Word: caf
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...outside eyes, Café Filho is a careful dresser with a preference for dark blue pin-stripe suits, grey ties and white silk shirts. At home he likes to lounge around in pajamas, reading, sipping coffee and chain-smoking strong Brazilian cigarettes (Hollywoods). Younger-looking than most men of his age, he still takes an occasional early-morning dip in the Atlantic surf on Copacabana beach. Despite his extensive reading, he is less educated, less cultured than Vargas was-but he promises to make a better President...
Early in life, Joao Café Filho was exposed to influences that were to set him apart from most of his countrymen. Brazil is a Roman Catholic nation, but Joao's parents were devout members of the flock of the Rev. William Porter, a Presbyterian missionary from the U.S. Cafe Filho was baptized in a Presbyterian chapel,* learned to read and write in the free elementary school maintained by Porter and his wife. Joao's first teachers were Henrietta and Evangeline Green, daughters of the U.S. vice consul in Natal...
While still in his teens, Café Filho began contributing angry, something-must-be-done articles on the plight of the poor to local newspapers. At 22 he started a shoestring paper of his own, O Jornál do Norte. Other papers in northeast Brazil were soon reprinting his fire-eating denunciations of corruption. One day a Natal politician whom he had brickbatted came in and laid a large banknote on his desk; Cafe Filho scornfully touched a match to the bill, used it to light a cigarette. At 27 Café Filho ran for the federal Chamber...
Flight to Argentina. In 1930 Getulio Vargas ran for President and got a majority of the votes. When the government tried to annul the election, Gauchos of Vargas' home state marched on Rio. Café Filho, fired by Vargas' eloquent talk of reform, joined the Vargas partisans in northeastern Brazil, took part in the successful seizure of Natal. Appointed police chief of his home town, with headquarters right next to the customs house, he soon noted the daily visits of a customs official's attractive daughter, Jandira Fernandes de Oliveira. In September 1931 he and Jandira...
Elected a federal Deputy in 1934, Café Filho, who had already turned against Vargas, became his roughest congressional critic. When Vargas set up an outright dictatorship in 1937, Café Filho fled to Argentina. As the price of a promise that he would not be molested if he returned to Brazil, Café Filho had to agree to refrain from all political activities. He got a job with a bus company, and spent the following seven years as a white-collar worker...