Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0012/00123.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 35KB | 554 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00123}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Brazil
Chapter 1F.   The Presidency of Joao Goulart}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Jan Knippers Black}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{goulart
government
military
congress
minister
political
president
states
united
army
see
pictures
see
figures
}
$Date{1982}
$Log{}
Title:       Brazil
Book:        Brazil, A Country Study
Author:      Jan Knippers Black
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1982

Chapter 1F.   The Presidency of Joao Goulart

     Goulart held the presidency for 30 months. For the first 16 months he
served under the parliamentary system, which drastically limited his powers.
His primary objective during that time was to secure another constitutional
amendment to restore the presidential system. During that first period,
therefore, Goulart sought to allay the suspicions of his conservative
detractors that he would be too leftist, procommunist, or irresponsible. He
journeyed to the United States for a meeting with President Kennedy, he
condemned Castro's increasing identification with the world communist
movement, and he emphasized the need to end inflation and restore Brazil's
financial health. At the same time, he pointed out that the parliamentary
system was not working. The performance of the parliamentary system, in which
a divided Congress was able to block the work of a weak cabinet, was clearly
inadequate for confronting Brazil's growing economic problems.

     Meanwhile, the forces that had attempted to prevent Goulart's
inauguration, defeated though they were on that occasion, had not given up the
struggle. Lacerda resumed his old role as tribune of the right and destroyer
of presidents. Elements within the military continued to plot, resolved to be
better prepared on the next occasion than they had been in 1955 and 1961.
Their attitudes were influenced by the growing anti-leftist sentiment in the
United States and elsewhere. The frustration of the United States with
Castro's revolution had led to a grim determination that a similar chain of
events would not be allowed to happen again in Latin America. A meeting of the
Organization of American States (OAS) at Punta del Este in Uruguay voted by
a bare two-thirds majority to suspend Cuban membership in the OAS. Brazil's
foreign minister, San Tiago Dantas, abstained, thereby helping passage of the
vote.

     It seemed to the policy makers in Washington that Brazil was ripe for a
"communist takeover." Dean Rusk, the United States secretary of state, later
told the acting Brazilian foreign minister that there had been pressures from
within the United States government to intervene in Brazil at the time of the
resignation of Quadros. Some United States officials, including Ambassador to
Brazil Lincoln Gordon, expressed fears that Goulart himself might eventually
deliver Brazil into Moscow's hands. Others were concerned not so much about
Goulart's intentions as about his tolerance of the radicalizing activities of
others. Among the radical figures most feared in Washington were Francisco
Juliao, a lawyer who was helping to organize the peasant leagues to defend
the interests of rural workers in the Northeast, and Governor Brizola of Rio
Grande do Sul. Brizola had already shown his capacity for organization and
leadership by spearheading the movement that had ensured Goulart's accession
to the presidency. He alarmed foreign investors by expropriating the
installations (not the shares) of the Rio Grande do Sul telephone company, a
subsidiary of International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT). ITT indignantly
rejected as inadequate the compensation offered by Goulart. Various agencies
of the United State government made contact with the Brazilian opposition to
Goulart, looking toward the day of the next crisis.

     Goulart's political strategy to demonstrate the inability of Congress to
take the action necessary to deal with the country's economic crisis and to
project himself as a progressive, moderate, and farsighted statesman was
generally successful. The first prime minister under the parliamentary system
was Tancredo Neves of the PSD, who had served in Vargas' last cabinet. The
Neves cabinet was based on a coalition of the PSD and PTB, the two parties
founded by Vargas and intermittently in alliance since that time. Food
shortages in the Northeast and pressure for land reform led to disorders,
however, including the raiding of shops and grain storage warehouses. These
pressures caused the PSD, which to a large extent represented large rural
property holders, to break its alliance with the PTB and side increasingly
with the business-oriented UDN. This prompted Neves to turn in his
resignation.

     Goulart then nominated as prime minister Dantas, who as foreign minister
in the Neves cabinet had refused to vote for or against the suspension of Cuba
from the OAS. The Chamber of Deputies rejected the nomination of Dantas,
despite the fact that unions had threatened to strike if his appointment were
not confirmed. Goulart then polled congressional leaders to find out who would
be able to command a majority and came up with the name of the president of
the Senate, Mauro de Andrade of the PSD. This time, however, it was Goulart
himself who made his own nominee withdraw after refusing his consent to the
cabinet members Andrade proposed.

     The stalemate passed from Congress to the streets as a general strike was
called in Rio de Janeiro and other leading cities. Riots erupted, and food
stores were looted in Rio, but Goulart quelled the disturbances by calling
labor leaders to Brasilia and convincing them to end the strike. For its part,
the army went on alert and General Amaury Kruel, chief of the president's
Military Household (Casa Militar), proposed a coup and the closing of Congress
(see The Executive, ch. 4).

     The left, and even some of the military leaders, wanted to advance the
date for the plebiscite on the continuation of the parliamentary system to
coincide with the congressional elections scheduled for October 7, 1962; the
constitutional amendment establishing the parliamentary system had foreseen
1965 as the plebiscite date. Former President Kubitschek, who was interested
in running again for the presidency, threw his prestige into the campaign for
an earlier plebiscite to attempt to break the political deadlock. This
counterbalanced the campaign of Lacerda and the right wing of the UDN to
continue the parliamentary system.

     These difficulties served to persuade Congress to approve a new prime
minister acceptable to Goulart, Fernando Brochado da Rocha of the PSD, a
deputy from Rio Grande do Sul who had been a member of Brizola's state
cabinet. The Rocha cabinet resigned after two months, however, partly over
disagreements concerning the plebiscite and partly because of Rocha's
reluctance to act on the request of the minister of war, General Nelson de
Melo, that the Commander of the Third Army in Rio Grande do Sul, General Jair
Dantas Ribeiro, be disciplined. General Ribeiro had sent a telegram to the
president, the prime minister, and the minister of war stating that he could
not guarantee the maintenance of order if there were a popular revolt in
reaction to Congress' refusal to move the plebiscite up to October.

     The succession of weak, short-lived cabinets finally prompted Congress to
vote for a plebiscite on January 6, 1963. In the plebiscite the electorate
voted overwhelmingly to end the parliamentary system and return full power to
the presidency, thus strengthening Goulart's position immensely. His political
position had also been strengthened during the congressional elections of the
previous October. These were bitterly fought battles, revealing increasing
ideological polarization. The left scored some gains, but Congress continued
to be dominated by politicians of the center. A big bonus for Goulart,
however, was the defeat of Quadros, who had returned from an extended trip
abroad to run for governor of Sao Paulo as the first step in reestablishing
his political career. Quadros was beaten by the veteran populist Barros, whom
Quadros had previously beaten for both governor and president.

     During the first half of 1963, Goulart made a serious attempt to
stabilize the economy and to deal with the country's other pressing problems,
building on the program of Dantas as finance minister, Hermes Lima as foreign
minister, and Celso Furtado-who was viewed by some United States officials as
a radical leftist-as minister without portfolio for economic planning. That
program as outlined in the "three-year plan" drawn up by Furtado seems in
retrospect to have embraced internal contradictions, however. What was
proposed was to reduce the rate of inflation, which had reached 52 percent
during the previous year; regain the annual rate of growth of 7 percent in
real terms reached under Kubitschek; and at the same time put through
structural reforms, including the redistribution of land, the implementation
of a progressive tax structure, and the granting of voting rights to
illiterates and enlisted men in the armed forces.

     In the attempt to carry out this program, the government unified exchange
rates, devalued the cruzeiro, and terminated subsidies on wheat and oil
imports. Aid was secured from the United States, but it was contingent on the
implementation of a tax reform and financial stabilization program. The IMF
had also set a series of conditions that Brazil was to meet before it received
the full amount of the aid. The policies adopted failed to achieve their
stabilization objectives while managing to alienate almost everyone.

     The end of subsidies and the unification of interest rates led to a rise
in the prices of articles of basic consumption, such as transportation and
bread. The restriction of credit led to a downturn in industrial activity and
an increase in unemployment. Meanwhile, foreign investors and their local
allies were angered by a new law placing limits on the repatriation of
profits. The finance minister had committed the government to hold the level
of increase in civil service and military salaries to a maximum of 40
percent-below the rate of inflation, which threatened to exceed 60 percent for
the year. Military dissatisfaction with salary levels, especially the erosion
of differentials-the small gap that separated the pay of officers from that of
enlisted men-was acute.

     The escalating alienation of the military from the government was, of
course, dangerous for political stability. The problem was intensified because
radical nationalist views had been gaining strength among enlisted men and
noncommissioned officers, raising the specter of insubordination within the
armed forces. In May a sergeant addressed a rally in Rio de Janeiro, attacking
the IMF and other "imperialist forces" and urging adoption of basic reforms.
General Kruel, the war minister, ordered disciplinary action taken against the
sergeant. Although Kruel was close to Goulart and represented a middle
position within the officer corps, his professional concern for military
unity and discipline was forcing him to become committed against the left.

     In an effort to reassure the international financial community and the
United States government of the orthodoxy of Brazil's financial policies,
Finance Minister Dantas negotiated a settlement in the expropriation of the
American and Foreign Power Company that included favorable compensation terms.
This proved irritating to the public because it came in the midst of the
administration's attempt to hold down civil service salaries. The agreement
was denounced on the left by Brizola and on the right by Lacerda, who was
looking for his own place on the nationalist bandwagon.

     Another issue inflaming tempers and polarizing opinion was that of
agrarian reform, to which Goulart was politically committed. Agrarian reform
was also contemplated in the Alliance for Progress and thus was assumed to be
consistent with the approach of the Kennedy administration. The key problem
for any agrarian reform project was that the constitution required the
government to compensate in cash for any property expropriated. The huge cash
requirements made any serious program impossible. The first step in a land
reform program, accordingly, would have to be the amending of the constitution
to make it possible to compensate in bonds for land taken. In March 1963
Goulart submitted a bill to amend the constitution in this way; it needed a
two-thirds affirmative vote of the Congress but was rejected by a committee
of the Chamber of Deputies in May.

     By June it was clear that the "three-year plan" would not be realized.
The cabinet yielded to pressure from the military and civil service and agreed
to a 70 percent salary increase. Inflation for the year had already reached 25
percent, which had been Furtado's projection of the level it would reach by
December. A team from the IMF left Rio unimpressed with the government's
attempt to halt inflation.

     Goulart nevertheless hesitated to commit himself to the
leftist-nationalist line of policy his brother-in-law, Brizola, was urging.
Although Furtado remained minister without portfolio, his planning ministry
was dissolved. Dantas, seriously ill with lung cancer, was replaced as finance
minister by Carlos Alberto Carvalho Pinto, the centrist former governor of Sao
Paulo. Kruel was replaced as minister of war by Ribeiro; like Kruel, Ribeiro
was a moderate sympathetic to Goulart.

     The political and economic situation continued to deteriorate, and
Goulart seemed incapable of reversing the tide. Although the cabinet had
approved a 70 percent increase in military pay, Congress had not passed the
appropriations bill. At the beginning of July, 2,000 members of the Military
Club sent an ultimatum demanding passage of the bill within 10 days. The war
minister imposed a mild disciplinary penalty on the president of the Military
Club, but Congress at once passed the bill.

     Inflation accelerated, and the government found that payments on the
country's foreign debt over the next two years would amount to 43 percent of
expected export revenue for that period. Goulart tried to back down on the
amount of compensation promised to the American and Foreign Power Company.
Word was circulated that Goulart planned to suspend payment on foreign debts.
Meanwhile, the United States had adopted the so-called islands of sanity
policy, whereby bilateral assistance was denied to the federal government
while the United States Agency for International Development (AID) continued
to support the projects of key state governments. The governors of the states
most favored by this policy were, in fact, engaged in conspiracy against the
Goulart government.

     Noncommissioned officers and other enlisted men became increasingly
militant in their demands for political rights. In September enlisted men in
the marines, air force, and navy attempted a coup in Brasilia. The issue that
precipitated the revolt was a court ruling that enlisted men were ineligible
to run for elective office, a ruling issued in response to the election of a
leftist-nationalist sergeant to a legislative seat. Goulart attempted to use
the incident to political advantage, requesting from Congress state of siege
powers; the request, opposed by political leaders of both right and left, was
denied by Congress.

     Another issue that was contributing to unrest and polarization came to
the fore in October. That was the fiercely anticommunist propaganda and
extensive political activity spawned by a number of relatively new
organizations of obscure paternity. The most notorious of these was the
Brazilian Institute of Democratic Action (Instituto Brasileiro de Acao
Democratica-IBAD), which had funded the campaigns of several hundred
right-wing candidates in the 1962 elections. A congressional commission of
inquiry that spent several months in 1963 investigating IBAD and other
organizations found that IBAD and its subsidiary groups had been responsible
for "a terrible and unprecedented process of electoral corruption." The
commission was dissolved before IBAD's funding could be traced to its ultimate
sources, but circumstantial evidence suggested that the sources were external.
(In the 1970s American sources confirmed that the United States Central
Intelligence Agency had been among its benefactors.) In October 1963 Goulart
decreed the closure of its offices.

     As Brizola and other militant leftist-nationalists extended and
intensified their activities, Goulart seemed hesitant and indecisive.
Reassured by his chief military advisers, Minister of Army Ribeiro and the
chief of his Military Household, General Assis Brasil, that the army would
remain loyal, Goulart moved to the left to undercut the appeal of Brizola,
his chief rival for support on the left. In a mass rally in Rio de Janeiro
on March 13, 1964, Goulart finally took decisive action, signing two
nationalistic decrees. The first nationalized all private oil refineries,
the only part of the oil business not under the control of Petrobras, the
state oil monopoly. The second decree declared that underutilized properties
above a certain size located within nine kilometers of federal highways,
railroads, and irrigation projects were subject to expropriation. The
president was thus using the traditional power of "eminent domain" to
expropriate a limited amount of land, rather than waiting for an act of
Congress, never likely to be passed, that would provide for a general land
reform program.

     Goulart's military advisers had been wrong about opinion in the armed
force. Many of the military officers who had conspired against Vargas and
Goulart on previous occasions were still in place. Lacerda was still in the
conspiracy business, along with governors of some of the other states.
According to declassified documents in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in
Austin, Texas, elements and agencies of the United States government and
various United States corporations were involved in abetting the plans for
a coup. When the anti-Goulart conspirators made their move, President Lyndon
B. Johnson had an aircraft carrier and other forces standing by off the
Brazilian coast near Santos, in case they needed reinforcement.

     The event that was the catalyst for the coup was another mutiny, this
time by sailors and marines protesting the arrest of a sailor who was trying
to organize a labor union of navy enlisted men. The union was being organized
around such demands as the right to marry and to wear civilian clothes when
off duty. Goulart dealt with the situation by removing the admiral who was
minister of navy and replacing him with a retired admiral suggested by labor
union leaders. The new navy minister, Admiral Paulo Rodrigues, then ordered
an amnesty for the sailors who had mutinied. Consequently, undecided military
officers rallied to the anti-Goulart side. They had already been given food
for thought by the circulation of a memorandum by General Humberto de Alencar
Castello Branco, chief of the army general staff, summarizing the case against
Goulart and urging military intervention.

     Goulart spoke on March 30 to a meeting of noncommissioned officers,
defiantly and impetuously associating himself with the cause of enlisted men's
rights. The next day troops started to march on Rio from Minas Gerais.
Unfortunately for the president, Minister of Army Ribeiro had just been
hospitalized for surgery. Troops sent to counter the rebels put up little
resistance. Calls for a general strike went unheeded, in part because many
labor leaders had already been arrested by the conspirators.

The Military In Power

The Takeover

     The revolt of March 31-April 2, 1964, was carried out swiftly and almost
without bloodshed. The moves of the First, Second, and Third armies to seize
the machinery of government were supported by several state governors and most
of the country's powerful economic groups. The president, unable or unwilling
to mobilize any important sector of the nation in defense of the
constitutional government, fled to Uruguay.

     Military intervention promoted by a deadlock between a left-leaning
president and a right-leaning Congress was by no means new in
twentieth-century Brazil, but the outcome of that intervention was. Contrary
to tradition and to the expectations of the civilian opponents of Goulart
who cooperated in the takeover, the military officers who assumed control in
1964 did not turn over power to the civilian politicians. The president
of the Chamber of Deputies, Ranieri Mazilli, next in line of succession
according to the constitution, assumed the title of acting president, but the
military's Supreme Revolutionary Command, comprising the commanders in chief
of the three armed services, ruled.

     The command set out immediately to eliminate from the political scene
elements of alleged subversion and corruption and within a week of the coup
had arrested more than 7,000 persons. The first of a series of sweeping
decrees, designated Institutional Acts, was issued by the command on April
9. Among other items, Institutional Act Number 1 asserted the right of the
command to suspend constitutional guarantees; to cancel the mandates of
elected federal, state, and local officials; to remove political appointees
and civil servants; and to deprive individuals of the rights of voting
and holding office for 10 years. The constitutional requirement of direct
election for the presidency was set aside, and on April 15, a purged
Congress, in response to the demands of the heads of the three armed
services, elected Castello Branco to fill Goulart's unexpired term.

The Castello Branco Government

     President Castello Branco-who became a marshal on leaving active army
duty-proceeded with what he termed the moral rehabilitation of Brazil. Within
seven months his government had removed from office some 9,000 pro-Goulart
civil servants and military officers and about 112 holders of elective office,
including seven state governors, one senator, 46 federal deputies, and 20
alternates. Of the country's most influential political and intellectual
leaders, 378 were deprived of their political rights (most, but not all, of
these were left-of-center). Among them were former presidents Goulart,
Quadros, and Kubitschek; PCdoB leader Prestes; peasant league leader Francisco
Juliao; economist Celso Furtado; architect Oscar Niemeyer; Pernambuco governor
Miguel Arraes; Brizola; and Minister of Justice Abelardo Jurema. The campaign
particularly decimated the labor and education ministries and the universities
and brought the surviving labor and student organizations under tight military
control.

     In addition to the campaign for "moral rehabilitation," the Castello
Branco government placed top priority on the control of inflation, changes in
the electoral system, and the promotion of economic growth through the
provision of incentives to foreign investors. The rate of inflation was
reduced, and the gross national product (GNP-see Glossary) increased during
Castello Branco's first year in office. These gains did not bring the
government popularity with the general public, however, because wage freezes
formed the basis of the austerity program, making the inequity in the
distribution of income even more pronounced. Furthermore, the concessions to
foreign enterprises ran counter to the wave of economic nationalism that had
been building since the early 1950s.

     The presidential election scheduled for October 1965 was postponed for a
year, but the president, ignoring pressures from the so-called hard-line
(linha dura) military officers, decided to proceed during that month with the
election of governors and lieutenant governors of 11 of the then 22 states.
The government maintained a veto over candidacies but otherwise pledged
nonintervention in the elections. The results alarmed the armed forces. The
winners in more than half of the states, including Guanabara and Minas Gerais,
were opposition candidates supported by the PSD, the PTB, the PSP, or some
combination of the three. Moreover, on the day following the election, former
President Kubitschek returned to the country after 16 months of exile and was
greeted with great public enthusiasm.

     Although explaining away the outcome of such elections as largely
determined by local considerations, the government turned to even stronger
measures to insulate itself against opponents. The newly elected governors
were allowed to assume office, but on October 27 the government issued
Institutional Act Number 2, which proclaimed the president's power to suspend
Congress and rule by decree, to assume greater control over government
expenditures, and to ban all political activity on the part of individuals
deprived of their political rights. The act increased the membership of the
Supreme Federal Tribunal and the Federal Court of Appeals, offsetting the
majority of judges appointed by Kubitschek and Goulart, and extended the
authority of the military courts to include the trial of civilians accused of
subversion (see The Judiciary, ch. 4).

     More important, the act provided for the indirect election of the
president and vice president by Congress and the dissolution of the existing
political parties. In place of the old parties an official government party,
the National Renovating Alliance (Alianca Renovadora Nacional-Arena), and an
official opposition party, the Brazilian Democratic Movement (Movimento
Democratico Brasileiro-MDB), were created.

     Institutional Act Number 3, which was promulgated on February 6, 1966,
replaced the direct election of governors with indirect elections by state
assemblies and eliminated the election of mayors of capital cities,
substituting presidential appointees. The following months witnessed the
issuance of a series of decrees, designated Complementary Acts, further
limiting the authority of elected officials at all levels. During the same
time, a number of important supporters, both military and civilian, defected
from the Castello Branco government. The most important of these was the
former governor of Guanabara, Carlos Lacerda; having concluded that the
military was not inclined to respect his ambitions to become president, he
proposed the formation of a broad opposition front including Kubitschek and
his supporters. Meanwhile, clashes between the security forces and the
National Union of Students (Uniao Nacional dos Estudantes-UNE) and between the
military authorities and the Northeast bishops, who issued a manifesto in
support of rural workers, contributed to an atmosphere of crisis.

     The MDB was nominally allowed to participate in the gubernatorial
elections in 12 more states on September 3, 1966, but the election of Arena
candidates, most of whom had been selected by Castello Branco, was assured
because the government maintained its veto over candidacies, canceled the
mandates of a sufficient number of MDB legislators in each state assembly to
ensure an Arena majority, and ordered Arena legislators not to vote for MDB
candidates. It also established the revocation of political rights as the
penalty for resigning in protest.

     The futility of opposition thus established, the MDB decided not to run a
candidate for the presidency; the unopposed Arena candidate, General Artur da
Costa e Silva, was elected by Congress on October 3, 1966, without incident.
The dismissal of six federal deputies on October 12, however, precipitated a
new crisis, because the congressional leadership of both parties refused to
recognize the cancellation of mandates. Castello Branco responded by recessing
Congress until after the congressional elections scheduled for November 15 and
proceeded with a new wave of cancellations of mandates.

     In January 1967 a Congress composed of 254 Arena members and 150 MDB
members in the Chamber of Deputies and 43 Arena members and 21 MDB members in
the Senate, approved the 1967 Constitution, which expanded the powers of the
presidency at the expense of Congress and further centralized public
administration. It also passed a new law placing tight controls on the
communications media (see Constitutional Structure, ch. 4).

President Artur da Costa e Silva

     Costa e Silva was inaugurated as president on March 15, 1967. The
predominance of the military in government was lessened somewhat for a time;
one-half of his 22 cabinet members were civilians, and his references to
"re-democratization" and the "humanizing" of economic policies gave
encouragement to some who had opposed his predecessor. The death of Castello
Branco in an air accident in July temporarily increased Costa e Silva's
freedom to maneuver, and for more than a year he permitted a wider latitude of
political activity.

     The hard-liners among the president's advisers, however, had not
capitulated. On December 13, 1968, after Congress refused to allow the
government to try one of its members for criticizing the armed forces, Costa e
Silva, through the Institutional Act Number 5, ordered Congress recessed
indefinitely. The same Institutional Act asserted additional rights of
intervention in states and municipalities, tightened press censorship, and
suspended the guarantee of habeas corpus for those accused of political
crimes. Another wave of arrests, exiles, job dismissals, and cancellations of
mandates followed the promulgation of this act. Two hundred ninety-four more
citizens, including Supreme Federal Tribunal justices, senators, deputies,
mayors, military officers, and journalists, were deprived of their political
rights, and the principal leaders of the MDB were placed under house arrest.
Hundreds of students and professors were removed from the universities.

     Since the inception of what it called a revolution in 1964, the military
had effectively defused the potential opposition of civilian party
politicians. By allowing some to participate while disqualifying others and
allowing those who cooperated to profit from the demise of those who did not,
the military government had kept the opposition disorganized and disoriented.
The most consistent and vocal opposition to the government until late 1968
came from student organizations and the progressive members of the Catholic
clergy. But when virtually all traditional forms of political competition and
expression of dissent had been de-legitimized, some persistent opponents of
the regime, especially university students, formed urban guerrilla movements.

     The boldest of the clandestine groups were the National Liberation
Action (Acao Libertador Nacional-ALN) and the Revolutionary Movement
of October 8 (Movimento Revolucionario 8 de Outubro-MR-8), which derived its
name from the date of the execution of Che Guevara by Bolivian authorities
in 1967 (see Threats of Internal Security, ch. 5). Their bank robberies and
other activities designed to harass and humiliate the government and to
acquire arms were paralleled on the right by vigilante groups, such as the
Command for Hunting Communists and the so-called death squads.

     The government announced in August 1969 that during the first week
in September, Costa e Silva would decree amendments to the 1967 Constitution
and reconvene Congress. On September 1, however, a triumvirate comprising
the ministers of the army, navy, and air force assumed the powers of the
presidency, announcing  that Costa e Silva had suffered a "circulatory
crisis with neurological manifestations." The three military
commanders-General Aurelio de Lyra Tavares of the army, Admiral Augusto
Rademaker of the navy, and Air Marsha Marcio de Souza e Mello-issued
another Institutional Act giving themselves complete control over national
security and related matters. They performed routine business "in the name
of the chief  of government," thus bypassing the civilian vice president,
Pedro Aleixo. The reconvening of Congress was postponed indefinitely.

     Three days after the triumvirate assumed control of the government,
the United States ambassador, C. Burke Elbrick, was kidnapped by members
of the ALN and the MR-8. The abductors issued a manifesto stating that
the ambassador would be executed unless 15 political prisoners were released
within 48 hours. After some delay and confusion the government bowed to
the demands of the guerrillas, and on September 7 the prisoners were flown
to asylum in Mexico. Elbrick was released unharmed that evening.

     Immediately after Elbrick's release, the triumvirate declared the
country to be in a state of "internal revolutionary war." More than 2,000
persons were arrested in Rio de Janeiro alone, and guarantees that had
appeared in every constitution since 1891 against banishment, life
imprisonment, and capital punishment were cast aside by decree. Former
President Kubitschek was placed under house arrest, although he was later
allowed to travel to New York for medical care.

     During the last two weeks of September 1969 and the first week of
October, meetings took place almost daily among the upper echelon of the
branches of the armed forces in preparation for the selection of a
successor to the incapacitated and seriously ill Costa e Silva. In this
procedure the military establishment functioned somewhat in the manner
of a highly factionalized ruling party in a single party system. No civilian
was considered eligible for the presidency or vice presidency or for a role
in the selection process.

     It was decided initially that only four-star generals would be eligible
for the presidency, but eligibility was later extended to lower ranking
generals and to the highest air force and naval officers. The preferences
of 118 generals, 60 admirals, and 61 air force brigadiers were canvassed,
but because the army was by far the strongest branch it was recognized
that the opinions of the generals, and particularly of the 10 generals of the
Army High Command, would weigh heavily in the final decision (see Army,
ch. 5).