The tendency toward dictatorships and the use of autocratic power to cover corruption and aid partizanship was visible even to the naked eye of the casual visitor. At the time I reached Brazil it was ruled over, ostensibly at least, by a nephew of Deodoro, the first president. Never, perhaps, had an administration been so cordially hated. “Dudú,” as the populace called the president, that being his eighteen-year-old wife’s pet name for him, was hated not only for himself but as a tool of the “odious gaucho” senator from Rio Grande do Sul, chief of the “P. R. C.” or Republican Conservative Party, and for some years the national boss of Brazil. When “Dudú” became president, the popular idol and fiery orator, Ruy Barbosa, only survivor of those who overthrew the monarchy, senator also and leader of the “P. R. L.” or Republican Liberal Party, had been the opposing candidate and, according at least to the Liberal newspapers, had been elected by an overwhelming popular vote. To be elected, however, does not always mean to take office in Latin-America, and the combined machinations of the “odious gaucho” and the army, in which “Dudú” was a field marshal, had reversed the verdict.
To hold his own against the popular clamor the Marshal had used methods taken from his own military profession, terminating finally in the declaration of a “state of siege” in the federal capital and that of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Nictheroy across the bay, and in the state of Ceará in the far north. On the surface this did not mean any noted suppression in the freedom of life. But if one happened to be a political opponent of the party in power, or a newspaper publisher, the sense of oppression was distinct. Under the sheltering wings of martial law no articles could be published until they had been submitted to a government censor, whose strictness made impossible the slightest adverse criticism of the powers that were. The suspension of the right of habeas corpus made it possible for “Dudú” to have scores of men thrown into dungeons out on the islands in Guanabara Bay merely because he or some of his followers did not like their political complexions. If the friends or families of the victims happened to find out what had become of them and got a writ of habeas corpus from the Supreme Court—according to the constitution a mandatory order of release—the government answered, “We are in a state of siege and the constitution is not working.” It would be hard to compute the full advantage of this little ruse to the ruling politicians, and the grafting that went on under cover of such protection may easily be imagined. When the decree was finally revoked, on the eve of a new administration, the suppressed news that flooded the papers was little less astounding than the swarms of political prisoners whom government launches brought back to the capital after months of imprisonment without any charge ever having been preferred against them.