Brazilian Socialist Revolution SI

[NotDavidSoslan]

Personality and appearance if Gustavo Henrique

Gustavo was a tall, slightly underweight man with brown eyes and hair and always wearing a business suit in public occasions. He recalled him and his wife being "the most envied couple" in Porto Alegre in the late 1940s.

The popular opinion considers Gustavo to have been a sedentary intellectual. His inner circle confirmed this was false, as he exercised once a week and sometimes played football, with Corinthians being his favorite team. But Gustavo was actually extremely intelligent, with a "incredible skill to process and remember information", in the minds of historian Lilia Schwartz. A voracious reader since childhood who wrote 11 books, Gustavo's favorite book was Quincas Borba by Machado de Assis.

While he considered Russian women to be attractive, Gustavo was loyal to his wife and family, even allowing his daughter and his first crush to publicly oppose his socialist regime, and was a devout Catholic, attending Mass weekly even after becoming federal deputy and president, and accusing his opponents of being Satanists.

In spite of those positive traits, Gustavo was fond of luxury goods, such as his golden Rolex wristwatch, and had a standard of living higher than the average Brazilian of the 1970s. In 1982, he bought a Puma GTi sports car, but rarely drove it; it was auctioned in 2020 along with a poisoned book used in an assassination attempt.

Miguel Arraes and Seixas Dória, the two governors that opposed the coup, would later recieve cabinet positions under Gustavo Henrique, although Dória came to oppose the socialist regime and was imprisoned.

The military dictatorship's grip over Brazil was short-lived. On 12 April 1965, the city of Juazeiro, Bahia, was violently seized by a group calling themselves the 7th of September Movement, triggering the Brazilian Revolution, which controlled most of the Northeast by the turn of the year and slowly advanced throughout most of the country throughout 1965.

On his radio broadcast following the capture of Juazeiro, Gustavo announced:

"My dear Brazilians, the patriotic and brotherly 7th of September Movement has just seized a small city in the North, overthrowing a branch of the Yankees' puppet government and estabilishment a popular, revolutionary and nationalist administration in its place. Citizens! Rise to arms against this barbaric despotism! Fight for the nation Vargas and others made what it is today!"

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Gustavo Henrique between leaving the Chamber of Deputies and the military coup

After his term in the chamber expired on 1 January 1963, Gustavo and the PSB focused on opposing the parliamentary system and calling for the republic to be restored. Gustavo argued Brazil was not a stable or rich nation, and as such, it needed strong leadership until that goal was achieved. The party's participation in the overwhelming "No" victory was small but important, especially in mobilizing Northeastern farmers to engage in politics for the first time; they would later become Gustavo and the socialist regime's main base.

When the presidential republic was restored, the PSB adopted the strategy of supporting João Goulart's reforms while arguing they did not go far enough. Instead, they argued for more radical proposals, such as banning the remittance of profits rather than just limiting it, leaving the IMF, implementing workers' self-management after workers were trained in running businesses, and suspending or auditing Brazil's foreign debt. The party also temporarily deemphasized religion to win over members of the National Students' Union (UNE), a group that later supported the Brazilian Revolution of 1965.

Gustavo's public speeches focused on industrializing and modernizing Brazil, as well as the need for the country to put its own interest and that of the Third World above anything else. Many who watched his speeches were surprised by his knowledge and eloquence, and according to historians, Gustavo successfully made socialism palatable to a good part of the Brazilian public.

Gustavo did not attend Goulart's Central do Brasil rally, fearing it would undermine the government, as he was already a target of attack from conservatives. He also condemned the 25 March military mutiny, calling for soldiers to respect their commanders.

During these two years, the PSB and its military wing, the Movimento Sete de Setembro, prepared for an armed revolution by importing large quantities of arms, disguised as umbrellas and canes, from the Soviet Union, Cuba and China, but their main weapons remained hunting and improvised rifles. They also began to indoctrinate the poor population of the Northeast by teaching them literacy and outlining their plans for land reform, the expansion of education and healthcare, and the protection of Brazilian Catholicism. The local authorities from conservative parties PSD and UDN were aware of these actions, and frequently disbanded party gatherings, but by April 1964, it was too late; a large share of the Northeastern population, and a smaller one in other regions, had adopted Gustavoism.

In 1958, a few days before announcing his candidacy for the Chamber of Deputies, Gustavo Henrique created the Amigos da Pátria (Friends of the Country) as a paramilitary group for the Socialist Party.

It initially numbered 50 men handpicked by Gustavo and armed with bolt-action rifles, and during the election campaign, was charged with protecting Gustavo's rallies from the police (the Communist Party was still illegal).

AP soldiers wore military uniforms with a Brazilian flag patch, produced by a clothing department founded by the Socialist Party but owned by a contrarian businessman, Pedro Gontijo. In 1961, the Brazilian Army sued Gustavo Henrique and the Amigos da Pátria for plagiarism, but his lawyer pointed out several differences between the two uniforms, and the suit was dropped.

As Gustavo's following grew, AP increased in number, reaching 1,500 militants by the time Gustavo refused to run for reelection. They were ordered not to attack or harm anybody except in self-defense, and often performed community service in poor neighborhoods, mixed with Gustavoist indoctrination. According to Gustavo's biographer, this "laid the foundations for the Brazilian revolution".

During João Goulart's presidential administration, the Amigos da Pátria changed their name to Grupos dos Onze (Groups of Eleven) and disarmed themselves, instead becoming a force supportive of Goulart's reforms. Members of PTB flocked to the organization, which was tasked with propaganda, public relations and charity work, and it was forcefully closed after the 1964 coup, refusing to resist, although some of its members were forced into exile while others joined the 7th of September Movement, which the Amigos da Pátria laid the foundation for.

From 1965 to 1969, Gustavo Henrique, an admirer of Joseph Stalin, conducted large-scale purges of the "old" Brazilian military that wiped out most of its officers.

Among them were generals Artur da Costa e Silva, Emilio Garrastazu Médici, Ernesto Geisel and João Figueiredo, who were hanged for having commanded units that fought the M-7-9 and for simply being anti-communist.

Instead, Gustavo heavily promoted a new generation of officers. They had fought for the Revolution and directly led troops against the "reactionary and neocolonial" Brazilian military. From 1970 to 1975 (when Operação Guararapes, the Brazilian intervention in Angola, began), the Brazilian Armed Forces conduced large-scale drills and military exercises, in cooperation with Cuba, in order to offset the damage done to its ranks by the purges.

For this reason, the purges ended up having little effect in the Angolan conflict, which was difficult due to the economic shock at home and the Brazilians' lack of knowledge of the terrain.

The "revolutionary generation" dominated the Armed Forces until the 2000s, when they died off or retired and were replaced by another, committed to liberal democracy and individual liberties, unlike the authoritarian positivism of 1889–1990.

Gustavo Henrique's first cabinet, 1965–1968

• Minister of Treasury: Caio Prado Júnior (PCB)
• Minister of Justice: João Amazonas (PCdoB)
• Minister of Foreign Relations: Celso Brant (PSB)
• Minister of Labour: Domingos Vellasco (PSB)
• Minister of Agriculture: Francisco Julião (PSB)
• Minister of Education: Gilberto Freyre (PSB)
• Minister of Housing and Urban Development: Oscar Niemeyer (PCB)



The Paraguayan military became primarily armed and trained by Argentina during this phase of the Stronato, receiving M4 Sherman Firefly tanks, some WW2-era half-tracks, and later, Pucara turboprops from the Argentine government. The guerrilas, on the other hand, were armed by the Brazilian government, which provided second-hand FALs, licensed Kalashnikovs, and other small arms to the EPP, PRF and FAC.

Rafael Franco was summarily executed on 10 January 1970, due to his political leadership of the Febrerista rebels, although another PRF leader held military leadership.

By the time Stroessner was couped in 1989, Paraguay had made great progress in fighting the insurgents, but not quite defeated them, as the great majority of Paraguayans lived in poverty, meaning many of them supported the EPP. The guerrilas were more successful in urban than in rural areas, due to the Stronato's land reform program and the Py Nandi peasant militia preventing Brazilian-style rural guerrilas from substantially threatening the regime.

The conflict only decisively turned in favor of the Paraguayan government after the end of the Cold War and Brazil's decisive shift towards neoliberalism, but the poor living standards of the majority of Paraguayans were still a factor; as such, even with the nominal surrender of EPP, the Paraguayan conflict is still raging as of 2023, albeit in a watered-down way.

On a related note, Gustavo Henrique strongly disliked Paraguay due to its invasion of Brazil in the 1860s and the brutal dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, and wanted the country to be a Brazilian satellite state, the same design he held for the other countries (other than Argentina and France) bordering Brazil.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

In 1966, Gustavo Henrique decreed the beginning of an urban reform program.

He created the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (Ministério da Habitação e do Desenvolvimento Urbano), naming Oscar Niemeyer, himself a communist, as its minister.

His decree:

• Granted tenants the right to buy the estate they lived in if they desired, protecting the landlord's right to maintain their residence exempt from any grant;
• Allowed the state to review the purchase inside average prices practiced by the market, guaranteeing the estate's payment in a deadline of one month, based on a installment consisting of 1% of the estate's full price in average market values;
• Nationalized real estate companies.

According to government data, this urban reform helped reduce homelessness and eviction rates, but recent research disputes this, arguing it had little effect, as landlords, a mostly right-wing group, overwhelmingly maintained their residences exempt from grants.

The MHDU still exists today, and its current minister is a left-wing politician from PSDB.