Brazil: The Other Barrel

Armed with its harsh new Institutional Act, Brazil's revolutionary gov ernment pressed relentlessly ahead in its war against Communism, corruption and all the other things it finds wrong with Brazil. In Rio, rumors flew that recently returned ex-President Juscelino Kubitschek, still sick abed after two weeks of military questioning about his graft-riddled 1956-61 regime, would soon be heading back to exile. In Sao Paulo, erratic ex-President Janio Quadros was called before a military tribunal amid stories that he and scores of others were going to jail for corruption during his wild seven-month regime in 1961. The public was told to prepare for a series of elections leading up to a brand-new Congress that would be more attentive to government business.

Once a new Congress is chosen, probably in November 1966, it will be called upon to elect Brazil's next President from a list of candidates acceptable to the revolution.

And who might that man be? President Humberto Castello Branco insists that he will not run. There is another soldier who is almost certain to be the candidate of the government's new "Party of the Revolution." He is Gen eral Artur da Costa e Silva, 63, Brazil's War Minister and Castello Branco's strong right arm in the barracks. Two men could hardly be more different in personality. Costa e Silva is a soldier's soldier, as bluff and hearty among his officers as Castello Branco is quiet and intense. Yet they work together as closely as the barrels of a shotgun; they graduated in the same class at Rio's Realengo Military Academy and have been on the same side in every crisis since 1930.

Trust Your Commanders. When the military rose up against Leftist Joao Goulart last year, it was Costa e Silva who was responsible for putting Castello Branco in the presidential palace. Since then, he has been a buffer between the soft-lining President and the linha dura (hardline) officers, who want ironhanded "revolutionary government." Last month, after anti-government candidates won gubernatorial elections in the key states of Minas Gerais and Guanabara, Rio's powerful First Army was on the verge of revolt—until Costa e Silva stepped in. "You must trust your commanders," he told the officers. "They are just as revolutionary as you are."

Some Brazilians fear that because Costa e Silva has the power, he may one day succumb to the temptation to set himself up as Brazil's dictator. He scoffs at the idea. "If I wanted to be come a dictator," he says, "I would have taken power right after the revolution. It was all right there in my hands. But I refused. I have no taste for it." Elective political power, though, may be something else. His fellow soldiers want him to run, and in Brazil today that makes him the overwhelming favorite. "To put it bluntly," says one U.S. observer, "Costa e Silva has all the goodies right now."