Word: mello
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last week, rising to make his maiden speech in the Brazilian Senate, Senator Arnon de Mello, 52, looked uneasily toward the back of the chamber. "I will speak today," he began, "with my eyes turned to Senator Silvestre Péricles de Góes Monteiro, who . . . who . . . who has threatened to kill me today." "Swine," roared Góes Monteiro, 67, charging down the aisle. Mello drew his Smith & Wesson .38, ducked behind a seat-and fired twice. An old hand at political gunplay, Góes Monteiro whipped out his own .38, but another Senator jumped him before...
Brazil was shocked, but hardly surprised. Both Mello and Góes Monteiro come from the hardscrabble northeast state of Alagoas, where political ambushes are the rule, not the exception. For more than 20 years, Góes Monteiro and his family ran the state as a private political reserve. Once, when a political enemy was mysteriously killed, Góes Monteiro ordered samba music played on public loudspeakers...
...dared cross him was Mello, a crusading newspaperman whose election as governor in 1950 touched off a bloody feud. Mello ordered an investigation into the previous Góes Monteiro regime; a star witness was found with both legs-and his spirit-broken, and at one point rival gangs fought a pitched battle with machine guns on the floor of the state assembly. When Mello moved on to the national Senate 14 months ago, old Góes Monteiro promised: "He'll never make his first speech...
Brazil's Francisco de Assis Chateaubriand Bandeira de Mello-"Chatô" to Brazilians-has fallen on sad times. He was the builder and sole commander of an $85 million, 58-company empire that included 31 newspapers, twelve television stations, 22 radio stations, four magazines, a news agency, two pharmaceutical laboratories and three coffee-and-cattle ranches. He crusaded to push Brazil into the air age, with a campaign that dotted the nation with aviation clubs. He built child-care centers all over Brazil, bullied friends and enemies into filling a $15 million Sāo Paulo art museum with...
...hotel bills, lived from meal to meal, worked from reel to reel. Down to his last $17, he was rescued by Brazil's President Juscelino Kubitschek, who told the army to get him some electrical equipment. For his Orpheus, Camus hired a handsome Brazilian futebol player named Breno Mello, for his Eurydice an unknown dancer from Pittsburgh with serenely lovely looks and a name that nobody could possibly forget: Marpessa Dawn. "The poverty," says Camus, "was not such a bad thing in the long run. I spent so much time trailing around on foot, just looking, that...