The Evening Star FRIDAY, MAY 13, 1938. FASCISM IN BRAZIL

Evening Star, Issue 22956, 13 May 1938, Page 8

The Evening Star FRIDAY, MAY 13, 1938. FASCISM IN BRAZIL

Nothing so dull'as elections makes the spice of life in Brazil. An attack on the President’s Palace, held off by the President’s revolver, desertion by traitorous guards, reffief from armed police arriving in trucks with machine guns, fierce street fighting for three hours in the princely city of Rio de Janeiro, arrests, destruction of the revolt —all these, with transference of the scene, might have furnished another chapter for the late 0. Henry’s ‘ Cabbages and Kings.’ The point to remember, however, is that ‘ Cabbages and Kings’ was written before the war. What has been happening in Brazil has happened many times, since the beginning of independence, in many South American States. A despotic rule in which, with whatever disguises, all real power is centred in one man, is called to-day Fascism or Communism. Before that it was called simply dictatorship, and in South American States over a long period the system was particularly rife. Dr Vargas’s Government in Brazil is not I 1 ascist, in the sense that it is based on any European theories. There are Fascists in Brazil, so called because they follow a European fashion in shirts and profess admiration for German, Italian, or Japanese models of extremism, but their programmes would be much the same if they had never heard of Europe. The chief difference from old habits lies in the shirts, and in the fact that they have been encouraged to make trouble by German and Italian propagandists. Towards the end of last year the Government felt itself threatened by Fascist disturbers, and proceeded to make itself safe by adopting Fascist, or dictatorial, methods. The chief body which it feared was the Action Integralista Brasiliera, a small minority group bent on imitation of Nazism. That movement was declared unlawful; it was not, however, so effectually suppressed but that it was able to make this week’s violent grasp at power, defeated as the cables have reported. The correspondent of an American paper, writing from Rio do Janeiro, sums up his impressions of Dr Vargas’s Government two months after it had become “ totalitarian.” He was convinced that it had not gone the length of extreme Fascism. “ The Brazilian people is not being subjected to anyth!.ig like a reign of political terrorism at present, so far as one can determine, and is widely approving the Vargas coup. . . When you talk with the Government’s leaders you find nothing of the mystic of Fascism, to far there has been no attempt by his, followers to exalt President Vargas into a legendary figure, a cosmic summing up of the national will.” Neither the President nor, except for the Integralista, the Brazilians, who call him “ Xu-Xu ” (pronounced “ ShooShoo ”) have lost their sense of humour, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senhor Arana) is regarded as the country’s chief Liberal. The strength of the Government, which has

pushed Parliament on one side as standing only for squabbles, will depend on the success with which it is able to cope with economic troubles, and the whole instinct of the President in dealing with those is to proceed gradually. It would appear from most accounts that the only probable result of a successful attempt to upset Dr Vargas’s Administration would be to inflict on the country a worse government.