The Price of Unpopularity

Thousands of government workers were given the day off for the funeral, but they preferred to flock to the beaches. The solemn salute of gunfire every ten minutes from Rio's forts went largely unnoticed. Thus, followed to the very end by the unpopularity that had been his lot in three years as an honest but uncharismatic President of Brazil, Humberto Castello Branco last week went to his grave at the age of 66, victim of a plane crash in the fifth month of his retirement. Said former Planning Minister Roberto Campos in a eulogy: "He had an aversion to easy promises and theatricalized results. He deeply dreaded creating false hopes in the people. He preferred to accustom the people to the discipline of truth."

Faith in Patience. When Castello Branco and current President Arthur da Costa e Silva (TIME cover, April 21) organized the 1964 military coup that toppled Leftist Joao Goulart, Brazil needed even more than truth. Communists and corruption were everywhere. The cost of living was climbing at the fantastic annual rate of 144% in Goulart's last year, and the Brazilian cruzeiro was barely worth the paper it was printed on.

Castello quickly introduced reforms, but he went at his job like a surgeon with a dull knife. In a series of decrees, he tightened credit, cut government spending 30%, canceled ruinous import subsidies, and brought the rate of inflation down to 41% by last year. To clean out Communists and political corruption, he stripped almost 800 Brazilians of their political rights and abolished all political parties except for a catchall government party and a token opposition. To guard against any return to the old ways, he also wrote a new constitution that provided for indirect presidential elections by Congress.

Castello Branco knew how to give orders and have them carried out, but had difficulty in making them liked or understood. Within a year after his rise to power, his methods had cost his government its earlier popularity, and the doughty little ex-general withdrew even further into himself. "A soldier learns patience," he once told a visitor. "I am a patient man." Prohibited from succeeding himself, he willingly left the limelight after Costa e Silva's inauguration as President in March. He spent most of his time with his family, was seen now and then at the opera in Rio, and took occasional trips to visit old friends. It was on such a trip last week that a small Piper Aztec in which he was flying collided with a jet training plane in the northeastern state of Ceara killing Castello, his brother and three others, including the pilot.

Bid to the Public. As Castello's successor, Costa e Silva is taking a new approach to Brazil's economic problems. Where Castello blamed excess demand for the country's inflationary troubles and tried to limit the amount of money in circulation, Costa's government is putting emphasis on industrial development to help meet the demand. Thus, in a recent three-year plan setting down guidelines for his administration, Costa called for an "acceleration of development" first and "containment of inflation" second. All that Costa seeks is "relative stability of prices" and "inflation inferior to the year before." Such a policy is part of his broader program to "humanize" the government and win back the public support that Castello lost. At the same time, Costa made it clear that other things have not changed. The day after Castello's plane crash, Helio Fernandes, the editor of Rio's Tribuna da Imprensa, wrote an editorial bitterly attacking the ex-President. He was promptly arrested and confined to a small, rocky island off northeast Brazil.

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