The family business.

• Author: Cardoso, Fernando Henrique
• Position: The Accidental President of Brazil - Excerpt

Politics first interrupted my life on a crystalline beach in Niteroe across the bay from Rio de Janeiro. It was May, 1938, and I was just six years old. My family had been enjoying a typically carefree vacation of tropical sun and surf when, late one night, a jangling telephone jostled us awake. My father lifted the receiver from the wall, listened, said nothing, and then slammed the phone down. Hurriedly, he changed into a military uniform, grabbed a revolver, and rushed out the door.

It was the night of the coup attempt by the integralistas, a rather bizarre band of fascists who spewed hatred against Jews and Communists under the motto "God, Fatherland, Family." They received funding front Mussolini and envisioned themselves as the heirs to Hitler, but the integralistas were unmistakably, uniquely Brazilian. They raised their right arms to salute like the Nazis, but of "Sieg heill" they shouted "Anaue--an Indian word of murky meaning that was supposed to reflect the group's nationalist leanings. Shoved out of power soon after the president had ordered Congress closed the year before, a small band of integralistas had panicked and made a daring, foolish attack that May night on the presidential palace.

What followed belonged in a Groucho Marx film. With the palace unguarded, President Getulio Vargas had no choice but to try and repel the attackers himself. The paunchy, cigar-smoking strongman appeared in the palace window with a handgun and took potshots at he rebels outside, while Alzira, his twenty-three-year-old daughter, frantically telephoned military commanders and begged for reinforcements. The integralistas, who turned out to be no experts in combat themselves, haplessly returned fire from behind exploding flowerpots and sculptures. The battle turned decisively when someone mounted a sub-machine gun in the palace window. In one of the most surreal moments in Brazilian history, Getulio himself then proceeded to blaze away at the attackers, keeping them at bay for several hours until my father and other soldiers arrived.

A dozen of the integralistas were killed, and the rebellion was summarily crushed. From that point on, Getulio established a personal squad of bodyguards whom accompanied him at all times, reflective of a deep paranoia that would eventually lead to his death.

When my father returned home the next day, he was sweaty and exhausted, but unharmed. "Everything's free now, Fernando Henrique," he told me with an easy smile...