rodolfo; Prestes, Luís Carlos Porto Alegre: police in, 154; reduced Communist threat in, 155, 156; alleged Soviet activity in, 215 Pravda (Moscow), 63, 96, 219 Press, in Brazil: on Soviet threat to Brazil, 12, 26, 30, 34, 37, 59; antiSoviet attitude of, 13, 17, 20, 33, 50; calls for anti-Communist measures, 50, 59, 63; reaction of, to intentona, 74, 81, 90-91; praises Uruguayan policy, 97; on Spanish Civil War, 114; on Soviet threat in late 1930s, 143-144, 145, 150; on Soviet expansionism during World War II, 146, 147, 149, 174-176, 183, 184; on abolition of Comintern, 190-191; on Moscow Conference, 192; supports rapprochement with USSR, 197, 199; postwar criticism of USSR by, 201, 204; and Soviet-

284

Brazil and the Soviet Challenge,

Brazilian rupture, 218, 219, 220. See also Censorship, in Brazil Prestes, Anita, 86, 187 Prestes, Leocádia, 107, 108, 109 Prestes, Luís Carlos, 13, 28, 60, 62, 63, 68, 70, 72, 74, 76, 103, 108, I I I , 112, 168, 169, 221-222; and Prestes Column, 2, 4·, conversion of, to Marxism, 5; recruitment and indoctrination of, by Comintern, 2 2 - 2 4 ; admission of, to PCB, 24; and intentona, 25, 53, 55, 5 6 - 5 7 , 58, 59, 63,64, 65, 6 9 - 7 0 ; escapes arrest, 80; orders murder of Elza Fernandes, 80; as political prisoner, 8 2 - 8 3 , 87, 124, 125-126, 153, 186-187; sentencing of, 88, 151; becomes secretary-general of PCB National Committee, 182; on Soviet-Brazilian rapprochement, 199; supports Vargas in 1945, 205, 206; elected senator, 206-207; and proscription of PCB, 213; subservience of, to Moscow, 213, 214 Prestes Column, 2, 4 PTB. See Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro Rabello, Manoel, 67; on problems of Natal garrison, 66; criticizes Soviet policy, 146; and police mistreatment of Prestes, 153, 186; quarrel of, with military hardliners, 184, 187-188; and Soviet-Brazilian rapprochement, 199 Rao, Vicente, 76, 81, 86, 222 Ravines, Eudocio, 23, 25, 229n.8 Recife, 60, 66} social conditions in, 1-2; ANL in, 55, 56; intentona in, 53, 6 7 - 6 8 ; political prisoners in, 79; police repression in, 182; post-World War II Communist activities in, 208 Reginaldo da Rocha, Lauro, 156

1917-1947

Régis de Oliveira, Raul: on Soviet threat, n , 27, 64; explains intentona to British Foreign Office, 95; on British official attitude toward Brazil, 109-110; efforts by, to counter attacks by British left, 1 1 0 - 1 1 1 ; criticizes Soviet international conduct, 144, 145, 146, 147 Reis, Carlos da Silva, 17 Reis Neto, Malvino, 68, 7 8 - 7 9 Revolt of 1935. See Intentona comunista Revolution of 1964, xi-xii Ribeiro, Orlando Leite: on Argentine reaction to intentona, 99; and Argentine left, 100; antiCommunist intelligence from, 108, 151, 164-165 Ribeiro Filho, João Gomes, 89, 112; and intentona, 65, 70, 71, 72; calls for anti-Communist legislation, 75; and purge of army, 77, 78 Rio Branco, Raul do, 10, 11, 17, 18, 35, 41 Rio Conference (1947), 216-217 Rio de Janeiro (Federal District): intentona in, 53, 6 7 - 6 8 , 69 Rio de Janeiro (state), 2, 2 8 - 2 9 Rio Grande do Norte. See Natal Rio Grande do Sul, 5, 29, 69, 206; perceived Communist activities in, 13, 15, 27, 62; Catholic Workers' Circles in, 32; and trade with USSR, 42, 4 4 - 4 5 ; ANL in, 56; troops of, as potential threat to federal government, 70, 121, 123, 137; anti-Communist activities in, 134, 155, 157, 189. See also Porto Alegre Ritter, Karl, 166, 168 Rodrigues Alves, José P., 15, 26, 100, 164 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 172, 192; support of, for Vargas, 106; and

Index

285

Soviet-Brazilian rapprochement, 193, 194 Russia. See Soviet Union Russo-Finnish war, 146-148, 172

Secret Service, British. See Graaf, Johann Seiva, 170, 184 Serviço Especial de Informações,

SAA. See Sociedade dos Amigos da América Saavedra Lamas, Carlos, 99, 100,

Serviço Nacional de Informações, xii, xiii Serviço Secreto de Informações, (SSI), 160, 161, 179 Serviço Social da Indústria (SESI),

95, 101

101

Salgado, Plínio, 132, 222; and AIB activities, 56; relations of, with federal authorities, 9 1 - 9 2 ; and 1937 politicomilitary conspiracy, 135-137, 138-139; and proscription of AIB, 140; and secret Italian subsidy, 142. See also Cohen Plan Salgado Filho, Pedro, 28, 31, 34, 150 Salles Oliveira, Armando de, 121, 133

Salvador, 182 Sampaio, Sebastião, 143, 144 Santa Catarina, 151, 155, 156, 159 Santiago, 165-166 São Paulo (city), 55, 193; Communist activities in, 29, 32; press censorship in, 183, 194 São Paulo (state), 18, 20, 28, 36, 80, 121, 159; social conditions in, 2; and Soviet immigration to, 16; 1932 revolt by, 28, 29; Communist activities in, 29, 48, 122, 123; anti-Communist measures by, 31, 33, 134, 153, 178, 189; labor unrest in, 33, 48, 207; and trade with USSR, 3 7 - 3 8 , 171; ANL in, 55, 62, 63; SAA activities in, 187-188; closing of PCB cells in, 212. See also Delegacia de Ordem Política e Social; Liga Brasileira de Defesa Democrática; Serviço Social da Indústria Schmidt-Elskop, Arthur, 116, 118 Secret Intelligence Service. See Serviço Secreto de Informações

210, 211

Silva Py, Aurélio da, 154, 155, 156 Simões Lopes, Luís, 113, 114 Simonsen, Roberto, 210, 211 Sinclair, Upton, 106 Siqueira Campos, Antonio de, 5 Sisson, Roberto, 54, 55, 56, 79 Soares, Otaviano Pinto, 66, 67 Sobral Pinto, Heráclito, 87, 88, 152, 153 Sociedade dos Amigos da América (SAA), 182, 187, 188, 189 Souto, Alcio, 211, 213, 221 Souto, Israel, 34, 35, 153, 154 Souza Dantas, Luís de: on leftist threat in France, 25, 108; on Spanish Civil War, 115; on Soviet threat, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148; on Soviet-German war, 175 Soviet Union: relations of, with Latin America, 6 - 7 , 190, 195; rupture of relations between, and Uruguay, 9 6 - 9 9 ; attacks Estado Novo, 141; interest of, in rapprochement with Brazil, 192, 194, 197; opposes permanent seat for Brazil on U N Security Council, 195; alleged espionage by, in Brazil, 214-215. See also Brazil; Comintern; Molotov, V. M.; Yuzhamtorg Spain, 107-108. See also Spanish Civil War Spanish Civil War: Axis and, 114; Brazil and, 114-115, 171 Stalin, Josef, 58, 177, 192

286

Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917-1947

Stettinius, Edward, Jr., 195, 198 Story of Russia, The, 186 Sulzberger, Arthur Hays, 105 Suritz, Jacob, 214, 215 Távora, Juarez, 5 Taylor, Robert, 186 Teixeira, Felisberto Baptista, 150, 154, 157 Teixeira dos Santos, Anor, 201, 205-206 Tenentes, 2, 30 Terra, Gabriel, 61, 62, 63, 64, 96, 162 Thaelmann, Karl, 24 Tribunal de Segurança Nacional, 87, 88, 136, 141 Trompowsky, Armando, 209 Trotsky, Leon, 10, n Trotskyites, 153 Truman, Harry S, 208, 216 União Democrática Nacional, 204, 205 United States: place of, in Brazilian foreign policy, ix; warns Brazil regarding Soviet agents, 11-12; influence of, on Brazilian attitude toward USSR, 13, 41; interest of, in intentona, 102; leftist opinion in, and Vargas regime, 106, 107; wartime cooperation of, with Brazil, 174, 189; and Brazilian representation on UN Security Council, 195-196; and SovietBrazilian rapprochement, 198; and Soviet-Brazilian rupture, 219. See also Aranha, Oswaldo; Gibson, Hugh; Hull, Cordell; Marshall, George C.; Roosevelt, Franklin D.; Welles, Sumner Uruguay: establishes diplomatic relations with USSR, 7; as perceived base of Soviet activities, 13, 15, 27, 34, 61, 179, 183; antiVargas agitation in, 27-28, 180,

187; anti-Communist cooperation of, with Brazil, 34-35; Brazilian intelligence activities in, 151, 162; wartime rapprochement of, with USSR, 183. See also, Bueno, Lucillo; Lusardo, Baptista; Montevideo; Muller, Filinto; Terra, Gabriel USSR. See Soviet Union Vallée, Léon Jules, 54, 81 Vansittart, Robert, 64, n o Vargas, Getúlio, 16, 22, 28, 32, 36, 47, 49, 57, 65, 66, 68, 70, 78, 106, 107, 108, 112, 122, 126, 129, 144, 146, 148, 150, 151, 162, 171, 172, 178, 180, 183, 186; meeting of, with Prestes, 5; seizes power, 21, 22; and co-optation of workers, 29-30, 157-158; ratifies police convention, 34; and trade with USSR, 39, 41, 43, 44; on leftist threat, 46, 50, 62, 75-76, 93; and alleged assassination plot, 61-62; proscribes ANL; and intentona, 71, 72; and post-intentona antiCommunist campaign, 74-75, 76, 83, 88, 89, 90, 153; on treatment of political prisoners, 84; orders deportation of Benario, 86; attitude of, toward integralism, 91, 92, 136-137, 140; and SovietUruguayan rupture, 98; on Soviet influence in League of Nations, 99; on British cooperation, 110; on leftist criticism, 111; and Spanish Civil War, 115, 171; and establishment of Estado Novo, 131, 137, 138, 139, 141; as target of leftist criticism in South America, 151; and Serviço Secreto de Informações, 161; and Russo-Finnish war, 172; suggests United States mediation of war, 172-173; declares war on Germany, 182; interest of, in rap-

Index prochement with USSR, 192193; and redemocratization, 196, 197, 204-205; reestablishes relations with USSR, 198; overthrow of, by military, 206; interest of, in Soviet policy, 213; reelected president, 222 Velloso, Pedro Leão, 195; and rapprochement with USSR, 192, 198, 199, 200-201; clash of, with Soviets at United Nations, 202 Venezuela, 195 Veras, Colaço, 167-168 Wainer, Samuel, 169, 184-185 Wang, Ming, 24, 25, 57

287

Welles, Sumner, 173, 189-190 White, John, 105 Xanthaky, Theodore, 80, 82; interviews of, with Ewerts, 102-103; interviews of, with Barron, 104 Xavier, Eduardo, 122 Yuzhamtorg, 13, 15, 43; establishment of, in Buenos Aires, 7; interest of, in trade with Brazil, 14, 16, 39-41, 42, 44; shifts headquarters to Montevideo, 26; expelled from Argentina, 34, 40; and alleged financing of intentona, 102, 103; abolished, 98