Brazil: A Century of Change

7. Political Transition and the (Un)rule of Law in the Republic

= 174 = 7 Paulo SérGIo PINHeIro Political Transition and the (Un)rule of Law in the Republic IN MeMorIaM Raul Amaro Nin Ferreira1 Our century has come up with too few improvements in the way it manages to govern, but it has marvelously advanced, while coarsening, the techniques for controlling the governed. —Murray KeMPtoN2 A French diplomat, Charles Wiener, who served in Rio de Janeiro in the nineteenth century, returned to Brazil in 1911. He recalled, “At that time, thirty-five years ago, there was still slavery in Brazil. One bought workers, laborers, artisans, domestic servants, as one would buy a horse, a sheep, a cow, or a dog. In 1875, I witnessed the sale of people of color. This occurred in a sort of open shop in downtown Rio.”3 Only fourteen years separated these scenes from the proclamation of the republic. A century later, the American writer Elizabeth Hardwick, on a visit to Brazil, noted that “the centuries seem to inhabit each moment; the diamonds at Minas, the slave ships, Dom Pedro in his summer palace at Petrópolis , the liberal tradition, the terrorists, the police,Vargas, Kubitschek, the Jesuits. All exist in a continuous present—a consciousness overcrowded and given to fatigue.”4 The legacy of African slavery was quite visible in the capital of the republic on the eve of World War I in 1914: “It cannot be denied that the long practice of slavery and its sudden final abolition have left a definite mark on Rio society. Hosts of Negro freedmen forsook the back country plantations for the capital, and to-day the great number of ex-slaves and their descendants, full blood Afris s PolItIcal traNSItIoN = 175 = cans or half-castes is a distinctive feature of the city’s life.” One senses a vision imbued with exoticism: “To Europeans familiar with cities like Cairo and Constantinople , this fact, however, adds a pleasant picturesqueness to the streets, and differentiates Rio de Janeiro from its southern and more prosaic Argentine rival, Buenos Aires, where the negro is practically non-existent.”5 This lovable touch did not mean that the Brazilians had renounced their discriminatory treatment of the former slaves: “The Brazilian behaves to his negro fellow citizens much as an English government official in Egypt behaves to his Syrian and Armenian fellow workers, although sufficiently imperious and aristocratic not to treat negro workmen and servants as his equals.”6 The past was not dead; indeed, in 1922, a century after independence, it was if the past were not really past: “Class distinction still reigns in Brazil to a certain degree as may be expected in a land where slavery existed until twenty-eight years ago, and which twenty-seven years ago still had an Emperor and a Court with a retinue of nobles.”7 In spite of the proclamation of the republic, no major transformations in the social structure or in the groups in power had occurred. The continuity from the empire to the First Republic followed a pattern borne out in the history of Brazil. In such transitions, the political elites tend to change little. Because of this deep continuity, it is hard to establish a distinction between the political cadres of the First Republic (1889–1930) and the dignitaries of the empire, just as later it would be difficult to tell the difference between the personnel of the military dictatorship and the ruling class of the New Republic inaugurated in 1985. One of the most persistent features of the elites of the First Republic was that, “as a class, they remain generally oblivious to the great bulk of poor and ignorant population around them, half savage in certain regions.”8 It had been hoped that, with the end of the Orleans and Braganza dynasty’s rule, a new political system would be born with the republic. This hope was renewed during the political transitions that followed the end of the empire. After the Vargas dictatorship and also after the military dictatorship, it was expected that the return to democratic government would ensure that the protection of civil rights won for political dissidents would be extended to all citizens. It was a beautiful dream. The authoritarian practices of past governments were little affected by changes in political regimes or elections.The arbitrary actions of agents of state repression against the most vulnerable groups of the population were practically unchanged. Under democratic governments, an authoritarian system has prevailed, embedded especially in the institutions of control of...