Brazil on the Move (26 page)

We reach a real jumping off place, in the midst of a vast sunsmitten plain. Two straggles of dilapidated shacks form a sort of crossroads—only there isn’t any real road—with a tin windmill to pump water at the intersection. The windmill has broken down. The broken parts are mournfully brought out for the governor’s inspection.

The landowner looks almost as badly off as his tenants. “I wouldn’t live here,” he says with some bitterness, “except that it’s the only land God saw fit to give me.”

It was dark by the time we reached Touros. Touros was a goodsized fishing town on the beach. The people seemed full of beans. A band played. Floodlights lit the speakers’ platform set up in the square across from a recent monument attractively contrived out of aluminum sheets to simulate a
jangada. The firmament resounded with the explosion of rockets and, fortunately at some distance, behind the church, somebody set off bombs so loud they must have been sticks of dynamite.

Aluísio Alves was at his best. He told us about his last visit to Touros in the course of an unsuccessful campaign and how he got there late and the people waited all night to hear him, and how their friendliness had cheered him. He told of the three years of work that still lay ahead of him in his battle against disease and illiteracy. Eighty per cent couldn’t read or write. Ninetyeight per cent suffered from schistosomiasis. Of every two children born, one child died in infancy. “People of Touros, with your help we shall change all this—our campaign is the campaign of hope.” And the green pennants waved.

The governor and his party were to be put up in a small house perched on a sand dune. Half the population of Touros had gotten there ahead to receive us. In fact they had eaten up most of the dinner laid out on a variety of tables set end to end. About all that was left was a little spaghetti, still cold in the can. There was one chair for the governor, but no more.

The porches were full of boys and girls who had come from interior towns to the speaking. The problem was where people would sleep. There were no beds and few cots and hammocks. As the large monsignor and I were the oldest, we were assigned to the privacy of a tiny leanto which housed tools back of the house. A cot was found for me and an effort was made to swing a hammock above it for the monsignor. Alas, we were both large men. There was no way of fitting us into the space. The monsignor handsomely retired and I was left alone. God knows where he slept. It was just as well I was out in the leanto because the racket in the house was indescribable. Everybody in town wanted to speak to the governor.

The governor went off to a dance given in his honor. He had addressed the crowd about two dozen times during the day. He had just finished a fulldress oration. He had driven eight or ten hours through the heat and the dust. He is a rather slight man. He must be made of iron.

A heavy shower of rain on the roof woke me at about four-thirty. When the rain stopped rockets started hissing up all around the house and exploding in the sky overhead. They have the loudest rockets in Touros I’ve ever heard. I mucked around in the yard behind the kitchen, awash with thin mud from the rain, in search of the washbasin. There was only one. Shaved among the awakening teenagers on the porch looking out on the long slow green spuming waves advancing towards the beach below the house out of a pearly ocean in the morning twilight.

Met our hosts. In the hubbub last night I didn’t have a chance to sort them out. The reddish-haired stocky man must be the paterfamilias. There are various sons, one a young man on crutches. The two elderly women stoking up a small charcoal brazier in the kitchen must be the maids. Nobody seems to be disturbed by the house having been turned last night into something like the New York subway at rush hour. We have to admit that the accommodations are plain.

Sitting on packing boxes at the table the large monsignor and I are regaled with a breakfast of eggs, toasted cheese, black coffee, and bread. Couldn’t be better.

Then we take an early morning stroll around the town in the governor’s train. Touros looks more modest by day than it did in the light of the floodlights. Squarish blocks of stucco houses. Sand in the streets. These strolls around town accompanied by the local authorities are part of the program at each place we stop. Anybody who feels like it comes up to
speak to the governor. He listens to them all, old and young, rich and poor. He listens with a serious air, with an occasional wry smile. If it’s a matter of some detail a secretary steps up to take notes. Aluísio Alves is a man of few words except when he is delivering a speech.

The mayor of Touros wants us to visit the school but it’s Sunday and no one can find the key. At last an intelligent-looking old woman arrives breathless. Everybody helps her as the big key is hard to turn and the doubledoors stick. She must be over seventy but I think she’s the schoolteacher.

By the time we have toured the schoolrooms the cars have lined up outside. Governor Alves gets into the seat next the chauffeur with his green handkerchief fluttering and we are off. It is a long drive, over a decent gravel road that shows signs of fresh repairs, to what I’m told is the world’s largest agave plantation. The company has an English name. There is an endless row of company houses—all alike, bleak, unshaded, of cracked stucco—but the fact that they are houses is a cause for admiration. There are long warehouses, piles of sisal drying (this is not hennequen but an agave that produces a very similar fiber), and an airstrip.

Two small planes, one the governor’s Cessna, are waiting for us. Those who can’t fit into the planes will follow by road. When we take off we can really appreciate the immensity of the plantation. A checkerboard of the spinyleaved agaves spreads in every direction over the rolling hills. We fly inland.

At São Miguel the country is even hillier. The people waiting for us at the airstrip are welldressed. Everything looks more prosperous. Abraços, felicidades. Great enthusiasm. This is the township where Aluísio Alves was born. Local boy makes good. Every face beams with a personal pride in him. We are driven into town. The greeting throng follows in a truck, a few of them on sleek caramelcolored ponies.

This is the longstaple cotton region. Perennial cotton was introduced by British companies some forty years ago. The country looks like Arizona with rosy desert mesas and flowerlike formations of gray rock. The air is dry. There is a crispness to the breeze although the sun is plumb overhead.

At São Miguel we sit at a table with a clean cloth and eat a second—or is it a third?—breakfast. When someone speaks of more milk, the girl who is waiting on us smilingly brings in a large pitcher of milk from the electric refrigerator in the back room. On the coast where we were nobody would have dreamed of milk. That pitcher of milk is more eloquent than a dozen speeches. After the sight of such poverty it is a real pleasure to be among prosperous people again.

After São Miguel we were driven over to another prosperous looking town, Pedro Pedrosa. Milk on sale in the market, and eggs, and decentlooking meat. Few flies. While Governor Alves was addressing the crowd a young man in riding boots invited me in perfect English to have a drink with him. He professed great admiration for Governor Alves. He had been several times to the States. He was the soninlaw of the man who owned a large part of the local cotton business. He was full of the possibilities of developing this region into one of the great longstaple cotton producers of the world. He wanted American capital. He’d spoken to a Rockefeller. “For God’s sake,” he said, “go home and tell the people in Washington to eliminate Castro … It is Castro that is the roadblock against progress in the Northeast.”

The air was bumpy to Martins, an ancient little city perched on a green cultivated ridge high above the arid hills. Martins is the highest populated area in the state. At two thousand feet the altitude gives it a climate of its own. We found the sun roasting, but the wind cool. There were flowering
trees and cobbled squares flanked by the long barred windows and tall green blinds of colonial buildings.

A dam was to be inaugurated. The cavalcade of cars plunged through the clinging dust to the edge of a lake in the valley below. It was long after noon. The speakers were grouped on a ranch wagon under the full lash of the sun. The governor spoke. The visitors spoke. The candidates spoke. The local authorities spoke. From the broiling crowd came questions and enthusiastic responses. At last after a couple of hours we were driven back into town to the cool airy corridors of the maternity hospital.

There the ladies’ auxiliary, so much like the ladies who would serve a meal for the benefit of a church or the PTA in any North American rural community, served a magnificent lunch (for the benefit of the hospital)—roast beef, chicken with rice, venison, an assortment of rolled meats and meat balls variously seasoned and sprinkled with
farinha
—washed down by pitcher after pitcher of coconut water and a special soft beverage flavored with guava. The guava filled the room with a sort of strawberry fragrance.

From Martins the flight was smooth through horizontal sunlight to Mossoró. Mossoró is the second city in the state. The drive in from the airport is a nightmare of noise. Three or four cars abreast, trucks and jeeps move in a slow roaring traffic jam into town. Every horn and claxon is sounding two notes from the governor’s campaign song: “Aluísio, Aluísio.”

This comicio is dedicated to the
meninos
, the children of the city. The motorcade stalls on a street leading into the square. A parade has become entangled with the traffic jam. There are ranks of girls and boys in costume, marching bands, drum majorettes.

In front of the reviewing stand in the square two floats are stranded. On one is seated a young lady dressed like the
Statue of Liberty. She’s already tired of holding up her torch. On the other, a plump youth stripped to the shorts is bound to a plaster pillar by newlooking aluminum chains to represent servitude. Although it’s obviously been a long day he’s still holding up his manacled hands with right good will.

Seeing that I look rather parched after listening to so many speeches in so much sun a thin man with a gray mustache from city hall leads me into the corner bar for a beer. The bar is full of hardbitten characters, obviously not meninos, who are taking advantage of the festivities to get thoroughly tanked up. We are latched onto by the inevitable grubby drunk who thinks he can speak English. He worked for the American submarine base during the war. He loves Americans.

The governor’s chauffeur, a thicknecked man who has the look that bodyguards have the world over—Lacerda would have called him “a sort of Gregório”—comes to fetch us. The speeches are about to start. He tactfully disentangles us from the drunk who loves Americans.

Indeed the children of Mossoró have turned out. Babes in arms, toddlers in their gauzy best. All the pretty girls. Boys and men perch like starlings in the trees of the jampacked square.

The afternoon is absolutely airless. The stand is crowded tight. Every menino who wants to is encouraged to climb up on it. It is hard to pay attention to the speakers on account of the squirming and the wriggling and the squeezing and the shuffling of the little ones working their way between the legs of the assembled politicos. Each one wants to get near the governor.

The boards of the stand creak. I’m wondering if they’ll bear the weight.

Beside me a gentleman in a white suit for whom no time has been found on the program is angrily jumping up and down as he argues with some official. The stand sways and
groans. I’m expecting the scantlings to give way any minute.

The speeches go on and on. Every local politico has his say. A gentleman named Duarte Filho is running for prefeito. Evidently the campaign is violent in Mossoró because the denunciations of the opposition become more and more extreme as twilight falls. There are too many adults among the children in the square. Toughlooking waterfront characters like the men in the bar. I’m worried about what would happen to all the little children if the meeting should end in a brawl.

While I’m trying to catch what the speakers are shouting a skinny grayhaired man, shoved up against my midriff by the crowd on the stand, pours into my ear a story you could hear only in Brazil. He too worked at the American submarine base. He too likes Americans. He knows a cave where there are crystals that shine bright as the headlights of a car. He has samples at his home. If they aren’t diamonds they are something just as valuable. He wants me to tell him the name of an American engineer. Brazilian engineers don’t have the education to exploit such a treasure or else they will try to steal it all for themselves. Can’t I find him an American engineer to prospect the cave? Diamonds as big as your fist shine with their own light in the darkness.

The square grows dark. The closepacked crowd is getting hotter and hotter. On the stand we sweat rivers. Speeches are becoming more and more violent. Men in the crowd have a threatening look. A dangerous tension seems to be building up. Suddenly a samba band begins to play.

I’ve been noticing one small band that officials have been trying to keep quiet, behind the speakers’ stand, shushing and pushing back the dark boys with instruments. The minute the governor stops talking they won’t be shushed any longer. Their drums throb. The sound of sambas rises from every street that leads into the square.

In three minutes half the people are dancing. The oratory
fades away. No more traffic jam. The floats are moving. The meeting turns into a sort of carnival parade with samba schools dancing ahead of the floats, each behind its own banner.
TOO YOUNG TO VOTE
, reads one. Songs take the place of speeches. Children, teenagers, old men and women, everybody is dancing.

No more tension. A cool breeze seems to sweep through the streets. The young kids are marvelous. In front of Duarte Filho’s house it is like a ballet. I’ve never seen such really beautiful dancing as fills the streets of Mossoró for hours, far into the night.