So, after some time lurking and posting in chat, I finally decided to post a TL! Wish me luck!
----------------- Chapter 1: Decay and Fall
Part 1: Rotten Apple
When we think of the 1980s, we think of change and turmoil. Nothing was safe from it. Technology, culture, economics and politics. Not even the seemingly impenetrable Iron Curtain could contain it. As such, it is very safe to say that Latin America too was caught in the tide.
Brazil was no exception.
Since 1964, the country was ruled by a military dictatorship, where the people were unable to elect their own presidents, governors, or capital mayors. The best they could do was voting for deputies and senators, who could belong to only two parties, the ARENA (government) and MDB (the "opposition"). And, thanks to the 1977 Pacote de Abril (Abril Package), the president, a general elected by Congress, could appoint one third of the Senate, effectively ensuring an ARENA majority in the upper house.
It used to be even worse.
With the Institutional Act Number 5 (AI-5), written in 1968, the president could effectively shut down Congress and rule by decree for as long as he wanted. Dissent was repressed with unsurprising savagery, with police brutality, torture and exile being the law of the land. But said law was abolished in 1978, not long after the imposition of the April Package. The brutality of the "Anos de Chumbo" of president Emílio Médici was replaced by the "slow, safe and gradual opening" of Ernesto Geisel, his successor.
Médici handing over the presidency to Geisel.
The government was becoming unpopular. Its economic policy consisted of borrowing huge amounts of money from the IMF to finance hugely expensive public infrastructure works gave the country a GDP growth rate that was as high as 14% in 1973. It also had the effect of creating huge amonts of debt, and, after the 1973 oil shock, this growth rate beagan to recede. These policies affected the lives of millions of ordinary brazilians, and many found that, after a few initial years of euphoria, their lives were actually changing for the worse. The slow democratization allowed these very same people to speak their mind more freely, and, eventually, openly demonstrate against the government.
In 1978, Geisel was succeded by João Figueiredo, a fellow supporter of liberalization. By then the economy moved closer and closer to a recession. Under immense pressure, he signed a law that gave amnesty to every opponent of the government, from guerrillas in the late 60s and early 70s, all sorts of artists, and politicians who were forced into either and early retirement or exile thanks to the 1964 coup d'etat. It also amnestied the torturers, shielding them from responding to their crimes. The dictatorship's days were numbered from the moment the law was signed.
The triumphant return of Miguel Arraes, former governor of Pernambuco, from exile. -----------------
So far, it's all OTL.
Alright, my second update is here. Sorry if the title looks cringy or something, I couldn't think of a better name.
------------------ Part 2: Strike!
As said before, the country was slowly becoming more democratic. There was, however, one important right that was still out of reach: the right for workers to strike, which was effectively forbidden since 1964. The easing of repression, combined with the predictable outrage that followed repeated wage squeezes, thanks to the worsening economic situation, finally emboldened enough workers in the state of São Paulo, the wealthiest and most industrialized in the country, to strike.
It all began in 1978, with a series of spontaneous work stoppages in the region known as the ABC (the cities of Santo André, São Bernardo and São Caetano), then the center of the country's automobile industry. These stoppages evolved, in march 1979, into a gigantic general strike, one in which more than two hundred thousand ironworkers participated, demanding a wage readjustment of 78.1%. Their most proeminent voice was a man named Luiz Inácio da Silva (1), a charismatic orator who, born in the town of Garanhuns, Pernambuco, migrated to the state of São Paulo in 1952, when he was seven years old.
Luiz Inácio about to speak to thousands of striking workers in São Bernardo.
Thanks to the decrease of censorship by the government, the press was allowed to report the strike, which were immediately supported by several sectors of civil society. The workers counted on the support of parts of the Catholic Church, artists, intellectuals, and MDB politicians. President Figueiredo quickly tried to suppress the movement, and Inácio was arrested, but, since the strike was too big to be contained, the government was forced to negotiate with the striking ironworkers. Inácio was released, and the labourers were given a 63% pay raise. While not entirely successful in achieving its objectives, the strike gave the workers their greatest wage readjustment of that period, and humiliated the ailing dictatorship, showing to the country that it wasn't invincible.
(1) Best known by his nickname, Lula. ------------------
------------------ Part 3: Who doesn't like a good party?
After the ABC strike, and the Amnesty Law of august 28th, another great change in the brazilian political system ocurred, with the abolition of both ARENA and MDB in december 20th. Now, new parties would have to be founded, ones which would count with many old and new characters. For the arenistas, this was an easy task: Nearly all of them became members of a new party, called PDS (Democratic Social Party). But if said reform did not weaken the government, the same couldn't be said of the opposition, many members of which founded their own parties soon after the end of MDB.
Most emedebistas stayed together, hoping to prevent the opposition from fighting each other. Instead of founding an entirely new party, they simply slapped a P to their front's old name, creating the PMDB (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party). Led by the legendary deputy Ulysses Guimarães, and other such figures as Franco Montoro and Mário Covas, among others, they quickly became the largest and most powerful opposition party.
Some of the more conservative members of MDB, such as Minas Gerais senator Tancredo Neves and Rio de Janeiro governor Chagas Freitas (1), founded the PP (People's Party), along with some former arenistas. However, the party did not last long, and its members voted in favor of joining forces with PMDB. Said party became a very broad church, united by their dislike of the dictatorship.
Left to right: Tancredo Neves, Ulysses Guimarães, and São Paulo senator Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
The biggest novelty, by far, was the Worker's Party (PT). It was mostly led by union leaders who earned their stripes in the strikes of 1978-80. Such leaders included Olívio Dutra (bank worker)(2), Jacó Bittar (oil worker) and, of course, Lula (ironworker), who became its first president without much difficulty. It also counted with the support of intellectuals such as historian Sérgio Buarque, artists such as musician Francisco Buarque (Sérgio's son) and a few incumbent politicians here and there, such as emedebista São Paulo state assemblyman Eduardo Suplicy(3). It was, as its name and red star suggested, a left-wing party, who hoped to win elections through sheer grassroots power.
And, finally, there was PTB (Brazilian Labour Party). Originally founded in 1945 by then president Getúlio Vargas, it was the single largest left wing party in the period before the 1964 coup d'etat. Soon after, it was forcibly dissolved, with most of its proeminent members, such as former Rio Grande do Sul governor Leonel Brizola, either retiring against their will or going into exile. Now, after returning to his homeland, Brizola immediately attempted to rebuild it.However, he had one significant roadblock: former deputy Ivete Vargas, Getúlio's granddaughter, also wanted the valuable three letters to herself.
Thus began a long judicial battle between the two politicians. Ivete had one crucial advantage: she was close to the government, and, especially, to its chief minister, general Golbery do Couto e Silva, a cunning individual who became known as the "dictatorship's wizard (bruxo da ditadura)". It was easy to see who had the advantage, and who could afford to fight dirty. But Brizola wasn't stupid, either. Not everyone gets to become governor of a state with just thirty-six years of age, after all. Still, if one was to look at the dispute from the outside, one could easily see that Golbery had the advantage.
Finally, the decision was made. And the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) awarded PTB to... Leonel Brizola. Somehow, the "Old Caudillo", as he was called, defeated the wizard (4). With complete control over the party of the Father of the Poor (5), Brizola had no problem reasserting his place as one of Brazil's most important left-wing politicians. Most former petebistas, such as former Rio de Janeiro senator Aarão Steinbruch, rallied under his flag, together with people such as anthropologist and former education minister Darcy Ribeiro, incumbent RJ senator Saturnino Braga, anti-racism campaigners such as Abdias Nascimento and Carlos Alberto de Oliveira (best known as Caó), and others (6). Ivete Vargas was forced to found a new party from scratch, called the Democratic Party (PD), which quickly ceased to exist after her cancer-caused death in 1984 (7).
Translation to very clear English: "He won it."
Democracy was finally returning. But not everybody was happy about it.
------------------
Notes:
(1) IOTL, Chagas Freitas was so conservative that he had many enemies inside MDB. When he left PP to join PMDB, then senator Saturnino Braga left the party, and became an ally of Brizola.
(2) IOTL, Olívio Dutra was elected mayor of Porto Alegre in 1988, and instituted the first ever participatory budgeting system. It became so popular that PT ran the city until 2004, winning four consecutive elections.
(3) Ironically for a member of PT, he's a rather wealthy man, as evidenced by his middle name being Matarazzo. Hopefully, he'll be elected senator this year.
(4) And here's our first POD! IOTL, Golbery defeated Brizola, and the PTB became a shadow of its former self, a soulless husk with an endless appetite for corruption. Here, that doesn't happen, and Brizola has more prestige in the brazilian left as a whole.
(5) Getúlio Vargas.
(6) Among these "others" was an unknown economist and former guerrilla fighter named Dilma Vana Rousseff.
(7) Brizola and Ivete's fates were reversed. IOTL, Leonel was the one who was forced to build a new party from scratch, the PDT (Democratic Labour Party), which was often seen a vehicle for him to get the presidency, rather than an actual party.
Now that freedom of the press was almost guarenteed, and the old bipartisan order was shattered, the focus was now on the 1982 elections. They were very special, since it would be the first time that, not only there would be new deputies and senators from several parties, but it would the first time since 1965 that governors would be directly elected by the population. Before that, they were elected by the state assemblies, ensuring that they were all ARENA members. The only exception was Chagas Freitas, of course, who was an arenista in all but name. People were especially anxious to see what former exiles or "retirees" such Miguel Arraes, Brizola, Mário Covas, Steinbruch, and others, would do.
Still, there was a part of the army who was not happy with these developments. These hardliners were once able to get two presidents "elected" (Costa e Silva and Médici), and were completely opposed to any kind of liberalization. Médici himself openly criticized Geisel, and later Figueiredo and their policies, saying that the opening was "premature". That was all they could do, since they had little to no political influence left, particularly after general Sylvio Frota's rather dramatic dismissal from the Army ministry. Others belived they could do one last, desperate way to stop the death of the dictatorship: Terrorist attacks.
Newspaper stands that dared to sell opposition newspapers were set ablaze. Bombs were detonated on several places, killing innocent people, in an attempt to pressure the government and terrify the opposition. In August 27, 1980, a letter bomb exploded inside the OAB (Brazil Lawyers Order) headquarters, killing its president's secretary. Another bomb mutilated a Rio de Janeiro City Council worker.
Finally, the hardliners decided they were going to make a really scary and bloody attack, one that would shock the entire country to its core. It was scheduled to happen in April 30, 1981, on the Riocentro Pavilion. There, two officers, a sergeant and a captain, rigged a car with explosives that would be detonated in the middle of a show commemorating Worker's Day. This attack, which would quite possibly be the bloodiest in the history of Brazil, was fortunately averted because one of the bombs exploded on the sergeant's lap, killing him instantly and gravely injuring the captain, wrecking the car where they were inside.
The car in which the bombs exploded. One can see the sergeant's corpse inside it.
The reaction to the attack changed from horror to immediate indignation, as it became clear to everyone that a part of the army was behind all the explosions and arson. However, no one, not even the captain involved, who survived the blast, was even investigated, and the case was archived. The sergeant was buried with full military honors, and the whole Riocentro affair was called an act commited by "a left-wing terrorist (read: guerrilla) group". Which didn't even exist anymore. Yes. Seriously. I wish I was joking.
This was so ridiculously, so insanely absurd that not only the general population, but also several officers, were outraged. Golbery do Couto e Silva, yes, the wizard himself, resigned from the chief ministry. Whatever power president Figueiredo had left to influence the democratization process was now entirely lost. He was now merely a spectator, rather than an actor, in the grand spectacle of brazilian politics.
He, by now, was thorougly convinced his position couldn't get any worse. That he was already at the bottom of the well. Oh boy, he was so, so wrong...
------------------
This is all OTL. Yes, even the ridiculous attempt to blame a leftist guerrilla group that didn't exist enymore.
If you thought the story was getting hot before, be careful, because now it'll start to boil!
------------------
Part 5: The Scowl May 18, 1981
Senate Chamber, National Congress Building, Brasília, Federative Republic of Brazil
Senator Pedro Simon was getting impatient. He intended to make a speech to the rest of the Senate, denouncing the slow pace of construction of some infrastructure works in his home state of Rio Grande do Sul. He was sure that senator José Sarney (PDS-MA) (1) was overstaying his time in the Senate pulpit, droning on about some trivial affair most of his colleagues were nowhere near caring about. Still, he had time to wait, and think about all that was happening in the country.
He was, privately, actually a little happy about the whole Riocentro Incident: no innocents were killed, and the humiliation the government went through would certainly help him. After all, he intended to run for the governorship of Rio Grande do Sul as the PMDB candidate (despite Brizola's repeated offers for him to rejoin PTB, the party he belonged to before the birth of the dictatorship in 1964) in next year's elections. He hoped his speech in the chamber would make a few headlines back home, and solidify his image as a defender of democracy.
Still, as impatient and thoughtful he was, he couldn't help but feel a little shocked seeing the unmistakable anger in the face of his fellow peemedebista, Minas Gerais senator Tancredo Neves. His face was curled into a deep scowl, making him look like he was about to scream to make his anger heard by everyone. It also made him look like he was in pain, maybe sick. That was certainly a possibility, after all, he was seventy-one years old... Nah. He was just outraged about all that was happening in the country, and the fact that a potential murderer was honored in his burial, while his partner in crime wasn't even investigated. Yeah, that must be it. He was thinking too much.
Finally, after five minutes that felt like an eternity, Sarney left the tribune. Simon climbed the stairs to the pulpit, and prepared himself to speak, adjusting the podium's microphone. He began his speech, first with a low, calm voice, but gradually becoming louder and more empassionate, making gestures as time went by. His words would become famous, just as he wanted, but, unfortunately, not in way he hoped for.
Pedro Simon in that fateful day, alongside senator José Sarney (PDS-MA).
Finally, three minutes into his speech, something terrible happened: Tancredo collapsed on the floor of the Senate, screaming in agony and clutching his stomach (2). Simon's following words were immortalized: " Huh, what? Oh God! Quick, someone help him! For god's sake, get a medic here!" as he pointed to Tancredo. He quickly climbed down the pulpit to carry him to an adequate place, together with four other senators, lest the medic take too long to arrive. He was immedialy rushed to the Federal District Base Hospital, after his colleagues handed him over to a group of medics waiting for him, not far away from the center of the chamber.
------------------
Note:
(1) The first civilian to become president of Brazil since João Goulart, and ruled from 1985 (The president-elect died before his inauguration) to 1990.
(2) IOTL, Tancredo had that disease when he was the president-elect of Brazil, in 1985. Here, he still suffers from that sickness... right after the Riocentro Affair.
So, yeah, that's it. Shit just got real.
EDIT: Added a new note about Tancredo's health issues.
In a normal time, Tancredo's collapse in the middle of the Senate chamber, and the subsequent rush to the hospital, would be seen with shock and horror. Still, as dramatic as it was, it would probably be forgotten by most people, except perhaps those from Minas Gerais, the state which he represented in the Senate, within a week. Here's where the problem began: these were not normal times. The country was still reeling from the aftermath of the Riocentro Case, and, as such, any new drama could reignite the fires of popular anger.
It was initially believed that the senator suffered from appendicitis, something that could be treated by removing the inflamed appendix. However, in the middle of said removal, the doctors discovered a seemingly benign, but infected, tumor in his intestine. The existence of said tumor was hidden for as long as possible (the word cancer was scary back then) but it was impossible to keep it hidden forever, and the Tancredo's condition was soon leaked to the press. The peemedebista was in a much worse state than initially believed. It was inevitable that some rumours would begin to spread about how the government was trying to hide the senator's condition from the public(1).
The whole affair became a lot scandalous after Tancredo was flown by helicopter to the Heart Institute, in the city of São Paulo. According to the government, this transfer was made because the the SP hospital was better equipped to deal with the senator's diseased and fragile state. Others believed that he was transfered not because of that, but because the treatment he was submitted to in Brasília was actually very ineffective, and actually worsened his condition. No one was completely sure of what was happening.
A cartoon mocking the doctors' incompetence.
The whole thing got so bad that many people began to believe that someone wanted Tancredo killed. Speculation ran wild and out of control, as the senator fought for his life in a hospital bed, kept alive by machines. Maybe it was someone in the army, who probably had something to do with the Riocentro Affair and its coverup. Hell, maybe it was the president himself! That must be why nobody has no idea of what is happening, after all!
Finally, a protest almost spontaneously erupted in Belo Horizonte, the capital of Tancredo's home state of Minas Gerais, in May 29. More than twenty-five thousand people gathered in the city's center, demanding not just answers, but clear answers about what was going on. These answers were not given. President Figueiredo's rude, buffoonish attitude certainly didn't help(2).
Finally, after 42 days and seven surgeries, Tancredo's health began to improve. Still in intense care and closely watched, he gave an interview to the many journalists who represented several newspapers, TV channels and radio stations that were there, eager to hear his words. He formally resigned his Senate seat, which would be occupied by his substitute Alfredo Campos, and announced his retirement from elected politics, due to obvious health reasons.
A few days after that, he allowed to leave the hospital to recover in his home town of São João Del Rei. He was given a hero's welcome, with thousands of people following him in the streets, chanting his name over and over.
For the government, and particularly president Figueiredo, the affair ruined whatever little credibility he still had. No one, not even his own ministers, took him seriously anymore.
Poor guy. Actually, no. Screw him.
It was obvious to everyone that the 1982 elections wouldn't just be a clear defeat for PDS. It would be a slaughter.
------------------
Notes:
(1) IOTL, even though he was the president-elect, Tancredo's treatment was still a mess. The only difference here was that he survived.
(2) If you want, please google "Figueiredo frases". Seriously, this was a guy who said that the solution to Brazil's favela (slum) issue was an atomic bomb. I'm not making this up.
------------------ Part 7: I Literally Have no Idea What to Put Here
Some day in August, 1982
A bar in Cacuia, Rio de Janeiro, Federative Republic of Brazil
It was an usual , boring day at the Bar do Tatu ("Tatu's Bar", with "tatu"-amardillo- being its owner's nickname). Inácio, who is a bartender and the owner's brother, was actually thankful of all the boredom. Less than a month before, the FIFA World Cup was on, and the place was often filled to the brim, especially when the brazilian national football team played, of course. Players such as Zico, Falcão and Sócrates (who never lost a chance to take a swipe at the government in every interview (1)), impressed the whole world with their skills on the field. After a tense 2-2 match with Italy and their golden boy ("Bambino d'Oro") Paolo Rossi, Brazil eventually got to the finals, defeating West Germany 3-1, and claimed their fourth World Cup title (2).
Football star Sócrates in a game against the Soviet Union. Brazil won that match 2-1, with him scoring the first goal.
Of course, thanks to that, poor Inácio had to work double time serving beer and other alcoholic drinks, food, cleaning, hearing drunks ramble about something, and a whole lot of other stuff. Come to think of it, his whole life sounded like something only a really creative storywriter could think of. Born in 1961, in the little sertão city of Pocinhos, Paraíba, he moved to São Paulo in the mid seventies, barely on his early teens, only to return to his home state some time later. Back in Paraíba, he worked in the construction of more than a few highways and miraculously escaped from becoming a debt slave to some oligarch. Then, in 1980, he moved to Rio de Janeiro, and almost starved to death after he arrived. So, yeah, boredom wasn't so bad. At least he was alive and had a stable job.
Now, there was a new topic that slowly gripped gripped the minds of everyone in Rio, after the euphoria of the championship: The governor election. A client signaled to Inácio that he wanted a beer. Meanwhile, a political ad ran on the television.
--"So, man"-- the client asked. "Any idea who to vote for?"
--"Nah dude, not yet"-- the bartender answered.
The decision wasn't easy. There were four candidates in the race: Sandra Cavalcanti (PDS), Miro Teixeira (PMDB), Lysâneas Maciel (PT) and Leonel Brizola (PTB). There was no way in hell that he would vote for Sandra, everyone knew she was the Planalto's candidate. Miro seemed nice, but he had the stink of Taxas Freitas (3). Maciel? Who's that guy? At last, Brizola felt a lot like a carpetbagger, who really wanted to use the state as a stepping stone to reach the presidency.
If he was such a great governor of Rio Grande do Sul as the ads said, why didn't he run there, where his victory was guarenteed, instead of throwing himself into a race that was dominated by Miro and Sandra in the polls, and he was in a distant third (4)? The fact that the candidates couldn't speak for themselves, but had their stories and proposals spoken by a boring voice didn't help (5). And neither did the fact that he was forced to vote for the entire party he chose, from city councillor to gevernor, at the penalty of having his vote nullified if his didn't help either (6).
The atmosphere in the bar changed when a bunch of rather unusual people showed up. As soon as the entered, they began distributing pamplhets and buttons to everyone who was there. Inácio got some of them for himself, to take a closer look at them. They had the words "Brizola Governador-82-Saturnino Braga Senador" and the name of some other congressional candidate written on them. Just random canvassers, he thought. They would talk a lot about how great their candidate was, ramble some word salads for a time, then leave. He was so very wrong.
More and more people came in as the time went by. Some of the carried large black-white-red tricolor flags with the letters PTB written on them. This wasn't just some random event staged by a bunch of sychophants, it was an actual rally! As the bar was filled to the brim with people, Inácio could see a balding, gray-haired man walking towards the table. He was surronded by people, and and wore a blue shirt with long sleeves, and had a little paper with the letters PTB stuck to the left side of his chest. He had absolutely no doubt that man was none other than Leonel de Moura Brizola himself.
After a couple of hours, the crowd dispersed, as all the food and drink available in the bar was depleted, and their leader moved elsewhere. Inácio was left surprised that they didn't eat the building's walls, actually. And he was now sure of who he was going to vote for.
------------------
Notes:
This might seem crazy, but the events in this chapter, minus the butterflies, of course, all happened. And I know that because this Inácio guy isn't some fictional character I just made up, but my father. I owe a lot to him and my mother, both warriors who almost literally crawled their way from poverty.
(1) Sócrates was famous not only as a football player, but as a political activist. IOTL, he supported the Diretas Já! campaign, speaking in rallies.
(2) Brazil's 1982 World Cup team is often seen as one of the best ever put to the field, so it was quite a shock when they lost that one game to Italy. Here, they're a little luckier, thanks to butterflies. No, it has nothing to do with the fact that this TL's writer is Brazilian. Why would you think that?
(3) A "kind" nickname my father had for Rio governor Chagas Freitas. "Taxas" means "taxes".
(4) IOTL, the Rio governor race was initially dominated by Miro and Sandra (who was in Ivete's right-wing PTB). Later on, Moreira Franco (PDS) began to climb in the polls at Sandra's expense. Brizola (PDT, the party he made from scratch), who for a long time was in fourth place, unexpectedly gained the lead and won the election.
(5) The Falcão Law.
(6) This was the "bound vote". If you didn't vote for all the the candidates your party of choice had, your vote was basically useless. A good way to diminish the power of the opposition.
Special thanks to @Dan1988 for discussing and helping me about Brazilian media, and especially the formation of TTL's TV Brasil, in this chapter.
------------------ Part 8: Fighting on Two Fronts: The 1982 Elections
"Only fraud can defeat us." --Pedro Simon, PMDB candidate for the governorship of Rio Grande do Sul (1).
Everyone knew, long before election season began, that the opposition would gain several million more votes than PDS. Not even the most ardent government supporters doubted that. However, that wasn't the whole story, for the opposition had several hurdles to overcome. First was the fact that electoral coalitions were forbidden, ensuring that their vote would be split among several candidates. This was especially apparent in Rio Grande do Sul, where gubernatorial candidates Pedro Simon (PMDB) and Alceu Collares (PTB), split the votes among themselves, giving PDS candidate Jair Soares a chance to win: All he needed was to do was gain a little more than 35% of the vote, with the other two candidates coming short thanks to their division.
There was also the "bound vote" (explained in the chapter before this one) that ensured that hundreds of thousands of votes were nullified either because they didn't vote for the entire party of their choice or forgot to fill in one of the blanks. This meant that several potential opposition votes ere almost literally thrown into a trash bin. The PDS candidates were also favored by the fact that nearly all the incumbent governors were fellow party members, giving them a chance to use the state public machines to turbine their campaigns (this was technically illegal, but nobody who really mattered cared). As such, even if they got fewer votes than PMDB, PTB and PT, PDS could still gain more governorships (2).
The cartoon speaks for itself.
That wasn't the end of it. They also had to fight on the media front, and most of the TV networks and stations were in pro-government hands. The most powerful of all was the mighty TV Globo, controlled by Roberto Marinho, who also owned a newspaper and a radio station with the same name. A man who supported the dictatorship since before it began, actively endorsing the 1964 coup against president João Goulart. Rede Globo and its other media counterparts could be trusted not to be critical of the government. There was also SBT, one of two TV networks created after the end of TV Tupi, Brazil's first television station, which was caused by several crises after the death of its founder, fromer Paraíba senator Assis Chateaubriand. This part of Tupi was owned by Silvio Santos, another pro-government media baron, who also had political ambitions of his own.
Roberto Marinho having a polite but tense conversation with his soon to become archenemy, governor Leonel Brizola.
Santos had control over only one half of Tupi's corpse. The other half was, surprisingly, given not to the equally pro-government Grupo Bloch, but to Jornal do Brasil, a newspaper that was very critical of the regime. In hindsight, one can see that this "bipartisan" division (one pro-government half, one opposition half) was not so surprising, given the trend towards liberalization controlled by president Figueiredo. Roberto Marinho was very alarmed by this development, since Jornal do Brasil already owned a newspaper (of course) and a radio station (Rádio JB). A TV channel under its control, even a token one, would turn JB into a serious threat to his Globo empire. He repeatedly asked the president to rethink this decision, and hand the concession to Bloch instead. However, Figueiredo was adamant: this was his transition to democracy, and the opposition would have a voice, as little as it was, on TV. And that one voice, that one opposition island on a sea of pro-dictatorship networks would have a name: Rede Brasil (3)
Then, on November 15, 1982, after much campaigning by all parties involved, the people went out to vote in massive numbers. This was really no surprise, since, after all, this was the first time they were allowed to directly elect their own governors since 1965. Later that day, the numbers began to pour in, and in the next, several states were called. The counting was supposed to last one week, but there were enough of a tendency to call the states of São Paulo, Paraná, Goiás and Espírito Santo for PMDB in the first three days. Meanwhile, PTB scored a surprising victory in Rio de Janeiro, with Leonel Brizola defeating Sandra Cavalcanti (PDS) by ten points and leaving PMDB's Miro Teixeira in third.
Hooray!
There were a few states whose results were quite surprising: Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, Pernambuco and Mato Grosso all had the PDS candidates holding narrow leads, despite polling predicting equally narrow PMDB victories. Their counts were also strangely slow: by the time larger states like Rio and São Paulo had one third of their votes counted, in these "fantastic four", as they were called, had less than 15% of their votes were counted. The very counting itself was odd, with pro-PDS places often reporting before a single vote in opposition strongholds was counted. In Rio Grande do Sul, for example, wher Jair Soares had a narrow lead against Simon and Collares, the results of the consevative, pro-PDS interior were known before PMDB and PTB strongholds like Caxias do Sul and the state capital, Porto Alegre. To the PMDB candidates, and other observers, there was only one possible explanation for all this.
Fraud.
The opposition campaigns mounted parallel vote counts, with their results being shown to the country by Jornal do Brasil and, of course, TV Brasil, eager to make its mark. Their counts were much quicker and less onerous than the official ones that were showed by TV Globo, and also put the PMDB candidates ahead of their opponents. As time went by, the irregularities became more and more apparent, catching the attention of not only the whole country, but also international newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Even foreign heads of government and other important personalities, like former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, commented on the elections. Finally, after much noise, TV Globo began showing the corrected numbers on television (4). For many, their slowness to recognize that said irregularities even existed showed that Roberto Marinho tried to steal four elections simultaneously. As such, Globo's reputation as a credible news source inevitably suffered a hit, while the recently created TV Brasil began to grow, thanks to the large number of people who turned to their channel to see the vote counts. They could finally stand on their own. Marinho and some PDS politicians' attempts to convince president Figueiredo to terminate this rival TV station after the whole debacle fell on deaf ears. He, to put it nicely, didn't care about things like these anymore. He just wanted to finish his term, retire, and be forgotten (5).
Now, for those results as a whole...
The São Paulo gubernatorial candidates. From left to right: Lula (PT), Reynaldo de Barros (PDS) and Franco Montoro (PMDB).
It was a bloodbath. A complete, absolute erasure of PDS all over the country, except the Northeast. Even in that region, the opposition had a victory in the state of Pernambuco, one of the "fantastic four". Their greatest victory, without a doubt, was São Paulo, where PMDB candidate Franco Montoro obliterated PDS candidate Reynaldo de Barros by a 55-21 percent margin. PTB scored only one, crucial victory, Leonel Brizola in Rio de Janeiro, one of the richest and most populous states in the country.
Complete and utter annihilation...
The only state where PT won more than 5% of the vote was São Paulo, where gubernatorial candidate Lula got a respectable 18% of the vote. He achieved this number thanks to the votes of the ABC, winning the cities there by a slim margin over Montoro. This meant that most of those cities elected petista mayors, thanks to the bound vote. These mayors, particularly Santo André's Celso Daniel (6), would become models and examples to be followed, appearing in the party's TV ads all over the contry in future elections (7).
Santo André mayor and future star (no pun intended) Celso Daniel.
As for Rio Grande do Sul? Well, PMDB candidate Pedro Simon did win a very tight victory, less than one percent ahead of... Alceu Collares. Yes, you read that right. Poor Jair Soares was stuck third place. For Pernambuco's Roberto Magalhães, the defeat wasn't as embarassing, but still a stinging one.
The opposition sweep was also felt in Brasília, thanks to the bound vote. It seemed that this law, invented to be a hurdle to the opposition, turned on its creators. Thanks to that, PDS lost the majority it once held in the Chamber of Deputies, where none other than Ulysess Guimarães would later be elected president of said house. The only reason they still held the Senate was the fact that only one third of it was renovated, and the "bionic" (appointed) senators chosen in 1978.
PI: João Lobo (PDS) RJ: Saturnino Braga (PTB) RN: Carlos Alberto (PDS)
RS: Paulo Brossard (PMDB)* SC: Pedro Ivo Campos (PMDB)*
SP: Almino Afonso (PMDB) SE: Albano Franco (PDS)
*Members of the "Fantastic Four"
Chamber of Deputies:
PMDB: 225
PDS: 200
PTB:35
PT:19
------------------
Notes:
(1) IOTL, Brizola was the one who said this quote, since he was the one who almost got his victory stolen by Marinho.
(2) This was what happened OTL. PMDB won ten races, and PDT one. PDS won twelve governorships.
(3) And here's where @Dan1988's contribution comes in. Thanks to several discussions I had with him, I found out that there were 4 main contenders for TV Tupi's corpse: Grupo Silvio Santos (pro-government, won OTL and founded SBT), Abril (owner of the Veja magazine, pro-opposition), Grupo Bloch (who won OTL and created Rede Manchete, pro-government) and Jornal do Brasil (pro-opposition). Here, instead of giving the two halves of Tupi to pro-government groups, he gives one half to the opposition (Jornal do Brasil, who created TTL's Rede Brasil) as part of his transition to democracy. Much to Roberto Marinho's despair.
(4) IOTL, this happened in Rio de Janeiro, and became known as the Proconsult Case. It happened almost exactly as described in the story. While it doesn't occur in RJ ITTL, since Brizola's victory is just too big to steal, it happens in the "Fantastic Four".
(5) Translation: "F*ck this, f*ck you all, I don't care about this sh*t anymore." A side effect from the scandals of past year.
(6) IOTL, Celso Daniel ran for mayor in 1982, but was defeated. The only mayor PT elected IOTL was Gilson Menezes, in Diadema, also in the ABC. Here, thanks to a better result by Lula (he won 10% IOTL) PT wins in São Bernardo, São Caetano and Santo André as well. This means that they start with four mayors, rather than just one, allowing the party to become a relevant electoral force not just in São Paulo, but nationwide, a few years earlier.
(7) Expect these mayors, Celso Daniel in particular, to be treated like Olívio Dutra in Porto Alegre was: big, shiny models to be put on display to prove how great PT is.
By the time the new legislators and governors were inaugurated in 1983, everyone could see that the writing on the wall, and that PMDB and its allies would win the next presidential election, scheduled to happen in 1985. There was one question in the air, however: how would this election be carried out? Recently elected president of the Chamber of Deputies Ulysses Guimarães immediatly stated his main objective before a press conference in Brasília: To ensure that in 1985, the people, rather than Congress, elected their own president. This would be done by passing a constitutional amendment through both houses of Congress.
This was easier said than done. The opposition held a majority in the Chamber of Deputies, 281-200 against PDS (1). However, such an amendment would need 320 votes (needing at least 39 PDS deputies to vote for it), a two-thirds majority, to go to the Senate. The situation in the upper house was even worse, thanks to the appointed senators that gave PDS a majority there. These daunting odds didn't scare the opposition as much as it potentially could have. After all, they already elected more than half of the country's governors, a clear sign that they had the support of the people.
Recently elected Chamber president Ulysses Guimarães, surrounded by allies.
The first step was taken by deputy Dante de Oliveira (PMDB-MT), who introduced the amendment proposal, co-signed by 219 fellow deputies and 33 senators (2). The numbers made it clear that its approval couldn't be an exclusively parliamentary move. They nedded outside support, popular mobilization for it. That mobilization began in March 31, with a small protest of about a thousand people (3) in the Pernambuco municipality of Abreu e Lima demanding the passage of the amendment. That protest was the birth of the Diretas Já! (Direct (elections) Now!).
The movement slowly began to grow. In June, there were similar, larger protests in Goiânia (Goiás) and Teresina (Piauí), that rallied about ten and five thousand people, respectively. In August, there were several simultaneous protests all over the state of Pernambuco, and in November, more than thirty thousand people marched across the city of São Paulo, all supporting the call for direct presidential elections. These rallies would soon be dwarfed by the ones that would eventually be arranged and conducted next year.
That's a lot of people.
São Paulo, January 25, 1984. More than 350.000 people occupied the Praça da Sé, in what became the first "official" rally of the Diretas Já! campaign. Official not only due to its massive size, but by the fact that several artists, trade union leaders and politicians spoke on that event. From that day forward, the campaign for direct presidential elections became a mass movement, getting the attention of the media. In one embarassing fiasco, TV Globo said that the rally was actually a celebration of the city's 400 year anniversary (4). This maneuver obviously didn't work, instead reinforcing its reputation as a government mouthpiece and making people turn to TV Brasil whenever they wanted to see any news related to politics.
The acquired enough mass to spread around the country with an impressive speed after the rally. Similarly sized protests happened in Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janeiro, each growing larger than the last. In April 10, one million people occupied the Candelária, Rio de Janeiro, spreadeing across the President Vargas Avenue. Most important opposition leaders, obviously including incumbent PTB governor Leonel Brizola, spoke to the crowd. Finally, on April 16, 1.5 million people marched from the Praça da Sé to the Vale do Anhangabaú, São Paulo, in what would be the last great rally of the campaign before the amendment, by now nicknamed Dante de Oliveira after its author, would be voted on by the Chamber of Deputies.
Finally, April 25, the great day, arrived, and the amendment was put to vote. However, it wasn't so straightforward. A day before, president Figueiredo declared a state of emergency in Brasília, which was quickly occupied by troops under the command of general Newton Cruz, a notorious hardliner. These troops also took over part of the Esplanada dos Ministérios, and were stationed right in front of the National Congress building.
A blackout occured in parts of the parts of the South and Southeast, frustrating many who hoped to hear the results through the radio, and telephone lines were cut. The Chamber of Deputies was now virtually isolated from the rest of the country. To make things worse, a large number of PDS deputies, led by São Paulo's Paulo Maluf, boycotted the session, in one last attempt to stop the amendment from getting the necessary two-thirds of the vote.
It was only late in the night and very early morning of April 26 that the results were announced one by one. 10 deputies abstained, 51 voted against it, and 98 didn't even show up to vote. 320 deputies, the exact two-thirds needed, voted for it, ensuring that it would go to the Senate (5). There was much celebration all over the country, as shown by the rallies and marches made in state capitals and smaller municipalites pretty much everywhere. One particular Rio de Janeiro bartender said in an interview that so many fireworks were fired that it all seemed like it was New Year come early (6). Despite all its attempts, the dictatorship suffered yet another humiliating defeat.
In the immediate time after the victory, no more rallies or protests were made. An outside observer would think that this was due to arrogance from the Diretas Já! members, but in reality, everyone involved was just completely exhausted. Besides, the new vote was scheduled to happen in June 5, giving people plent of time to rest. New events were finally held mid-May, in both the capitals and smaller cities and towns of Brazil. Finally, on June 4, the day before the Senate vote, the opposition mobilized absolutely everything they had, artists, union leaders, absolutely no one and nothing was spared.
On that day, several simultaneous protests, marches and rallies erupted on all state capitals in the country, with no exception. Everybody who could walk and hold a flag for the movement was on the streets, from the Oiapoque to Chuí (7). The smallest capital protest, in Macapá, had fifty thousand people. The largest ones, in Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, mobilized from one to two million people, all making the same chant: Diretas Já!
The vote began the following day. This time, there was no grand spectacle, no military occupation, no boycott, no communication cuts, nothing. Many were optimistic, seeing that the lack of any attempt to even intimidate the opposition was a sign that the dictatorship already recognized its defeat. Some were even debating who they were going to vote for next year. As time went by, however, this optimism gave way to nervousness, and eventually despair.
It was all over. The amendment fell short by ten votes, thanks to the bionic senators. The 1985 presidential election would be made by Congress, and people who were ready to drink to celebrate their victory instead drank to drown their sadness.
------------------
Notes:
(1) These numbers were much closer OTL, with 244 opposition deputies versus 235 PDS members.
(2) IOTL, 177 deputies co-signed it, along with 24 senators.
(3) IOTL, this initial protest had the participation of only a thousand people, since they still feared repression by the military. Here, greater insatisfaction and that one BH protest in the Tancredo Affair make people less afraid. This means that this protest, along with the following ones in Teresina, Goiânia and the São Paulo Praça da Sé are a few thousand members larger.
(4) This actually happened OTL, but TV Globo didn't have a competitor eager to capitalize on its mistakes (TTL's TV Brasil).
(5) IOTL, 298 deputies voted yes, 65 voted no, 3 abstained and 113 didn't show up. Thus, it fell short.
(6) You all know who that bartender is.
(7) Northern and southern extreme points of Brazil.
And here we go, to finally end Chapter 1! ------------------ Part 10: Endgame
With the end of the movement for direct elections, the focus was now on the negotiations that would happen to decide who would be the candidates for next year's election. For the opposition, this process was very easy: Ulysses Guimarães, now fondly called "Senhor Diretas" thanks to his commitment to restoring the democratic process, was universally acclaimed as the candidate of the coalition called "Aliança Democrática" (Democratic Alliance), composed by PMDB, PTB and PT, with Rio Grande do Sul senator Paulo Brossard as his running mate. The only roadblock they had was Ulysses himself, who repeatedly voiced that he would rather be elected by the people. PT had a few internal issues, because some members believed that taking part in the whole affair was a betrayal of Diretas Já. These few dissidents would leave the party and later found thePeople's Socialist Party (1).
Senhor Diretas being carried by the people.
For PDS, the inner cracks within the party, growing larger and more numerous after the defeats in the 1982 elections, now made it explode into a civil war. The real objective was not winning the presidency: everyone knew that Ulysses was going to win (2). The real fight was over who would control the party and its formidable machine after the election. The main combatants in this conflict were São Paulo deputy and former governor Paulo Maluf, the one who led the boycott against the Dante Amendment, and the northeastern coronéis (oligarchs) like José Sarney (king of Maranhão), Antônio Carlos Magalhães (king of Bahia) and their allies, like vice-president Aureliano Chaves.
The ambitious (and corrupt) Paulo Maluf. On the right is his ally and successor as SP governor, José Maria Marin.
At first, the dispute was somewhat even. After 1982, the playing field began to favor Sarney and ACM, due to the fact that all of the remaining PDS governors and most of the politicians were in the Northeast, their area of influence. In an attempt to increase his prestige inside PDS, Maluf led the boycott against the Dante amendment. His failure in stopping the law from going to the Senate was disastrous for his candidacy, but he still had some supporters.
After the direct election amendment was defeated, the tensions inside PDS escalated to a feverish temperature. Sarney, national president of the party, proposed to Figueiredo that the presidential candidate be chosen through a primary, to deescalate the situation. This idea was readily supported by ACM and company. Maluf immediatly objected, saying that the primary would give his opponent an unfair advantage, and pressured Figueiredo to revoke it. The president refused (3), and the primary was held in July 5, pitting Maluf against Aureliano Chaves, supported by the coronéis. He was predictably defeated.
Maluf and Aureliano Chaves, pretending that they're not enemies.
That wasn't the end of it. Maluf, instead of conceding, announced that he and his supporters would leave PDS and found a new party, the Liberal Front Party (PFL), and either vote against Chaves in the election or not vote at all (4). He offered his support to Ulysses Guimarães in the election, a proposal that was quickly refused by the peemedebista (5). The split in the government party had already ensured the opposition's victory, and that the election would be a mere formality.
January 15, 1985. Election Day. All of Congress, deputies and senators, were assembled on what would be the last indirect election in Brazil's history. The results and their evolution were displayed on live television, for everyone in the country to see.
The triumphant democrats.
Ulysses easily trounced Aureliano. Finally, after twenty-one years, the dictatorship was over. Brazil had a civilian president, and was free to walk another path.
To create a New Republic.
End of Chapter 1 ------------------
Notes:
(1) IOTL, PT refused to support Tancredo with that very argument. Here, they support Ulysses, who's not as moderate and far more prestigious among the left. This makes the far-left petistas leave PT and later found a party full of far-left loons who rant about revolution, like OTL's PCO and PSTU.
(2) OTL, PDS had an Electoral College majority. ITTL, they don't.
(3) IOTL, Figueiredo yielded to Maluf's pressure and vetoed the primary. In the national PDS convention, Maluf defeated Sarney and ACM's candidate, Mário Andreazza.
(4) IOTL, Sarney and ACM were the ones who abandoned PDS after their defeat. Tancredo accepted their support, and Sarney became his running mate. The rest is history.
(5) Since the opposition already has an Electoral College majority ITTL, they don't need the support of the widely and wildly despised Paulo Salim Maluf.
A little update on our northern brothers! Also, WIKIBOX TIME!
------------------ Foreign Snapshot: The (literal) Collapse of the Perfect Dictatorship
Brazil wasn't the only ailing dictatorship in Latin America. The continent was, after all, full of them, most of them consisting of military juntas intalled through coups in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. The one exception was Mexico. Ruled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) since 1929, it was much older and more entrenched than its fellow dictatorships, and its presidents were civilians. This didn't mean it was any less willing to use massive amounts of brute force to suppress dissent, as shown by the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre and the Halconazo ("Hawk Strike") of 1971. It held presidential elections that were mostly a sham, since PRI's power was so absolute that the PAN (National Action Party, PRI's conservative opponent) candidates were lucky if they won 15% of the vote.
The president had the effective power to appoint his successor (the "dedazo", pointing of the finger), who was guaranteed to win due to the reasons already stated. This kind of political system obviously generated huge amounts of corruption, thanks to its excessively centralized nature and overall lack of accountability. Even with these problems, the dictatorship not only survived, but thrived, for a very long time. This happened because the mexican economy kept a steady growth and low inflation from the forties all the way into the seventies (the Mexican Miracle), making sure enough people stayed happy and satisfied with what they had. It seemed so strong that Peruvian writer and future president Mario Vargas Llosa (1) called Mexico the "Perfect Dictatorship".
It would all fall apart.
Literally. Very, very literally.
Ruins of the then famous Hotel Regis.
Mexico, suffering a grave economic crisis since the late seventies, was a rotten, hollow tree, waiting to fall with a decisive blow. That hit came in September 19, 1985, when a 50 second long earthquake struck Mexico City, which was preparing to host next year's World Cup. Hundreds of the capital's buildings, completely unprepared for such an event thanks to years of PRI mismanagement and corruption, crumbled like houses of cards, while thousands more were severely damaged. Thousands of people were killed in what was the single worst tragedy to hit Mexico City in the twentieth century.
International reaction was swift, with thousands of volunteers and billions of dollars being offered to the mexican government. Aid that said government... refused. President Miguel de La Madrid and other high-ranking PRI members and ministers were nowhere to be seen. Not only that, but looting was rampant all over the capital, because the military was not deployed to help in the rescue efforts or guarantee order (2). The leaderless city's population was forced to rebuild their homes by itself, with no aid from the government or from outside. And so they did it. Alone.
Without PRI.
Fast forward to 1988. The government was now hopelessly unpopular. In the 1986 World Cup, president Madrid was mercilessly booed in the opening ceremony (3). Now, in a general election year, the angry population would try to do what was once seen as impossible: kick PRI from power, and not just for a while either, but for good.
Miguel de La Madrid on the World Cup.
Surprisingly enough, PRI's greatest challenger did not come from PAN, but was rather one of their own: Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, former governor of Michoacán and son of Lázaro Cárdenas, one of Mexico's greatest presidents. He first presented himself as the member of a reformist, left-wing faction from within the party, hoping to become the PRI candidate. His position was clearly superficial, since he was not close to the government at all. When he was predictably brushed aside and the president appointed minister Carlos Salinas de Gortari to be his successor, Cárdenas and his fellow reformists left the party.
Now no longer members of PRI, the Cardenistas allied themselves with several small left-wing parties, uniting them into a single electoral force called the Frente Democrático Nacional (National Democratic Front), and began to campaign across the country. But even with the all the corruption, crisis, poverty and the earthquake, they knew this wouldn't be an easy election. Salinas enjoyed the support of the country's main trade unions, most important politicians, the public machinery, and, in case things got real hairy, PRI could very well rig the election. And PAN candidate Manuel Clouthier was not a non-factor either.
After months of enthusiastic campaigning the great day, July 6, 1988, arrived. People left their homes to vote in what would be the country's first real election in its history. The FDN campaign took the measure of setting parallel vote counts, just in case PRI tried to pull a Brazil on them, with Televisa as their TVGlobo (4), which was certainly possible.
Finally, the voting stopped, and people went back to their homes to see the first results. And they were promising: for some time, Cárdenas held a steady ten point lead over Salinas, with PAN candidate Manuel Clouthier in third. Then, on the middle of the night, Interior Secretary Manuel Bartlett announced that the counting would be suspended, since the phone lines that transmitted the results were saturated. For many, there was no doubt of what was about to happen: PRI was going to rig the vote.
Thousands of people in Mexico City and other major urban center took to the streets, chanting "El pueblo votó y Cárdenas ganó!" ("the people voted, and Cárdenas won!"). The confusion lasted around two hours, and the results were once again transmitted through radio and television. To everyone's surprise, Cárdenas still held a three point lead over Salinas. It was over. The opposition's victory was simply too big to steal (5).
The Perfect Dictatorship was dead.
------------------
Notes:
(1) Spoilers...
(2) IOTL, the mexican government did refuse international aid for a time before they yielded, and the army wasn't deployed initially. Here, Madrid and his PRI cronies screw up even more.
(3) Look at this :
(4) From the little I've read about Televisa, it seems like it was/is Mexico's TV Globo. Also, the whole Brazil rigging affair of 1982 became an international scandal, one that wasn't forgotten by FDN.
(5) Cárdenas did win the election IOTL, but he got stolen out of the mexican presidency.
This will be the last part of this foreign interlude. ------------------ Foreign Snapshot: Other events, 1980-85
1980
September 22: Iraq invades Iran.
November 4: Ronald Reagan is elected president of the United States, crushing incumbent president Jimmy Carter and winning 48 states and 509 electoral votes. Carter wins only Georgia and Rhode Island (1).
Also November 4: Denis Healey narrowly defeats Michael Foot in the UK Labour Party leadership election (2).
December 22: USSR leader Leonid Brezhnev dies after suffering a stroke (3). He is succeeded by Yuri Andropov, who begins a large anti-corruption campaign soon after taking power.
1981
May 24 and July 31: Jaime Roldós, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, leader of Panama, make official flights in the respective days. Their planes reported some issues, but they both landed safely (4).
October 9: Egyptian president Anwar Sadat narrowly escapes an assassination attempt, a reprisal against his peace treaty with Israel, made in 1979. Vice-president Hosni Mubarak is not as lucky, however, and dies on the spot (5).
1982
April 2--June 14: The argentine dictatorship, trying to rally its dissatisfied people around the flag, invade the Falkland Islands. They are crushingly defeated by Great Britain.
July 13--August 12: After expelling Iraqi troops from its borders, Iran launches an offensive codenamed Operation Ramadan. Contrary to what was expected, their target was not Basra itself, but rather Amarah, strategically located between Basra and Baghdad. The surprised Iraqis were forced to retreat, but not before setting the Al-Fakkah oil field on fire. These events provoke new a rise in oil prices, which were falling since the start of the decade (6).
November 2: US midterm elections: Thanks to this price raise, the Democrats win several tight races in the US Senate, chief among them California, wher governor Jerry Brown defeated San Diego mayor Pete Wilson by 49.3--48.1 (7). They also elect the country's first ever black governor, California's Tom Bradley. The overall Senate score is 51 D to 49 R.
Senator-elect Jerry Brown and Governor-elect Tom Bradley giving an interview.
1983
February 6--26: Iran lauches an offensive towards Basra, codenamed Operation Before The Dawn. They fail miserably, and the war degrades into a stalemate.
June 9: UK PM Margaret Thatcher, unpopular thanks to her economic policies, wins a general election thanks to the surge in her approval rating caused by the victory in the Falklands War. The Conservative Party wins 372 seats in Parliament, ahead of Labour, who won 242 seats (8).
September: Kurds rebel against Iraqi authority, opening a new front in the Iran-Iraq War.
October 30: Argentina's military dictatorship finally gives way to democracy, with the election of president Raúl Alfonsín, a member of the UCR. He also gains a majority in both houses of Congress (9).
1984
January 24--May 6: The very popular Jaime Roldós is succeeded by his vice-president, Osvaldo Hurtado, as President of Ecuador, after an easy election victory.
May 6: Panama democratically elects Arnulfo Arias president. A member of the opposition, he was deposed by a coup led by none other than Torrijos himself after only eleven days as president in 1968. Despite fears that the panamanian dictator would orchestrate a new coup, he was allowed to assume the presidency. He would rule the country until his death in 1988, in the middle of his term.
May 12: USSR leader Yuri Andropov dies. He is succeeded by his close ally Mikhail Gorbachev, who finds the country in a slightly better state than it was before, thanks to the high oil prices and the years of anti-corruption purges. This allows him to start reforming the ailing empire, which is losing its grip on the Warsaw Pact.
July 23: Israeli general election day. Shimon Peres, leading the Alignment alliance, faces off against Likud, led by incumbent prime minister Yitzhak Shamir. Peres wins a slim but clear majority (10).
Ronald Reagan having a chat with israeli PM Shimon Peres.
November 6: US president Ronald Reagan is reelected with a comfortable margin, winning 41 states and 413 electoral votes. The Democratic candidate, Colorado senator Gary Hart, won 9 states and 125 electoral votes. Among the downballot races, African-American Roland Burris is elected senator for Illinois, defeating incumbent Charles Percy by a small margin thanks to a massive win in Cook County.
1985
Throughout the year: Iran makes small advances on Iraqi Kurdistan and around Basra. By now, Saddam's forces have begun to use chemical weapons on a large scale, ensuring that any large Iranian offensives suffer massive casualties.
April 22: Beginning of the Trial of the Juntas in Argentina. As a result of said trial, most of the high-ranking members of the argentine dictatorship, like former presidents Jorge Rafael Videla and Roberto Viola, are sentenced to prison.
------------------
Notes:
(1) ITTL, Jerry Brown doesn't run for president in 1980. This means Ted Kennedy does better in his challenge against Carter, and the party is even more split. As a result, Reagan wins Maryland, Hawaii, West Virginia and Minnesota, which were single digit wins for Carter OTL. This worse defeat ensures that Walter Mondale loses to Gary Hart in the 1984 Democratic primary.
(2) IOTL, Michael Foot defeated Healy by a close margin. The party later suffered a split between left and right, and it was butchered in the 1983 election. Here, with Healey at the helm, the split isn't so great, and they lose a little less.
(3) Brezhnev was old, and had a very unhealthy lifestyle, so it's not hard for him to die a little earlier. This gives Andropov a little more time (about two years) to rule, and purge corruption for longer than he did OTL. This ensures that he's immediatly succeeded by Gorbachev, instead of by Chernenko.
(4) The planes carrying these two leaders crashed. Ecuador lost a very young and promising leader who had ruled the country since 1979 (so he ruled for less than two years of a five year term). In Panama's case, Torrijos' untimely death created a crisis that allowed the rise of Manuel Noriega.
(5) Sadat died and Mubarak was wounded, but lived. The fates here are reversed.
(6) IOTL, Operation Ramadan was a head-on attack against Basra, which predictably failed. Here, they instead try to cut it off from the rest of Iraq, achieving better results. A godsend for the USSR.
(7) They win the Minnesota, Missouri, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Connecticut races. As for California, Brown's choice not to run in 1980 makes him a little less unpopular, which allows him to defeat Wilson. This has the effect of making Tom Bradley to win the governor's race (much closer than the Senate race IOTL).
(8) A much better result for Labour than OTL, where they won only 209 seats to the Tories' 397 seats.
(9) Alfonsín's UCR won a majority in the lower house OTL, but not in the Senate.
(10) IOTL, Peres didn't win a majority, forcing him to divide his term: two years as PM for him, two years for Shamir. His victory will have a very important consequence ITTL.
New president Ulysses Guimarães inherited a country with a very, very bad shape. Oil prices, whose rise in the early seventies fueled the economic crisis of the dictatorship, seemed to be falling in the early eighties. However, the eruption of the Iran-Iraq War made them grow once more, creating even more difficulties for a country that imported most of its oil from foreign countries. The incentives the past government gave to alcohol production (the Proálcool program) helped, but complete independence from fossil fuels was just not possible. Still, it helped soften the economic hit that was Operation Ramadan and its burning of the Al-Fakkah oil field.
One couldn't forget the massive socioeconomic inequality, that restricted Brazil's consumer market, strangling economic growth. A large inflation rate, one that reached 215% a year in 1984, and that reached 12% a month in March, when Ulysses took office. This inflation increased the cost of living at the same time that it devalued wages, deepening the already mentioned inequality. The worst economic scar by far was the massive, 100 billion dollar foreign debt, created by the dictatorship's policy of building huge, insanely expensive and often useless public works, like the Transamazonian Highway, that linked nothing to nowhere.
An unpaved segment of the Transamazonian Highway. It will probably never be finished.
Even then, despite the extremely fragil position Brazil was in, in 1985, most ordinary people were very confident and optimistic about the country and their own future. This year was different: after 21 years, Brazil was finally a democracy, and the new president wasn't just some random technocrat, but a man who fought as hard as he could to restore it. Indeed, Ulysses Guimarães' inauguration was watched by millions of people all over the country, and in Brasília itself, he was cheered by the crowd that gathered there to watch the ceremony. He was Brazil's great hope.
The situation in Congress, despite his huge victory in the Electoral College just a few months ago, was not as favorable as it seemed. There were two main power blocs in it: the first, larger one was the Centrão ("big center") which, despite its name, was actually a conservative group composed of of PDS, PFL and a large number of PMDB congresspeople. The second, smaller and left-wing group was the progressive bloc, composed of PTB, PT and the other half of PMDB members. While there was a certain balance of power between the two groups in the Chamber of Deputies, where they had similar numbers, the Senate was mostly dominated by the Centrão. This was bad news for president Ulysses, since, despite being personally closer to the progressives, he still had to negotiate with the right-wingers. At the same time, if he got too close to them, he risked turning the Brazilian left into an enemy.
Senators Saturnino Braga (PTB-RJ) and José Sarney(PDS-MA), important members of the progressive bloc and Centrão, respectively.
But for now, everyone was still euphoric and optimistic. And it was then, within this honeymoon period that was the year of 1985, that the people who lived in the state capitals would finally elect their mayors. Before then, they were appointed by the governors. These elections also proved to be the first truly free ones in a very long time, since all parties, including the socialist party and the two communist parties (PCB and PC do B) were allowed to exist and run candidates for mayor.
No one expected anything less than an almost clean sweep of crushing PMDB victories all over the country. These expectations were duly met on November 15, where more than half of all the capitals elected PMDB mayors to govern them.
Their greatest victory, without a doubt, was São Paulo, where senator Fernando Henrique Cardoso was elected mayor. This victory was achieved thanks to an unexpected alliance between PMDB and PT in the city (1). At first, there was a third candidate, petista state assemblyman Eduardo Suplicy. Initial polling in the city suggested a tight race, one wher Jânio could win, thanks to vote splitting between FHC and Suplicy.
Since neither party wanted such a scenario to become reality, they struck a deal after long negotiations. Suplicy would drop out of the race, and become FHC's running mate. Meanwhile, Fernando Henrique would have to push a few left-wing policies, and appoint some petistas to his cabinet, like legendary educator Paulo Freire, who would become his Education Secretary. This was helped by the fact that FHC was one of the most outspoken progressives in PMDB, and a personal friend of Lula.
Once this alliance was sealed, Jânio had no chance of winning, and was easily trounced.
Still, large a sweep as it was, it wasn't all flowers and cheers for PMDB. The party was defeated by PDS in Florianópolis, Fortaleza, Natal, Salvador and Teresina (2). In Natal and Salvador (3), there were strong suspicions that the state governments there illegally supported their preferred candidates by using the public machine and buying votes in their favor. This was especially apparent in Salvador, where PMDB candidate and former mayor Mário Kértesz was defeated by PDS candidate Edvaldo Brito, also a former mayor, despite the former leading the polls by a large margin throughout the whole election.
PTB also achieved impressive results, winning not only the Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre mayoralties (which was expected, since party leader Leonel Brizola was very popular in these places) but also achieved upsets in the Northeast capitals of Recife and São Luís, where the party almost didn't exist.
The first was achieved by the fact that leading candidates Jarbas Vasconcelos (PSB) and Sérgio Murilo (PMDB) engaged in brutal attacks against each other. Murilo, at one point, was accused of murder, and later suffered an assassination attempt (4). This negative atmosphere allowed 29 year old PTB city councillor João Coelho to win the race with 35% of the vote. His campaign, despite having very little money, was more optimistic and policy-driven, striking a great contrast with the smearing wars waged by the two leading candidates, who didn't notice the young challenger advancing right below them.
In São Luís, the race was initially dominated by conservatives Jaime Santana (PFL) and Gardênia Gonçalves (PDS), who were in a tight race, within the margin of error of each other. State assemblyman Jackson Lago allied himself with every available party, creating a wide left-wing alliance that included the communists, PT and PMDB (5). While not as surprising as the Recife race, since Lago already had a long career that started in the seventies, it was still an upset.
PT also did surprisingly well. In Fortaleza, PMDB candidate Paes de Andrade was projected to win the race with 50% of the vote, ahead of PDS candidate Lúcio Alcântara. Alcântara won the race, but the biggest surprise of all was that the second place, instead of belonging to Andrade, but instead fell to petista assemblywoman Maria Luíza Fontenele. Predicted to win only 10% of the vote, she was instead only five thousand votes behind Alcântara, an impressive result for someone who didn't even have a plan to properly administrate the city, due to the sheer unlikeliness that she would achieve such a result (6).
However, if petistas were left amazed and somewhat frustrated about Fortaleza, in Goiânia, they celebrated. Federal deputy Darci Accorsi, PT's highest ranking member in Goiás, where the party had a token presence except for the captital, won a very close race against PMDB candidate Daniel Antônio. Antônio was seen as the overwhleming favorite, scoring 60% of the vote in one poll, while Accorsi scored only 10%. In the end, the PT candidate won by a tight 49.6%--45.4 margin (7).
Goiânia mayor-elect Darci Accorsi on the barber's chair.
Goiás PMDB governor Iris Rezende was so sure that his candidate would win that he did not even campaign for him. PT took advantage of that, with Lula and even Santo André mayor Celso Daniel campaigning for Accorsi and appearing on his TV ads. Accorsi, with Daniel at his side, promised the people of Goiânia that he would administrate the city much like Santo André was run by PT: an efficient, transparent and honest government (8). There was something that didn't appear in the ads, the fact that Celso Daniel had a large number of loyal city councillors, thanks to the now defunct bound vote. Darci had only a few allies (the 1985 election in the capitals didn't change councillors, only mayors), and had a hostile governor to boot. He would have some tough years ahead of him (9).
Soon, 1985 came to a close, and the fateful year of 1986 arrived. As it began, the honeymoon began to die. It was time for president Ulysses to make some tough choices.
Porto Alegre: Alceu Collares (PTB) Porto Velho: Jerônimo Santana (PMDB) Recife: João Ramos Coelho (PTB)
Rio Branco: Adalberto Aragão (PMDB) Rio de Janeiro: César Maia (PTB) Salvador: Edvaldo Brito (PDS)
São Luís: Jackson Lago (PTB) São Paulo: Fernando Henrique Cardoso (PMDB) Teresina: Átila Lira (PDS)
Vitória: Hermes Laranja (PMDB)
------------------
Notes:
(1) IOTL, there was no alliance between the two parties, and Jânio was elected with 37% of the vote, ahead of FHC, who scored 34% of the vote. Suplicy won 20% of the vote.
(2) IOTL, PDS (controlled by Maluf, and much smaller thanks to the exodus of coronéis who founded PFL) won only the São Luís mayoralty. Here, since they're stronger, they win more races (some of them with OTL PFL members, like Teresina's Átila Lira)
(3) In the OTL Natal race, it was discovered that governor Agripino Maia intended to buy votes for candidate Wilma Maia. Here, that scheme isn't discovered.
(4) The OTL Recife mayoral race was very, very dirty: Murilo accused Jarbas of beating his father, while Jarbas accused Murilo of murder. Here, the whole thing gets even worse and Murilo suffers an assassination attempt. This allows OTL third place finisher Coelho to win the election with a narrow margin. IOTL, the score was: Jarbas 35%, Murilo 29,5%, and Coelho with an impressive 23%.
(5) IOTL, the race was won by Gardênia Gonçalves, with 37% of the vote. Jackson Lago finished in third with 18%, ahead of PMDB candidate Carlos Guterres' 12%. The alliance between Lago and PMDB allows him to unite these votes, run a better campaign, and win the election. IOTL, he would later win the mayoralty in 1988.
(6) Fontenele may not know it, but she just dodged a bullet. IOTL, she won the election with ten thousand votes ahead of Paes de Andrade. The following administration didn't have a plan of government, had to deal with a hostile city council and a hostile state and federal government. She even got expelled from PT during her mayoralty, and ruined her young political career.
(7) IOTL, Antônio won the election with 48% of the vote, just ahead of Accorsi's 43% score. A better campaign and stronger PT overall change the result.
(8) That's a bit excessive. Still, I did say that Celso Daniel would become a PT star (pun intended).
(9) Mayor Accorsi will have to face the same difficulties that Fortaleza's Fontenele did OTL. However, he does have a plan of government to follow, with more fellow PT mayors around.
So, I literally deleted my first draft of this thing. Hopefully, this one will be better. ------------------ Part 2: Tough Choices February 23, 1986 Planalto Palace, Brasília, Federative Republic of Brazil
Today was an incredibly busy and important day in the capital of the Republic. President Ulysses was scheduled to unveil the plan that would tackle the economic crisis that the country was in. Naturally, many ordinary people were especially anxious about what would be done, and how it would improve their lives. Other, more powerful people who had contacts in Brasília, weren't all so happy or optimistic about it. Among them was Goiás governor Iris Rezende, who talked with the presidente no less than three times yesterday, almost begging the president to change some parts of the plan or even scrap it entirely. He argued that it would cause serious damage to PMDB in the short term, which mattered since there would be general elections in November 15.
For president Ulysses Guimarães, this was a very stressful occasion. Not only because of Iris' nagging, in which he clearly implied that he cared more about maintaining his coronel-like power in Goiás than the future of the country (1), but because of all the work that was put into the plan. The result of months and months of discussions with finance minister Francisco Dornelles would all be put to practice after today. He was convinced that watering it down as Iris suggested would little more than an attempt to buy the votes of the people while kicking the can down the road.
Still, the Goiás governor's warnings increased his stress. At first, he thought PMDB would tank in the short term, but would later rise again after the crisis was put under control and they were proven right.But what if the economy didn't recover? What if PMDB simply suffered too much of a hit in the elections to return as a major force? And the internal division between leftist and right-wing factions, would it become too great and split the party in two? What about PT, who could off progressive voters who would otherwise vote for PMDB, especially in São Paulo?
Speaking of leftists, one couldn't forget about RJ governor Leonel Brizola, who wouldn't waste any chance to grow PTB and improve his position for an inevitable campaign for the presidency. In the end, it was much better for Ulysses to think about what was about to happen, rather than a bunch of what ifs. Or else he would probably get a migraine, something he couldn't afford to suffer in the middle of his address to the nation.
Finally, the time had come for him to speak to the people. Sitting before a table, with two national flags behind him and with tens of TV and radio stations ready to record him, the president announced what was in the plan that was given the name Plano Cruzado.
Far, far away, in an apartment in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro...
A gray haired, balding man who, with his wife Neusa at his side, watched the television like a hawk, ready to listen to the president's words. At first, those words were what he expected to hear. Ulysses denounced the dictatorship's legacy of endless spending, unfinished projects, and inflation, citing how they harmed the people of Brazil, especially the poor and powerless. So far, nothing bad yet.
All of that quickly changed once these platitudes and attacks against the old order gave their way. With a heavy heart, president Ulysses Guimarães said that the government was forced to enact the following measures to save Brazil from an imminent economic collapse.
Some of the most important of these measures were:
The national currency was changed, from the old cruzeiro to the new cruzado, with Cz$ 1,00 (one cruzado) being worth Cr$ 1000 (one thousand cruzeiros);
Massive spending cuts, including infrastructure and education spending;
The privatization of some state-owned companies;
And, at last, the slow, gradual opening of national markets to foreign competition (2).
Anyone, including our character, could see the president cringing, almost crying while he announced the plan. Indeed, in the middle of his speech, Ulysses asked for a cup of water before going on. A few minutes after said speech ended and the TV channels returned to their usual programming, and after he wasn't as upset, the man went for the house telephone, and called for a very close friend of his. They talked about the Plano Cruzado, and what would be its immediate effects, for a few minutes. They finally concluded that Ulysses had no other choice, since he was held hostage by the Centrão. He ended the conversation with a quip:
"-- Well, you better get used to being called 'Rio de Janeiro governor-elect Darcy Ribeiro'."
------------------
Yeah, that man is none other than Leonel Brizola.
Notes:
(1) IOTL, Iris Rezende ruled Goiás like a king from 1982 to 1998, when he was defeated by the state's current monarch, Marconi Perillo (PSDB).
(2) Here, the difference to OTL is clear: Plano Cruzado, instead of consisting of a bunch of unsustainable wage and price freezes, is an austerity program, which won't be as disastrous, but far more unpopular initially.
------------------ Part 3: 1986 Elections, Part One
At first, in January, many believed that the 1986 state elections would be a repeat of last year's municipal elections: a PMDB sweep all over the country. In the Southeast, except Rio de Janeiro, with its popular PTB governor Leonel Brizola, the party was believed to be invincible, particularly in São Paulo, with the crushing victories of Franco Montoro four years before, and Fernando Henrique Cardoso in the capital last year. The South was also seen as a safe region, except Rio Grande do Sul, where governor Pedro Simon just barely defeated PTB candidate Alceu Collares, who was later elected mayor of Porto Alegre.
PMDB wasn't so heavily entrenched in the Center-West and North, but they were expected to hold. They won in 1982, after all, despite facing several disadvantages (1), so the government had a good reason to be optimistic in those states. The Northeast was by far the most interesting region. Nearly all states, except Pernambuco, had PDS governors. However, in 1985, the state capitals of Maceió (AL), Aracaju (SE) and João Pessoa (PB) elected PMDB mayors. Thus, president Ulysses and his colleagues hoped they could win at least a few more states, delivering a lethal blow to PDS and hopefully destroy it for good.
Maceió (AL) mayor Renan Calheiros, one of PMDB's most promising politicians in the Northeast.
All of that changed after the Plano Cruzado.
At first, it was popular, despite its draconian appearance. Thanks to the adoption of a new currency and the spending cuts, inflation collapsed, something that was quite literally felt in the pockets of millions of ordinary people. Finally, after years of increases, supermarket prices were lower, rather than higher, than before. The "dragon" of inflation was defeated. Unfortunately, it was replaced by another, one who had two heads: recession and unemployment.
The very spending cuts that cut down inflation also meant that several infrastructure projects were put on hold, some coming close to shutting down entirely. Hundreds of thousands of workers were laid off, and were forced to wander the streets looking for new jobs. At the same time, tens of thousands of stores, industries and other businesses shut down, because they were unable to compete with foreign products. They were forced to fire their workers, worsening the unemployment issue. Since jobless people obviously don't buy as many goods as their employed counterparts, sales collapsed, creating a deep recession in which Brazil's GDP fell a staggering 4% in 1986.
The government's approval rating predictably collapsed from 65% in February to around 35% in April. Suddenly, the elections weren't so predictable anymore. This was a disaster for PMDB, since these elections would decide the Constituent Assembly scheduled to gather in 1988 to write a new constitution for Brazil. This meant that whoever won the most seats in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies would not only leave their mark in the country for four years, but permanently change its course for many decades to come. An opportunity simply too great for either Sarney and his allies on the right, or Brizola, Lula and other leftists, to miss. They were starving dogs who just found a giant slab of meat waiting for them.
And they would get it no matter what.
------------------
One of PMDB's main targets was the state of Ceará, ruled by the same, PDS-aligned group since 1962: senator Virgílio Távora, former minister César Cals and lieutenant governor Adauto Bezerra. This triumvirate, called "três coronéis" (three coronéis, coronel being a slang for oligarch), easily elected incumbent governor Gonzaga Mota in 1982, who won with a crushing 65% of the vote. However, they were becoming weak and unpopular, for the people were tired of being ruled by the same trio for twenty four years. To make matters worse for the coronéis, Gonzaga Mota switched sides and became a member of PMDB.
The situation became slightly less one sided after Luís Alcântara, an ally of the triumvirate, unexpectedly became mayor of Fortaleza in 1985. Mota supported favorite turned third place finisher Paes de Andrade, and was humiliated. Still, PMDB hoped to capture the state in the state election, and presented a fresh new face as its candidate, a 38 year old businessman named Tasso Jereissati. The old order fielded Adauto Bezerra, in a race that became a battle between two very different generations, a young and bright one against a group that owed its power to the dead dictatorship.
The race began with Tasso gaining a seemingly invincible two digit lead over Bezerra. However, the unpopularity of the Plano Cruzado began to hurt him, and turned what was supposed to be a cakewalk first into an even field. Right before election day, the two candidates technically tied, with either Bezerra or Jereissati enjoying a two point lead over their adversary.
In the end, Tasso's victories in cities like Sobral and Fortaleza were unable to offset Bezerra's wide sweep of most of Ceará's interior. It would take some more time for the state to free itself from the três coronéis.
--------------
Paraíba was another major target for PMDB. However, if the Ceará election at first seemed like a cakewalk, the gubernatorial race here was much less so. Their candidate was former deputy and Sousa mayor Antônio Mariz, who had to face popular former PDS governor Tarcísio Burity. The two had a long, established rivalry: they fought over who would become the state's ARENA governor back in 1978, in the last indirect election for governor that took place. In 1982, Mariz joined PMDB and became its candidate for governor. He was predictably defeated by pedessista Wilson Braga, who enjoyed the support of then governor Burity.
The race, already difficult for the PMDB candidate, seemed to become an impassable mountain after the announcement of the Plano Cruzado. Nearly all polls predicted to a crushing two digit victory for PDS. But even then, not all was yet lost for Mariz. He had the support of the mayors of Campina Grande, Ronaldo Cunha Lima and João Pessoa, Marcus Odilon, the largest cities in the state. After months of long, arduous campaigning, Mariz managed to cut Burity's lead from twenty points, when the race started, to ten points, on election day. No one, not even Mariz himself, thought he could carry the day.
In the end, Burity lost to Mariz, falling short by a razor-thin margin of about two thounsand votes in what was one of Brazil's closest gubernatorial elections ever. Mariz became governor thanks to his crushing victories in João Pessoa and Campina Grande, where he got more than 70% of the vote in these cities, and his good standing in Paraíba's interior, since he was mayor of Sousa. Thus, Burity wasn't able to achieve the wide sweep that brought Adauto Bezerra to victory in Ceará.
It was one stunning and joyous upset in what became nothing less than a disastrous night for PMDB.
------------------
Notes:
(1) For more information, please read Part 8, Chapter 1.
------------------ Part 4: 1986 Elections, Part Two
Goiás was among the states that were believed to be among the safest for PMDB. Its incumbent governor, Iris Rezende, who was elected in 1982 with a stunning 70% of the vote, ruled the state with an iron hand, like a coronel. Many in the governing party were dissatisfied with the amount of power the governor held in his hands, which ensured that only his closest allies held any important positions in the government. The leader of this "rebel" faction was senator Mauro Borges, who was the state's last governor before the 1964 coup d'état, which forcibly removed him from his office.
Now, twenty-two years after his removal, Borges wanted to become governor again. For that, he intended to become the PMDB candidate: even with the Plano Cruzado's effects, he was popular enough among the people to win. This was something that was more easily said than done, since Rezende had complete control over the state party, and he would never allow someone who had greater stature in Goiás than him to succeed him. Thus, nobody was surprised when Borges lost the PMDB convention by a large margin to Henrique Santillo, Iris' candidate.
That wasn't the end of it though. Not even close.
Mauro Borges, along with his supporters, abandoned PMDB and joined the PDC (Christian Democratic Party), a tiny party that was founded last year, and became its gubernatorial candidate. He ran an anti-establishment campaign, branding Iris Rezende as a coronel and a "puppetmaster", who needed to have complete control over everything he touched, including the state and people of Goiás. This highly effective campaign, combined with what became known as the "Cruzado effect", allowed Borges to gain ground very quickly against Santillo. In the eve of election day, the PDC candidate held a steady, comfortable lead over his opponent.
In the end, Borges won as predicted, but his and Santillo's percentages were a little off, because nobody expected the PT candidate, Pedro Wilson, to gain a surprising 11% of the vote. He even got a plurality of the vote in Goiânia, where most of his votes unsurprisingly came from, thanks to the support he enjoyed from incumbent mayor and fellow petista Darci Accorsi.
------------------
The situation in the state of Amazonas was almost identical to that of Goiás. Its PMDB governor, Gilberto Mestrinho, irritated many within his party not only because of the power he held, but also because of his right-wing bent. This last trait enraged many leftists and progressives. It was only a matter of time before the party suffered a split within its rank, which happened after PMDB selected former Manaus mayor and Mestrinho ally Amazonino Mendes.
The dissatisfied progressives abandoned the party and rallied around the candidacy the of hot-headed firebrand deputy Arthur Virgílio Neto, who became a member of the tiny PSB (Brazilian Socialist Party). Arthur was the son of famous former senator Arthur Virgílio Filho, who was kicked of office by the dictatorship in 1969, a pedigree that gave him quite some power and name recognition. Unlike the centrist/center-right coalition that brought Mauro Borges to victory in Goiás, Virgílio's coalition, which included PTB and the communist parties (PCB and PCdoB), was a very leftist one. In the end, whatever unfair advantage that Amazonino held thanks to the state public machine governor Mestrinho used to support him were offset by the Cruzado effect and Virgílio's effective, populist campaign.
Virgílio's surprisingly large margin of victory owed itself to the excellent results he obtained in Manaus (the state capital) and Parintins, the state's most populous cities. In those two areas, he easily blew Amazonino out of the water, nullifying whatever advantage he had in Amazonas' large, nearly empty interior.
Poor, poor PMDB, harassed from both the left and the right.
A new character approaches...
------------------ Part 5: 1986 Elections, Part Three
If there was any state where PMDB was supposed to survive in, it was São Paulo. The wealthiest and most populous state in the country, it was where the party's most famous victory in the preceding elections happened. Not only in 1982, when governor Montoro easily obliterated PDS candidate Reynaldo de Barros, but in 1985, with Fernando Henrique Cardoso's overwhelming and triumphant election to the state capital's mayoralty. Many journalists and politicians believed that PMDB was simply invincible in the state, a massive misunderstanding created by the arrogance born from just too many victories.
São Paulo, even without the Cruzado effect, wasn't even close to being the peemedebista monolith that it seemed to be. The state had a vast, very conservative interior, and many in the capital, especially wealthy neighborhoods like Morumbi, were right-wing as well. The leader of PFL, deputy Paulo Maluf, reviled in the rest of the country, had many supporters in the state, and especially the capital, since many great infrastructure works were built when he was mayor and later governor. As a result of this, he was naturally expected to claim the governorship for himself again, instead of running for a new term in the Chamber of Deputies.
São Paulo's Marginal Tietê, one of the city's many avenues that were paved during Maluf's tenure as an appointed mayor.
As such, Maluf's announcement in early March that he would run for a second term in Congress, rather than for the state's highest post, shocked everybody. Instead, he and PFL put their weight and support behind another candidate (1). This candidate was a media baron and celebrity named Silvio Santos (his real name was Senor Abravanel), who belonged to the tiny PMB (Brazilian Municipalist Party). Maluf's endorsement was a godsend to his fledgling campaign, since it gave him precious TV airtime and money. To top it all off, shortly after this event, PDS announced almost unanimously that it would become a member of his coalition. The right was now solidly unified behind one candidate.
The same couldn't be said of PMDB. There were two candidates fighting for the gubernatorial nomination: incumbent lieutenant governor Orestes Quércia and Mário Covas, FHC's predecessor as mayor of São Paulo. To keep this internal battle from becoming too severe, the two candidates made a deal: Quércia would run for governor, while Covas ran for the Senate. This wasn't universally accepted: mayor Fernando Henrique, one of Covas' most enthusiastic supporters, refused to openly back or campaign for Quércia. The former senator and Campinas mayor shot back, accusing FHC of being a closet petista.
This was quite the attack, since PT nominated none other than Eduardo Suplicy (FHC's running mate in the mayoral election) as its candidate for the governorship. The petistas were eager to increase their share of the vote and get more than 20% of the vote, much to the despair of PMDB. To make matters even worse, Quércia was regularly dogged by accusations of corruption, something that pursued him since the 1970s, when he was mayor of Campinas.
These allegations were nothing compared to what was discovered in September. In that month, governor Franco Montoro was hit by a massive scandal involving his Security Secretary Michel Temer. Temer, pejoratively nicknamed "The Sinister Secretary" by the military police officers, was found out to have diverted large amounts of money from the government to fund his congressional campaign. Montoro himself wasn't personally implied in any wrongdoing, but his reluctance to fire Temer cut into his approval ratings. In the end, the "Sinister Secretary" lost his election, was fired, and was later sentenced to a few years in prison, any political ambitions of his utterly ruined (2).
Michel Temer.
Poor Quércia was obviously caught in the middle of the anti-corruption storm, and was now repeatedly asked every day about his fortune. His fate was sealed after he finally had enough of that and screamed at a reporter, calling him a liar and a slanderer, after being asked exactly about that one time too many (3).
In the end, no one was really surprised by Silvio Santos's victory. He swept much of the state's interior, including but not limited to cities like Ribeirão Preto and Presidente Prudente, along with the capital's wealthy central region. Suplicy easily swept the ABC, along with São Paulo's working-class periphery, and cut deeply into the progressive vote that, without the Cruzado effect, would have otherwise voted for Quércia.
------------------
Notes:
(1) ITTL, Maluf almost certainly cut a deal so he could count on the elected governor's support for the 1988 mayoral election in São Paulo. IOTL, he himself ran for governor and finished in third place.
(2) Temer was rather unpopular during his time as Security Secretary. The police officers asked governor Montoro to fire him more than once. Also, something like misusing public money certainly isn't too low for him (just look at his presidency...).
------------------ Part 6: 1986 Elections, Part Four
Of all the states where PMDB held the governorship, Rio Grande do Sul was the one where its grip on power was weakest. Its incumbent governor, Pedro Simon, was elected by an extremely slim margin over PTB gubernatorial candidate Alceu Collares in the 1982 election. Worse than that, the bound vote meant that only roughly a third of the State Assembly's seats were occupied by fellow party peemedebistas, with another third going to PTB and yet another one going to PDS. As such, governor Simon was forced to make several deals and concessions to either party in order to secure a majority in the state legislature, something that made him look weak to the state's population.
The situation got even worse after the 1985 mayoral elections, since PTB won many mayoral races all over the state. Their most important victories were in Canoas, RS's third largest city, where they elected Francisco Dequi (1), and Porto Alegre, where the victor was none other than Alceu Collares. These victories further strengthened their already strong position in the state, and few doubted that they had a very strong chance of capturing the governorship. A victory here was also especially important for the party, not just politically speaking, but almost a matter of honor to its president Leonel Brizola, since he was born in the state.
Mayor Collares having a chat with Lula.
Despite their electoral power, PTB was obviously not the only party who wished to control the state executive for the next four years. PDS wanted to avenge the humiliating defeat they suffered in 1982, and PMDB was desperate and completely willing to do everything it could to maintain power at any cost. As such, all three parties sought to nominate the strongest possible candidates. PTB selected Santa Maria mayor Carlos Renan Kurtz, while PDS selected former Canoas mayor Hugo Lagranha, and PMDB selected José Fogaça, former mayor of Porto Alegre (2).
At first, the polls indicated a messy three-way race where anyone could win, since all three candidates were very capable and charismatic on their own right. However, the Plano Cruzado soon made Fogaça's numbers sink like a rock, and the election was dominated by Kurtz and Lagranha, with the former gaining a clear and growing lead. This happened not only he didn't have the stain of the dead dictatorship in his career, but because he enjoyed the support of Brizola, who regularly traveled from RJ to his home state to campaign for Kurtz. The Old Caudillo was still very popular in RS, despite the fact that his governorship ended 24 years ago (3).
In the end, the PTB candidate, as expected, carried the day with a comfortable seven-point margin over Lagranha, who, despite scoring a better result than Jair Soares's crushing defeat four years ago, was hurt by PMDB's complete collapse in the state, preventing an even split of the progressive vote that could have allowed him to win. The greatest losers here were obviously Fogaça and his party, who collapsed from winning the governorship in the election four years before to not even cracking the 20% mark. And it would only get worse for them from now on.
Everyone's eyes were turned to PTB. Speaking before a crowd of around 25 thousand people in Porto Alegre, alongside fellow politicians like mayor Alceu Collares and senator-elect Sereno Chaise, who was the state capital's last elected ruler before the 1964 coup d'état forced him out of office, governor-elect Carlos Renan Kurtz gave a triumphant speech to the crowd. He promised he would lead a government that put people first, and make education its main priority, just like Leonel Brizola did back in the late fifties and early sixties. This state educational revolution would be spearheaded by the construction of hundreds of CIEPs.
CIEP? What is that supposed to be, you may ask. Scroll down, and you'll learn.
------------------
Politically speaking, Rio de Janeiro was a very unique state. An opposition stronghold during the dictatorship, it was widely expected to be carried by PMDB in the 1982 elections. But, instead of doing that, it became the only state in the country that didn't follow the common PMDB-PDS struggle seen everywhere else, and PTB candidate Leonel Brizola was voted into power with a comfortable margin. Peemedebista Miro Teixeira, the initial favourite to win the governorship, ended up in third place, behind PDS candidate Sandra Cavalcanti. The Old Caudillo and his followers successfully usurped PMDB's place as Rio's main anti-dictatorship group. And that was only the beginning of it all.
For decades, the people who lived in Rio's poorest areas (called favelas, or slums) had to contend with constant police incursions (officially to fight criminals and drug lords who occupied them) that almost always resulted in bloodshed. They also lived with the neverending threat of being forcibly expelled from their houses so they could make way for new development projects, condemning them to a homeless life unless they somehow found a new shanty to live in. And, finally, they had no access to basic services like running water, adequate sanitation or decent schools to study.
The Favela da Catacumba (Catacumba slum), which was demolished and had its inhabitants expelled in 1970.
As such it is very difficult to overstate just how unprecedented and drastic the policy changes that Brizola's administration implemented were. First and foremost, he immediatly ordered the police to cease all invasions, which, according to him, were ineffective at stopping crime and created nothing more than needless bloodshed. The state police's new targets were the death squads that terrorized Rio's low-income populations, often with the support of corrupt police officers, who were now prosecuted by the hundreds. Secondly, instead of continuing the forced removal policies championed by previous governments, the PTB administration focused on building the necessary infrastructure to provide running water and electricity to these areas.
And there was something else. Four precious letters that, after four years of government, became inseparable from governor Brizola and his PTB.
CIEP.
Governor Brizola's greatest legacy.
Those letters are an acronym for Centros Integrados de Educação Pública (Integrated Public Education Centers). Idealized by lieutenant governor Darcy Ribeiro, and architecturally designed by none other than Oscar Niemeyer himself, the CIEPs were giant public schools, each one of them able to provide care for around 1.500 children each. There, they would stay most of the day inside (from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, keeping them away from the streets -- and, therefore, crime) where they would not only study, but also play with each other, perform exercises, and eat the best food available in lunch time, which often were of better quality than what they ate at home. By 1986, more than 400 hundred CIEPs were already built (ensuring that more than 600.000 children were given proper education and a decent future) , and more than 200 were in the way. The people of Rio de Janeiro were witnessing a revolution.
With all these policies, it is logical to think that Brizola was extremely popular in the state, and whatever gubernatorial candidate he endorsed would easily be elected, ensuring that his precious CIEPs wouldn't just be shut down right after he left the Palácio Guanabara (the governor's mansion (4)). But it wasn't so simple: the governor's approval rating, while generally high, wasn't unanimous, especially among the middle and upper classes. Large portions of these two groups feared that Brizola's non-confrontational policy towards the favelas would allow crime to flourish within them, fears that were eagerly fueled by Roberto Marinho's TV Globo and the Revista Veja magazine. Only TV Brasil was even remotely friendly toward the governor.
A Revista Veja cover. The big words mean "Rio is Afraid" in Portuguese.
The PMDB candidate, former Niterói mayor Wellington Moreira Franco, hoped to exploit these fears and score a surprise upset victory against his PTB opponent, lieutenant governor Darcy Ribeiro. He counted with the full support of Globo and Veja, while Ribeiro relied on his powerful and popular patron, who was not afraid of using the public machine to propel his candidate's campaign (5).
Soon after campaign season began, initial polling indicated that Ribeiro held a comfortable lead over Moreira. Still, the peemedebista was within striking distance of his adversary, and immediatly issued ads highliting Rio's crime problem, where Moreira regularly appeared and promised that he would do whatever it it took to solve it. Meanwhile, Ribeiro's campaign focused on promising to protect the government's achievements, especially the CIEP program. However, he didn't have Brizola's charisma, and, for many ordinary people, education seemed to be a more "distant" issue when compared to the "shock value" crime held. As such, some expected Moreira to rise in the polls, and maybe even win the election, much to the Old Caudillo's despair.
And then president Ulysses Guimarães' Plano Cruzado came in, and Brizola could sleep without any worries.
Moreira's numbers immediatly plummeted, and Ribeiro's lead reached the double digits with ease. The grand upset the peemedebista dreamed of became more and more of a pipe dream, especially since his party withdrew funds that were supposed to go to his campaign and diverted them to other races, especially to Orestes Quércia and Henrique Santillo's ailing and ultimately doomed campaigns in São Paulo and Goiás, respectively. By October, Darcy held a massive 20 point lead, and the former mayor of Niterói's campaign ceased to speak about what policies he would strive for if he won the governorship, and pumped out more attack ads than ever before.
In one last, desperate attempt to win the hearts of at least some voters, Moreira not only accused his opponent of having ties with organized crime (an accusation that was supposedly proven by the state police's no-invasion policy), but he also promised to solve Rio's violent crime issue in less than six months (6). He was predictably treated as a joke after that, and, by November 15, governor Brizola could rest assured that his opponent would be obliterated, and his faithful lieutenant would continue his work.
It would be hard to overstate the sheer size of Darcy's victory, especially since the polls drastically underestimated it. They predicted that he would win by 15 points (a landslide), rather than the crushing 33 point margin he scored against Franco. He easily swept through the entire state, winning every municipality, even Niterói, the city Moreira once ruled. In his triumphant victory speech, with Brizola standing right at his side, governor-elect Darcy Ribeiro promised to build 500 more CIEPs, ensuring that every poor child in the state of Rio de Janeiro, whether they lived in the favelas of the capital and the Baixada Fluminense, the hills of Petrópolis and Nova Friburgo, or far-flung cities like Resende (birthplace of lieutenant governor-elect Noel de Carvalho) and Campos, all had the right to a decent future.
Meanwhile, with his legacy and power secured in this year's elections, Leonel Brizola could finally focus all his efforts towards getting... something else. Everyone knew exactly what he pursued. After all, it was something he dreamed of getting ever since he left Rio Grande do Sul for RJ (then a city-state called Guanabara) in 1962, back when he still had a moustache and a head full of black hair.
The Presidency.
------------------
Notes:
(1) IOTL, PDT won in Porto Alegre, but their Canoas mayoral candidate Francisco Dequi was defeated in Canoas by a tiny 6.000 vote margin. Here, with a stronger, more legitimate party, and a near statewide victory three years ago, Dequi wins the day with a tiny margin.
(2) IOTL, PDS governor Jair Soares appointed João Antônio Dib to the Porto Alegre mayoralty. Here, since Pedro Simon is the governor, José Fogaça gets to rule the capital instead.
(3) The guy ordered the construction of more than 6.000 public schools all over Rio Grande do Sul in his four year term, so his popularity really shouldn't be that surprising.
(4) IOTL, Moreira Franco was elected. Guess what he did right after Brizola left the governorship?
(5) Brizola might have been awesome and a (personal hero of mine), but he was a politician, and quite a crafty one at that. He would surely fight dirty if he thought he needed to.
(6) Believe me, he made that exact same promise IOTL. It's something only someone whose main priority is filling his own pockets -- like Moreira Franco -- could come up with.
------------------ Part 7: 1986 Elections, Overview
When people talk about the elections of November 15, 1986, there is a consensus that PMDB, regardless of president Ulysses Guimarães' untouchable personal popularity, was condemned be crushed, all thanks to the Plano Cruzado's (or just 'PC' for short) austerity measures, and that, if something else, or maybe even nothing, was done, the party wouldn't have suffered so many decisive defeats. The reality, however, is that Brazil's economic situation was already heading towards a catastrophe years before that, creating a poison pill that the government would be inevitably forced to swallow. The most that can be said is that maybe, with another approach to the economy, maybe PMDB's defeat wouldn't be as catastrophic, allowing it to maintain some sort of relevance, instead of de facto ceasing to exist shortly after the end Ulysses' presidency, and de jure after his death in 2001 (1).
Now, since we are clearly going too far forward in time, let us go back to right before November 15, 1986, and its immediate aftermath.
As discussed earlier, few expected the government to retain many governors, senators or deputies, thanks to the adverse (perhaps necessary, but that's talk for another day) effects of PC. To make matter worse, many of PMDB's more left-wing members abandoned their old party in favor of new, more progressive groups that were appeared with the end of the dictatorship, like Miguel Arraes, former governor of Pernambuco, who ran for the state governorship under the newly reborn PSB (Brazilian Socialist Party), and Chagas Rodrigues, former governor of Piauí, who returned to the ranks of Brizola's PTB (the party he belonged to before the 1964 coup d'état). These issues would do nothing except become ever more severe as time went on.
São Paulo senator Almino Afonso (mustachioed man wearing a black suit), one of the most vocal members of PMDB's progressive wing, joined PSB soon after PC was announced. Fortune would shine very brightly on him in the future.
The government was a large, bleeding whale trapped in shark infested waters. And, when the time came, everyone who had a mouth was eager to take a bite out of it.
Yes. Everyone.
If the elections that ocurred in 1982 were marked by an overwhelming popular rejection of the incumbent dictatorship, the 1986 general elections marked the end of the old bipartisan order that reigned until then, which were dominated by ARENA (now PDS) and MDB (now PMDB), with PTB, a small third party at the time, scoring a surprise victory in Rio de Janeiro. Now, no less than eight different political parties held at least one governorship, and the results in Congress were just as diverse, with several new, smaller parties gaining seats in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, especially in the former. Meanwhile, PMDB and PDS, which until then controlled 13 and 8 gubernatorial seats respectively, along with most of Congress, had no choice but to take the full brunt of the newcomers' powerful offensive, and collapsed. After November 15, 1986, both parties held only four governorships each, and lost most of their power in Congress. Finally, after decades of being trapped by the chains of bipartisanship, Brazil was truly a multi-party democracy once more (2).
It was time for the new and little ones, both from the right and the left, to shine.
On the right side of the political spectrum, the biggest surprise of all were PMB's two gubernatorial victories in the states of Mato Grosso, where they elected former governor Frederico Campos (he ruled the state from 1979 to 1983), whose victory was assisted by the fact that incumbent governor Raimundo Pombo abandoned PMDB for PTB and ran for the Senate, and refused to back Campos' main adversary, PMDB candidate Carlos Bezerra, critically weakening his candidacy. And, of course, one couldn't possibly ever forget Silvio Santos' decisive victory in São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest state in the country, which not only put the small party in a powerful political position, but also awarded them a strong candidate who had very good chances of reaching the presidency in 1989. In the legislative area, they elected a single senator, former governor Wilson Braga in Paraíba, and a few deputies, all from São Paulo.
Wait a minute, is that a TV Globo logo right behind him?
PFL, also on the right end of the political spectrum, also performed better than expected, especially considering the fact that their most important member and leader was none other than Paulo Maluf, who was still despised by large sectors of the population outside of his home state of São Paulo, thanks to constant and credible accusations of corruption and his close links to the military government. Although he decided not to run for the governorship, instead endorsing Silvio Santos, the party elected governors in three different states, the most important of them being Santa Catarina's Vilson Kleinubing.
Santa Catarina governor-elect Vilson Kleinubing (wearing glasses). He became a rising star within PFL, and would later become one of Paulo Maluf's fiercest opponents in its internal struggles.
The Christian Democrats (PDC) who were more centrist, elected two governors. One of them was the already mentioned Mauro Borges, in Goiás, while the other one was the ambitious 37 year old former mayor of Maceió, Fernando Collor de Mello. Later, the two men would clash for control of the party, since Borges was a centrist while Collor was an open conservative, one who was able to hide his conservatism behind his young and handsome looks. Finally, there was the Liberal Party (PL), who elected Itamar Franco to the Minas Gerais governorship. Itamar abandoned PMDB after he lost the party nomination to former Contagem mayor Newton Cardoso. With a broad alliance with centrist and center-left parties, he easily won the race, giving his new party a very important state to rule. Such domination, however, was not to last.
Governor Collor (PDC-AL) celebrating his inauguration. Maceió mayor Renan Calheiros (the man with glasses staring right at the camera), seeing the way the wind was blowing, abandoned PMDB and became his right hand man.
Now, let us go to the other end of the political spectrum.
For the first time since 1948 (3), the communists were allowed to send candidates to Parliament, without fear that they would be kicked out of their offices and persecuted later, thanks to their ideas. Both communist parties, the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party, led by Pernambuco federal deputy Roberto Freire) and PCdoB (Communist Party of Brazil, who had figures such as João Amazonas and Aldo Rebelo, who was first elected to Congress in 1982 as a member of PMDB(4)) elected five federal deputies each. It wasn't much, however, considering both parties were outlawed for decades until literally a year ago, it was a good start, especially considering Freire was Pernambuco's most voted congressman, receiving around 130.000 votes (5). Now, their supporters could freely wave their red flags, covered with stars and the hammer and sickle, without the possibility of getting arrested.
The other newcomer progressive party, PSB, won the governorships of Pernambuco and Amazonas. The victor in the former race was none other than legendary former governor Miguel Arraes, whose good governance of the state in the period from 1963 to 1964 gave him godlike levels of popularity, especially among the poorer masses. More than that, he had several followers and political allies, who all joined the new party along with him, like his own ambitious grandson, Eduardo Campos, and federal deputy and future senator Jarbas Vasconcelos. It was also benefited by the entry of other incumbent politicians, such as São Paulo senator Almino Afonso. Despite being barely a year old, the Socialist Party of Brazil was now a force to be reckoned with.
Jarbas Vasconcelos and Miguel Arraes.
The Workers' Party experienced a dramatic growth, becoming larger than the previously mentioned groups, thanks to the fact that they participated in previous elections, something that gave them a strong base and an already established structure from which they could grow from. While they won no governorships (a great dissapointment, since many in the party thought that Eduardo Suplicy had a real chance to win the São Paulo race), they doubled the number of deputies they had, and Lula became the single most voted federal deputy in brazilian history, with more than 850.000 votes (6). Just as important was the fact that they, for they elected not one but two senators, those two being Lauro Campos, from the Federal District, and famous jurist Hélio Bicudo, in São Paulo (7). The latter's victory was an epic nailbiter, where he very narrowly defeated former governor and far-right hack José Maria Marin by just 50.000 votes. The petistas that were elected in this decisive year, which included the already mentioned Lula and Hélio Bicudo, also had people such as José Genoino, Plínio Sampaio, José Dirceu, Chico Mendes, Marina Silva, Patrus Ananias, Virgílio Guimarães, among many others, became known as the "Geração de 86" (generation from 86). This group of people would, in the future, become influential, widely respected figures, and reach the highest posts of the federal government.
Eduardo Suplicy with three members of the Geração de 86. From left to right: Ivan Valente, Plínio Sampaio, Suplicy and José Genoino.
The political party that celebrated the results of the 1986 elections was, without a single doubt, the Labour Party. And they had excellent reasons to be festive: they won five gubernatorial seats, a huge leap from the single victory they had in Rio de Janeiro four years ago. They considerably strengthened their hold in RJ thanks to Darcy Ribeiro's crushing victory, and vindicated Alceu Collares' near-miss in Rio Grande do Sul four years ago by electing Carlos Renan Kurtz without much difficulty. Not only that, but they were also benefited by the defections of three PMDB candidates: Waldir Pires in Bahia, Chagas Rodrigues in Piauí and Mário Maia in Acre. These three defectors all won their races, esnuring that the party had a strong presence in most of the country, not just in the South and Southeast. In fact, the only region that didn't have at least one PTB governor was the Center-West.
And all of those gains were only in the executive area. In the Chamber of Deputies, they successfully elected people from several backgrounds, from intellectuals like Theotônio dos Santos (MG), an economist, famous singer and composer Gilberto Gil (BA) (8), and trade union leaders such as José Juarez Antunes (RJ), tripling the number of seats they held and becoming the single largest party in the lower house. In the Senate, where they until then had one single member, they won nine new seats. Rio de Janeiro senator Saturnino Braga, who was used to being a single and often lonely voice in the upper house, suddenly found himself leading a group that could actually make its voice heard, which was quite a leap from his previous position.
An inseparable duo.
The Brazilian Labour Pary showed to the country that it was a truly national party, one with strong roots in most of the country, rather than just a shiny vehicle whose only purpose was to allow its leader to make his inevitable run for the presidency. Not only that, but its position as Brazil's largest and strongest progressive party, and Leonel Brizola, the last heir of Getúlio Vargas' legacy, as the country's most important left-wing leader, was now completely unquestioned.
Results:
Gubernatorial seats:
PTB: 5 seats (+4) PMDB: 4 seats (-9) PDS: 4 seats (-4) PFL: 3 seats (+3, new party) PMB: 2 seats (+2, new party) PDC: 2 seats (+2, new party) PSB: 2 seats (+2, new party) PL: 1 seat (+1, new party)
Senatorial seats (only the results of the 1986 election, which is two-thirds of the Senate as a whole):
PTB: 130 seats (+95) PMDB: 98 seats (-127) PDS: 91 seats (-109) PFL: 62 seats (+35) PT: 52 seats (+33) PMB: 18 seats (+18, new party) PSB: 14 seats (+14, new party) PDC: 12 seats (+12, new party) PCB: 5 seats (+5, new party) PCdoB: 5 seats (+5, new party)
------------------
Notes:
(1) Spoilers...
(2) This is the complete opposite of what happened IOTL. The PMDB victory was so overwhelming that some people were afraid that it would become the Brazilian equivalent to Mexico's PRI. Seriously, they won 22 governorships.
(3) Between 1945 and 1948, the Brazilian Communist Party was allowed to function, and they had members in Congress. Some of the more famous politicians were writer Jorge Amado, Carlos Marighella and, of course, Luís Carlos Prestes.
(4) Aldo Rebelo tried to do that IOTL, but he didn't get enough votes. He only got into elected office in 1988, when he became a São Paulo city councillor.
(5) Freire got around 75.000 votes OTL.
(6) IOTL, Lula got around 651.000 votes, which was still a record that would be overcome only in 2002 and 2018, when the far-right crazies Enéas Carneiro and Eduardo Bolsonaro got 1.5 and 1.8 million votes respectively.
(7) IOTL, Bicudo ran, but ended up in third place, behind the victorious PMDB duo composed by Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Mário Covas, but less than one percentage point ahead of Marin. Here, with a stronger PT and with FHC out of the picture for now (he's mayor of São Paulo), he just barely catches the second seat. Also, since he's going to get especially well treated by his "companheiros", since he's one of PT first senators, don't expect him to become a right-winger anytime soon.
(8) Yes, that Gilberto Gil. This isn't really that outlandish, since he did run for the Salvador City Council just two years later (he originally wanted to run for mayor, but was barred from doing that by governor Waldir Pires), and became Lula's first Minister of Culture, with a tenure that lasted from 2003 to 2008.
I'm really, really sorry that I couldn't come up with a better title. Also, wikiboxes.
-------------------- Andean Snapshot: Our Weirdly Similar (but different) Neighbor
Peru. One of several south american countries that neighbor Brazil (there are a lot of those, so that's not really a surprise). Like it's giant western neighbor, its democracy was shattered in the 1960s when its civilian president was overthrown by a military coup. And, again, like us, the dictatorship that was established ruled the country until the 1980s, when they finally allowed the country's population to choose its presidents and legislators again.
And that where our similarities end, and things get weird.
You see, while in here our center-left civilian president João Goulart was replaced in 1964 by a right-wing, pro-USA dictatorship, the situation was completely reversed in our small andean neighbor. Before its coup, which occurred in 1968, it was ruled by president Fernando Belaúnde Terry, who belonged to a center-right party called Acción Popular (Popular Action). The military strongman who led his overthrow and took over the country, Juan Velasco Alvarado, was a left-wing, pro-Soviet general, and the junta he created was called the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces. Surrounded by fellow dictators who were all allies of the United States, the Peruvian government instead chose to pursue closer relations with the Soviet Union and, of course, Cuba's Fidel Castro. In fact, of Alvarado's advisers was none other than Darcy Ribeiro himself, who had fled his native country right after its own civilian president was expelled (1).
Peru's peculiar left-wing military dictator.
One similarity between Peru and its fellow dictatorships was the fact that its government wasn't that good at managing the economy. Said mismanagement created an economic and political crisis, and Alvarado himself was deposed in a bloodless coup in 1975, with fellow general Francisco Morales Bermúdez succeeding him as president. The change in leadership didn't reverse Peru's fortunes, and the Bermúdez was forced to return power to civilian hands. The "Revolutionary Government" finally came to an end in 1980, when the majority of the Peruvian people voted to elect none other than Belaúnde Terry himself. Back in his rightful place after a decade in exile, and with a majority in both houses of Congress, Terry restored freedom of speech and served a full, uninterrupted five-year term.
Belaúnde Terry before and after several years of exile.
However, despite his glorious return and the high hopes of many people, he wasn't able to stop the Peruvian economy's deterioration, with growing inflation and debt eroding the government's popularity. He was able to continue and finish some of the projects that were started by his first presidency, the most important of them being a railroad that linked the northern port of Chiclayo to previously isolated regions in the Amazon, an achievement that he was proud of until his death. However, as said before, he wasn't able to significantly improve the country's economy, and, to make matters worse, a small far-left terrorist group which called itself the Sendero Luminoso ("Shining Path") led by former philosphy professor Abimael Guzmán, best known by the alias of "Presidente Gonzalo", launched an armed insurrection against the government. The president, however, didn't pay much attention to the group, something that would later cost the country dearly.
Let us now jump straight to 1985. That year, Peru had its second presidential and legislative elections since the fall of the dictatorship, and it was clear to everyone that AP's candidate, second vice-president Javier Alva Orlandini, had absolutely no chance of winning. The two frontrunners were both left of center, the first and by far most likely to win being the charismatic 36 year old congressman Alan García Pérez, who belonged to the center-left APRA (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance), the oldest political party in the country.
His main adversary was Alfonso Barrantes Lingán, the mayor of Lima, who was nicknamed "El Frejolito" (The Little Bean), and became famous for his efforts to fight extreme poverty in the Peruvian capital, with policies such as the distribution of free glasses of milk to children who lived in Lima's poorer neighborhoods (known as the "Vaso de Leche") and the implementation of a brand new system of direct democracy known as Participatory Budgeting (let's call it "PB" for short). It basically allowed the people to decide how the municipal government should spend a part of its budget, not only giving a sense of empowerment to people who felt they were being marginalized by the political system, but in the long term also led to the overall improvement of Lima's standard of living. PB was first enacted in the Brazilian city of Santo André, in 1983, by the administration of mayor Celso Daniel, who later became somewhat of an international star (no pun intended), and Barrantes was the first of many foreign mayors to implement PB in their own cities (2).
The first ever meeting of the newly created PB in Santo André, which later elected delegates, each representing a specific neighborhood, to reach a consensus on how the city government should spend its money.
Despite that, Barrantes had many disadvantages in his incoming battle against García, first of them being that he was 22 years older than his opponent, who was nicknamed the "Latin American Kennedy" thanks to his young age. The party he belonged to, called "Izquierda Unida" (United Left), despite becoming the second largest political force in the country thanks to the previous municipal elections (including his victory in the Lima mayoral race), was founded just five years ago, and was, honestly, less of an united political party and more of a ragtag, if growing, coalition of many smaller far-left groups. García had a much older and solid structure to support him, and the people still had fond memories of the late Víctor Raúl Haya de La Torre, who founded and led APRA until his death in 1979.
A Shining Path poster celebrating five years of its existence. Many innocent people, including leftists who opposed it, would be killed by the group before the "People's War" finally ended a few years Abimael Guzmán's capture by Peruvian authorities.
Along with the two frontrunners, there were seven other less important candidates, including former military dictator Bermúdez, who could consider themselves be lucky if they received more than 3% of the vote. All of these people and their respective parties, important or not, would battle it out until Election Day. The elections were also plagued by attacks perpetrated by the increasingly bolder Shining Path, and they almost murdered the president of the National Electoral Council, Domingo García Rada. The Belaúnde administration's lethargic response to it, coupled with the worsening economic crisis, made it so that a growing number peasants and urban slum dwellers began to support the terrorist group in its "People's War".
It was in this context that the people finally went to vote in April 14, 1985, and would know the results of the first round later that same day.
Barrantes and García on the campaign trail.
There were no great surprises. García led the pack with an impressive 44% of the vote, and Barrantes, his closest challenger, held 33%, and the other candidates carved the rest of the total vote among themselves, none of them reaching even 10%. In Congress, APRA easily became the largest faction in both of its houses. However, they didn't have an absolute majority in either, and Izquierda Unida was right behind them, particularly in the Chamber of Deputies. Now, the only thing that wasn't settled was who was going to win the presidency, since there was supposed to be a second round of voting.
However, many thought that the runoff would be nothing more than a mere formality, since García held a seemingly unbeatable lead over Barrantes in the polls. Combined with his already strong showing in the first round, some actually expected the IU candidate to withdraw from the race, handing the presidency over to APRA. However, despite the odds being against him, and running low on cash, Barrantes and Izquierda Unida decided to fight on, arguing that the runoff would strengthen Peruvian democracy (3). Still, despite the mayor of Lima's surprisingly energetic runoff campaign, literally every major figure in Peru, possibly including Barrantes himself, predicted that García would win, and the APRA candidate, accordingly, barely campaingned at all, spending more time giving interviews on how his future government was going to be, convinced, like everyone else, that his victory was inevitable.
APRA did win, however the race was much, much closer than expected. This is easily explained by the fact that many people were either outright disgusted or at least put off by García's arrogance, something that was shown by his decision not to campaign during the runoff, with many voting for Barrantes often for no other reason other than to show their displeasure. This was not a good sign for the future president, once hailed as "Latin America's Kennedy", now seen by many as an arrogant brat who wanted to be awarded with the presidency on a silver platter. Nevermind the fact that he didn't have a majority in Congress.
The inauguration of Alan García Pérez.
His five-year long government was a disaster. Actually, scratch that. It was a complete, utter and absolute catastrophe.
The number of people in poverty increased by 13% (from 42% to 55%), and Peru's GDP fell by 20%. Not only that, but hyperinflation cut slashed people's wages, and forced the government to change the national currency twice, first from the sol to the Inti, and finally to the nuevo sol. To make things even worse, García attempted to nationalise the banking industry, which incurred the wrath of the IMF and isolated Peru from international financial markets. Finally, he and several members of the administration suffered from many credible accusations of corruption, which only worsened his image among the people.
There was, however, one group that had many reasons to celebrate the crisis: the Shining Path.
Areas under the direct control or influence of the Shining Path.
The economic meltdown of the country allowed them to take over nearly half of its territory, giving them the resources and manpower required to increase the frequency and intensity of its attacks. Many peasants formed militias called "Rondas Campesinas" to fight back against its brutal rule of much of the Peruvian countryside, in which they tortured and killed many innocent people, including not only peasants, but also trade union organizers, elected officials and the general civilian population. The government responded in kind, and president García was accused of commiting human rights violations such as the Accomarca Massacre, where 47 peasants were gunned down by Army troops, and at least 1600 people "disappeared". He would be put on trial after his presidency, thanks to these actions and the already mentioned accusations of corruption.
Naturally, as a direct result of the apocalyptically incompetent APRA government and widespread senderista terror, many people were disilllusioned not only with the left, but with the political system as a whole, and hoped that an outsider would be able to finally save the country from what seemed to be an imminent implosion. Thus, it should come as no surprise that one of the frontrunners and overall favorite was none other than Mario Vargas Llosa, one of Latin America's most famous writers. Originally a socialist who supported the Cuban Revolution, like many of his fellow intellectuals, he later became disillusioned with Fidel Castro's government thanks to its dictatorial nature, and distanced himself from the left as a whole. Now a right-wing liberal, he proposed a drastic austerity program that involved the privatasation of many industries along with a market economy and free trade. While these proposals scared a large part of the country's poorer population, his high name recognition and status as a political outsider made him a force to be reckoned with.
Mario Vargas Llosa on the campaign trail.
The other frontrunner was, amazingly enough when one considers the context, none other than the second-place finisher in the 1985 elections, Alfonso Barrantes Lingán. It doesn't sound so surprising when one looks at his and Izquierda Unida's fortunes during the García years. First, his surprisingly close loss to APRA five years ago raised his national profile dramatically, and allowed him to be reelected as mayor of Lima in the 1986 municipal elections, where he easily defeated Jorge del Castillo, who had president García's support (4). This ensured that his programs, especially Participatory Budgeting, would be allowed to continue, and later lead to direct improvements in city services, such as the expansion and betterment of Lima's sewage system, public education, and the paving and maintenance of new roads, all of that while the rest of the country almost literally melted down.
His succesful mayoralty turned Lima into a bastion of Izquierda Unida, and he was succeeded in 1989 by his deputy, Henry Pease García. Barrantes won nationwide and international praise, as well as a reputation as an honest, honorable man, particularly when put in contrast against the corrupt and incompetent Alan García Pérez, and became a respected figure even in right-wing circles. Still, despite being in a much better position than five years ago, the now former mayor of the national capital had to contend with widespread anti-left sentiment, created and sustained by five years of APRA administration and Shining Path terrorism. He was also an outspoken Marxist, which made things even worse.
Wait a minute, that's not Barrantes! Who the hell is this guy?
In the last weeks leading to the first round, however, another candidate began to rise right under the noses of the frontrunners, who were more than a little busy hammering away at each other. This man was Alberto Fujimori, a virtually unknown agricultural engineer of Japanese descent. Leading a brand new right-wing party called Cambio 90 (Change 90), he started with just 1% in the polls, lumped with the "others" and very far behind Barrantes and Vargas Llosa, who were always a hair's breadth away from each other. Then, about two months before the elections, he began to rise at the astonishingly fast rate of about 2% per day, and Fujimori now had the chance to force one of the other two major candidates out of the runoff, something that was once seen as impossible.
And then Election Day finally arrived. The last poll, taken two days before, showed a triple tie between Fujimori, Barrantes and Vargas Llosa. The only thing that was absolutely certain was the fact that there was definitely going to be a runoff, and that any of the three could be on it. The counting of the votes began soon after the last of them were cast by the people, and continued throughout the night. It was an epic, agonizingly slow nailbiter of a race, with the three candidates regularly swapping places, always with less than a percentage point separating one from the other, and the results were only truly known in the next morning, after all the votes were counted.
In the end, these were the results:
Mario Vargas Llosa (FREDEMO) - 2.602.706 votes (33,21%)
Alfonso Barrantes Lingán (United Left) - 2.464.772 votes (31,45%)
Alberto Fujimori (Cambio 90) - 2.415.399 votes (30,82%)
In the end, Vargas won a very small plurality, just three points ahead of the third place finisher. The race for second place was even tighter, and Barrantes' crushing victory in Lima (he got 60% of the vote there) provided him with just enough votes to overcome Fujimori by a razor-thin margin of less than fifty thousand votes. Fujimori initially contested the results, but later conceded and, clearly embittered by the fact that the former mayor of Lima "stole" his place in the runoff, immediatly endorsed Vargas Llosa (5).
Fujimori announcing his endorsement of Vargas Llosa.
Despite this critical endorsement, one which the right-wing writer would display without end in his ads and rallies, the fight was far from over. His Izquierda Unida adversary was still widely respected among many circles, despite his leftism remaining quite an obstacle in a country that was still being terrorized by the Shining Path and mismanaged by the nominally social-democratic APRA government. There was also the problem of his neoliberal platform that straight up proposed an economic shock that scared many poor voters, and the fact that Vargas Llosa was an open and declared atheist in a deeply Catholic country. As he and Barrantes defended their own positions and clashed with each other, neither seemed to gain a decisive advantage, and they were tied in the margin of error for the entire race.
It was just as epic a race as it was in the first round, with Barrantes and Vargas Llosa never gaining more than a one percent lead over each other. Said race was dominated by a stark division between the more urban areas, such as Cusco and obviously Lima, where Barrantes won with wide margins, and the countryside, which Vargas Llosa swept with no difficulty at all. In the end, despite his big wins in the big cities and campaigning with all of his and IU's strength all over Peru, the widespread anti-left sentiment across the countryside, created by years of being terrorized by the Shining Path, proved too much for Barrantes to overcome, and he was defeated by twenty two thousand votes.
Alfonso Barrantes with his trademark glass of milk, in what became his last public appearance.
The former mayor of Lima would not get another shot at a future election. Not that he wanted to run for the presidency again: he immediatly ruled that out, stating that his two defeats were a "message from the people". He did not, however, rule out a potential run for the Senate or the Chamber of Deputies, and many people were curious to see just what he would run for. Sadly, they would only be able to speculate about where he would go since, in February 15, 1992, Alfonso Barrantes Lingán was brutally murdered in Lima by a member of the Shining Path (6). He was given a state funeral, which more than 300.000 people attended and said their last words to the man they affectionately called "Frejolito". He was 65 years old.
The 54 year-old Mario Vargas Llosa was now Peru's new president. He had no previous political experience (he was once slated to become president Belaúnde Terry's prime minister, and that was it) and inherited a country that was not only, economically speaking, in the gutter, but one that was also bitterly divided thanks to years of corruption scandals, terrorist attacks, and what was the single closest election in all of Peruvian history. Even then, there was still hope. The new leader's party, unlike his predecessor, had a majority in both houses of Congress, which would allow him to turn his agenda into legislation without much difficulty. The Shining Path was also losing support at an alarming rate, thanks to its brutal treatment of the very same peasants it claimed to defend. Would his shock therapy get Peru out of the abyss it was in, or was the situation completely hopeless?
Only time would tell.
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Notes:
(1) This is all OTL.
(2) IOTL , the system called Participatory Budgeting (Orçamento Participativo) was first implemented in 1989 by the petista mayor of Porto Alegre Olívio Dutra, and won international praise, with many foreign mayors adopting it. Here, since PT is a bit stronger and controls more mayoralties, PB is implemented it six years earlier. Celso Daniel's got a bright future ahead of him.
(3) This is literally the complete opposite of what happened IOTL. Barrantes declined to participate in the runoff, saying that it would destabilize Peruvian democracy, and handed the presidency over to García on a silver platter. Here, since he does a bit better in the first round, he decides to go for it.
(4) IOTL, Barrantes lost to Castillo by two points. Later, in 1990, Izquierda Unida imploded thanks to internal disputes, and Barrantes ran for president with a small party, with rest of IU fielded Henry Pease García. Here, since Barrantes stays on as mayor of Lima, he is later succeeded by Pease, and IU remains a relevant party.
(5) This is especially ironic, since IOTL Fujimori absolutely wrecked Vargas Llosa thanks to the massive support he had from the left, who absolutely hated his opponent's platform.
(6) IOTL, on that same day, the Shining Path assassinated María Elena Moyano, a popular community organizer. Here, they decide to murder a "juicier" target.
