Army Warning

The toughest town in Brazil is grimy, industrial Caxias (pop. 136,000), on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. Its political boss is Federal Deputy Tenorio Caval-canti, who sports a beard, a flowing cape, a revolver, a bulletproof vest and 47 wounds from various shooting scrapes. He owns real estate, a newspaper and a steel-gated house, and he has boasted that he could hold it against a siege. One morning last week while Tenorio was away, 200 troops rolled up in armored trucks, with bazookas and machine guns, and cracked the fort without a shot. Tenorio's henchmen opened the doors, the troops marched in, ransacked the house and confiscated three pistols, two rifles and three machine guns. Another detail broke into Tenorio's apartment, seized more arms.

The raid was no ordinary police crackdown, but a carefully planned piece of political strategy. The man behind it: War Minister Henrique Teixeira Lott, who staged 1955's famed "preventive coup" to ensure constitutional government, but who lately has been showing increasing annoyance at parliamentary foibles. The main target of General Lett's ire is the opposition National Democratic Union (U.D.N.), of which Tenorio is a prominent member. The U.D.N. deputies have taken advantage of congressional immunity to insult high army brass in speeches; allied with other blocs in Congress, they have also sabotaged President Juscelino Kubitschek's anti-inflation program, blatantly voted themselves subsidized cars and salary hikes.

With Tenorio, Lott had a stronger case. The army raiders got search warrants in advance and stayed carefully within the law. Other U.D.N. spokesmen were anxious to condemn Lott. But they were reluctant to defend Tenorio until they saw whether ballistic tests on the seized weapons shed any light on the dozens of unsolved murders in Caxias. Nevertheless, Lott's re-emergence as constable of the realm, playing power politics without a by-your-leave from President Kubitschek, stirred uneasy fears of army dominance. Kubitschek, whose declining popularity makes him ever more beholden to Lott, conferred quickly with his War Minister but was noncommittal on the raid.

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