Empire-Building Educator

One sweltering day last week Publisher Franciscode Assis Chateaubriand Bandeira de Mello ushered the President of the Republic and other wilted dignitaries into a cable car for the dizzy ride to the top of Sugar Loaf Mountain. The occasion: formal inauguration of Rio's first television station. High above the shining crescents of the capital's white beaches, the party sipped champagne, listened to speeches and to songs by a choir from one of Publisher Chateaubriand's child-care centers. Across the vast reaches of Brazil, Chateaubriand's radio stations and newspapers proclaimed the significance of the occasion. Already owner of 28 newspapers, five magazines, 19 radio stations and a nationwide news agency, Chateaubriand,*who had already launched another TV station in Sao Paulo, tucked the fledgling medium of video securely under his wing.

A birdlike creature of 59 with darting black eyes, restless hands and a big head, "Chato" is a fighting cock whose hard work, smart financing, fast talk and seething energy have created Latin America's biggest news empire, and made him very nearly the most powerful man in Brazil. He first fireballed into Rio in 1917 as a brash young lawyer from the north with a driving urge to write for the newspapers. After a spectacular career as reporter and editor, he borrowed 3,000,000 cruzeiros in 1925 and bought his first newspaper, Rio's O Jornal. Generally regarded as Brazil's top reporter, he competed with his own staffers for scoops. He tangled with almost everybody. "I'm like a loaf of yeast bread," he liked to say. "The more they knead me the higher I rise." He always carried a revolver and sometimes even drew it, though his aim was so bad that in one scrape he fired at an antagonist and shot his chief editorial writer in the jaw.

On the Spot. Soon after Getulio Vargas came to power in 1930, Chato quarreled with him and joined the abortive Sao Paulo uprising. Getulio forced him into bankruptcy, then ordered him placed aboard a Japanese freighter in Rio harbor and transported to Far Eastern exile. Though Chato succeeded in talking his way ashore, and Getulio in due course restored his properties, the chastened publisher made it a rule never to have trouble with Vargas again. In last year's election he avoided taking a clear stand for or against Getulio.

But Chato kept right on expanding into all the modern variants of journalism. His ruling passion was, and is, to educate his countrymen. He transformed the Brazilian press, introducing modern makeup, circus-type headlines, bylined news stories on the U.S. model. He created his own news in campaigns for amateur flying, a lavish art museum for Sao Paulo, a hundred child centers to provide free milk and medical care for youngsters in poorer districts all over Brazil. And he showed his competitors that undreamed-of revenues could be earned by convincing Brazilian businessmen that it paid to advertise. Always, he plowed the fat profits right back into his enterprises, which by last week had grown to an estimated $50 million value.

On the Run. Chato runs his empire in a manner that fills observers with awe and keeps his subordinates on edge. He travels abroad, always by air, a full third of the time. Another third he puts in roaming around Brazil, scribbling his daily syndicated column (2,000,000 readers) on old envelopes and odd scraps of paper. He divides the rest of his time between his news agency's two main nerve centers in Rio and Sao Paulo.

He speaks five languages fluently and orates brilliantly in one of them, his own Portuguese. He rarely drinks, and berates associates or even strangers who smoke in his presence. He seldom sleeps more than 3 1/2 hours a night, and can get along nicely for short spells on an hour and a half. Says Chato: "The great cannibal of our period is time. I fight it aggressively."

The Broad View. It is hard to overestimate Chato's impact on Brazilian public opinion. His columns and newscasts convey a burning hatred for Communism and a strong regard for the U.S. On issues nearer home, in recent weeks, he called upon the President-elect to "teach Brazilians how to work," denounced "cancerous bureaucrats" and urged exploration of Brazil's oil by foreign companies ("What good does our oil do a thousand feet under the ground?").

Last week Chato was taking a broad view of the return of his old nemesis, Getulio. "What I'm doing with my papers, my magazines, my radio and my television," said Chato expansively, "is running a big university in Brazil. I'm teaching progress and democracy. As a matter of fact, Dr. Vargas spent a long time in my school. Maybe he didn't progress very fast, but I think he learned a great deal. Now he knows lots about democracy."

*Years ago he dropped the rest of his name, kept only the name of the famous French writer-statesman that his Francophile grandfather had gratuitously grafted on to the family handle.

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