(2 of 3)
"We could see fighting going on outside," reported Daughter Alzira. "The invaders seemed armed with machine guns and grenades. Projectiles cut through the tall palms of the garden and chipped the palace walls." For three-and-a-half anxious hours President Vargas and his defenders held out. Finally War Minister Enrico Caspar Dutra, a bullet through his ear, arrived, leading a detachment .of the regular army and attacked the Integralistas from the rear. Rio Grande do Sul Interventor Colonel Oswaldo Cordeiro de Faria, who had been busy battling attackers at his home, appeared still clad in his pajamas at the head of a company of police, civilians and soldiers. They bottled up the Green Shirts with a flanking movement. Thirty Integralistas were captured, eight lay dead.
Doughty President Vargas lost no time in re-establishing the prestige of his regime. Declaring martial law, he started a cleanup. At the Navy Ministry, where the Integralistas had their only success in their well-planned but weakly-executed Putsch, the rebels were quickly dislodged and captured. An attack on the Green Shirt headquarters netted another 300 prisoners, and within 48 hours the jails were jammed with 700 prisoners, 25 Integralistas lay dead in the morgues. At least five Vargas defenders were killed in the attacks.
Immediate search was begun for cadaverous-faced, black-mustached Plinio Salgado, the "Supreme Chief of the Green Shirts" who has been in hiding since Vargas outlawed the movement as a political party (TIME, Nov. 22). At last reports Salgado was still hiding. Arrested as leaders of the Putsch were Belmiro Valdeverde, chief of the "Revolutionary Dissident Wing" of the Party, and Admiral Eduardo Taveres.
Picked up in the palace grounds with wounds in the head and abdomen was 21-year-old Dom Juan of Orleans & Bragança, son of Dom Pedro, official pretender to the Brazilian throne. Reported shot in the leg as he tried to join the fighting was Dom Juan's 25-year-old brother, Pedro. These incidents led to speculations that back of the Integralistas was a move to restore the monarchy. Founded in 1822 by Dom Pedro I, son of Portugal's King Dom Juan VI whom Napoleon frightened into the New World, the Brazilian Empire lasted until an uprising of landowners and army in 1889 forced Dom Pedro II to resign. Today his grandson, handlebar-mustached, white-haired Dom Pedro, lives a guest of the Brazilian Government on his tax-free Gráo Palace at Petropolis, outside Rio. Young Dom Juan last week stoutly insisted he "was merely trying to join the excitement and got in the way of a bullet", but police put him under bedside arrest ''for examination."
"The abortive uprising was carried out with foreign help," charged President Vargas. Naming no names, it was evident what he meant when police arrested five employes of a German bank in the capital, two of whom were German citizens, and charged that German-made arms had been used by the plotters. Germany's activities in Brazil have been under President Vargas' attention for some time. Recently he infuriated the Nazis by nationalizing some 1,100 schools in Brazil which were teaching German and operating under German laws and rules.