Iguaçu Falls (Part three) – An exercise in fiction

On September 29, General (4 stars) Oscar Rossi, couldn't shake off a bad headache.  The evening before, he and two dozens general officers had attended the retirement party for General Adriano Galvaõ dos Santos, the Army Chief.  The affair had lasted until the wee hours of the morning, wine and cachaça had flowed with abandon.  By the time Rossi’s plane landed in Porto Alegre, the rain had stopped and it was daylight.

The political and security climate only made his headache worse.  The economy was in recession, wracked by sky high interest rates, an imploding currency, a confidence crisis, general strikes, and a government in total disarray.  Crime and politically inspired violence had multiplied as police forces, which had been widely criticized for excessive violence, were basically holding back.

Sensing its vulnerability, the Rousseff government had clumsily issued a decree to transfer some of the general officers’ powers to the Minister of Defense.  This didn't go down well, and an unease had developed where it had not existed.

With its economy in free fall, the majority coalition in disarray, the opposition not ready for prime time and the public clamoring for order and better wages, the army was the one force not tainted by corruption or incompetence.

General Rossi was the Head of the Southern Military Command (CMS) which covered the states of Parana, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul.  Before the oil boom, this region had been at the heart of an industrial Brazil.  It also abutted with Argentina, the perennial regional challenger and occasional historical foe.  Heading the CMS was indeed quite a career achievement for an ambitious 47 year old soldier.

The dinner had not been without controversy and had bared some tension.  Oscar Dürenberger, the brash leader of the 12th Infantry Airborne Brigade, having raised his glass to toast Galvaõ, looked at him straight in the eyes, smiled thinly and asked:” Well General, how long before we have to clean up this mess?”

Silence had fallen over the assembly.  Galvaõ had not risen to the top Army job by baiting his minister or displaying excessive ambition.  He also remembered history.  He held Dürenberger’s stare, lowered his glass, crossed his hands on the dining table, and slowly answered his junior commander:
-“Oscar, there is an elected government in place, it is up to them to figure out what to do and take responsibility.  We are neither cowboys nor crazed revolutionaries!...Besides, if you read your recent Latin American history, you will see that the armed forces rarely grabbed power; more often than not they took over when a substantial proportion of the population pushed them to….and I don't see this happening here.”

When General Almeida from the Northeastern Military Command proposed another toast, to a man, everybody stood up and the discussion veered into another direction.  Yet Rossi was still analyzing Galvaõ’s words in his head, and a brief look across the table convinced him that he was not alone in doing so.

Rossi looked at his watch.  It was a quarter past ten in the morning.  He was still worried, and the fact that he want alone feeling depressed was small consolation.  What would this new day bring?  A lot of change as it turned out.

2,000 miles to the North East, over the draught stricken sertaõ, a large cb cloud system had been gathering foe s verbal hours.  At 10.43 am, a huge thunderbolt hit the 500 kv transmission line and the substation at Sobradinho.  The latter burst into flame and a chain reaction ensued, with circuits tripping one after the other.  For whatever reason, the energy management software at Cia de Eletricidade do Estado da Bahia (Coelba) failed to activate.

Brazil depends on hydroelectricity to the tune of 64%.   But persistent draughts, high transmission losses and erratic government energy policies which discouraged new investments had left the system both unbalanced and inefficient.  Over the course of the previous four weeks, the Ministry of a Energy had discussed the possibility of putting some of its thermal power plants back on line.  Unfortunately, no decision had been made.

The national grid was now tremendous stress; mismatches between loads and generation caused the system to break down into uncontrolled islands, collapsing frequency or voltage.  By 10.55 am the Imperatriz node was taken out of service, and with it the critical North-South electric transmission axis.  The 8,400 MW Tucurui hydroelectric plant was now a useless monument of concrete lost in the Amazon.

Resplendent and majestic in the morning sun, the Itaipu dam was still one of the world greatest engineering and construction marvels. Its massive turbines had a combined 14,000 MW electric generation capacity and their energy was transmitted over a triple set of 750 kv power lines.

At 11.20 am, the northern half of Brazil, down to Brasilia, was in the dark.  The states of Acre and Roraima, already self sufficient and not integrated to the national grid, were spared.

The cascading blackouts kept moving south.  By 11.30 am, with the big economies of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais at full demand for electric energy, the southern grid system went out not massive overload.  Not even the mighty Itaipu could make up for the loss of the Northern power system.  Following protocols, the Itaipu system tripped; 98% of the Brazilian population and 90% of the territory were now without power.

Outside, somewhere behind the officers mess, the Cummins standby generators kicked in.  Shortly thereafter, Rossi's phone rang.

Iguacu Falls, (Part Two) - an exercise in fiction

In Salvador, an early morning thunderstorm washed away torn paper posters, empty soda bottles, as well as an odd assortment of abandoned sneakers, broken wood sticks and debris of the violent confrontations from the previous day. Now and then, an armored police van could be seen speeding silently down empty avenues, lights flashing.

This scene was repeated, with minor variations, in many large cities.  But in the heart of Brazil’s manufacturing, the so called ABC Region outside the city of São Paulo, TV crews were beaming back scenes reminiscent of Apocalypse Now: an acrid haze from still burning tires floated in the streets; blackened wrecks of police cars and buses haphazardly dotted the urban landscape; rows of shops with broken windows and gaping doors added to the vision of destruction and irreality.

TV viewers were served non-stop images of violence from the day before, of interviews with victims and of seemingly deserted cities.  Shocked by the extent of the destruction, many businesses had not opened and, by and large, people had decided to stay home.

Despite the endless televised group discussions and opinionated pundits, viewers were still struggling to make sense of what they had seen: massive crowds surging between concrete city blocks like the sea at high tide, companies of red shirted militias, some on foot others riding motorcycles, giving chase to straggling demonstrators.  But two videos held viewers in their seats: one of a policeman, his clothes set on fire, slowly crumbling to the ground in a silent scream, the other of a police squad, beating two men senseless with their clubs, long after these had stopped moving.  Had the police put their lives on the line in defending the safety of the citizenry or had they behaved like thugs?

The government seemed just as shocked and dumbfounded as the public.  The presidential office had released no communique so far, while the Interior Ministry had condemned the violence and declared a state of emergency.

The main opposition party had been divided as to how to react.  But on September 23rd, the leaders of the PSDB came out with a unified message that President Dilma  Rousseff should resign or be impeached, recalling the words of former PMDB icon, Ulysses Guimaraes, back in 1992 when then President Collor was himself under threat of impeachment for corruption:” He thinks he still he is president, but he no longer is”.

Attuned as ever to where power was shifting, and conscious of its own weakened position as a result of the indictment of several of its most prominent members, the PMDB issued a communique calling for “ the voice of the people to be heard, and for politicians to respect it”.

Fearing an imminent vote of impeachment, the PT and its allies called for “an immediate popular show of support in favor of democracy and against the rabid forces of oppression”.

Soon, thousands of armed milicias petistas and sympathizers took to the streets in Brasilia, encircling the seat of government, the Planalto , as well as the Brazilian Nacional Congress, ostensibly to protect both.  When Vagner Freitas and a handful of CUT followers stormed the news set of TV Brasilia to denounce a presumed coup, the temperature rose by several degrees.

In Goianias, São Paulo, Rio, Salvador, and elsewhere, supporters of the government in place occupied or blocked access to strategic centers of power or industry.  Having been widely criticized for the use of excessive force, federal and local police forces stood by.

The 23rd came and went.  On the 24th, public employees unions called for a general strike.  They were soon followed by those of Petrobras, Banco do Brazil, as well as those of the likes of CSN, Usiminas, GM, Ford and Fiat.

On the 25th, air traffic controllers joined the movement.  The country had ground to a halt.  The PT had effectively broken into several factions, the more extreme being the more vocal, the PMDB was not sure whether to make effective its dominance of the governing coalition, and the opposition was, as usual, divided and not ready to govern.

Brazil slowly drifted into chaos, as basic services were no longer provided, private industry was on strike, the supply chains of commerce were no longer functioning, and the streets were no longer safe.  Change needed to come, and it did on the 26th.