Tragic August, uncertain October
The death of Eduardo Campos, a presidential candidate, in a plane crash has thrown the election open
AUGUST is a tragic month in Brazilian politics. Sixty years ago Getúlio Vargas, a populist dictator turned democrat, committed suicide while in office. In 1976 Juscelino Kubitschek, who built Brasília, the country’s Utopian capital, was killed in a car crash. On the morning of August 13th the month claimed its latest victim. Eduardo Campos, leader of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) and one of President Dilma Rousseff’s two main rivals in an election this October, died when his chartered jet crashed in the port city of Santos, 60km south-east of São Paulo.
The aircraft, a Cessna 560XL, was reportedly in good working order when it took off at 9.21am from Rio de Janeiro. Bad weather meant a landing at the Guarujá airstrip in Santos, where Mr Campos was making a campaign stop, had to be aborted. Soon afterwards, witnesses reported hearing an explosion and seeing the Cessna plummet ablaze into an apartment building and gym. The cause of the explosion, which also claimed the lives of two pilots and four other passengers, was not immediately clear.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "Tragic August, uncertain October"
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