Brazil: Edging Toward the Brink

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There are soldiers who are armed but not loved

Mostly lost with their weapons in their hands

In the barracks they learn the old lesson

Of dying for the country and living for nothing.

There is hunger on the great plantations

And desperation marching through the streets

But still they take the flower as their strongest refrain

And believe that flowers can overcome the cannon.

When he wrote those words and set them to music last month, Brazilian Composer Geraldo Vandré had more than a song in his heart. He comes from the nation's impoverished Northeast, and he gave voice in Caminhando (Walking) to the growing impatience of millions of Brazilians with the way the military is running—or not running—the country. Overnight Caminhando became a hit. Taunting the regime, Brazilians sang it in the streets, hummed it in the favelas, and pushed it for an international prize.

The military hated the words. "A subversive lyric," said General Luis de Franĉa Oliveira, Rio's secretary of public security. "A musical cadence of the Mao Tse-tung type that can easily serve as the anthem for student street demonstrations." In a fit of anger, police in Rio's main street arrested one group of youths merely for listening to Caminhando outside a record shop.

Without Miracles. That ridiculous act reflects the tension that grips Brazil these days. A vast majority of Brazilians applauded the overthrow of Leftist João Goulart in 1964, and the cleanup started by the new military-backed regime of General Humberto Castello Branco was obviously necessary. When War Minister Arthur Costa e Silva was elected President by Congress in 1966, Brazilians listened to his promise to "humanize" the bureaucracy, promote a "Year of Education" and declare war on inflation. He did manage to slash the annual rate of inflation from 40% to 25%. The nation's gross national product edged up by 5%. Brazil's trade in coffee, cotton and other agricultural products came into balance.

But Costa e Silva held down the cost of living at great cost to himself. "We went through 1967 without any miracles," the President says. "I prefer a sure and measured success." Maybe some miracles are needed. Brazil should be taking off economically; it is barely holding its own. Education is a shambles: half of the population remains illiterate, and there is no room at the university for two of every three students who pass the entrance exam. Workers who earn only $40 a month must spend a fourth of that on bus fares to get to their jobs.

Continuing censorship, the military's failure to fulfill its promise of popular elections, the denial of political rights to hundreds of politicians and intellectuals have turned the public sour and left the country edgy. Here is a report on the situation from TIME Correspondent William Forbis: