BRAZIL: ‘Labourist’ Brizola Made His Mark Defending Democracy

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 22 2004 (IPS) - The death of Leonel de Moura Brizola means the last of Brazil’s ”labourist” leaders is gone. He was considered a bold defender of this national movement which gave rise to the country’s industrialisation and to labour rights in the early 20th century.

Brizola died Monday night at age 82. He served twice as governor of Rio de Janeiro state and, earlier, as governor of Rio Grande do Sul.

He entered politics in the 1940s and grew into a bold and respected – even feared -politician, and was a founder of the Brazilian Labourist Party (PTB).

The presidency was his frustrated dream. His rising star was undercut by the military dictatorship that took power in a coup d’état in 1964 and lasted until 1985. During that 21-year period Brizola lived in exile in neighbouring Uruguay and in Portugal.

He was probably the politician that the military leaders hated and feared most since the events of 1961, when as governor of Rio Grande do Sul he led the resistance against an attempted coup.

The military wanted to prevent the vice-president at the time, Joao Goulart, a Labourist, from succeeding President Janio Quadros, who resigned just seven months into his term.

Defence of the ”chain of legality”, together with Brizola’s speeches calling for resistance, won the support of the army in Rio Grande do Sul, and slowed down the coup, but Goulart was ultimately overthrown in 1964.

That image of Brizola as frontline defender of a threatened democracy is what will be remembered for generations to come, said Foreign Minister Celos Amorim, as he expressed sadness about the death of the political leader who many in academic circles consider a populist party boss.

His standing in Brazilian politics declined during his second term as governor of Rio de Janeiro, from 1991 to 1994, but his role in the country’s 20th century history is recognised by politicians and activists across the ideological spectrum.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who had Brizola’s support in many past elections, declared a three-day mourning period.

The country ”lost a reference point of great political importance,” lamented Lula, adding that he had always felt respect and admiration for the PTB leader, even during times of political divergences

During the Goulart administration, Brizola – who had married Goulart’s sister – made a name for himself with his radical defence of ”grassroots reforms” for agriculture, urban areas and the banking system.

After the coup, having sought refuge in Uruguay, he tried unsuccessfully to promote guerrilla resistance against Brazil’s military regime. Some years later he explained that failure saying that it was not in keeping with democratic goals.

Expelled from Uruguay in 1978 by that country’s military dictatorship, he went into exile in Portugal, where he reorganised the PTB before returning to Brazil in September 1979, taking advantage of an amnesty decreed by the last dictatorship leader, Joao Figueiredo.

But the military did what they could to block his path to the Brazilian presidency, convincing the electoral courts to deny him the right to use the name PTB for his party in 1980 and to give it to a more moderate opposition group.

Brizola then founded the Labourist Democratic Party (PDT), and as its candidate won the Rio governorship twice. He was the party’s president until the end.

With the PDT he ran for president of Brazil in 1989 and again in 1994, when it became clear that it shared the leftist banner with a stronger political force, one with a more promising future: the Workers Party (PT), founded in 1979 by Lula, a former metalworker and union leader.

In 1998 Brizola was candidate for vice-president on the Lula ticket, but they were defeated by Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2003) who was re-elected to serve a second term.

In the 2002 elections, when Lula finally won the presidency, Brizola supported him in the run-off vote, participating in the winning coalition.

But he and the PDT broke with the Lula administration late last year due to differences on economic policies. Brizola charged that Lula was following Cardoso’s neoliberal route.

The Labourist decadence became evident in its ever-smaller representation in parliament and in the electoral defeats suffered by Brizola himself, the latest being the 2002 legislative elections, when the veteran politician ran an unsuccessful campaign for a Senate seat.

But the Labourist tradition has made its mark on Brazil, such as the labour legislation that was adopted in the 1930s by the ”father” of this political movement, former president Getulio Vargas who governed the country from 1930 to 1945 as dictator and from 1950 to 1954 as democratically elected national leader.

One of the aims of Lula’s predecessor, Cardoso, was to ”put an end to the Vargas era,” in other words, enact reforms that would eradicate all vestiges of ”Varguismo”.

Even the Lula administration has announced that it is seeking labour and trade union reforms in order to move beyond the ”outdated” structures and laws still in place.

Women’s right to vote, minimum wages, the social security system, the creation of the state-run oil company Petrobras and the building of the steel industry are listed among Vargas’ legacies.

Brizola, meanwhile, focused the Labourist movement on social concerns, underscoring the need to make education and poverty eradication the top priorities in this country that now has a population of 178 million.

His determination to halt police repression in the ‘favelas’ (hillside slums) in Rio de Janeiro cost him electoral support from the middle class, which blame the impoverished residents of the favelas for the criminal violence in this tourist city.