Rebound

Brazil's Communists, outlawed and barred from their headquarters, felt a little better after the first shock had worn off. The big reason for their sense of relief was that President Dutra's Government had lost the offensive. It had found itself legally unable to finish the Communists by turning their legislators out of Congress and stopping the presses of their raucous Tribuna Popular. Moreover, many a thoughtful Brazilian, with no love for Communism but with a lively memory of dictatorship, had rushed to support the Communist Party's right to exist.

The Communists showed their relief. In the Senate palace, Luis Carlos Prestes, Brazil's No. 1 Communist, popped up one afternoon to return some papers to the Commission of Justice, of which he is a member. He explained that he had been "too busy lately" to work on them. One evening in downtown Rio, a group called "The Friends of Paraguay" met to hear a Negro actor read the poems of U.S. leftist Langston Hughes. They were so moved that they soon addressed each other, not as "friend," but as "comrade." In the sultry Vermelinho (The Little Red One), a sidewalk cafe, Communist literati flocked again to sip beer. They sneered complacently at "Yankee imperialists" who drank Scotch.

Elsewhere, the anti-Yankee attacks were brassily strident. Tribuna Popular (still getting a half supply of newsprint from the Government) blamed the U.S., along with Dutra and the Army, for the "illegal" political ban. U.S. Ambassador William D. Pawley was accused of "leading the offensive of U.S. capital against Brazil." The facts: peripatetic Bill Pawley had been sunning himself in Miami at the time the Electoral Tribunal made up its mind on the Commies; the U.S. Embassy had maintained a scrupulous hands-off attitude toward the Government move; privately, Embassy officials felt there were better ways of fighting Communism than those employed by Dutra. If the Brazilian Army had drawn any conclusions from U.S. foreign policy--i.e., Truman's aid to Greece and Turkey--the deductions were not inspired.

The Battle. What next? The Communists would fight their ban. In a 15th-floor office on Rio's main-stem Avenida Rio Branco, moon-faced Communist Lawyer Sinval Palmeira clutched the multipage appeal he will present to the Supreme Tribunal. He had a diplomatic good word for the Yankees. "The U.S. Constitution," he said, "is helping me to write it."

Not for some four months will Brazil's busy Supreme Tribunal consider the legality of Brazil's Communist Party. In the meantime, the battle between Dutra and the Communists centers on the still active Communist Congressmen. Only Congress itself can fire them, and Dutra's P.S.D. (Social Democrat Party) cannot muster the two-thirds majority to do it. Moreover, the opposition U.D.N. (National Democratic Union), which has backed Dutra on many an issue, refuses to go along on this one. U.D.N. Chief Jose Americo de Almeida had gone straight to President Dutra at squat Catete Palace and made that plain.

For hamstrung Caspar Dutra there are two ways out. He can let the Army stage a coup and abolish Congress. Or he can seize upon some incident to declare a "state of siege" under which the Communists can be squelched. Because he wants to govern legally, Dutra has refused the first alternative. Shrewd observers do not think the well-disciplined Communists will give him any excuse for the second.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.