Joao Figueiredo, military ruler who opened Brazil to democracy, dies at 81
SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) -- Gen. Joao Figueiredo, who died on Friday
at age
81, was Brazil's most reluctant president and will go down in history as
the man who
stewarded the country's return to democracy after 20 years of military
dictatorship.
Doctors in Rio de Janeiro told Reuters he died at home from heart and respiratory
failure early on Friday. President Fernando Henrique Cardoso declared three
days of
mourning for the country's former leader, Cardoso's press office said.
Figueiredo, a moderate but controversial figure, ruled Brazil from 1979
to
1985, allowing, at the very end of his term, a civilian government and
president to take charge.
"He led the process ... toward political openness, allowing the country
to
become a state of law and to enjoy full democracy," Vice President Marco
Maciel said on Friday. "This is the main mark that he left after his lamentable
death."
Opinions differed, however.
"Luckily, he wasn't a man of big ambitions. He simply did not hamper the
transition to democracy, which was the best thing he could do," said
historian Yuri Ribeiro, son of the Brazilian Communist Party leader Luis
Carlos Prestes, who lived in exile with his family during the military
regime.
In March 1985, the general retired into seclusion, proclaiming that he
wanted to be forgotten. In 1987 he re-emerged to express his regret at
the
path he followed because it led to "economic dictatorship."
"The biggest mistake of the (1964) revolution was to make me president,
because I'm responsible for this opening which I thought would lead to
a
full-scale democracy," he said then.
"During the military rule, there was talk that Brazil had a dictatorship.
Now I
ask: which is a bigger dictatorship, mine or the current economic
dictatorship?" he said, referring to the government's attempts to stem
the
country's galloping inflation.
Figueiredo said he never wanted to be president but the army pressured
him
into accepting the nomination as the successor to Gen. Ernesto Geisel.
He
said he was a bad choice.
Though his stewardship of Brazil's return to democracy is probably his
greatest achievement, Figueiredo was more proud of some of his showcase
economic developments, like the world's largest dam, at Itaipu.
From the day he left the government on March 15, 1985, he was virtually
forgotten as he isolated himself at his private property outside Rio de
Janeiro, content to indulge in his favourite hobby, horse riding.
The mantle of power was thrust on him in 1979 by his mentor, President
Geisel, who nominated the former cavalry general as his candidate for
electoral college elections to choose his successor. Figueiredo won
comfortably.
Plucked from a comfortable niche as head of the feared military security
arm, the euphemistically named National Information Service (SNI),
Figueiredo, who played an active part in the 1964 coup as a lieutenant
colonel, doffed his uniform and sinister dark glasses to play a benign
politician.
His off-the-cuff comments delighted reporters. Asked once whether he liked
the smell of the crowds that greeted him, he retorted: "I prefer the smell
of
horses."
He had a heart attack during his term and underwent surgery in the United
States. When he regained consciousness his first words were reputed to
have been: "How are my horses?"
But the equestrian passion was a prime cause of the ill health that plagued
his
presidency. He suffered a compressed disc in a fall and had back trouble
ever after.
He steadfastly adhered to Geisel's policy of allowing a return to open
politics. Figueiredo refused, unlike his four military predecessors, to
name a
successor. Tancredo Neves, leader of the opposition Democratic
Movement Party, won the January 1985 election but died before he could
take office. The vice president, Jose Sarney, became president.
Figueiredo had pledged to uphold the constitution, in which the architects
of
the 1964 coup had enshrined the provision that future presidents be elected
indirectly by an electoral college. But he often appeared to waver in his
resolve.
Although he never went as far as allowing direct elections, Figueiredo
began
the process of returning Brazil to democracy by lifting censorship, releasing
political prisoners and allowing those in exile to return. Direct elections
were
not restored until 1989.
In the 10 years before Figueiredo came to power, hundreds of opposition
activists and leftist guerrillas were killed or disappeared and hundreds
more
politicians, professors, musicians, writers and artists were forced to
leave
Brazil.
However, the violence in Brazil was not as severe as that in Chile or
Argentina, where the military confessed to throwing scores of prisoners
into
the ocean from airplanes and carrying out mass executions at stadiums.
Figueiredo held free, direct elections in November 1982 for state
governorships, assemblies and parliament, despite the concern of some
hardline military officers.
Born into a military family in his beloved Rio on Jan. 15, 1918, Joao Batista
Oliveira de Figueiredo entered military college at the age of 11. Graduating
brilliantly, he followed his father, also a general, into the cavalry.
Two of his brothers are generals and his father was an outspoken defender
of constitutional principles whose career suffered as a consequence during
the Getulio Vargas dictatorship in the 1930s.
Figueiredo is survived by his wife and two sons, who preferred business
to a
military career.