Leonel Brizola - Early Life and Rise Unto Preeminence (1922-1964)

Early Life and Rise Unto Preeminence (1922-1964)

The son of a small farmer who was killed when fighting as a volunteer in the 1923 local civil war for the rebel leader Assis Brasil against Rio Grande's dictator Borges de Medeiros, Brizola was christened Itagiba, but early in life adopted the alias of Leonel, for the rebel warlord Leonel Rocha, known as "The Muleteer of Freedom". He left his mother's house at eleven, working in Porto Alegre as a paperboy, shoeshiner and other occasional jobs until completing high school and entering college, where he graduated in engineering, a trade in which he never worked, as he entered professional politics in his early twenties, being elected to the Rio Grande State Assembly in 1946. By his marriage to Neusa Goulart, João Goulart's sister, in which he had former President Getúlio Vargas as best man, Brizola became not only a wealthy landowner but also a regional leadership of the Brazilian Labour Party (Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro or PTB). After Vargas's death, he inherited the undisputed regional leadership of his party, while his brother-in-law ruled the PTB national caucus. Both perpetuated Vargas' populist tradition, specially, in Brizola's case, the practice of a direct personal link between charismatic leader and the broad masses. During the presidency of Goulart (1961–1964) Brizola was an important supporter of his brother-in-law, first as governor and later as a deputy in the National Congress of Brazil.

As governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Brizola raised himself to preeminence for his social policies, expressed in the speedy building of public schools in poor neighbourhoods across the state (brizoletas) as well as for his nationalist policies, specially his nationalization of American public utilities trusts' assets in the state, such as ITT and Electric Bond & Share. He gained nationwide visibility mostly by acting in defense of democracy and Goulart's rights as president. When Jânio Quadros resigned from the presidency in August 1961, the Brazilian military ministers in the Cabinet attempted to prevent Vice-President Goulart from becoming president for his allegedly ties with the Communist movement. After winning support from the local army commander, General Machado Lopes, Brizola forged a pool of radio stations in Rio Grande do Sul, the so-called "cadeia da legalidade" (legality chain), issuing a nationwide call from Palácio Piratini denouncing the intentions behind the Cabinet ministers' actions and conclaimimg common citizens to go into the streets protesting. Also, Brizola toyed with handing out firearms to civilians, surrendered the State Police Force to the regional army command and began organizing paramilitary Committees of Democratic Resistance. After twelve days of impending civil war, the attempted coup failed, and Goulart was inaugurated as president.

Brizola, however, had developed presidential aspirations of his own, which he could not legally fulfill, as Brazilian law didn't allow close relatives of the acting President to present themselves as candidates for the following term of office; therefore, between 1961 and 1964, Brizola acted as the radical wing of the independent left, pressuring for an agenda of radical social and political reforms in general as well as for a specific change in the electoral legislation that allowed for his presidential candidacy in 1965. Seem as personally authoritarian and quarrelsome, and not above dealing with his enemies by means of physical aggression - as in a famous case when he hit the maverick rightwing journalist David Nasser in public at the middle of the Rio de Janeiro airport - Brizola acted in the political game around the Goulart government - specially after his landslide 1962 election to Congress as a representative for the State of Guanabara - as a freebooter, being feared and hated by both the moderate Left and the Right.

In early 1963, Brizola took control of a radio broadcast, Rádio Mayrink Veiga, which he used as a means to propagate his fiery rhetorics, at the same time toying with constituting a grassroots network of political cells composed of small groups of armed men, the so-called "elevensome" (Grupos de Onze - paramilitary parties modelled on a soccer team). In a classification developed by Goulart's Foreign Minister and leader of the moderate left, Santiago Dantas, Brizola was the epitome of the "negative left" - a definition somewhat obscure, given the notorious absence, in Brizola's case, of clear ideological commitments. Generally, he stood for an extreme Left Nationalism (land reform, extension of the franchise for illiterates and NCOs)and for tight controls over foreign investment, something that earned him the hatred of the American ambassador to Brazil, Lincoln Gordon, who went so far as to compare Brizola's propaganda techniques with those of Joseph Goebbels - a mood partaken by most of contemporary American midia In late 1963, after a conservative plan of economic adjustment (Plano Trienal) devised by the Ministry of Planning Celso Furtado had failed, Brizola involved himself in a bid for power by means of an attempt to topple Goulart's economically conservative Minister of Finance Carvalho Pinto in order to take the post himself, an attempt that failed—the post was given to a nonentity—but made much to radicalize Brazilian political life at the time.