Brazil: Point of Disorder

In Brazil's free-swinging politics, violence is often more than verbal. Rip-roaring fist fights sometimes punctuate the debates in the modernistic chambers of the national Congress in Brasilia. Many a lawmaker packs a pistol, which can be used—as one Congressman recently discovered—to assure undivided attention to a speech.

Last week, rising to make his maiden speech in the Brazilian Senate, Senator Arnon de Mello, 52, looked uneasily toward the back of the chamber. "I will speak today," he began, "with my eyes turned to Senator Silvestre Péricles de Góes Monteiro, who . ....