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Within four hours after Jango left Brasília, the Senate president gaveled a special joint session of Congress to order and announced that Goulart "had abandoned the site of the republic" and "left the presidency vacant." Mazzilli, president of the Chamber of Deputies and next in line of succession, thereupon became chief of state automatically—even though it took Goulart one more day to accept the inevitable and follow his lovely wife, Maria Tereza, and his two children to exile in Uruguay. Only a few scattered shots were ever fired in his defense. Those who saw him just before his plane took off from the airport said he was a beaten man, verging on tears.
Within 30 days, Congress must elect a "permanent temporary" President to fill out the rest of Goulart's term, which runs until January 1966. No real presidential candidate will want to jeopardize his chances in next year's elections by becoming an interim President legally forbidden to succeed himself. At week's end seven of Brazil's key states had already endorsed General Humberto Castelo Branco for the temporary job. One of the key plotters and Goulart's army chief of staff, General Branco handled many of the top contacts before the revolt. Behind the scenes, real power will be held by the civilian leaders of the revolt—the governors of several states, including Carlos Lacerda. Other potentially powerful men, such as ex-President Kubitschek, wait in the wings.
A Start. In the first flush of revolutionary fervor, Brazil's right and center went after the left. Crowds burned out the headquarters of the left-dominated National Students Union. The left-leaning governor of Pernambuco was packed off to exile on a lonely island in the Atlantic, along with a passel of Communists and other assorted leftist?.
Brother-in-law Brizola was last seen gunning up the highway out of Porto Alegre in a borrowed green Volkswagen. Moscow recalled its ambassador; the Cuban ambassador braced for a diplomatic break any moment. The U.S. promised sympathy and aid.
But Brazil itself still has an uphill fight ahead. It will have to re-create a business climate that will appeal anew to foreign investors long ago disenchanted. It must assure the U.S. that solid economic aid will not just be fed, greenback by greenback, onto a fire of inflation. It must inspire a sense of national responsibility among its people. That means that labor must forgo any more of those massive 75% and 100% raises long demanded—and won—under Jango. The government will have to slow down the money presses and cut back overloaded federal payrolls. Manufacturers will have to hold the line on prices. But at least by dumping Goulart, Brazil has made a start along the road to confidence in itself. Over one 24-hour period during the revolution, Rio's black-market exchange rate for cruzeiros dropped from 2,200 to the dollar to 1,300.