It is reported that the intelligent and cultured son of a state senator of Bahia was refused admission to our national military academy for the mere motive that he is black.
I have more than once had a Brazilian of that pale darkness of complexion common to those who have lived for generations in the tropics draw back a sleeve to convince me that the color of his hands and face is climatic rather than racial, at the same time asserting almost in a whisper that the “aristocratic old families” of Brazil are just as proud of their Caucasian blood, and fully as determined that it shall not be sullied with African, as are “os Americanos do Norte.” But positive proof that there is no illegitimate strain in their veins is so rare, and pure-blooded families are so greatly in the majority, that they usually keep their color prejudices to themselves. It does not pay to express such sentiments openly in a land largely in the hands of negroes, or at least of those of negro blood, where the government averages the mulatto tint, where the army which accomplished the change from monarchy to republic is still powerful and overwhelmingly African in its enlisted personnel.
The constitution and the law-making and executive bodies of Brazil are similar to those of the United States, more so, in fact, than in any other country of South America. Here, too, there are states rather than provinces; those states are largely autonomous, even less closely federated than our own and vastly less so than the provinces of Spanish-America, which are governed mainly from the national capitals. In so far as any real one exists, the division between the two main political parties in Brazil is the line separating those who wish a more centralized government from those who wish the present semi-freedom of the states to continue, if not to be increased. It is the contention of the latter that state autonomy permits a fuller development of independent activity, which in the end is of advantage to the entire federation. The other side points to the frequent threats of secession—now of Rio Grande do Sul because it feels it is neglected and exploited by the central government, now of industrial São Paulo, prosperous Pernambuco, or self-sufficient Amazonia as a protest against supporting and being hampered by the throng of official loafers in the federal capital, now of the north from the south for mere incompatability of temperament—as proof that the existing loose bonds are perilous to the future of the republic. As in all Latin-America, however, political parties are much more a matter of personalities, of rallying about some particular leader rather than about a given set of principles, and except in minor details there is no visible difference between the two principal divisions. To put it more concisely, in the words of a frank politician: “Party lines? Well, you see Brazil is like a great banquet table, heaped with all manner of food and delicacies. There is not room for everyone at it, so those of us who are seated are on one side, and those who are constantly trying to crowd into our places form the other party.”
An American long resident in Brazil asserted that the future of the country is in the hands of the fazendeiros of the interior, industrious, tenacious, totally different from the city dwellers, a law unto themselves, original because they have no precedents. However true this may be, one soon realizes that Rio is mainly a port and a point of distribution, living on the “rake-off” from the business passing through its hands, and that such productive activity as exists is chiefly due to foreign residents. The “upper class” Brazilian at least has inherited his Portuguese forefather’s distaste for work and his preference for a government sinecure; thanks perhaps to the climate, he is even more strongly of that inclination than his ancestors. Almost every native of social pretensions one meets in Rio is on the government payroll, and the city swarms with clerks and bureaucrats. The centuries during which the mineral wealth of Brazil poured into the public coffers of Portugal, and from them into the pockets of politicians and court favorites, bred the notion, still widely prevalent in all Latin-America, that “the government” is a great reservoir of supply for those who know how to tap it, rather than a servant of the general population. To the latter, on the contrary, it is something in the nature of a powerful foreign enemy, with which the average citizen has nothing to do if he can possibly avoid it, except to trick or rob it when he gets a chance, yet which he expects to do miracles unaided, as if it were some kind of god—mixed with devil.
It has often been said that the Argentine, Uruguay, and to a certain extent Chile are more progressive than the rest of South America because they are ruled by whites. In her highest offices Brazil, too, usually has men of Caucasian race; but the great mass of citizens being more or less African—though two years’ residence suffices for voting rights—the country is really under a mulatto government. Even immigration is at present unable to better this matter, because white newcomers are numerically and linguistically so weak that they have little say in the government and their efforts merely make the country richer and give the worthless native more chance to engage in politics. Swarms of part-negro parasites, what might be called the sterile class, are incessantly on the trail of the producer, constantly preying on productive industry, and supernaturally clever in devising schemes to appropriate the lion’s share of their earnings. It seems to be a fixed policy of Brazilian government to lie low until a head raises itself industriously above the horizon—then “swat” it! Its motto evidently is, “The moment you find a golden egg, hunt up the goose and choke it to death.” Brazilian taxes make those of other lands seem mere financial pin-pricks. To begin with, there is a “protective” tariff so intricate that it requires an expert despachante to deal with it, and so high that those are rare imports that do not at least double their prices at the customhouse. Then there is the omnipresent “consumption impost.” Scarcely a thing can be offered for sale until it has a federal revenue stamp affixed to it. If you buy a hat you find a document pasted inside showing that the government has already levied 2$000 upon the sale; a 4$000 umbrella has a $500 stamp wound round the top of the rod; every pair of shoes has a stamp stuck on the inside of one of the heels—for some reason they have not yet thought of selling each shoe separately. Almost nothing is without its revenue stamp; and, be it noted, the stamp must be affixed before the goods are offered for sale, so that a merchant may have hundreds of dollars tied up in revenue stamps on his shelves for years, even if he does not lose their value entirely by the articles proving unsalable. There is a “consumption” tax on every box of matches, over the cork of every bottled beverage, be it imported wine or local mineral or soda-water. Tooth-paste is considered a luxury, as by most legislators, and pays a high impost accordingly; there is a stamp on every receipt or bank check, on every lottery, railway, steamer, or theater ticket, on every birth, marriage, or burial certificate; there are taxes until your head aches and your pocketbook writhes with agony, impostos until only the foolish would think of trying to save money, since it is sure to be taken away as soon as the government hears of it. A cynical editor complained that there is no tax on revolutions and that “French women” are allowed to go unstamped.
But this is only the beginning—and these things, by the way, are no aftermath of the World War, but were in force long before the war-impoverished world at large had thought of them. State and municipal taxes are as ubiquitous, and iniquitous, as those of the federal government. Among the few ways in which the Brazilians who overthrew the monarchy did not copy the American constitution was in not decreeing free trade between the states, with the result that politicians who cannot fatten on federal imposts may feed on state import and export duties. Many a state taxes everything taken in or out of it; at least one even taxes the citizens who go outside the state to work. The beans of Rio Grande do Sul, where they are sometimes a drug on the market, cannot be sent to hungry states because the growers cannot pay the high export and import taxes between them and their market. Many a Brazilian city imports its potatoes from Portugal, at luxury prices, while pigs are feeding on those grown just beyond a nearby state boundary. If you buy a bottle of beer or mineral water, you will probably find a federal, a state, and a municipal tax-stamp on it. Every merchant down to the last street-hawker, every newsboy or lottery-vendor, wears or otherwise displays a license to do business.
The politicians are constantly on the lookout for some new form of taxation, but as they have the same scarcity of original ideas in this matter as in others, the ancestry of most of their schemes can be traced back to Europe or North America. Thus they copied the “protective” tariff of the United States, though there are few native industries to “protect,” not only because it was an easy way to raise revenue but because it gave many openings for political henchmen. They were just beginning to hear of the income tax at the time of my visit and to plan legislation accordingly. The more sources of easy money of this kind the government discovers, the worse it seems to be for the country, not only in cramping existing industry but by drawing more of the population away from production into the sterile ranks of the seekers after government sinecures. Thanks partly to Iberian custom, partly to the power of the second greatest class of non-producers—absentee owners of big estates—there is little or no land or real estate tax, except in the cities, and in consequence many squatters and few clear titles. But this is about the only form of financial oppression the swarthy rulers have overlooked, and now and then they show outcroppings of originality that resemble genius. When the outbreak of war in Europe sharpened their wits they had the happy thought, among others of like nature, of charging duty on foreign newspapers arriving by mail and of recharging full foreign postage on prepaid letters from abroad that were forwarded from one town to another within the republic, or even within the same state. Postal Union rules to the contrary notwithstanding. Brazil once ran a post office savings bank, but after taking in millions from the poorer class of the community this suspended payment, and to-day a government bank-book with 5,000$000 credited in it cannot be sold for two-fifths that amount. During the war one could buy a postal order in any city of Brazil, but if the addressee attempted to cash it he was informed that there was no money on hand for such purposes. More than that, if your correspondent returned the unpayable order to you, your own post office would laugh at the idea of giving you back the money. Furthermore, if you received a postal order payable, say, in São Paulo, and presented it at the same time that you bought another order on the issuing office, the tar-brushed clerk would calmly rake in your money with one hand and thrust your order back with the other with the information that the post office had no funds on hand to pay it.
If all or even a large proportion of the income from this hydra-headed revenue system reached the public coffers and passed out from them in proper channels of public improvement, there would be less cause for complaint on the part of the taxpayers. But not only is a great amount of it diverted to the pockets of politicians and their sycophants, even before it becomes a part of the public funds, by such simple expedients as bribery of those whose duty it is to collect them, but the outlets from the public coffers are many and devious, not a few ending in unexplored swamps and morasses. Nor does this well-known and widely commented-upon state of affairs arouse to action the despoiled majority. Bursts of popular indignation take other forms in Brazil. Everyone seems to endure robbery unprotestingly and await his chance to recoup in similar manner. Were all Brazilians honest, it would work out to about the same division of property in the end—and save them much mental exertion. We have no lack of political corruption in the United States, but here at least it is sometimes unearthed and punished. In Brazil the political grafter is immune, both because Portuguese training has made his machinations seem a matter of course and because the “outs” do not propose to establish a troublesome precedent by auditing the actions of those temporarily in power.
The Brazilians are inclined to be spendthrifts individually and nationally. Both the public and the private attitude is suggestive of the prodigal son of an indulgent father of unlimited wealth. Fortunes made quickly and easily in slave times have in most instances long since been squandered; the families who more recently grew rich from cattle, sugar, or coffee have in many cases already gambled and rioted their wealth away. Neither the individual nor the nation is content to live within its income. The politicians periodically coax a loan from foreign capitalists, spend it in riotous living, and when the interest comes due seek to place a “refunding loan,” to borrow money to pay the interest on the money they have borrowed. Financially Brazil had reached a critical stage before the beginning of the World War, not only the federal government owing a colossal foreign debt, but nearly every state and municipality staggering into bankruptcy. The government had issued enormous quantities of paper money bearing the statement “The National Treasury promises to pay the bearer 10$”—or some other sum; yet take a ragged, illegible bill to the treasury and you would probably be told, “Well, you have the 10$ there, haven’t you?” and thus the paper continued in circulation until it wore out and disappeared and the government issued more at the total cost of the cheap material and the printing. Soon after the outbreak of the war all foreign banks in Brazil refused to lend the government any more money, whereupon the politicians authorized the issue of 150,000,000$000 in gold; that is, as it was explained later on in tiny type on them, notes payable in gold, though everyone in Brazil knew that even those already outstanding could not be redeemed. A saving clause at the end of the decree read, “If when these notes come due the government has not the gold on hand to pay them, then it may redeem them in paper.” Such was the mulatto government’s idea of “meeting the present world’s crisis.”
Of a piece with their other schemes are the federal and at least two state lotteries supported by the population mainly for the advantage of the politicians. There are persons who contend that a lottery supplies a harmless outlet for a natural craving for excitement, at a moderate cost to the individual and with a benefit to the state that operates it. With the Latin-American the intoxication of the lottery is said to take the place of alcoholic intoxication in the Anglo-Saxon. All this may be more or less true, but at least the state loses much activity of its day-dreaming citizens, while the bureaucracy and the politicians are fattening on the profits. Lottery drawings succeed one another with feverish frequency in Brazil—the powers that be see to that, whatever other duties they may be forced to neglect. The streets of every large city swarm with ragged urchins and brazen-voiced touts who press tickets upon the passer-by at every turn, each guaranteeing that his is the winning number. Every block in the business section has its cambistas lying in wait in their ticket-decorated shops; besides the veritable pest of street vendors pursuing their victims into the most secret corners, there are cambios all over the country and perambulating ticket-hawkers canvassing even the rural districts. Everyone “plays the lottery.” The young lady on her way home from church stops to buy a ticket, or at least a “piece” of ticket, as innocently as she would a ribbon; school children enter their classrooms loudly discussing the merits of the various numbers they have chosen; the number of persons losing sleep, or going to sleep on the job, figuring up what they will do with the hundred thousand reis they are always sure of winning is beyond computation. The lottery cannot but add to the natural tendency of the Latin-American to put it off until to-morrow, for if it is not done to-day perhaps he will win the grand prize this evening and never have to do it at all. Brazil had long been struggling to get a loan from Europe, but when the war gave capitalists a chance to lend their money nearer home at higher rates and with better security the Brazilians were naturally left out in the cold. Editors complained that when France offered government bonds her citizens rushed forward and subscribed the amount several times over in one day, while Brazil could not get any response whatever from her own people. Yet not a scrivener among them noted that if the Brazilian government could get at a fair rate of interest on a legitimate investment a fraction of the enormous sums her people pay into the state and national lotteries every week there would have been no need to go abroad seeking a “refunding loan.”