Brazil: End of the Purges

After six months of housecleaning, Brazil's revolutionary government last week gave up its power to purge—just as President Humberto Castello Branco had promised it would. The bristles in Castello Branco's broom were two articles in the sweeping Institutional Act decreed by the revolutionaries after they deposed leftist President João Goulart last April. Under Article 10, which was in effect for two months, the government could revoke for ten years the political rights of anyone judged guilty of subversion or corruption; under Article 7, lasting six months, it could fire or retire any...