World: CRACKDOWN IN BRAZIL

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THREE months ago, after police stormed the campus of Brasilia University, Congressman Marcio Moreira Alves rose in Brazil's Chamber of Deputies and urged his countrymen to boycott Independence Day military parades to show their disapproval. Last week that seemingly insignificant act led to some startlingly drastic consequences for South America's biggest, most populous nation. The government imposed censorship on the country's radio and press, put the armed forces on alert, sent tanks rumbling down Rio de Janeiro's broad Avenida Brasil and, finally, suspended Brazil's constitution and shut down its Congress—both indefinitely. . Nest of Torturers. Alves, 32, is the chief parliamentary critic of the military strongmen behind Brazil's President Arthur da Costa e Silva. Last year, he wrote Tortures and the Tortured, a study of the brutal manner in which Brazil's military deal with their political opponents. The book was banned temporarily. After his September speech, in which he assailed the military as a "nest of torturers," the generals decided that it was time to ban Alves himself. They insisted that he be arrested, tried by the Supreme Court and stripped of his political rights for ten years. Before he could be brought to trial, however, the normally compliant Congress had to agree to suspend his immunity. The government foresaw little trouble.

Last week, just before the issue came to a vote, Alves rose to implore his colleagues to refuse "to turn over to a small group of extremists the cleaver for their beheading." One by one the 369 assembled Congressmen left their seats in Brasilia's modern Chamber of Deputies to deliver the ballots. When the count was in, the government had suffered a stunning defeat. Nearly 100 of Costa e Silva's followers crossed party lines to vote with the opposition. By a margin of 216 to 141, the deputies quashed the government's motion to lift Alves' parliamentary immunity and permit his conviction for "publicly inciting animosity between the armed forces or between these and social class es or institutions." A handful of spectators in the galleries jumped to their feet cheering, then began to sing the national anthem. After a moment's hesitation, most of the deputies in the chamber joined in.

Their joy was short-lived. Brazil's military wasted no time in acting. General Siseno Sarmento, commander of the crack First Army based in Rio de Janeiro, conferred for 50 minutes with Costa e Silva and other military leaders at Laranjeiras, the President's Rio residence. Having failed to remove Alves by legal parliamentary procedures, they decided to do away with the procedures themselves. Costa e Silva, a former marshal, resisted briefly, then caved in—as he almost invariably has since succeeding another retired officer, Humberto Castello Branco, 22 months ago.