Just ten years ago it was called the United States of Brazil—a functioning democracy with a representative government patterned on the American model. There, however, comparison with the U.S. ended. Although Brazil was the giant of South America, with about half its 6,888,000-sq.-mi. land mass, it was perennially hamstrung by internal problems. Now much of that has changed. Today Brazil, with a population of 103 million, is the major political and economic influence in South America; moreover its exports are spreading so far beyond the continent's shores that it is being billed as "the new Japan." But no longer is it the United States of Brazil. Ten years after a military coup ousted the leftist government of President Joāo Goulart, it remains in the iron grip of a junta; in 1967 the generals renamed the country the Federated Republic of Brazil.
When they took over, the generals declared their intention to rule only "temporarily"; they gave themselves three years. Last week Pat Nixon flew into the gleaming, Oscar Niemeyer-inspired capital Brasilia to witness the inauguration of a new President, but the ceremony signaled no easing of the reins. In a brief swearing in, low-keyed President-select (meaning selected by the generals) Ernesto Geisel promised to uphold a constitution that his three immediate predecessors (all generals) had carefully tailored to meet their authoritarian requirements.
Carbon Copies. Geisel, 65, will be the first Protestant ever to rule what is the world's largest Roman Catholic nation. One of the original plotters of the coup, he served four years as head of Petrobras, the state-owned oil monopoly. The new chief of state is almost a carbon copy of the taciturn outgoing President, Emilio Garrastaz Médici, and few changes seem in prospect. In fact, given the self-effacing, collective character of the Brazilian oligarchy, who wears the presidential mantle at any particular time is of little importance.
What is important is the remarkable stability and success of Brazil's decade-old right-wing dictatorship. Its achievement has far-reaching implications, a fact that President Nixon accurately noted in an ebullient 1971 salute to the visiting Medici: "As Brazil goes, so will the rest of the Latin American continent." That encomium caused brass buttons to pop on Brazilian uniforms. It also chilled the political leaders of Brazil's neighbors—notably Argentina—who fear the imperial ambitions of a new "colossus on the make."
The junta has run Brazil with efficiency and cold skill. It has imposed strict censorship on the press and the arts and has imprisoned and tortured priests and Catholic lay workers who have been organizing among the poor. With the notable exception of Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Archbishop Helder Pessoa Cámara of Recife and Olinda,* opponents of the regime have been cowed or brutalized into silence. The generals have relentlessly tracked down leftists. In late 1969 they killed Guerrilla Leader Carlos Marighella, the one man who had the personal magnetism to lead an underground movement. According to apologists for the junta, torture is something that "used to happen." Unfortunately, there are plenty of victims who insist that it is still happening.