Leonel Brizola

By Darcy Ribeiro

"I'm a plant of the desert.
When the drought is tough,
I live on a dew-drop".

Born on January 22, 1922, he became a member of PTB (Brazilian Labor Party) in 1945, when he was an engineering student. The party had been recently constituted. He intended to support Getúlio Vargas’s social policies. Brizola was a peculiar university student given that most of his fellow students were either communists or "udenistas"(from UDN, the right-wing party linked to the industrial bourgeoisie and the urban middle classes).

That was probably because he had had a hard life - a poor childhood and having to work to pay for his studies - which identified him with the working classes. Peculiar, also, because in spite his success at that age, he wouldn’t join the riches and would even be proud of his humble origin. Still as a student, Brizola was elected State Deputy and became one of the main working class representatives in Rio Grande do Sul’s Constituent Assembly.

He got married, in 1950, to Neuza, João Goulart’s sister, whom got him closer to Getúlio, the wedding’s best man. When Getúlio went out in his memorable electoral campaign all over Brazil, he took with him three special aids: Goulart, Brochado da Rocha and Brizola. They were called "The President’s Kindergarten". Brizola grew during these struggles and became the chief left-wing Brazilian leader, As such, he pleaded to the progressive forces to join him - in a National Liberation Front - to fight imperialism and unproductive great land properties.

Such was his prestige that, keeping his post as Rio Grande do Sul’s Governor, he became a candidate to the National Congress as Rio de Janeiro’s Federal Deputy and reached the highest electoral marks registered in Brazilian history. A popular leader, Brizola became, in Parliament, the chief coordinator of the of the pressure group on Goulart Government to execute the basic reforms, mainly the land reform, which should be done, in his view, "under the law or the force". He organized the "Popular Mobilization Front", constituted by the Nationalist Parliamentary Front, UNE (National Students Union) and CGT (Workers General Union) and supported by main left-wing leaders such as Luis Carlos Prestes, Miguel Arraes e Francisco Julião.

A left-wing leader

As a result emerged what Santiago Dantas called "negative left-wing", to oppose the forces led by Brizola, with the persuasive character of the movement that supported Goulart in his reforms policies. Thereon, the progressive forces split into two. On one side the Government struggled for fundamental reforms which it considered possible and were seen by the right-wing as so advanced that the latter got united and started a conspiracy against the former which resulted in the 1964’s coup d’etat. On the other side Brizola use intensely the radio broadcasts and went out all over Brazil to preach and mobilize the people to press for the overhaul reforms.

Simultaneously he organized his followers in groups of eleven people (Grupos dos 11) similar to communist grass-root organization organizing themselves in their residential and work places for their radical political militancy. It was in this environment that the 1964’s military coup came. Goulart tried the dialogue, negotiating with the military commanders, but refusing to give fighting orders against the uprising. Brizola organized an armed resistance movement in Rio Grande do Sul together with General Ladário Teles, III Army’s commander. Goulart landed in Porto Alegre on April 2nd dismissing the armed resistance. He opted for exile in Uruguay, where Brizola, many other comrades and I were compelled to get exile too. In exile, Brizola continued to make efforts to organize the armed struggle against the military dictatorship.

He believed, as many others, in those years of enthusiasm for Che Guevara, that it was possible to repeat the Cuban’s did. But the dictatorship was consolidated, making that fighting strategy more and more unfeasible. Because of pressures by the military in Brazil on the Uruguayan Government we ended up in internment. I was in Montevideo lecturing at the University but was forbidden to go out of the country. Brizola was interned to a hostile beach resort. From there he would leave for a small farm he had bought in the countryside, where he would live for several years.

In the US and Europe

Even though he was isolated in Uruguay, his political prestige and influence was so decisive upon the Rio Grande do Sul’s politics that, in September 1977, the Brazilian military forced the Uruguayan rulers to ban expel Brizola from that country, giving him a deadline of five days to leave the country. It was his second exile and we all expected him to go to live in Venezuela or Portugal. Surprisingly, Brizola, known as chief political opponent of the United States in South America, looked for the US Embassy, requested and got the support of President Carter (human rights defender) as a political dissident persecuted by the Brazilian military regime.

From thereon Brizola returned to his political growth. Then, as one of the major Latin American leaders. It was on such condition that he went to Lisbon, got closer to the Socialist International, through Mário Soares, and was hosted as distinguished statesman by several European leaders such as François Mitterand, Olav Palm and Willy Brandt. In July 1978, Brizola organized a gathering of Brazilian laborites and socialists in Lisbon in order to give a re-birth to PTB (Brazilian Labor Party). Many laborites came from Brazil as well from the exile to execute that project.

The Lisbon Charter was then approved with programmatic principles that should direct the new PTB, based upon popular representation, multiparty system, Getulian nationalism, modern trade-unionism and capitalist development oriented by the State. Return to Brazil Brizola returned to Brazil in September 1979 when the amnesty law came into force. He devoted himself to PTB’s reorganization of which he was prevented by (general) Golbery, dictatorship ideologist, whom made the party’s to be handed over to a group of adventurers, in whose hands it was converted into a name to be rented to other parties’ interests, to bosses aspirations, became subdued to the Government and was controlled by bankers.

Labor rebirth

Quickly recovering from this drawback imposed by the military regime, Brizola created PDT - Labor Democratic Party. In its leadership he re-took his political militancy, surround by his old comrades from labor and Vargas’ nationalism and Goulart’s reformists, whom, under his leadership - transcended to democratic socialism, already integrated to the Socialist International, of which Brizola was elected Vice-President.

In November that year I was on his side at the final fraternization dinner of Socialist International’s Congress in Madrid and saw Brizola to be cheered as a future head of State. I realized there, once more, the enormous power involve in Brizola’s charismatic appeal which I had seen to be exercised so many times in Brazil. Charismatic appeal is that kind of leader, distinguishable in among all, as if he had a star shining on his/her forehead. The ancient Greek would define him/her as the one that on coming to the temple would fill the whole room. In the Brazilian political struggle Brizola distinguished himself as the main opponent to the Brazilian military Government in decay, with such a popular support that he was elected Rio de Janeiro’s Governor.

It is the only case in our history that a politician, have once been Governor, managed to get elected for the same post in another federated State. Years later I saw Brizola choose he whether he wanted to be re-elected by Rio Grande do Sul or Rio de Janeiro, so evident was the desire of the electorate of the two States of bring him back as Governor. I have been in Brizola’s side in his two administrations in Rio. In the first, as Vice-Governor, in the second as a Senate member. In both as a coordinator of his educational program.

The full-time school

We did many memorable things. The most important was to re-create the Brazilian elementary school in the way of Integrated Centers for Public Education - CIEPs. Admirable for their architecture, due to Oscar Niemeyer, and moreover for their educational revolution, as a full-time school for teachers and pupils, for their training-on-the-job program, for their role as a production center of the most varied high quality didactic tools and for their audio-visual workshops, through tele-videos and educational computer programs.

To the CIEPs we added another novelty which was the Public High School, where the students coming from CIEPs continue their studies of 6th to 8th elementary grades and the whole secondary level, receiving an education of the highest quality. Our most challenging intervention, although, was the Northern Rio State University (UENF), structured at the same basis as the MIT, as an experimental University geared to integrate Brazil into the 3rd millennium civilization.

All these achievements, of which I am very proud, are not my creations alone, because they make real old ideas of the main Brazilian educators, headed by Anísio Teixeira. What made them feasible was the fact that I was able to count on the first education geared statesman Brazil has ever had: Leonel Brizola. As Porto Alegre’s mayor and also as Rio Grande do Sul’s Governor, Brazil had already revealed a passion for education which, deepened during his long years in exile, could flourish in Rio de Janeiro.

As a result, Brizola was the first Brazilian ruler to understand, in all its depth, the full importance of the educational issue, indispensable requirement to Brazil’s progress. I finish these considerations stressing that we, PDT’s militants, are the heirs of the ideology and experience of the three most courageous, fertile and brightest statesmen Brazil has ever had: Getúlio Vargas, João Goulart and Leonel Brizola. As one can see we came from far away, we’ve brought many aspirations, great victories and terrible frustrations. We made the 1930’s revolution to modernize Brazil. We legalized labor struggles through the trade-unions and the main laws, still in force, that give guarantees to the rights of wage earners. We created the Health and Education Ministries and the first Brazilian University. We laid the basis for Brazilian industrialization by creating Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional, Petrobrás, Eletrobrás, and several other state industries. All these provoked such a hatred in the conservative people that it cost us the suicide of our major leader Getúlio Vargas. We were the ones to assume the responsibility of overcoming the backwardness and poverty of the Brazilian population in the deepest way. This population was always exploited by and infertile ruling class. We did it through the land reform and the law to control foreign exploitation, both in the Government of President João Goulart.

They also provoked such a reaction in the old class descendant from slave owners and subdued vassals to foreign capital, that our Government was overthrown and the President and his fellow aids were so harshly persecuted in bitter years of exile that many of them died. It is us that embody, nowadays, this struggle, under the leadership of Leonel Brizola. He reappears after fifteen years in exile and forty in politics, as the leader who is coming to clear our legal system in order to make Brazil flourish, finally, as the free motherland of a civilizes, prosperous and happy people. God save Brazil! (Darcy Ribeiro, 1994).