Green Shirts Up, Down

A truckload of some 30 Integralistas, the famed Brazilian Green Shirts who salute like Italian Fascists and are as anti-Semitic as German Nazis, rolled through the quiet streets of Rio de Janeiro just after midnight one night last week. They jarred to a halt at the main entrance to stately Guanabara Palace, once the home of Brazil's Crown Princess Isabella and now the residence of President Getulio Dornelles Vargas and family. It was the usual hour for the changing of the guard. With knowing nods the sailors on duty, in conspiracy with the Green Shirts, relinquished their posts. The Integralistas, wearing their green shirts concealed under fake Brazilian Navy uniforms and flaunting white kerchiefs inscribed with their watchword "Avante" ("Forward") around their necks, hopped from their truck, filed into the grounds. At the same time another band of Green Shirts rolled up to the west gate and when loyal guards resisted their entrance there, opened fire. Two guards got away, ran to warn the President.

Pudgy little President Vargas, his wife, his two sons, Luthero and Manoel Antonio and two daughters, Alzira and Jandrya, tumbled from their beds at the first burst of firing. "When I ran to the palace front door, I saw several dark figures. All the lights were out," said 23-year-old Alzira afterward. "By their voices I distinguished father, Uncle Benjamin, and my two brothers. All had pistols."

"We had no time to discuss what was happening," said younger Daughter Jandrya, "for father opened the window and saw a number of men shooting at the palace. Father shouted to us, 'Run for cover.' He began firing his revolver through the window." Added Alzira: "He was all for going out single-handed armed only with his pistol and meeting the invaders in the garden but the rest of us diplomatically dissuaded him."

Instead, President Vargas placed his sons defensively at the windows, had a submachine gun mounted and himself blazed away at the attackers. The Integralistas, apparently thinking a large force defended the palace, contented themselves with sending machine-gun bullets whining into the palace walls.

All telephone lines had been severed, except one to an isolated marine station. From there Vargas learned that the Green Shirts had struck simultaneously at the Navy Ministry, which had fallen, the Ministry of War, the Treasury, the home of army chief General Pedro de Goes Monteiro, the police and fire department headquarters and even the Pan American airport. Three radio stations were taken and used to send out false assurances that the Integralistas were in control of Brazil. Carloads of armed Green Shirts roared through the streets, hurling small bombs to create confusion. Excited but efficient, loyal army officers assured President Vargas by telephone that reinforcement would be sent as soon as the attackers were quashed in the downtown districts.

"We could see fighting going on outside," reported Daughter Alzira. "The invaders seemed armed with machine guns and grenades. Projectiles cut through the tall palms of the garden and chipped the palace walls." For three-and-a-half anxious hours President Vargas and his defenders held out. Finally War Minister Enrico Caspar Dutra, a bullet through his ear, arrived, leading a detachment .of the regular army and attacked the Integralistas from the rear. Rio Grande do Sul Interventor Colonel Oswaldo Cordeiro de Faria, who had been busy battling attackers at his home, appeared still clad in his pajamas at the head of a company of police, civilians and soldiers. They bottled up the Green Shirts with a flanking movement. Thirty Integralistas were captured, eight lay dead.

Doughty President Vargas lost no time in re-establishing the prestige of his regime. Declaring martial law, he started a cleanup. At the Navy Ministry, where the Integralistas had their only success in their well-planned but weakly-executed Putsch, the rebels were quickly dislodged and captured. An attack on the Green Shirt headquarters netted another 300 prisoners, and within 48 hours the jails were jammed with 700 prisoners, 25 Integralistas lay dead in the morgues. At least five Vargas defenders were killed in the attacks.

Immediate search was begun for cadaverous-faced, black-mustached Plinio Salgado, the "Supreme Chief of the Green Shirts" who has been in hiding since Vargas outlawed the movement as a political party (TIME, Nov. 22). At last reports Salgado was still hiding. Arrested as leaders of the Putsch were Belmiro Valdeverde, chief of the "Revolutionary Dissident Wing" of the Party, and Admiral Eduardo Taveres.

Picked up in the palace grounds with wounds in the head and abdomen was 21-year-old Dom Juan of Orleans & Braganc,a, son of Dom Pedro, official pretender to the Brazilian throne. Reported shot in the leg as he tried to join the fighting was Dom Juan's 25-year-old brother, Pedro. These incidents led to speculations that back of the Integralistas was a move to restore the monarchy. Founded in 1822 by Dom Pedro I, son of Portugal's King Dom Juan VI whom Napoleon frightened into the New World, the Brazilian Empire lasted until an uprising of landowners and army in 1889 forced Dom Pedro II to resign. Today his grandson, handlebar-mustached, white-haired Dom Pedro, lives a guest of the Brazilian Government on his tax-free Grao Palace at Petropolis, outside Rio. Young Dom Juan last week stoutly insisted he "was merely trying to join the excitement and got in the way of a bullet", but police put him under bedside arrest ''for examination."

"The abortive uprising was carried out with foreign help," charged President Vargas. Naming no names, it was evident what he meant when police arrested five employes of a German bank in the capital, two of whom were German citizens, and charged that German-made arms had been used by the plotters. Germany's activities in Brazil have been under President Vargas' attention for some time. Recently he infuriated the Nazis by nationalizing some 1,100 schools in Brazil which were teaching German and operating under German laws and rules.

Like most South American strongmen. President Vargas himself seized power by armed revolt in 1930, utilized the incipient Integralista movement to make himself virtual dictator six months ago. Ever since earnest U. S. liberals & radicals visiting Brazil have come out with reports that President Vargas himself was a Fascist. Dr. Vargas, on his part, has been moving heaven & earth to demonstrate to the democracies, particularly the U. S., that he was not emulating the European Fascist-Nazi regimes: He halted the deportation of German Jews, dissolved the Integralistas and appointed as his Foreign Minister the longtime friend of President Roosevelt, suave Oswaldo Aranha, former Ambassador at Washington. Last week the new Brazilian Ambassador to the U. S., Mario de Pimental Brandao gleefully told Washington correspondents: "I have been denying . . . that the Brazilian Government was Fascist. Now you have proof that it is not." In the face of these assurances "Good Neighbor" President Roosevelt, guest of President Vargas on his 1936 South American tour, sent Brazil's strongman a personal message expressing "happiness"' over his survival.

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