Latin America: Blood & Freedom

In Recife, white-suited, perspiring students milled about on the steaming cobblestones in front of the Pernambuco Daily. They were celebrating Brazil’s “new freedom” (TIME, March 5). Suddenly, shots cracked out from nearby windows. Nine students fell wounded. The secretary of the Students’ Union, Democrito de Souza, lay dead. Soldiers nabbed one gunman, who claimed he had been given his revolver by civil police, told to fire on the students.

Indignation swept restive Brazil. In Rio de Janeiro, the powerful National Students’ Union met angrily. Cried Byronic young Newsman Carlos Lacerda: “I accuse Getulio Vargas and Agamenon Magalhaes [new Minister of Justice] of the assassination of the student Democrito. Under the dictatorship of Getulio Vargas, youth has only one right, which is to die for its country. This it is doing in Italy. Youth comes to the streets today to demand another right: a Government which represents the people of Brazil. . . . And if this right is denied it, it still has, like the student of Recife, the right to die for its country here.”

Few doubted that more blood would be spilled before Brazil’s millions chose a legal president in the elections which now seemed assured by September. That the blood might be held to a minimum, President Vargas installed Strongman João Alberto Lins de Barros as Chief of Police.

This was not the first time that João Alberto had come to the President’s aid. In the 1930 revolution he had been one of the “young lieutenants” who put Getulio Vargas in power. Another “young lieutenant,” Eduardo Gomes, was now acclaimed as leader of the anti-Government forces. As a friend of both, João Alberto could easily act as a conciliator.