Part of What Was Wrong

"Compared with corruption, Communist infiltration in Brazil has been insignificant," said Marshal Taurino Rezende, chairman of the revolutionary government's Central Investigating Committee. Brazilians could put it another way: compared with corruption, practically everything in Brazil has been insignificant. When the new government of President Humberto Castello Branco had completed its housecleaning with a tenth and final political "blacklist" of prominent Brazilians accused of Communism or corruption prior to the overthrow of President Joao ("Jango") Goulart, corruption indeed seemed to have first rank.

Peddlers"& Sin Czars. In Goulart's own official household, his presidential press secretary, Raul Ryff, 52, doubled --but in name only--as $6,000-a-year treasurer of one of Brazil's many social security institutes; his real sideline, according to the investigators, was peddling influence, and he picked up $25,000 on one coffee deal alone. A second member of Goulart's staff, his private secretary, added $15,000 to his regular $8,400 salary when Goulart named him minister-counselor for economic affairs in Brazil's Rome embassy; his nearest approach to the job was an all-expense seven-day blast in Rome, celebrating the appointment. Still a third close Goulart friend, the president of the General Labor Command, was able to guarantee anyone a good government job--for a $1,200 fee.

In Brazil's Congress, the investigators found that one of Goulart's Labor Party Deputies had made a fortune by adding 1,295 people to his personal payroll in return for a slice of their paychecks. A fellow congressman, one Tenorio Cavalcanti, 58, required almost no investigation: he was already well known as a fulltime gangster (13 killings to his credit) and the sin czar who--fully protected by his congressional immunity --built Duque de Caxias, on Rio's northern outskirts, into a wide-open vice mecca famed for its brothels, gambling dens, brawling street fights and general folderol.

Smugglers & Taxidermists. On and on it went, from state Governors down to civil servants. The Governor of Amazonas state was found to have staked out a huge ranch along the banks of the Amazon, added an airstrip, dock and warehouse, and used it to run up a whirlwind trade in smuggled goods. Another former state Governor coolly pocketed an entire $6,400,000 highway appropriation, once appointed 600 men to the single post of state taxidermist--enough to stuff every man, woman and child in his state. Then there was the former president of Brazil's state savings banks, who became a millionaire by dipping into the till. His mistake was once inviting General Artur da Costa e Silva to visit his sumptuous apartment, showing off his wardrobe ("Fifty white linen suits alone," he beamed). Came the revolution, and Costa e Silva, now Brazil's hardheaded War Minister, personally entered the banker's name on the purge list.

In the ten blacklists, 378 Brazilians have been purged of their political rights for ten years, meaning that they cannot hold public office or even vote as ordinary citizens. At that, the list was not as long as expected. But as Marshal Rezende said: "If everything wrong with Brazil were removed, there would not be very much left."

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