Dictator at Home

Onetime President Getulio Vargas has been on leave from the Brazilian Senate for more than a year. But to his tiny, yellow stucco ranch house in remote southwest Rio Grande do Sul comes an endless stream of well-wishers, politicos, favor-seekers and givers of advice. Three and a half years after the revolution that broke his 15-year rule, the wily ex-dictator is again the political personage of the hour.

In Brazilian cities, posters proclaim: "He will return." Below the legend is a price list showing that rice, beans and other basic necessities of Brazilian life now cost twice what they did in Getulio's time. Getulio himself has made no move. Yet he is so widely discussed for the 1950 presidential elections that most political maneuvers in Brazil lately have had one theme: stop Getulio. To further that end by bolstering his own sagging prestige, President Eurico Caspar Dutra recently announced plans for a visit to the U.S.

Last week TIME Correspondent William White called on Vargas at his farm not far from the Argentine border. White found the short-legged little man deeply tanned from days in the saddle, a picture of health at 65. O Presidente wore a faded blue shirt tucked into a gaucho's baggy blue bomachos.

Green Pastures. Vargas led the way slowly into the house, sat down near the door. There was not a picture on the wall, nor a rug on the floor. Over the unpainted table, bare except for letters and newspapers lying on a small radio, hung a naked light bulb. In the adjoining room stood a metal bed, a lavender-colored wardrobe, a few nondescript wooden chairs. "My parents were farmers," Vargas began. "Now that I am an old man, it is good to be back in my childhood scenes."

When he was asked to discuss U.S.Brazilian relations, Vargas was silent for fully two minutes as he toyed with an unlit cigar, crumpled a handkerchief, and looked out across his rolling pastures. Then he said: "Roosevelt trusted me. He believed that Brazil should be a great country. A strong Brazil would make a strong ally--a good customer. We were right when we had that point of view."

The careful mind ticked on slowly. "Brazil has two urgent problems Americans could help with--transport and farm machinery. All the rest of Brazil's problems can be solved by its government--if there is more administration and less politics."

Red Problem. Did O Presidente approve the government's outlawing of the Communists? This time the pause was longer. A chicken scurried across the floor. Then: "We should have followed the example of the U.S. Communism would have got nowhere as a political party."

There was one more question: "If the people themselves should demand your return to office, would you run for the presidency?" Vargas squirmed. He twisted a box of matches around in his hands. He looked out the door. Finally he said: "The Brazilian people are suffering, particularly the workers. The crisis, in time, may pass." And then, as an afterthought: "Perhaps they need a younger man than I." In short, Getulio Vargas did not answer the question as bluntly as the posters.

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