Let's all go together, forward go Brazil....

Never before had a World Cup final been so wildly commemorated by the population, and with so much emotion, as that in Mexico in 1970, when Brazil won the World Cup for the third time. Here, as there, people from all walks of life took to the streets, jumping and crying, singing, and making a real party of it all. When the national squad came home, the Government decreed an optional holyday ponto facultativo (amounting to a holiday), and the players paraded on an open car, through the streets of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and the commemorations took the best part of a week.

At the beginning of the 1970s, players like Pelé, Tostão and Rivelino made the Brazilians go wild, and even those people who did not live through those days have heard about how the whole country would repeatedly sing the famous refrain “All together let’s go/Forward Brazil, Brazil/Hail the National Team...” while following the game on the radio or television. There was already live TV transmission, by satellite, but still in black and white. Only a few people, invited by the military government, watched the game in colour, in a closed experimental session organizsed by Embratel.

As already mentioned, Brazilian football also wowed Mexico. During the whole visit, the Mexican press and supporters would give a lot of attention to the Brazilian national team, even to the surprise of the Brazilians present. One description of this fraternal climate between Mexicans and Brazilians is in the book Confessions of a Supporter (Confissões de um Torcedor), written by journalist, composer, cultural agitator and football enthusiast Nelson Motta. In 1970, Nelsinho is appointed to cover the event for the Última Hora newspaper, at the request of director Samuel Wainer.

The excerpt below shows the euphoria of the supporters, but also provide details that help with the reconstitution of those days:
“Brazil would put on a footballing show in the field, while the supporters would revel in the streets and Wilson Simonal would pack the most luxurious of Mexican night clubs, everything was in our favour. In those days of heat and happiness, from the first game onwards no-one ever considered the possibility of Brazil not being champions. However, no-one would imagine that everything would be so great and beautiful. Everything was very cheap in Mexico, everything very hot and slow, while on the streets of Guadalajara the people, somewhat ugly but very friendly, would come out of the shell of melancholy and would cheer up in the Brazilian Carnivals”.

The journalist continues, with aerials also attentive to the backstage scenes of the party: “After the famous final, while celebrating the victory in a suite of one of Mexico City’s most luxury hotels, it was with fascination that I witnessed several girls from the jet-set of Rio de Janeiro fighting to see who would be the first to have it off with Jairzinho and Paulo César Caju”.

Football and Dictatorship
The year 1970 brings to public memory an unusual association between the times of the “best football in the world” and political repression, when many people were tortured in the cellars of the dictatorship, while there was widespread publicity of mottos like “the country of the future”, “Brazil, love it or leave it” and “this is a country that moves forward”.

On one hand, football instilled in Brazilians a feeling of happiness, optimism and faith in the future. On the other hand, the same football was used as an instrument of political and ideological control by the military dictatorship.

The President of the country at the time was General Emílio Garrastazu Médici, whose government was considered the most repressive in the whole Brazilian Republic. While he was President, between October 1969 and March 1974, Médici strictly carried out the task self-assigned to the military bigwigs, that of stamping out social movements and also the urban and rural guerrilla movements. People were snatched from their houses and would then disappear, and all you would hear would be whispers. On the other hand, the lack of information about these facts by most of the people was almost complete. In November the previous year, the enforcement of the Institutional Act No. 5 consolidated the “hard line” of the regime, giving absolute power to the military and suspending all Constitutional guarantees. A film that helps one to understand a bit about this period is The Year My Parents Went on Holiday (O Ano em que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias - Brazil, 2006), directed by Cao Hamburger.

In those “years of lead” the person in charge of repression was the Army Minister, Orlando Geisel, who would succeed Médici as President. This was also the period of the “economic miracle”, the period between 1969 and 1973 when there was significant economic growth, at the expense of an increase in concentration of wealth and also of poverty. Leading the economy was Delfim Netto, the same man who after the dictatorship continued in politics and was elected as a Congressman on several occasions, for the Democratic Social Party (PDS) and successors thereto.

Rock and the Tropicalist Movement
These were the days of the Volkswagen Beetle, and bell-bottom pants boca-de-sino trousers; the currency at the time was the Cruzeiro. The middle class prospered, and this increased the consumption of durable goods, including refrigerators and televisions. On the television screen, the most viewed programme show on Saturday afternoons was Chacrinha, known as the Old Warrior (Velho Guerreiro), who would “honk the girl” and throw codfish and pineapples to the audience of TV Globo.

The world spun faster... in June 1969, the first human landed on the moon and, the following month, in the United States, 500 thousand young people got together to celebrate life, love, sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll at the Woodstock Festival, a milestone in the hippie movement. The year of 1970 also had its significant losses: in March, the Beatles announced the end of the group; in September there was the death of guitarristguitarist Jimi Hendrix and then in October that of singer Janis Joplin, both brought on by overdoses of heroin.

The changes in behaviourbehavior, which would make the Seventies a revolutionary age, was also felt in Brazil, albeit a bit more slowly considering the conservatism of the time. However, the people already had their icons in the music and irreverent posture of the young artists of the Tropicalist Movement, including Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, the Mutantes and the Novos Baianos, Jorge Ben and others.

Caetano and Gil really suffered at the hands of the dictatorship: they were arrested in 1968 and exiled in England between 1970 and 1972. At this time, Caetano composed his famous song London, London and other hits, and also sends articles to the Rio de Janeiro tabloid O Pasquim. Created in 1969, the Pasquim, before it became more political, as a voice for the opposition to the military regime, initially started as a space for the free discussion about taboo issues, including sex, drugs, feminism and divorce.