It took another four years, but Getúlio Vargas eventually did return to the presidency. On October 3, 1950, the ex-president defeated Eduardo Gomes and Cristiano Machado in Brazil’s second postwar presidential election, winning more votes than the combined total of the two other candidates. Vargas’s victory was proof of his continued popularity among Brazil’s masses, but it was also the product of an energetic and brilliant campaign. Vargas felt he was the only man capable of extracting Brazil from the mess in which it found itself at the dawn of the 1950s, and he had vied for the presidency like a man possessed.
On January 31, 1951, Vargas took the oath of office at the Tiradentes Palace in Rio. It was the same place where, nearly a decade earlier, the president’s old friend and sparring partner Osvaldo Aranha had announced Brazil’s break of diplomatic relations with Germany and Italy. Among the foreign dignitaries who attended the inauguration was Nelson Rockefeller, with whom Vargas met prior to taking the oath of office. A more auspicious ceremony is hard to imagine.
In his speech at the inauguration, Vargas thumbed his nose at the people who had forced him from office some five years earlier. He was still angry at the military’s treatment of him in October 1945 and at the lies that had been written about him since that fateful evening when he had been ousted from power. “The people have carried me back to the presidency,” he proclaimed to the huge crowd that had gathered in front of the Tiradentes Palace.
Following his speech, Vargas toured Rio in a large open-topped car, standing on the backseat as onlookers threw confetti from the city’s skyscrapers and soldiers saluted their new commander in chief. Cariocas turned out by the hundreds of thousands to cheer the new president, bringing the city to a virtual standstill.
When Vargas eventually reached the Catete Palace, the new seat of the presidency, he paid a less than glowing tribute to his predecessor, General Dutra, for arranging such a fair and free election. When questioned by journalists, Vargas couldn’t resist also taking a swipe at Adolf Berle, who he believed had stoked the military’s discontent with him in September and October 1945. Though he didn’t mention the former ambassador by name, President Vargas left little to the imagination when he commented that US-Brazilian relations had been hijacked by certain officials who didn’t understand their true nature.1
Vargas had waited a long time for this day, and he struggled to control the pent-up frustration that he had harbored since being removed from power. Yet despite his palpable anger, a sense of wild optimism was sweeping through the city and the country as a whole. It was the holiday season in Rio, and Carnaval was on its way. January 31 was a hot summer day in the city; the sun was shining, the city’s hotels were filled to the rafters with rich foreign guests, and new sambas were being written in tribute to the country’s new president. Vargas was back on top, and Brazilians were obviously happy to have him there.
As the light dimmed over the Atlantic Ocean and shadows lengthened across the Catete Palace, the president and his entourage, including Alzira, left Rio and—in time-honored fashion—headed up the winding road to Petrópolis to escape the city’s oppressive heat. By every measure, it had been a triumphant day for the president, one that seemed to have confirmed his place in Brazilian democratic political history. And that evening, as he puffed on his large corona cigar in Petrópolis, surrounded by family and friends, Vargas went to work finalizing the composition of his new government.
On the campaign trail in 1950, Vargas had talked a great deal about World War II and what he saw as the fruits of Brazil’s participation in the fighting. He reminded Brazilians of his close relationship with President Roosevelt and the US training and equipment that had made the Brazilian army, air force, and navy the strongest armed forces on the South American continent. With help from the United States, Brazil had also constructed modern airfields and naval facilities, which had since been converted into postwar airports and ports. The improvement of the air and road transportation system in the country’s interior was also directly attributable to Vargas’s wartime policies. Arguably the most important of all these projects, however, was the Volta Redonda steel mill, which had been built with the help of funding from the United States. The Volta Redonda mill had played a vital role in Brazil’s economic transformation during and after the war, and had helped to convert the country from an underdeveloped hinterland to an industrial powerhouse.
Vargas could also point to a strengthened Brazilian nationalism as another of his achievements during the war. Key to this was his suppression of German and Italian influence in the country.2 His efforts from 1938 onward to bring the country’s German immigrant population into line with Brazilian national culture through education and language had helped to make Brazil a more unified country during World War II.3
What Vargas did not highlight in his 1950 campaign were the opportunities he had missed and the decisions he had mistimed during the war. For a complex set of reasons—not least, the military’s reluctance to give up on the hope of continued armament supplies from Germany—Vargas hadn’t committed Brazil to the Allied cause until relatively late in the war. This had had the unintended effect of limiting Brazil’s returns. By the time Brazil did formally commit to the Allies, the tide of the conflict had turned in their favor. If Vargas had committed earlier, Brazil could have played a much more strategically important role in the war. His hesitation had been part of the problem, but so too had the extensive negotiations over the FEB’s equipment, training, and dispatch to Europe—all of which dragged on for so long that by the time the expeditionary force reached Europe, D-Day had already taken place and the Allies were well on the way to securing a total victory over the Axis. Vargas’s decision to recall the FEB as soon as the fighting in Europe ended also cost Brazil dearly in the postwar era. Had Vargas agreed to requests from the United States to leave the force in Europe to help manage the continent in the aftermath of the war, its presence there would have strengthened Brazil’s claim for a permanent seat at the United Nations. Vargas’s legendary caution, as well as the restraints the military imposed on his decision making, meant that Brazil had arrived at the party too late and had left too early.
In 1950, however, Brazilians either could not see the ways in which Vargas had mismanaged the war or they didn’t care. They were intent on electing the architect of Brazil’s wartime policy, in the hope that he could reignite Brazil’s economy and return the country to the starring role on the world stage that it had played during the war. Despite the improvements brought by World War II, Brazil’s economy continued to lurch from crisis to crisis. Brazilians hoped that by winning back some of the international prominence Brazil had enjoyed in the previous decade, Vargas would be able to resuscitate the country’s economy as well.
Brazil certainly had changed during the war—politically, as well as economically. The Brazilian electorate had higher expectations for their leaders, and the press was more aggressive, practicing a tabloid style of journalism that had been relatively unheard of during Vargas’s previous reign. To a certain extent, Vargas managed to adapt to the new Brazilian politics, although his leadership style changed in the process. He was no longer the cool politician who carefully weighed all available opinions and options before coming down on one side or the other.4 Instead, he aggressively took on his rivals and articulated his agenda in a manner that resembled that of his old friend, President Roosevelt.
Vargas’s new style reflected his understanding that he could no longer rule by decree. Brazil had morphed into a democracy practically overnight, and he had to play by a new set of rules—and cater to a new set of Brazilians. Vargas’s constituency was a curious mixture of Brazil’s elites and its masses. He spoke directly to the latter in frequent national radio addresses and in mass rallies at football stadiums. His speeches and broadcasts were fiery and laced with promises of reforms, but he increasingly had trouble delivering on them. His dealings with Brazil’s national congress often left him frustrated. The masses appeared to stick with him nevertheless, but the elites slowly started to peel off from his camp.
World War II had made Brazil’s military extremely powerful, as Vargas had found out the hard way in October 1945. In the early 1950s, his allies were forced to concede that if the military wished to stage another coup against Vargas, there was little the president would be able to do to resist. During Vargas’s term in office, the danger of a coup by some segment of the military was ever-present.
An even more serious threat was Brazil’s ongoing financial crisis, which was fueled by inflationary pressures and which resulted in widespread unrest among the country’s working class—unrest exacerbated by anti-Vargas communist forces. The president’s long-standing personal problems, too, had started to resurface by 1953, two years into his rule. He slipped on a marble palace floor, fracturing his arm and leg. Alzira, who oversaw her father’s physical rehabilitation, noted that he appeared lonely and was suffering from acute insomnia—classic signs of depression. Vargas increasingly refused to have visitors to the Catete Palace, and with the exception of a few trusted friends and family he had less and less contact with other people. Many of his circle of political associates were starting to abandon him, whether because of his failed reforms or his confrontational style, or perhaps because they were positioning themselves for future elections. As his presidency wore on, Vargas came to rely on his own family more than ever, with Alzira taking on greater influence and Benjamin, whose shortcomings the president still refused to admit, remaining as much a behind-the-scenes force as ever.
Vargas had at least one friend left: his “left eye,” Osvaldo Aranha. The former foreign minister returned to the fold when an increasingly desperate Vargas appointed him to serve as his minister of finance in mid-1953. Aranha was given the herculean task of trying to manage the Brazilian economy, but his influence on Vargas went well beyond his ministerial brief. The rehabilitated Aranha gave his fellow gaúcho much-needed counsel, and spent his time trying to push a tired and worn-out president toward the path of reform.
Yet to some degree, Vargas’s hands were tied—many of the problems facing Brazil at mid-century were the result of US policies over which he had little control. In the years following World War II, the United States was focused on the international fight against communism and the extension of its Marshall Plan, a program intended to reconstruct Europe both physically and economically. Washington now lavished a great deal of attention on Brazil’s regional rival, Argentina, and on the strong nationalist movements that were emerging in other parts of South America, worrying—as it had once worried about Brazil—that unless it pandered to these unaligned actors, they would gravitate toward its enemy.
The United States had moved on. The administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower was far less interested in Brazil than Roosevelt had been, and Vargas missed the attention that Washington had paid to both him and Brazil during the war.5 That attention wasn’t likely to be coming back anytime soon. The United States appeared weary of aiding Brazil; some US officials were calling for the country to take better care of itself economically. Indeed, whereas Aranha had once envisioned a full partnership between Brazil and the United States, the relationship between the two countries could now be seen for what it was: a marriage of convenience. It was a fact that Vargas, lying awake in his bed at night, surely reflected on with no small amount of bitterness.
In the end, it was not the economy or any foreign policy issue that brought down Vargas a second time, but rather a largely unforeseen series of events and intrigues, the origins of which could be traced back to the fallout from the 1938 attack on the Guanabara Palace. Once more, the military’s attitude toward Vargas—and its willingness to intervene against him—was of critical importance in this new crisis, which occurred within the heated political climate that characterized much of Vargas’s final term in office.
Carlos Lacerda, the publisher of Rio’s daily newspaper, Tribuna da Imprensa, was one of the most outspoken critics of President Vargas and his regime. Lacerda had previously tried to expose corruption within the Vargas administration, as well as secret deals that, Lacerda claimed, the president had struck with Argentina. Lacerda’s newspaper was full of scathing attacks on Vargas and the government, and these articles helped the publisher’s nascent political career; by the start of August 1954, Lacerda was well ahead of Vargas’s son, Lutero, in Brazil’s congressional elections.6 By this time, Vargas had few friends among the country’s civilian elite or within its armed forces, yet he retained enough power to worry Lacerda’s supporters (who counted among their number many members of Brazil’s military). Following unconfirmed reports that Lacerda’s life was in danger, the Brazilian air force decided to guard him on the campaign trail.
Concerns about Lacerda’s safety proved accurate. At around 1 a.m. on the morning of August 5, 1954, as the publisher returned to his small apartment in the Copacabana part of the city, a gunman shot at him from a passing taxi. Lacerda was only wounded in the foot, but his air force guard, Major Rubens Vaz, was killed. The attacker fled the scene, shooting at a police car as the taxi disappeared down one of Copacabana’s narrow, tree-lined avenues that link the neighborhood’s interior with the beach.
Writing in his newspaper the following day, Lacerda laid down the gauntlet, accusing President Vargas of protecting the people who had carried out the attack. The result electrified an already volatile situation in Rio. Demonstrators marched past the Catete Palace calling for justice for the assassins and shouting anti-Vargas slogans.7 The president and Aranha watched from a second-floor window in the palace, twitching at the curtains like a couple of worried old men spying on their neighbors.
The unrest did not end there. Major Vaz’s funeral became a major political event; hundreds of officers from all the armed services attended, among them Eduardo Gomes and Eurico Dutra, the two military candidates from the 1945 presidential election that Dutra had—surprisingly—won. Following the funeral, more than five hundred officers met at Rio’s Air Force Club to voice their anger and swap theories about the event’s links to the presidential palace. The air force subsequently launched its own investigation into the shooting, claiming that it did not trust the police to do the job.
Worse soon followed. Shortly after authorities apprehended the taxi driver involved in the shooting, the head of the presidential bodyguard and the only person of color in the president’s inner circle, Gregório Fortunato, was linked to the plot, accused of hiring the gunman who wounded Lacerda and killed Major Vaz. Fortunato had joined the presidential guard when it was formed by Benjamin in 1938, and succeeded Benjamin as its head in 1950. Fortunato was a simple man with little education, and he had also proven himself something of an opportunist, violating the president’s trust by accepting bribes and arrangement fees from eager Brazilian bankers.8 Soon it was discovered that Vargas’s other son, Manuel, had transferred to Fortunato the deed of a property owned by the president in Rio Grande do Sul. The president denied any knowledge of the transfer, but it was another piece of evidence that he had somehow been involved in the plot.
President Vargas, who even before the crisis had been deeply depressed and racked by insomnia, was starting to sink. The situation demanded leadership and quick thinking, but Vargas hesitated; in the palace, a siege mentality deepened with each passing day. The president appeared to be sleepwalking toward a precipice.
Meanwhile the military, led by the air force, was rapidly mobilizing against Vargas. Using helicopters and spotter planes, the armed forces caught the killer in a dramatic sweep of Rio, and his arrest appeared to bring the scandal closer to the palace. When investigators searched Fortunato’s files, they discovered a web of corruption and deceit that linked him to both the killing and other shady dealings.
The calls for Vargas’s immediate resignation grew daily. When the investigation into Fortunato’s files was complete and its results disseminated by a hostile press, the country’s elites—from lawyers to academics to leaders of commerce—backed these demands. Dutra joined the fray, arguing that for the good of the country and the maintenance of law and order, the president should resign with immediate effect.
Vargas, however, vowed to withstand the pressure, arguing that there was no evidence linking his son to the plot and that he had moved quickly to disband the presidential guard to ensure that there would be no repetition of the shooting. He had ordered all palace officials to cooperate fully with investigators. He had even tried leaving Rio for Belo Horizonte, in order to refocus attention on what he saw as the government’s good work there in dealing with the economic crisis.
All his efforts failed. The media were interested only in the developing scandal and its implications for the president and the country’s future. Opposition forces made good use of radio to make their case for Vargas’s resignation, while the president—who had once mastered that medium but had since given up his regular broadcasts—looked more and more like a politician from a bygone age.
Senior air force officers met on August 22, and led by Eduardo Gomes, demanded Vargas’s resignation, effectively sealing his political fate.9 A note containing the same demand and signed by all the officers present at the meeting was delivered to Vargas that same evening by the chief of staff of the armed forces, General Masarenham de Morais.
Everybody waited for the president’s reaction. It was thought unlikely that he would be willing to agree to a deal to leave Rio and enter political exile for a second time in his career. Elements within the military called for him to be exiled from Brazil and warned that the mistakes of 1945 should not be repeated; the president should not be allowed to return to Rio Grande do Sul to start building up his political power base once again. In truth, a repeat of that scenario appeared highly unlikely in 1954. Vargas was in his early seventies and not in the best of health, and he seemed more and more like a beaten man. This time, few Brazilians expected him to make a comeback.
When the chief of staff delivered the military’s note to Vargas on the evening of August 22, the president responded:
I can’t agree with this. They want to slip me away from here as though I were a criminal. I have committed no crime. I’ll stay in power. If necessary I’ll leave bathed in blood, but I can’t be made to flee like this. . . . I shall fulfill my mandate until the end, with the collaboration of the armed forces. But even if I should be abandoned by the navy, army, and air force and by my own friends, I’ll resist alone . . . I have lived so much. . . . Now I can die. . . . I am too old to be demoralized, and now I have no reason to fear death.10
Vargas appeared calm, and the atmosphere inside the palace mirrored his demeanor; to the extent possible, it was business as usual at the Catete Palace. Alzira noted that her father appeared detached and seemed to be preparing to make a stand against what he saw as the bullying tactics of the military. He continued to plan additional trips away from Rio, saying they would be good for his spirits and would take him away from the center of the political storm.
The storm, however, hit Vargas with full force—and much quicker than he had anticipated. Just before midnight on the evening of August 23, the same night he had received a visit from the chief of staff, Vargas was informed that the military’s two most senior officers were waiting downstairs, urgently asking to meet with him. Just after midnight, they were shown into Vargas’s small study where the president and his brother, Benjamin, were waiting for them.
The meeting was short and tense. The officers demanded, in the name of the armed forces, that Vargas resign immediately. They gave him the choice of formally resigning or taking a leave of absence; whichever method he chose, however, the result would be the same. The military would remove Vargas from power for a second time.
Vargas refused to take either option, but he agreed to discuss the military’s request at an emergency cabinet meeting, which was to be held during the early morning hours. Aranha arrived for the cabinet meeting soon after Vargas had concluded his meeting with the military; when the finance minister joined Vargas, he noted that the president was signing some papers he had taken out of a drawer. Vargas appeared calm, if slightly withdrawn. It was clear that he had played for time once more, and did not intend to take either option the military had presented.
The president appeared to be preparing for a last stand. Sandbags were being stacked outside the Catete Palace, and Alzira and her husband arrived to be with the president. Vargas, dressed in a blue-gray suit, spoke with Aranha and then his son-in-law, in front of whom he signed some more papers.11 As he made his way downstairs to the cabinet meeting just before 3 a.m., Vargas looked relaxed, smoking a Brazilian corona cigar and talking with Benjamin.
The cabinet was in a somber state as Vargas entered. The ministers seemed to know that the meeting would not end well. Aranha took a seat on Vargas’s right. Breaking with tradition, Alzira was also in the room, along with other members of the Vargas clan and a few close advisors to the president.
Vargas always handled cabinet meetings in the same methodical manner, and this time was no different. He announced in a quiet voice that there was only one item on the agenda: the future of the presidency and of his administration. He then went around the table, asking each minister to express his view on what to do. Euclides Zenóbio da Costa, the minister of war, said that, while he remained loyal to the president, he felt that if Vargas did not resign, much of the army would follow the lead of the air force and navy and take a stand against him. “If you resist,” the minister said, “much blood will flow and the outcome would be far from certain.”12 Most of the other ministers dodged Vargas’s question, stating simply that the eventual choice would be his alone, but that they would back him come what may.
It was left to Aranha to summarize the arguments and then spell out the options, as he had done for Vargas for decades. He outlined three alternatives: the first, that Vargas and those with him in the palace could resist the military to the extent they were able; the second, that they could rally the forces loyal to the president to come to his defense; and the third, that Vargas could resign. Aranha did not indicate any personal preference for any of the three options.
At this point, Alzira did something that she had never done before at a cabinet meeting: she intervened. “Lives are at stake, including mine,” she said, “so I consider myself entitled to speak.”13 She addressed the group slowly, in a voice devoid of emotion, immediately seizing the attention of everybody in the cabinet room. It was as if she were summing up the possible rebuttals to the arguments of the minister of war. “How many generals are really against the president?” she asked, adding, “Would the resignation of the president really bring peace and tranquillity to the country?” Alzira’s lawyerly counterattack was too much for the minister of war, who protested, “I am only trying to point out the consequences of any resistance.” Alzira shot Zenóbio da Costa a look that said everything about what she felt about him and his loyalty to her father.
Just then, a note was handed to Vargas. It stated that the generals preferred for Vargas to take a leave of absence. The president read the note’s contents to the cabinet, while Alzira continued staring down the minister of war. Some discussion of the note followed, until Vargas interrupted. He said slowly: “As the cabinet has failed to reach a conclusion, I shall make the decision. I am instructing my military ministers to maintain order throughout the country. If this is maintained, I shall withdraw. I will ask for a leave of absence. If not, the rebels will find my body in here.”14
Without further comment, Vargas brought the meeting to a close. Instructing Aranha to make an announcement to the military to this effect, and asking Zenóbio da Costa to meet with the generals to make the necessary arrangements, he then wished his ministers a good night and, not a little wearily, made his way upstairs to his study. There, he was joined by Benjamin, then by Alzira, who looked tired but who was still hoping for some miraculous solution that would leave her father in office.
Then Vargas did something that caused his daughter great alarm. Taking a key from his jacket pocket, he informed her that it opened the private safe at the palace. “If anything should happen to me,” he told her, “in there are some securities and important papers . . . The securities are for Darci and the papers are for you, Alzira. Now I’m going to sleep.”15
Alzira pleaded with her father. “Stop all this, who is going to use the key if we all go together to our end?”
“I’m only informing you,” Vargas said quietly. With that, he left the room and went to bed. For the first time in a number of nights, he was able to get straight to sleep.
Downstairs, a few cabinet members hung around the palace and took note of the growing defenses outside its gates. When word reached them that the president was asleep, they slowly slipped out into the mild Rio air. Most expected to be back at the Catete Palace the following day.16
Aranha went upstairs, carrying the text of an announcement of the cabinet’s decision. Alzira took it immediately to her father and woke him so he could review it, but she found him disinterested in the document, wanting simply to get some sleep.17 When Alzira told Aranha of her father’s reaction, his old friend took it as a cue to return home and get some sleep himself.
As Alzira escorted Aranha out of the building, he noticed that revolvers were being handed out to those in the palace who did not already carry guns. Alzira and the family were obviously preparing for the first option he had summed up at the cabinet—to resist the military. This, Aranha thought to himself, was not going to end well, and his mind was cast back to the events of May 1938, the last time he had seen Alzira armed with a revolver.
Aranha was the final minister to leave the palace, and for a time all was quiet in the building—but not for long. At exactly 6 a.m., two army officers arrived at the front door and demanded that Benjamin accompany them immediately to an air base where the air force investigators who were continuing their inquiry into the attempted assassination of Lacerda wanted to question him and take a statement. “I cannot leave my brother at this time,” Benjamin informed the officers. In the back of his mind he thought it was all a ruse, and that the air force had dispatched the men to arrest him. The officers, however, were insistent that he accompany them. Benjamin tried to stall, insisting that if the investigators wished to speak with him, they should come to him at the palace. The officers simply responded that their orders were to take him to the base.
Benjamin decided that he had better wake up his older brother, and went upstairs to find President Vargas. Both men agreed that the officers’ arrival at this hour of the morning signaled the military’s intention to arrest Benjamin and remove him from the palace so that he was out of the way. Benjamin again told the awaiting officers that he would not leave the president’s side at this crucial time.
Learning that her father was awake, Alzira tried once more to convince him that he should move against the generals who were responsible for this outrage. She suggested arresting the ring leader, Eduardo Gomes, and claimed that there were still troops loyal to Vargas who would be willing to carry out the arrest. But Vargas was tired, and he dismissed his daughter’s suggestion. “Let me sleep,” he said. Alzira left the room to check on the result of the meeting of the minister of war and the generals. She did not have to wait long.
At 7 a.m., news reached Benjamin that it all was final. The minister of war, Zenóbio da Costa, and the generals had reached an agreement; Vargas would take a leave of absence, with immediate effect. Benjamin broke the news to Vargas, who queried the statement. “This means that I am deposed?” he asked his brother. Benjamin replied in the affirmative, and tried to reassure Vargas that he had received the information from a reliable source. “Go and double check,” Vargas quietly asked his brother.
At 7:45 a.m., Vargas asked his valet, who was due to give him a shave, to let him rest a little bit more. Just after 8 a.m., while Vargas was still waiting for his brother to return to formally confirm the news of his deposition, he walked across the corridor from his bedroom to his study. Still dressed in his pajamas, he startled Alzira, who had thought her father was sleeping.18 She decided not to say anything to him, and Vargas went back into to his bedroom.
At 8:41 a.m., holding his Colt .32 pistol in his right hand, President Getúlio Vargas shot himself through the heart.19 The gunshot echoed through the palace. On hearing the noise, Alzira ran into her father’s room. There she discovered his motionless body, the pistol lying nearby. She screamed, “It can’t be, it can’t be, you promised.” Vargas’s son Lutero entered the room and pronounced his father dead.
Benjamin was left with the task of breaking the news of Vargas’s death to the minister of war and thereby to the military and to Osvaldo Aranha. In a state of shock, Aranha raced toward the Catete Palace in his ministerial car. On his way, Aranha learned that Vargas’s death had been a suicide.20
The police arrived in the president’s bedroom as family members were embracing. Everybody present noticed the white envelope on the bedside table. Alzira’s husband opened it, and discovered that it was the two-page message to the Brazilian people—one of the very documents that the president had signed at the last cabinet meeting.
Soon after Aranha arrived at the palace, he entered Vargas’s bedroom and proclaimed, “He died in order not to sacrifice us.” When he saw the farewell message, Aranha asked to take it to the director of the national radio channel, which had already begun to announce the news of Vargas’s death, so that the president’s last words to his country could be broadcast for all Brazil to hear. Before he left, however, Aranha read the note out loud in the corridor of the palace for the president’s family and members of his staff to hear.21 His voice choking with emotion, the old gaucho related his departed friend’s last message:
Once more the forces and interests, which work against the people, have organized themselves afresh and break out against me.
They do not accuse me, they insult me; they do not fight me, they vilify and do not allow me the right to defend myself. They must silence my voice and impede my actions so that I shall not continue to defend, as I have always defended, the people and especially the humble. I follow my destiny. After decades of domination and plunder on the part of international economic and financial groups, I placed myself at the head of a revolution and won. I began the work of liberation and I installed a regime of social freedom. I had to resign. I returned to the government on the arms of the people. The underground campaign of international groups joined that of the national groups, which were working against the regime of assuring employment. The excess-profits law was held up by Congress. Hatreds were unleashed against the just revision of minimum wages. I wished to bring about national freedom in the utilization of our resources by means of Petrobrás; this had hardly begun to operate when the wave of agitation swelled. Electrobrás was obstructed to the point of despair. They do not want the worker to be free. They do not want the people to be independent.
I assumed the government in the midst of an inflationary spiral, which was destroying the rewards of work. Profits of foreign companies were reaching as much as 500 percent per year. In declarations of import values, frauds of more than $100 million per year were proved. Came the coffee crisis and the value of our main product rose. We tried to defend its price and the reply was such violent pressure on our economy that we were forced to give in.
I have fought month after month, day after day, hour after hour, resisting constant, incessant pressure, suffering everything in silence, forgetting everything, giving myself in order to defend the people who now are left deserted. There is nothing more I can give you except my blood. If the birds of prey want someone’s blood, if they want to go on draining the Brazilian people, I offer my life as a holocaust. I choose this means of being always with you. When they humiliate you, you will feel my soul suffering at your side. When hunger knocks at your door, you will feel in your breast the energy to struggle for yourselves and your children. When you are scorned, my memory will give you the strength to react. My sacrifice will keep you united and my name will be your battle standard.
Each drop of my blood will be an immortal flame in your conscience and will uphold the sacred will to resist. To hatred, I answer with pardon. And to those who think they have to defend me, I reply with my victory. I was a slave of the people, and today I am freeing myself for eternal life. But this people whose slave I was will no longer be slave to anyone. My sacrifice will remain forever in their souls and my blood will be the price of their ransom.
I fought against the spoliation of Brazil. I fought against the spoliation of the people. I have fought with my whole heart. Hatred, infamy, and slander have not conquered my spirit. I have given you my life. Now I offer you my death. I fear nothing. Serenely I take my first step toward eternity and leave life to enter history.22
It was a fittingly grandiose closing statement by the undersized statesman who had led Brazil into the modern age. The note became one of the most important and controversial documents in Brazilian history.
News of the president’s death spread quickly, and soon angry mobs had taken to the streets of Rio.23 The front pages of some newspapers’ early editions, which had gone to print hours before Vargas had died, falsely reported that the president had resigned and that at 5:20 a.m. the vice president had assumed power.24 Angry Brazilians attacked vans carrying newspapers that had recently been hostile to Vargas, setting the vehicles alight as they tried to distribute the afternoon edition of the paper—the one confirming his death.25 When it came time for Brazil to bury its fallen president, hundreds of thousands of people lined the route of the funeral procession.26
It was, ironically, the Brazilian masses who most mourned Vargas’s death. Many Brazilians thought of Vargas as the “father of the poor,” but in reality he had promised them much and delivered very little. The paradox of his life could be seen in his World War II policies. A strong Brazilian nationalist who was suspicious of US cultural and political aims, he had nevertheless opened up Brazil to levels of US influence hitherto unseen in Latin America. Under Vargas’s leadership, Brazil became powerful in ways—industrially, militarily, and to some extent geopolitically—that it had never been before. Brazil’s elites—its military leaders, politicians, business moguls, and industrial tycoons—benefited tremendously from these advancements. But for ordinary Brazilians, still struggling with high prices and stagnating wages, the father of the poor turned out to be a cold and distant patriarch.
A more apt legacy for Vargas, and one more commensurate with his goals, could be seen in the city where he died. World War II and Vargas changed Rio de Janeiro beyond recognition. The city’s new infrastructure amplified Brazil’s international appeal and drew visitors from around the world. Guanabara Bay proved to be a gateway into the entire country—if not for the travelers themselves, then at least for their money, which gradually helped to return Brazil’s economy to an even keel. The guest list at the Copacabana Palace Hotel during the 1950s and 1960s reveals a host of American stars, including John Wayne and Kirk Douglas. There were new international airports and expanded port facilities. The highway connections to the rest of the country dramatically improved and the rise of domestic steel production enabled the building of skyscrapers to tower over the city.
These changes were due as much to World War II itself as they were to the man who led Brazil through it. Thanks in large part to the opportunities afforded by the conflict, Brazil and its capital city could no longer be dismissed as postcolonial outposts at the fringes of civilization. Brazil may still have been waiting for its future to arrive, but by the time Vargas was entombed, his capital was at least living in the present.