Brazil's Durable Rebel

During the past 100 years Brazil's 29 rulers have included Portuguese monarchs, populist revolutionaries, fascist generals and moderate republicans. Regardless of era or ideology, all have faced a common adversary: O Estado de Sao Paulo, Brazil's foremost newspaper. On a continent where journalistic rebels perish quickly and most surviving publications are servile in spirit, O Estado stands out as a durable, responsible independent. The paper so treasures its freedom that last month, on the 100th anniversary of its founding, it publicly still admitted to only 95 years of independent existence; the years 1940-45 are excluded because Dictator Getulio Vargas had seized control of the paper then.

Some Crusades. Before and after that interregnum, three generations of the Mesquita family have maintained the paper's integrity. Politically, O Estado has remained moderately conservative. Thus the paper has retained a power base among the rich while occasionally fighting for progressive causes. Julio Mesquita, grandfather of the present director, Julio de Mesquita Neto, was the son of landowners who gave up law for journalism. During the 1870s the paper crusaded successfully to abolish slavery. After the monarchy was overthrown, Mesquita supported the creation of a republic. Later, many regimes tried to suppress O Estado, and Mesquita was once imprisoned briefly in 1924.

At his death in 1927, his son, Julio de Mesquita Filho, assumed control and battled Brazilian governments in the '30s and '40s. Twice Mesquita Filho was forced into exile. By 1964 he was back in Sao Paulo wielding political influence himself. He plotted with the military to overthrow leftist Joao Goulart, whom he suspected of heading toward totalitarianism. Once in power, however, the new rulers turned authoritarian, and O Estado again found itself in opposition.

At Filho's death in 1969, his son, Julio de Mesquita Neto, took over the paper. He has continually defied the government's request for self-censor ship. Instead, when the censors cut sto ries, he filled the blank space with excerpts from Poet Luis Vaz de Camoes epic work Os Lusiadas, about Portuguese adventures in the Orient. The paper has also resisted in other ways.

Its correspondent in Recife publicly identified the chief of Fourth Army intelligence; the reporter was severely tortured, but finally let go. Other O Estado stories on student protests, strikes and treatment of political prisoners have brought pressures from the police.

Required Reading. Mesquita's editorial page remains rigidly antiCommunist. It abhors any tinkering with private enterprise. But the news columns have a less conservative tone. The pa per's liberal reporters are not compelled to follow the boss's views.

The staff is large enough -- 445 reporters, stringers and editors -- to pro vide the most comprehensive coverage of any South American paper. Despite a dull format, the paper is required reading for Brazil's professional classes. Such prestige brings in more advertising than O Estado can use. Though circulation is modest (198,000 daily, 300,000 Sunday), earnings this year may total $5.4 million.

The family could afford a jet-set life. But instead, Julio and his brother Ruy spend most of their time managing the paper.

Steady prosperity and the absence of stockholder pressure -- the family retains sole ownership --strengthen the Mesquita's hand with the military. Apparently out of respect for O Estado 's influence, the regime seems to have ended its censorship of the paper for the time being. Yet the adversary relationship persists. The paper recently charged that a government candidate who had lost in the elections was using "Nazi-Fascist jargon" in suggesting that the elections be nullified. In the old days, O Estado would have been censored. Says Julio Mesquita: "Estado will not change its opinions. Under a totalitarian regime, we will be oppressed and continue to fight for freedom. Under a free regime, we will worry about the dangers and excesses of democracy. It's really easier for Brazil to change than it is for Estado to change."

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