Leonel Brizola
Leonel de Moura Brizola was a Brazilian politician. Launched into politics by Brazilian president Getúlio Vargas in the 1930–1950s, Brizola was the only politician to serve as elected governor of two Brazilian states. An engineer by training, Brizola organized the youth wing of the Brazilian Labour Party and served as state representative for Rio Grande do Sul and mayor of its capital, Porto Alegre.
In 1958 he was elected governor of Rio Grande do Sul and subsequently played a major role in thwarting a first coup attempt by sectors of the armed forces, who wished to prevent João Goulart from assuming the presidency following the resignation of Jânio Quadros in August 1961, under allegations of communist ties. Three years later, facing the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état that went on to install the Brazilian military dictatorship, Brizola called on the democratic forces to resist, but Goulart did not want to risk a civil war, and Brizola was exiled in Uruguay.
One of the few Brazilian major political figures able to overcome the dictatorship's twenty-years ban on his political activity, Brizola returned to Brazil in 1979, but failed in his bid to take control of the reemerging Brazilian Labour Party as the military government instead conceded it to Ivete Vargas. Brizola founded the Democratic Labour Party on a democratic socialist, nationalist and populist platform descended from Getúlio Vargas' own labour legacy, promoted as an ideology he called socialismo moreno, a non-Marxist, Christian and markedly Brazilian left-wing political agenda for a post-Cold War setting.
In 1982 and 1990 Brizola was elected governor of Rio de Janeiro, after a failed 1989 bid for the presidency, in which he narrowly finished third, after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In the 1990s, Brizola competed for preeminence in the Brazilian left with future president Lula's Workers' Party, later briefly integrating Lula's government in the early 2000s. He was also vice-president of the Socialist International and served as Honorary President of that organization from October 2003 until his death in June 2004. Known for his sharp, energetic rhetoric and frank, direct style, Brizola is considered one of the most important historic figures of the Brazilian left.
Early life and rise to prominence (1922–1964)
Brizola's father José Brizola was a small-scale farmer who was killed when fighting as a volunteer in 1923 in a local civil war for the rebel leader Assis Brasil against Rio Grande do Sul's governor Borges de Medeiros. Brizola was named Itagiba, but early in life he adopted the alias Leonel, which he took from the rebel warlord Leonel Rocha who had commanded the cavalry column in which José Brizola served. Brizola left his mother's house at the age of eleven; he worked in Passo Fundo and Carazinho as a newspaper deliverer, shoeshiner and at other occasional jobs. Aided by the family of a Methodist minister, he received a scholarship that allowed him to complete high school in Porto Alegre and enter college.He graduated with a degree in engineering but never worked in that trade. Still as an undergraduate, he entered professional politics in his early twenties, joining the youth organization of the Brazilian Labor Party in 1945. In 1946 an undergraduate, he was elected to the Rio Grande State Legislature. The Labor Party had been created in order to offer political support for former president Getúlio Vargas among the working classes, and Brizola, who was busy with creating party organizations across Rio Grande do Sul, at the time developed ties to the Vargas family through his personal friendship with Vargas's son Maneco as well as with Vargas's brother Espartaco, such friendships opening his way to make friends with Vargas himself, who was in internal exile after having been toppled from power in late 1945. As a member of the State Legislature, Brizola made a speech from the tribune in which he launched nationwide the candidacy of Vargas to the incoming 1950 presidential elections.
In 1950, Brizola married Neusa Goulart—João Goulart's sister—and had Vargas as his best man. Through this marriage, Brizola became a wealthy landowner and a regional leader of the PTB. After Vargas's 1954 suicide during his second presidential term, Brizola inherited the undisputed regional leadership of his party while his brother-in-law ruled the PTB national caucus. Both perpetuated Vargas' populist tradition; in Brizola's case, the practice of a direct personal link between charismatic leader and the general public. In quick succession, Brizola filled various positions, being a member of the Rio Grande State Legislature for two terms, State Secretary for Public Works, Federal Congressman for Rio Grande in 1955 and Mayor of Porto Alegre from 1956 to 1958. In 1958 he would resign from his mayoralty in order to present himself as a contender at the elections for State Governor. From a regional leadership, Brizola would then ascend, during the presidency of Goulart to the role of an important national supporter of his brother-in-law; first as governor and later as a deputy in the National Congress of Brazil.
As governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Brizola rose to prominence for his social policies that included the quick building of public schools in poor neighborhoods across the state. He supported policies directed towards improving the conditions of small-scale, autonomous farmers and landless rural workers, and the sponsorship of the creation of the corporation MASTER.
Brizola gained nationwide attention by acting in defense of democracy and Goulart's rights as president. When Jânio Quadros resigned from the presidency in August 1961, the Brazilian military ministers in the Cabinet tried to prevent Vice-President Goulart from becoming president on the grounds of his alleged ties with the Communist movement. After winning support from local army commander general Machado Lopes, Brizola forged the cadeia da legalidade from a pool of radio stations in Rio Grande do Sul, which issued a nationwide call from the Piratini Palace denouncing the intentions behind the Cabinet ministers' actions and encouraging common citizens to protest in the streets. Brizola surrendered the State Police Force to the regional army command and began organizing paramilitary Committees of Democratic Resistance, and considered handing out firearms to civilians. After twelve days of impending civil war, the attempted coup failed and Goulart was inaugurated as president.
Nationalizations of industrial utilities in Rio Grande and Cold War politics
Brizola gained international attention for his nationalist policies; as governor he developed his plan for quick industrialization of the state, a program for the constitution of state-owned industrial utilities, that led him to nationalize American public utilities trusts' assets in Rio Grande, such as ITT and Electric Bond & Share.At the time as well as later, many scholars believed such nationalizations to express socialist policy. However, the reason offered by Brizola for the nationalization - in fact almost an expropriation, as the compensation given was of only one monetary unit, pending settlement by a Brazilian court- was simply that both American enterprises, although profiting from previously existing infrastructures, nevertheless supplied limited quantities of utilities at the highest possible rates to final consumers and reinvested a tiny fraction of their profits, the remaining "excess" profits being "repatriated".Therefore, these foreign contractors were considered by Brizola as unreliable for playing a role as tools in a longterm blueprint for industrialization. Earlier, Brizola had offered ITT to participate in a new mixed, state-private ownership telephone company, which would be financed through the selling of new shares to the State of Rio Grande as well as to the general public - in this new company, ITT would remain with a 25% share. As Leacock writes, this proposal probably failed because ITT CEOs didn't want to participate in a joint venture they would not control. That Brizola's avowedly reasons corresponded to his actual goals is supported by a later American scholar, who considers that Brizola's administration, albeit "marred" by these "controversial" nationalizations, was nevertheless "vigorous and constructive". Other American scholar remembers that the same rightist military government that would later exile Brizola found it necessary to nationalize the entire Brazilian telecommunications system in other to develop necessary infrastructures.
Of the two major American contractors involved in Brizola's nationalization, Amforp was far more accommodating; it had been operating at a loss in Brazil and was confident of striking a deal with the Federal government -i.e. Goulart - in order to close its Brazilian operation. ITT had been also operating at a loss; nevertheless, as it had already been taken by surprise by the expropriation of its property in Cuba by Fidel Castro, the nationalization of its Brazilian operation - no matter how unprofitable - was seem by it as something that could set a precedent to the whole of Latin America.Therefore, the fact that ITT decided to enlist for support from Washington
The Brizola nationalizations became headline news in the American press when the John F. Kennedy administration was trying to counter the "Communist infiltration" in Brazil by striking a deal with Goulart that included U.S. financial aid to the Brazilian federal government. In this context, Brizola's actions became a diplomatic embarrassment, which turned Brizola's State government into an intended target of the Hickenlooper Amendment. Goulart gave in to American pressure on the issue, accepting to pay what the Left considered excessive compensations to both ITT & Amforp in exchange for financial aid, Brizola presented his in-law as a defector from the nationalist cause.
Through his domestic and foreign politics, Brizola became a major player in Brazilian politics, eventually developing presidential aspirations he could not legally fulfill at the time; Brazilian law did not allow close relatives of the acting President to stand for the following term of office. Between 1961 and 1964, Brizola acted as the radical wing of the independent left, where he pressured the office for an agenda of radical social and political reforms and for a change in the electoral legislation that allowed for his presidential candidacy in 1965. He was seen as personally authoritarian and quarrelsome, and capable of dealing with his enemies using physical aggression; for example he hit rightwing journalist David Nasser at Rio de Janeiro airport. Brizola acted as an adventurer in the political game around the Goulart government, being feared and hated by the political moderate Left and Right. This role was especially visible when Brizola moved his constituency from Rio Grande do Sul to a national political center, winning a landslide victory in the 1962 election to Congress as a representative for the State of Guanabara—the Rio de Janeiro municipality reorganized as a city-state after the national capital had been moved to Brasilia. A layer of lore quickly developed around Brizola's efforts to "steal" his brother-in-law's Goulart "political thunder".