The Man from Minas

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The clanging of church bells, scream of sirens and thud of artillery salutes penetrated as a confused blend of sound into the blossom-bedecked Chamber of Deputies in Rio's Tiradentes Palace, but the spectators seemed unaware of the background noise or the extravagant colors of the tropical flowers. All attention centered on a pale, slender man in white tie and black tailcoat. "I swear," he said, tense with emotion, "to uphold, defend and obey the Constitution of the Republic, and to maintain its union, integrity and independence." Intoned the presiding officer of the Chamber of Deputies: "I proclaim you, Juscelino Kubitschek, President of the Republic for a period of five years."

Pelted with flowers, hailed with cheers and popping firecrackers, the new President of Latin America's biggest nation rode from Tiradentes to Catete Palace along streets guarded by cavalrymen in plumed ceremonial helmets--and also by drab, businesslike tanks, forceful reminders that Brazil was still living under a state of siege. At Catete, Acting President Nereu Ramos took off the green-and-gold sash of office and draped it across the incoming President's breast.

"Mr. President," said Ramos, "you are taking over the government of the Republic in an hour of great changes and great hopes." And with that, Juscelino Kubitschek, 54, sometime practicing physician and surgeon, last week took up the burden of governing a half-formed, painfully growing giant of a nation, greater in area than the U.S., greater in its 58 million population than France or Britain, but still a Land of the Future, its past a tangle of good intentions and bad techniques, its present clouded and uncertain.

Brazil's new President has made his countrymen a vast promise--not merely to cope with the old, urgent problems of sprinting inflation and nagging debts, but to push and pull the nation a long way toward the bright dream of tomorrow--in his own phrase, to achieve "Fifty Years' Progress in Five." Kubitschek is a man with a political flair and a remarkable capacity for work; he will need both.

Showing his political touch, he made a protocol-breaking appearance on the balcony of Catete Palace a few minutes after taking over. "I promised that I would enter Catete with the people of Brazil," he cried. "I will keep that promise." He ordered the guards to open the gates and let in the huge crowd. Still wearing his sash, he mixed with the milling, chattering visitors. He slapped backs, grasped hands, whisked children up in his arms to buss their cheeks. Then, unaided by any microphone, he made a brief, unscheduled speech from the veranda. "I intend to work for order, justice and the welfare of the people." he said. "We are with you, Juscelino!" somebody shouted, and the crowd thundered agreement.

Threshold of an Era. One of the President's first official acts was to decree an end to the despised press censorship imposed by the interim administration last November. A few days later he asked Congress to lift the state of siege as of Feb. 15, ten days ahead of schedule. As a gesture to show that he expects no violence, Kubitschek plans to send back to other duties the plainclothes detail assigned to guard him. "I rely on this more than any bodyguard." he told a friend, patting a German-made .25-caliber automatic hidden beneath his well-tailored jacket.

An early riser, the President held his first Cabinet meeting at 7 a.m. on the day after the inauguration, reminded his ministers that he firmly intends to push ahead with his economic program and maintain "a high standard of administrative morality." That night he spoke at a sumptuous banquet (caviar, lobster, pheasant) for the 59 foreign delegations assembled in Rio.

At Catete Palace next day, Kubitschek met with Vice President Richard Nixon and Assistant Secretary of State Henry Holland, to discuss Brazil's need for U.S. help in jacking up its economy and coping with Communist penetration efforts. Afterwards, Holland remarked: "No doubt about it, this appears to be the best government to deal with that Brazil has ever had." Said Nixon in a speech at the Volta Redonda steel plant the following day: "I confidently believe that Brazil is on the threshold of an era of progress unequaled in history by any nation in this Hemisphere. I am confident that with its abundant resources, its great people and its dedicated leadership, Brazil's progress in the next few years will startle the world."

Up from Diamantina. The hard task of leading Brazil into what he calls "the final stage of emancipation" will be harder for Juscelino Kubitschek because he took office as a figure of controversy. He won last October's election with only 36% of the votes; only a "preventive revolution" by the army halted a drive by bitter-end opponents to nullify the vote and call off the inauguration.

Kubitschek's character and stature are matters of heated debate in Brazil. Seen through hostile eyes, he is a lightweight, a mixture of playboy and opportunist. Admirers look upon him as a born leader with surpassing political skill, and an executive of great competence, with promise of becoming, measured by practical accomplishment, the greatest President Brazil has ever had.

He is, in fact, as many-faceted as a diamond from Diamantina, the drowsy back-land town where he was born and raised. On the polished surface, no trace remains to recall the shy, shabby small-towner who at 18 took a third-class coach to the state capital to make his way in the world. Smooth, brisk and notably well-groomed, he suggests just what he used to be--a high-fee society doctor. Young for a Brazilian President, he looks even younger, with catlike grace and glowing vigor. His smile rivals French Actor Fernandel's in expanse. He loves society parties, especially if there is dancing. Tangos and slow foxtrots are his favorites, but he can samba with the lightest-footed--showing a distinct preference for pretty partners. At a ball a few years ago, the late President Getulio Vargas jokingly asked Kubitschek why he didn't ask some homely women to dance. "I do, Mr. President," he quipped, "but only during an election campaign."

Unglamorous Slogan. Quick-minded rather than reflective, Kubitschek seldom does any off-the-job reading heavier than historical novels. On the job, he prefers oral briefings to written reports. His favorite sedentary diversion is poker; a bold, unfathomable bluffer, he usually wins. He has no hobbies, no interest in sports. "When I was young, I was too poor," he explains. "Later I was too busy."

Perhaps his greatest gift is his awesome energy. No matter how late he stays up at night, he gets to his office at 7 a.m. As mayor of Belo Horizonte and later as governor of his home state of Minas Gerais, he undertook extensive public-works programs--and carried them out. "What I start, I finish," he says.

Kubitschek has no rigid political ideology. He can adapt his viewpoint to an audience or a situation as effortlessly as water conforms to the shape of a pitcher. He has been called, among other things, "leftist" and "conservative." Neither tag really fits, but conservative is probably the less inaccurate of the two. His presidential campaign slogan was unemotional and unglamorous; he promised, not a political reformation or social transformation, but "Power, Transportation and Food."

"My Mother's Son." In his exterior, Juscelino Kubitschek resembles his handsome father, Joao Oliveira, a gay, clever but improvident amateur poet, who died when Juscelino was two. Inside, he is far more like his prim, pious mother Julia. Stern Widow Julia reared the boy and his older sister Maria on a schoolteacher's salary. Harried and embittered by poverty, Julia drilled into her son a fierce will to succeed. Now a hale-looking 83, she still calls him by his boyhood nickname, Nono.

"In reality I am more my mother's son than my father's," Juscelino Kubitschek said recently. Blue-eyed Julia, granddaughter of a German-speaking immigrant from what is now Czechoslovakia, continued to go by her maiden name after her marriage, and Juscelino grew up as Kubitschek rather than Oliveira. Now that he is famous, his countrymen rarely pronounce the name Kubitschek; he is simply "Juscelino," just as Vargas was always "Getulio."

First Shoes. During the 18th century diamond rush in the inland plateau state of Minas Gerais, Diamantina was a rich, bustling city of 40,000 inhabitants. A local diamond magnate even had an artificial lake and several miniature ships built, so that his mulata mistress could ease her nostalgia for the sea without making the three-week muleback trip to Rio. By the time Juscelino Kubitschek was born, Sept. 12, 1901, the synthetic sea had long since vanished, along with the diamonds, and hillside Diamantina had shrunk into an uneventful, cobble-streeted town with a population of less than 10,000.

Even by the standards of Diamantina, the Kubitschek family was poor. When Julia had taught her son all she could, she persuaded Diamantina's Roman Catholic seminary to take him as a pupil at a reduced tuition fee. On his first day of school, Juscelino, then eleven, put on his first pair of shoes, bought with money earned as a grocer's errand boy. Recalls one of his seminary teachers: "I never saw such a remarkable memory in a child. He could recite an entire page by heart after reading it once. He was not what I would call deep, but he certainly was bright."

After a few years, even cut-rate fees proved too costly for Julia's pinched purse, and Juscelino had to leave school. At 18, having taught himself Morse code, he qualified as an operator in the Minas Gerais state telegraph system. He left home for Belo Horizonte, the state capital, with one spare shirt and a roast chicken. During the months he had to wait for an opening, he lived largely on bread.

Beyond the Horizon. The future President worked as a telegraph operator in Belo Horizonte for seven years, putting himself through preparatory schools and medical school. On the job from midnight to 7 a.m., he started classes at 8 a.m., snatched a few hours of sleep in the afternoon. He got his M.D. (cum laude) at 26, resigned his telegrapher's job the same day. Meanwhile, his sister Maria had married a prosperous Belo Horizonte surgeon, who made Kubitschek his assistant. A year later, bitten by wanderlust, Kubitschek borrowed money from rich friends and took off for Europe--supposedly to study, but actually to satisfy his itch to see what lay beyond the Belo Horizonte horizon. He did some serious postgraduate work at clinics in Paris. Berlin and Vienna, but he also spent a lot of time in cafes.

Returning to Belo Horizonte broadened and polished by travel, he married the pretty, dark-eyed daughter of a wealthy politician. The marriage was happy. "He has not always been a perfect husband.'' Sarah Kubitschek said secretly. "But after all. perfection is dull." The Kubitscheks have two children. Marcia and Maristela, both twelve. Marcia was born to them; they adopted Maristela five years later, to spare Marcia an only child's loneliness.

The Call to Politics. Prospering Surgeon Kubitschek became increasingly absorbed in politics as years went by, serving as secretary of the state government and later as a federal deputy. In 1940 the governor of Minas Gerais named him mayor of Belo Horizonte. With that, Kubitschek gave up surgery altogether.

For a man with no experience in administration or leadership, youthful Dr. Kubitschek made an extraordinarily successful mayor. "It was just as if he grabbed the city physically and gave it a good shaking," a friend recalls. Laid out Washington-style in the 18905, handsome Belo Horizonte (pop. 400,000) had outgrown its plan. During Kubitschek's term as mayor, Belo's water supply and street mileage more than doubled; the paved-sidewalk area and sewer capacity tripled.

Pigs & Pig Iron. Kubitschek took a minor part in 1945 in the founding of the pro-Vargas Social Democratic Party (P.S.D.), an alliance of state political machines, largely controlled by well-to-do businessmen and landowners. In 1950, after a second tour in the federal Chamber of Deputies, he ran for governor of Minas Gerais as the P.S.D. candidate, was elected for a five-year term.

Second among Brazil's 20 states in population (8,000,000), Minas is almost Texan in area--and Mineiros take an almost Texan pride in it. The Portuguese colonizers found the region so rich in minerals that they named it, prosaically, General Mines. In the 18th century, Minas produced a large share of the world's gold and diamonds. Today it produces 99% of Brazil's iron ore, 95% of its manganese and mica. Near the town of Itabira lie the world's biggest known deposits of high-grade iron ore. Minas is Brazil's No. i state in output of corn, cattle and dairy products, No. 2 in pigs and pig iron.

Despite this natural abundance, Minas Gerais was a poorish state in 1950, its industrial growth, as in all of Brazil, sadly hindered by lack of adequate electric power and transportation. In running for governor, Juscelino Kubitschek took "Power and Transportation" as his slogan, promised to build 1,900 miles of new roads and would dou ble the state's electric-power output. By the time Kubitschek resigned last April to run for President, Minas' operating electric-power capacity had soared from 205,000 kilowatts to 450,000, and a little more than 1,900 miles of new roads had been laid down. The rapidly growing state attracted $325 million in new investment capital, and industrial production more than doubled.

Kubitschek had already made up his mind to run for President in the October 1955 election, and hoped to get President Vargas' backing, when Vargas' suicide (in August 1954) threw Brazil's politicos and parties into wild confusion. One result, when emotion quieted, was that Kubitschek managed to corral the P.S.D. presidential nomination, despite the strenuous opposition of the older bosses. That split forced him to reach for the additional backing of the Vargas-created Labor Party (P.T.B.). The price was admittedly high: he had to take demagogic P.T.B. Boss Joao ("Jango") Goulart as his vice-presidential running mate. Goulart was especially hated by the anti-Vargas military chiefs because of his extreme inflationary policies during a term as federal Minister of Labor. Kubitschek knew that the Goulart alliance increased the risk of military intervention to keep him out of office if he won. But it was a risk to be taken.

The Red Line. Soon after the Labor Party endorsed Kubitschek, the illegal Brazilian Communist Party stopped calling him a lackey of big business and, in a characteristic display of party-line acrobatics, endorsed him for President. Outlawed by Congress in 1947 (Kubitschek was among the Deputies who voted in favor of the ban), the party still has an estimated 60,000 members and many non-Communists fellow-travel its line. Eager for votes, Kubitschek failed to reject the Red endorsement--a piece of opportunism that has already made trouble for him and is likely to make more.

In the presidential campaign, Kubitschek used the same methods that had won him the governorship: go to the voters, hit even the little, out-of-the-way towns that other candidates skip, invite questions, have an answer for everything. He chartered a DC-3, fitted it out as a combination office, bedroom and conference room, covered 100,000 miles in the most strenuous search for votes in the annals of Brazilian politics. His wife Sarah organized women's J-J (Juscelino-Jango) clubs throughout the country, made speeches on TV, kept up her husband's morale with her cheerful, unflagging conviction that he would win. "I was against Juscelino's going into politics," she said. "But when he went ahead anyway, I was right there beside him."

Of the four candidates in the race for the Presidency, two were moralizers and two materialists, General Juarez Tavora and Right-Winger Plinio Salgado, both considered deeply religious, vowed to clean up corruption. Juscelino Kubitschek and rich, Falstaffan Adhemar de Barros, both M.D.s, former state governors and practical politicians, vowed to raise living standards. Barros ran well ahead of Kubitschek in the big cities; Kubitschek piled up his plurality in the inland towns and farm villages, where the P.S.D. machine operated most efficiently, and where most of the voters had laid eyes on no other presidential candidate. The final count: Kubitschek, 3,077,411; Tavora, 2,610,462; Barros, 2,222,725; Salgado, 714,379.

No sooner were the votes counted than the block-Kubitschek camp, arguing that he would not have won without Communist endorsement, got to work. In the name of antiCommunism, morality and higher democracy, a faction--made up largely of navy and air force officers, intellectuals and conservative politicos--set out to prevent the President-elect's inauguration one way or another--if necessary, by means of a golpe (military coup).

The sturdiest military opponent of the golpistas was majestic, stony-faced Lieut. General Henrique Teixeira Lott, War Minister under President Joao Cafe Filho, Vargas' successor. No great admirer of Kubitschek, non-political General Lott felt, nevertheless, that the army's clear duty was to accept the voters' decision and uphold the constitution. With most of the key army commanders on his side, Lott had enough firepower to keep the anti-inauguration camp from even trying to bring off a golpe--so long as he remained War Minister. To be on the safe side, Lott and trusted staff officers drew up operations plans for dealing with a revolt by i) civilians, 2) the air force, 3) the navy, or 4) the air force and navy together. Eight men alone knew of the existence of these plans, kept in four sealed envelopes in a locked desk drawer in the War Ministry.

Early in November President Cafe Filho, who had tried to stay neutral in the behind-the-scenes struggle, suffered a mild heart attack and went on sick leave. In keeping with the constitution, Chamber of Deputies Speaker Carlos Luz, suspected of golpista sympathies, took over as Acting President. On Nov. 10 Luz forced General Lott to resign. Lett's successor, a golpista army general, was waiting in the next room.

Early the next morning, army troops in full battle kit swarmed over Rio. During the night General Lott had opened Envelope No. 4. His bloodless "preventive revolution" was a complete success. Congress named Nereu Ramos, presiding officer of the Senate, as the new Acting President, and voted a state of siege to firm up his government.

Practical Goals. With his inauguration assured, Kubitschek went off on a hurried, three-week airborne tour of the U.S. and Europe, to win friends and stir up foreign interest in Brazil's vast problems and opportunities. The trip also served the useful purpose of gaining added prestige for Kubitschek, and giving Brazilians a chance to catch their breath and reflect on what manner of man they had chosen. Even his supporters are likely to find him something of a novelty. Brazil has had generals, statesmen and intellectuals for Presidents, but never before a businessman type like Juscelino Kubitschek.

The practical economic goals of Kubitschek's term are set forth in a 247-page document drafted in 1955 by Kubitschek and a brain-trust panel headed by Lucas Lopes, a brilliant engineer who bossed the Minas Gerais electric-energy program. To implement the plan, the President will set up, with Lopes as chairman, an Economic Development Committee made up of key administration officials and economic technicians. Kubitschek expects private capital to do most of the development job. "My government will interfere," he says, "only when private enterprise is unwilling or unable to carry out what is indispensable." The program in a Brazil-nutshell:

POWER. Expand electric-power capacity from the present 3,000,000 kilowatts to 5,000,000 by 1960. This is the heart of the program, and will require some $300 million worth of imported equipment.

TRANSPORTATION. Businesslike operation of the fabulously inefficient government-owned railroads; construction of 6,200 miles of roads; improvement of existing roads. Purchase of 50-odd ships of various tonnages to trim the country's dollar-draining ocean-freight bills.

FOOD. Build silos, warehouses and refrigerated slaughterhouses (upwards of 25% of the food that Brazilian farms now produce spoils for lack of adequate transport and storage facilities); make more and easier credit available to farmers; promote bigger wheat crops.

MINING & MANUFACTURING. Boost coal production; up iron-ore exports, now 1,600,000 tons a year, to 10,000,000 tons. Promote manufacture of locomotives and heavy machinery; create an auto industry that will produce 100,000 cars, jeeps and trucks a year by 1960.

OIL. Kubitschek is up against Brazilian nationalism, which keeps foreign capital out of oil development. Petrobras, the government oil monopoly, now gets only 6,500 barrels a day out of the ground, about 3% of consumption. Stuck with Petrobras, Kubitschek expects to do no better than keep the bill for oil imports, some $280 million a year, from getting bigger as national consumption goes up.

Dr. Kubitschek's prescription is largely designed to remedy Brazil's foreign-exchange shortage, which ranks with inflation as the nation's most serious economic malady. Even with imports curbed by government controls, Brazil runs up exchange deficits. The two main exports, coffee and cotton, are subject to price tremors. About half of Brazil's export earnings go for debt service, ocean freight, oil and wheat; what is left for machinery, raw materials and all other imports amounts to some $700 million a year--about $12 per Brazilian. The shortage of foreign exchange stunts economic growth by holding down Brazil's capacity to service foreign loans and pay for capital goods. The foreign-debt burden is already staggeringly heavy: $1.7 billion, some $900 million of it owed to the U.S.

Dizzy Spiral. Kubitschek expects his development program to help cure the inflation sickness by making more goods available. The puzzler here is how to finance the government's share of the program and at the same time slow down the currency presses. In the past few years, the government custom of printing new money to meet budget deficits has kept inflation spiraling dizzily. Retail prices have almost doubled within three years, rising faster than wages. Among Brazilian workers, the resulting sag in real wages has brought on a rancorous discontent.

To make much headway, Kubitschek & Co. will have to attract a lot of foreign capital to Brazil. Again and again during his preinauguration tour, Kubitschek stressed that his administration will welcome foreign investment. For the power and transportation sectors of the program, the administration will also need development loans from the U.S. Government. Urgently needed is U.S. aid in refunding Brazil's existing foreign debts so as to lessen the yearly bite. Just at inauguration time, the U.S. Export-Import Bank announced equipment loans totaling $55 million to Brazilian government-run enterprises ; obvious in the timing was Washington's intent to show its good will toward the new administration.

Racking Task. Piled atop his economic problems, President Kubitschek has a full share of political worries. Within the armed forces, the "preventive revolution" left resentments strong enough to be troublesome if the government stumbles. Vice President Goulart, powerless under the constitution to do anything more than preside over the Senate, is likely to go his own political way, looking ahead to the 1960 election. Kubitschek is still under suspicion, in Brazil and abroad, of having made some kind of election deal with the Reds; anything he does or says that relates to Communism will be examined for signs that he is paying off a debt. And Brazil's Communists are stirring; they are under orders from Moscow to wage an intensive comeback campaign this year.

The problem of political payoffs proved worrisome to Kubitschek even before his inauguration. In making up his Cabinet, he had to consider the claims of political allies and his need for strong congressional support. What emerged after many hours was a line-up that seemed somewhat oldish and politico-ridden for a new administration with a dynamic program. Snapped Rio's Correio da Manha: "Faced with the choice between a great Cabinet and Congressional majority, Senhor Kubitschek chose the latter." In at least two key Cabinet posts, however, Kubitschek placed his first choices: as Finance Minister, shrewd Federal Deputy Jose Maria Alkmin, a loyal friend since the telegraph-office days in Belo Horizonte; as War Minister, General Henrique Teixeira Lott.

To keep his campaign promises in spite of all his political and economic harassments will be a racking task even for a President with Juscelino Kubitschek's energy. But he seems confident that he can deliver, just as he did in Minas Gerais. "I take office," he said last week, "with a serene conviction that I can and will be a good President for my country."

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