1962 (63?) _ In vino veritas
Carlos Lacerda, on the Military and PriestsWritten on December 4, 2017
I believe it was a Saturday afternoon in 1963, around 3-4 PM.
With a group from the JEC (Catholic Student Youth?), with whom I had gotten involved, I ended up at the duplex apartment in Praia do Flamengo where Carlos Frederico Werneck de Lacerda lived.
Lacerda, as everyone knew him, was the Governor of Guanabara (the state that had emerged from the transfer of the Federal District to Brasília in 1960, which now corresponds to the municipality of Rio de Janeiro). He was also the leader of the opposition to the then-president João Goulart’s government, which was supported by the left, unionists, and the so-called opportunists, as the gossip went.
There were about eight of us; I was the youngest, just 16 years old! The others knew each other and paraded me around as a trophy: the “guy” from the Colégio de Aplicação! From the heart of the left! After all, there was intelligent life there too!!! (heh, heh...).
Lacerda received us in a bathrobe, holding a glass of whiskey, with three or four friends or advisers whose faces I vaguely recognized from newspapers (two were very young—Rafael de Almeida Magalhães? Mauro Magalhães?).
The purpose of the visit, I believe, was to get us excited about political activity.
Lacerda's "party" was the UDN (National Democratic Union), which at the time was considered a party ideologically to the right of the others, with a “liberal economic” stance, “Catholic” values, and “militarist” tendencies. Lacerda was a national leader, likely a presidential candidate in the following election (1965).
After the usual introductions, by Djalma(?) and Poças(?) (both from the Santo Inácio school and both later studied engineering at the back end—pretty sure it was them), we were told that we were there to fight for Brazil, for our ideals of freedom, that Lacerda could count on us, etc., etc.
One of the advisers talked about how we should organize ourselves, that the world was living through a polarization between communism and capitalism, between democracy and totalitarianism, the East and the West, etc., etc.
And Lacerda kept drinking whiskey.
Then, around 5 PM, there was a moment when everyone fell silent and turned their attention to Lacerda, who by now had already consumed half a bottle of whiskey, giving his brain a boost (but without slurring his speech).
I’ll try to transcribe and document as faithfully as possible, despite the inaccuracies of my memory after more than 55 years, a statement and reasoning I never forgot and never heard or read again, which I regard as being of great clarity and logic:
“...you all should pay close attention to priests and the military. Be very careful with them.
Remember that the Vatican is the capital of a state called the Catholic Church.
Priests and military personnel are educated by the state, in seminaries and military schools.
They become state employees, live in houses that don't belong to them, are transferred as part of so-called strategic plans, manage parishes and barracks that aren't theirs, have no competitors (they exercise a monopoly in their areas), they don’t need to generate profit, they follow strict disciplines, similar to the Communist Party (which, in reality, is a church with Marxism as its religion), and they rise in the hierarchy competing with a very restricted group of ‘initiated’ individuals.
They spend their lives tending to the faithful (or to activists) and to recruits. When they become Bishops or Generals, after years of service and adaptation to the ‘nomenklatura’, that is, the bureaucracy, they think they know the great problems of the world.
They are not communists, but no one knows why, and no one knows why communists aren’t military officers or members of churches.”
I was shocked because, up until then, I had always thought that the military and the Catholic Church formed a harmonious whole. It took me some time, but eventually, I came to realize that, except for a few exceptions, Lacerda was right.
Years later, when I saw Golbery do Couto e Silva in the sacristies of life, colluding with Glauber Rocha, leftist factions, and trade unionists to found the Workers' Party (PT), I remembered this conversation with Lacerda and now see how prophetic he was.
I also learned how whiskey clears the mind and loosens the tongue. That was what Lacerda truly thought, but only said in private. To this day, I remain a Lacerda supporter and still enjoy my whiskey.
Great Lacerda, to whom the people of Rio owe so much for his competence in administration.
Miguel Fernández y Fernández, written in 2017. Engineer, columnist, and authentic liberal
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