Pereira, Pessoa, Parahyba

Joao Pessoa, assassinated President (Governor) of the State of Parahyba, lay in his coffin in Recife, State of Pernambuco last week and no one dared take him home. News of his death, escaping over foreign cables, lifted one corner of the veil of secrecy which has shrouded affairs in Parahyba since January.

The State of Parahyba is a mountainous oblong of land, almost three times as big as Belgium, on the eastern point of the bulge of Brazil. The late Joao Pessoa was more than its Governor. He was the defeated National Democrat (Liberal) candidate for Vice President of the United States of Brazil, brother of learned, esteemed Epitacio Da Silva Pessoa, onetime (1919-22) President of Brazil, now World Court judge. He was also distributor of all the political patronage in Parahyba.

Parahyba is heavily Liberal, but the Brazilian Federal government and most of the rest of Brazil's state governments are and will continue for the next four years to be Conservative Republican. Five-and-a-half months ago one Jose Pereira, hotheaded Republican state deputy in the Parahyba legislature, complained that sufficiently rich political plums were not falling into his lap, retired to his bailiwick, the mountainous city of Princeza on the Parahyba-Pernambuco frontier, and declared that Princeza and its surroundings were a new independent Brazilian state responsible only to the Federal government.

If a bellicose Republican boss should arise in upper New York state, defy Democratic Governor Roosevelt and attempt to make a 49th state out of the environs of Poughkeepsie, the Federal Government and the U. S. Army would doubtless give him short shrift. But things are different in Brazil. Rebellious Jose Pereira has potent friends in Rio de Janeiro. Though over 500 rebels and Parahyba state police have been killed since February near Princeza, Federal troops have not been called out, nor has the State President of Pernambuco allowed State President Pessoa to bring his militia through Pernambuco territory to surround Rebel Pereira.

Fortnight ago State President Pessoa went on a vacation trip to Recife, Pernambuco. He received an anonymous warning that he would be killed some time after July 20. In Recife one Joao Dantas, Republican friend of rebellious Jose Pereira, walked up to Joao Pessoa as he sat in the Gloria Confectionery Shop, shot him dead, then was spirited away by the police.

Rio de Janeiro officials did their best to hush this up too. A Federal censorship was established. Liberal-owned radio stations were closed. Chief of Police Oliveira Sobrinho called editors of opposition papers into his office, pointed out how unfortunate it would be if they should publish "false and misleading" accounts of the assassination or the unfortunate little affair of the ''independent state" in Parahyba.

But the story would not hush. In Parahyba city enraged Liberals burned Republican homes, wrecked Republican stores. Parahyba's police were all inland, fighting Independent Jose Pereira; 1,000 Federal troops finally were called out to do police duty. In Parahyba gaol 187 convicts banged on the jail doors, begged that they might be released to slit the throats of the murderers of State President Pessoa.

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