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Juscelino Kubitschek and the 1960 Presidential Election*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Sheldon Maram
Sheldon Maram
Affiliation:
Sheldon Maram is Professor in the Department of History, California State University, Fullerton.
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Extract

Brazilian specialists have long recognised the importance of the 1960 presidential elections, which set in motion a process that culminated in a 21—year military dictatorship. Only in 1989 did Brazilians witness once again the direct election of a president. Nonetheless, scholarly literature on this event is sparse and often tends toward the ahistorical view that the election of Jânio Quadros in 1960 was part of an inexorable process. Almost entirely ignored are the reasons why Brazil's largest political party, the Partido Social Democrático or PSD, nominated for president a weak candidate, Marshal of the Brazilian Army Henrique Teixeira Lott.1

Clearly, Lott himself was not part of a praetorian guard that imposed his candidacy. Indeed, the Marshal was a reluctant candidate, who offered to withdraw in October 1959 in favour of a ‘national unity candidate’.2 In my view Lott's nomination had much more to do with a complex series of manoeuvres carried out by Brazil's president Juscelino Kubitschek (1956–61) than with his own actions. For Kubitschek, the political parties and presidential aspirants in 1960 were merely pawns in his highly personalistic vision of the political process. Constitutionally barred from seeking immediate re—election, Kubitschek initially manoeuvred to induce his party, the PSD, not to run its own presidential candidate. When this effort failed, he displayed, at the very least, ambivalence regarding the fate of the party's candidate.

An analysis of Kubitschek's actions and motivations presents methodological challenges to the historian. Historians traditionally rely heavily on written documentation to support their analysis of actions and motivations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , February 1992 , pp. 123 - 145
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 For one of the exceptions to this pattern, see Hippolito, Lucia, De Raposas e Reformistas: o PSD e a expêriência democrática brasileira (1941–1964) (Rio de Janeiro, 1985), pp. 199–210.Google Scholar

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4 Affonso Heliodoro, interview by author, 6 June 1989, Brasília; José Sete Câmara, interview by author, 11 Aug. 1989, Rio de Janeiro; Lúcio Martins Meira, interview by author, 18 July 1989, Rio de Janeiro.

5 Carlos Heitor Cony, interview by author, 18 May 1989, Rio de Janeiro; Sarah Kubitschek, interview by author, 16 Aug. 1989, Rio de Janeiro.

6 See note 4.

7 Sarah Kubitschek, interview, 16 Aug. 1989; Lucas Lopes, interview by author, 14 Aug. 1990, Rio de Janeiro; Armando Falcāo, interview by author, 23 Aug. 1990, Rio de Janeiro.

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36 Lopes, 27 July 1989 interview; Campos, 24 July 1989 interview. Lopes and Campos both left the Kubitschek government after Lopes had a heart attack and Kubitschek abandoned a short-lived economic stabilisation plan.

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40 Falcāo, 24 Aug. 1990 interview, Notably, Amaral Peixoto suggested a similar argument to explain Kubitschek's opposition to a presidential candidate strongly identified with the PSD in Camargo, Aspásia et al. , Artes da politico: Diálogo com Amaral Peixoto (Rio de Janeiro, 1986), p. 429Google Scholar

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