Niemeyer the Communist, the Generals and the Most Forgotten Palace of Brasília

The delicate white buildings designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer (1907-2012) for the headquarters of the three branches of government in Brasilia were easy prey for the Bolsonaristas on January 8, 2023. The mob nimbly climbed the ramps. In a jiffy, it swept away the glazed facades. The coup plotters had departed that Sunday morning from another architectural complex designed by Brazil's most international architect, the Army Headquarters. When Niemeyer, a proud communist, was commissioned to create the main public buildings of the new capital, it also included the seat of military power. What is striking is that the monumental barracks with curved shapes and reinforced concrete was built between 1968 and 1973, precisely, the years of lead of a fiercely anti-communist dictatorship. Cold War stuff. Since then, it has been the headquarters of the army. Perhaps that is why it is a work that is largely forgotten (or ignored) among the vast legacy of the Rio de Janeiro artist. Few in Brazil know the history of the building.

It is said that Niemeyer fondly remembered the camaraderie between workers and engineers during the construction of the futuristic capital in the 1961s. "On the day of the inauguration [in 1964], with the president, the generals, the deputies, all the high officials and their ladies of high society, everything changed. The magic was suddenly broken," he lamented. After the coup in 1968, the military closed Congress in 5 through decree AI<>.

Last Tuesday, a solitary private soldier stood guard at the great hallmark of the barracks: the acoustic shell – to protect the authorities during the parades, 12 meters high, curved in shape and with an impressive echo. Ahead, a six-lane avenue designed by Niemeyer for the parade of troops that, for two months before Lula assumed the presidency, was taken over by the Bolsonarist camp that demanded a military intervention to prevent the return of the leftist leader to power. A few steps away, a theater with an undulating roof where the Brasilia Symphony Orchestra performs. The Army rents it out for events.

Bolsonaro supporters during his occupation of the avenue in front of the Barracks, on November 2, 2022.SERGIO LIMA

Visitors are barred from the rest of the complex, two huge rectangular office blocks. That morning, two couples of tourists walked through the gardens while a squadron of fighters sailed through a deep blue sky dotted with fluffy clouds.

Anyone familiar with Niemeyer's work immediately recognizes the stroke of his pencil in the barracks. The army — the professional birthplace of former President Jair Bolsonaro and a stronghold of his henchmen — does not hide, but neither does it boast that its house is the work of one of Brazil's most famous communists. The day after the riot, the police cleared the camp and arrested more than 1,000 people.

The relationship between Niemeyer and the military was full of ups and downs and contradictions. Nothing so flashy. After all, Brazil is the country where the military regime, which wanted Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil far away in exile, accepted the artists' proposal to hold one last concert to raise funds before leaving for London. Veloso tells the story in his autobiography, Verdade tropical.

"It's an iconic building," explains architect Bruno Campos, who dedicated his master's thesis to the Army Headquarters. "Niemeyer proposed it as a palace. The idea was that each of the powers would have their own." Planalto, for the president; Alvorada, the president's official residence; Itamaraty, headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the Supreme Court and the Congress. He built a peculiar cathedral for the Catholic Church, whose bells were donated by the Spain of dictator Francisco Franco.

"It's a work that's very hidden in historiography. I imagine because it was built during the dictatorship, because it is not very accessible and because it is a symbol of the Armed Forces," explains Campos. "A colonel got me permission to enter a room in the library [of the barracks] where they keep the original plans, it's a very rich archive."

Sketch of the Army Headquarters in Brasilia, designed by Oscar Niemeyer.Fundação Oscar Niemeyer

Although the term "palace" for the barracks did not survive the tensions of the time, this researcher from the University of Brasília defends including it in that list. For several reasons: the rational construction system, the prefabricated elements, and, like other of the artist's emblematic works, gardens by the landscape architect Burle Marx and a tile panel by Athos Bulcão.

By 1964, the year of the coup d'état, Niemeyer was an established professional with an anti-American discourse that was uncomfortable for the Armed Forces. He praised Chile's Salvador Allende, signed letters in defense of democracy and articles proclaiming, "I am a true communist." A friend of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, he never missed an opportunity to criticize inequality and injustice. Like other Brazilian opponents, he was spied on and interrogated, but never arrested. The military had no courage, his friends said.

The architect Campos was interested in the building but was also intrigued by the historical moment in which it was built. The artist and the generals swallowed their mutual misgivings and collaborated for much of the work on the Headquarters, although Niemeyer had already gone into exile in Paris. Angered by repeated delays, the Army abruptly pushed him aside. "He lost control of the project," says Campos. The Niemeyer Foundation did not respond to requests for comment.

The most remembered and repeated episode about Niemeyer during the dictatorship (1964-1985) is the struggle with the generals over the future airport of Brasilia. The architect designed a circular airfield, which the military rejected outright: it had to be rectangular. The uniformed men won the battle. He also had clashes with the Catholic Church. The bishop of Belo Horizonte refused to consecrate the church of Pampulha because it was signed by an atheist.

In a particularly hurtful gesture, the dictatorship accused him of the worst crime an artist can perpetrate: plagiarism. This is how he recalled it in his memoirs, As curvas do tempo: "Indignity reaches unimaginable limits when Colonel Manso Neto creates a sketch with which he intends to prove that he copied Le Corbusier." He was infuriated by the rumor reaching the circles of power, where he moved so well. He worked with the Frenchman in the international team that designed the UN headquarters in New York.

A protester is evicted by security forces from the camp in front of the headquarters, on January 9, 2023.AMANDA PEROBELLI (REUTERS)

In the aftermath of the airport brawl, a senior official proclaimed: "A communist architect's house is in Moscow." Niemeyer understood that it was time to leave, but not to the USSR, but to Paris.

By then, the police had raided his studio and the architecture magazine Módulo, which he directed. He resigned, along with more than 200 professors, from the University of Brasília in protest against the military regime. While he was losing commissions in his homeland, exile led to opportunity. He took advantage of it.

The Brazilian architect designed the iconic headquarters of the French Communist Party, the Mondadori publishing house, in Milan (inspired by the Itamaraty chancellery in Brasilia), universities in Algiers... Its international projection skyrocketed. With him, Brazilian architecture entered the world's elite.

Niemeyer appointed another architect to lead the day-to-day management of the work of the Barracks in Brasilia, as in other projects. He chose his former son-in-law Carlos Magalhães, whom Campos interviewed for his thesis. "He was detained during the dictatorship. He told me that he was released through the archbishop, whom he knew from the cathedral project."

Magalhães told him an anecdote that may illustrate the Brazilian character. In the 1980s, the Army awarded Magalhães the Peacemaker's Medal for services rendered during the construction of its monumental headquarters. In solidarity with his repressed colleagues, the architect declined to receive her at a public ceremony. The soldiers discreetly delivered it to him in a small box. It was handed to him in a corridor of the barracks, without fanfare.

Niemeyer's visits to Brazil from the dictatorship became more frequent as democracy made its way. He continued to create tirelessly in his studio on Copacabana Beach. Anyone who travels through urban Brazil comes across these suggestive and easily recognizable shapes left and right. He created the Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro, a rodeo stadium for Brazilian cowboys, a museum in the shape of a flying saucer that overlooks Guanabara Bay, and much more... At age 99, he married for the second time. He was 103 when he gave the Niemeyer Cultural Center to Avilés, Spain. The atheist who created churches, the communist who built the Army Headquarters died at the age of 104.

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