Word: adhemar
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...Died. Adhemar de Barros, 67, Brazilian politician who served three terms as Governor of Sao Paulo State, busy center of Latin American industry; of a heart attack; in Paris. After becoming Governor in 1938, De Barros spent his 28-year reign building a network of highways and hospitals. He also took an impressive cut off the top of the porco barrel, openly bragged of tampering with ballot boxes. Still, he survived all purges, until President Humberto Branco could tolerate his corruption no longer. De Barros was exiled...
...Adhemar, now 65, flew off to European exile with his black-haired mistress in tow, many Brazilians felt a twinge of regret at seeing the magnificent old reprobate go. After all, in an era when corrupt politicians were almost admired, Adhemar had been the greatest rogue of them...
...Adhemar was intent on installing his own man, but Castello Branco picked out Abreu Sodré, a reform-minded São Paulo lawyer, for the Governor's job. Since the election was to be decided by the state legislature, where the revolution held a bandwagon majority, Adhemar's only hope was to woo the assemblymen's votes, and he went about it with all the fury that money and patronage could buy. He handed out 13,000 state jobs in five days, sometimes nominating as many as three people to the same position. And when Castello...
Lesser men would have been chastened by the military's zeal against corruption. Not Adhemar. While revolutionary tribunals zeroed in on the in discretions of Leftist Goulart and his allies, the Governor blithely launched an all-out kickback campaign that local businessmen defined wryly as "the golden era of the little tin box." Few new enterprises could get started without cutting Adhemar in, and established concerns were often hit for "contributions" to Adhemar-invented causes. An $18 million school-construction contract was mysteriously awarded without public bids...
Patronage & Bribes. Over the years, Adhemar accumulated a sizable fortune, and it was just as well that he did. For last week President Humberto Castello Branco, with the weight of the military behind him, suddenly fired Adhemar and canceled his political rights for ten years. The reason: Adhemar had turned against the revolution. The issue: who would succeed him at the end of his term in January...