SUICIDE OF VARGAS

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27441, 30 August 1954, Page 11

SUICIDE OF VARGAS

Decision Made In Last Minute

(Rec. 9 p.m.) t m RIO DE JANEIRO, August 27. President Getulio Vargas committed suicide in a last-minute decision that reversed a plan to resist his dismissal with gunfire, his right-hand man was quoted as saying today. Mr Oswald© Aranha. who was Dr. Vargas’s Finance Minister, told the newspaper, “O Globo.” that he and two other members of the Cabinet had pledged themselves to resist any attempt to depose Dr. Vargas “pistol in Mr Aranha said the three men had agreed with Dr. Vargas to open fire on the War Minister (General Zenopio da Costa), and the Vice-President (Mr Joao Cafe Filho) when they brought to the palace the Army’s order deposing Dr. Vargas. But a few minutes after their agreement, Dr. Vargas changed his mind, retired to his bedroom and shot himself “in order to save our lives,” Mr Aranha told the newspaper. “It would have been a slaughter, but the constitution would have been saved,” he was quoted as saying. * The former Finance Minister also said that Dr. last note was written not in expectation of suicide, “but of his dying while fighting off an invasion of the palace.” Mr Aranha said the late President

had been the victim of one of the “greatest injustices in history.” Those who had tried to force Dr. Vargas to resign, because they believed him directly or indirectly responsible for the murder of an Air Force major, • had not submitted any evidence to back up the claim, he said. General 'da Costa, who was War Minister, and who had. notified Dr. Vargas a few hours before the President’s suicide that he could not be held responsible fbr maintaining order if Dr. Vargas did not relinquish power, gav# a somewhat different version of the events leadin a to the suicide. He said he was dissuaded from arresting the rebel generals by Mr Aranha, who informed him, after a pre-dawn Ministers’ emergency meeting with Dr. Vargas, that the President had agreed to resign.