Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume E–11, Part 2, Documents on South America, 1973–1976

94. Telegram 440 From the Embassy in Brazil to the Department of State¹

Brasília, January 18, 1974, 1910Z.

440. Subject: Election of General Geisel—Embassy Comment. Ref: Brasília 421 (Notal).

1. The “anti-campaign” of the opposition MDB party “anti-candidate” Ulysses Guimaraes may have had its touch of cynicism, but this was in perfect keeping with the “non-event” of the election of General Geisel.

2. In a country with some democratic tradition, whose government claims legitimacy based on the will of the people, the rubber-stamping exercise which characterized the “election” of Brazil’s next President can only be called a charade. What makes this non-event even sadder for the sympathetic observer was, on one hand, the smug self-satisfaction and hypocrisy of those who ran the show—the government apparatus supported by the so-called majority political party, and, on the other hand, the almost complete apathy of the public. Few people in Brasília took cognizance of a national “election” in their midst. Were it not for newspaper headlines and TV, there would have been no public acknowledgment of the event. The only positive aspect of the exercise was that it was peaceful and orderly, an accomplishment of considerable note since achievement of non-violent succession is one of the more problematical aspects of authoritarian regimes.

3. It is obvious that along with the remarkable accomplishments of the Médici government in the economic field and in the areas of national integration and security during the last five years, it did not permit a return to representative government—as it had promised—and thus the present election represented its most notable political failure. There is, at this point, no concrete indication to the observer of the Brazilian scene that the return of democratic institutions—representative government, habeas corpus, civil liberties, absence of censorship—is other than a rhetorical objective of the new administration.

4. The mood among politicos and intellectuals is gloomy—with good reason. Columnist Castello Branco claims that this is at least in part their own fault (see reftel). The gloom is intensified by the total absence at this writing of any ray of knowledge on anyone’s part—except Geisel’s—as to who will be in the new administration, what the new administration will do, how it will act. With the exception of the heavily censored Estado de São Paulo and surprisingly the gutsy—or foolish—Journal de Brasília, the reaction in the daily press has been expectedly sycophantic.

5. This telegram does not address itself to the much more profound question as to whether democracy can exist in Brazil at this stage in its history and whether it is a good thing for Brazil. The only point we wish to make is that it doesn’t exist now in spite of all pretenses and trappings by the government to the contrary. One of the major questions which the Médici administration did not answer and which the new Geisel administration may have to address, at some time during its term of office, is how can this government continue to base its legitimacy on the popular will when it refuses to permit the popular will to be expressed or exercised. President Geisel might have to face the alternatives of either permitting some political opening or of finding another source for his government’s legitimacy.

Tuch

1. Summary: The Embassy commented on the election of Geisel as President, noting that the return to representative government promised by the Médici regime had not taken place.

   Source: National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, [no film number]. Confidential; Priority. Repeated to Buenos Aires, Caracas, Montevideo, Santiago, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo.