Hubert Herring - A History of Latin America, pp.

759-768

V1

The Dictatorship of Getulio Vargas, 1930-45

Getulio Vargas was forty-seven when he seized power. Born in Rio Grande do Sul in 1883, trained first for
army life, then for the law, he had served in the national congress, as minister of the treasury under Washington
Luiz, then as governor of his state--always with ability. There was nothing impressive, certainly nothing alarming
about this compact little man of five feet, four inches who became president of Brazil in 1930; he met callers with a
smile, walked unguarded, talked with any who accosted him, played poor golf on Sundays and smiled when people
joked about it. His sedate home life reassured the Brazilians. He was usually described as an honest who
collected a modest thousand dollars a month salary and did not dip into the public treasury. Even critics admitted
his loyalty to his country, while denouncing him as a dictator.
Vargas was certainly no kin to the rough tyrants who had often misruled nearby Spanish American nations.
To be sure, some of his critics found it wiser to live abroad and a few went to jail for brief terms, but none were
found in dark streets with bullets in their backs. The outcry against Vargas seemed incongruous to those who met
him: he looked so mild and amiable. Vargas, says Gilberto Freyre, must be understood against to the Jesuit
missionary fathers who had shaped that area. Like them he was silent, introspective, subtle, realistic, distant, and
cold; he was also a son of the Gauchos of Indian-Portuguese blood, telluric, instinctive, fatalistic, proud, and
dramatic. Tavares de Sa speaks of Vargas shrewd, tortuous...sophistry. This was the man who for fifteen years
played state against state, group against group, man against man--always with a smile--until at last he was retired
for a time to his southern pastures.
Getulio Vargas first two years in office inspired the confidence of most Brazilians. his apologists blamed
all ills upon the republic: the empty treasury, the defaulted foreign debts, the un-honored internal leans, the
widespread unemployment, and the overproduction and under pricing of coffee. Brazilians accepted the
explanation and hailed Vargas with relief. His first measures were reassuring. He made it clear that state loyalties
must yield to national unity, a needed reproof to the arrogant bosses of Sao Paulo, Minas Gerias, and Rio Grande
do Sul. With the consent of a frightened congress, Vargas imposed rigid censorship, removed elected state
officials, and named his own men as governors and as mayors. The government was now in Rio de Janeiro-- more
accurately, in the hands of Getulio Vargas.
Vargas economic measures were vigorous and often wise: he imposed new taxes, removed the ridiculous
tariff barriers between the states, encouraged new industries, placed further checks on coffee production and
marketing, and declared a moratorium on foreign loans. Public confidence in the central government increase,
although there were rumblings of discontent as he failed to regularize his position by a legal election. The demand
for constitutional government and democratic practices finally provoked the paulistas to revolt; the uprising of July,
1932, in Sao Paulo attracted support from factions in other states and led to a three-month defiance of federal
troops, virtually a civil war. When the revolt was crushed, Vargas treated the rebels with moderation; a few were
exiled, others were briefly jailed, and some were deprived of their civil rights--but there were no executions. When
the city of Sao Paulo later dedicated the Avenida 9 de Julho, commemorating their unsuccessful revolution, Vargas
himself participated in the ceremony, smiling amiably at his former enemies.
The Brazilians continued
to demand a constitutional regime. In 1933 Vargas blandly convened a constituent assembly, which produced the
Constitution of 1934. It was similar to the Constitution of 1891 but with economic provisions reminiscent of the
Italian corporative state. The new instrument reinforced national unity by vesting larger powers in the chief
executive, provided for social legislation to safeguard laborers in field and factory, and granted the suffrage to
women. The assembly then named Vargas president for a four-year term. Brazilians congratulated themselves
upon their escape from dictatorship and return to legitimate government. The truce lasted a year. In November,
1935, there were barracks-revolts in Rio de Janiero and Pernambuco, involving army and navy officers and many
civilians. The rebellion was promptly crushed, and many were jailed or deported. Vargas pinned responsibility
upon the Communists, declared a state of siege, and ruled as a dictator. Always quick to describe all critics as
Communists, Vargas was probably correct in naming them in this instance. The Allianca Nacional Libertadora,
allied with the Third International, had been organized in 1934; its leader, able Luiz Carlos Prestes, was
remembered for his spectacular march through the wilderness and respected by his bitterest critics. As an exile,

Prestes had spent some years in Moscow and had been soundly converted to the gospel of Lenin. Brazil was ripe
for Communist infiltration, its people were chiefly a hungry, angry proletariat. Prestes was arrested and confined
without a trial until 1945.
The threat from the Communist left was matched by no less a threat from the fascist right. A strange
group called the integralistas had been growing rapidly since 1934, led by a neurotic zealot named Plinio Salgado.
His language was a strange mumbo jumbo of sun worship, Italian Fascism, the corporative state, anti-Semitism,
and the leadership principle. His devoted followers, several hundred thousand in all, wore green shirts, had a
distinctive salute, used the Greek sigma as their identifying mark, exalted God, Nation, Family, marched on all
possible occasions, and staged bewildering ceremonies to the rising sun. Salgado had money to spend; some of it
may have come from the German Embassy. Intergralismo reached into the army, the navy, government offices,
and the best families of Brazil.
A presidential election was set for January, 1938. Three forces dominated the campaign: Vargas, who
was constitutionally ineligible for reelection; the Communists, whose leader Prestes was in jail; and the
Integralistas, perhaps the most numerous of all the parties. The old-guard parties, representing coalitions of state
machines, named their candidates. Vargas said nothing until October, when he announced that a Communist
uprising was imminent and declared a state of war for ninety days, the exact period before election day. Plinio
Salgado theatrically offered the services of 100,000 Integralistas to protect the republic. In November, Vargas
struck; he spoke to the nation over the radio, proclaimed himself president for another term, dissolved congress,
and announced a new constitution for the Novo Estado, The New State, a document written by Vargas himself with
the help of his minister of justice, Francisco Campos. Vargas had outplayed the Integralistas, perhaps forestalled
an outright fascist state. Brazilians, happily quit of the preposterous Plinio Salgado, found it hard to stomach the
Novo Estado and its ghost constitution. Latin America has seen many fake constitutions, but this creation out faked
them all. It declared a state of national emergency and provided that so long as such emergency continued the
constitution was without force until approved by a plebiscite, that only then could a congress be elected--and
Vargas never mentioned the plebiscite again. So, concluded Karl Loewenstein, a constitutional cat is chasing its
legal tail, or vice versa...It is the Brazilian way of talking through his hat. However, Article 180 made all clear; until
congress is elected the president of the Republic shall be empowered to issue decrees on all matters of legislation
for the union.
Vargas dictatorship was now complete. He named all officials, high and low. His social program,
launched by decree, guaranteed collective bargaining, but with trade unions controlled by the state; it also promised
an eight-hour day, restriction on night work and child labor, medical assistance for workers and expectant mothers,
and security from birth to death. other decrees dealt with economic issues. The state theoretically assumed control
of all national wealth. Brazil for the Brazilians was the slogan; foreign enterprise was caught in a tangle of new
regulations.
In May, 1938, the Integralists made a last bid for power. Several hundred men, including army officers and
civil servants, closed in upon the presidential palace where Vargas, his daughter, and a handful of servants held
them off with a few guns until the army finally arrived. A few hundred were arrested, some were jailed briefly, but
no one was executed for this bold treason. Plinio Salgado went into hiding and soon took refuge in Portugal. After
1938 there were no more armed revolts, and Vargas ruled uncontested for seven years.
Vargas called his government a new kind of democracy, a disciplined democracy. But the facts belie his
phrases: there were neither congress nor elections; Vargas made all appointments and ruled by decree; labor
unions were the tool of the state as in Mussolinis Italy; economic life was dominated by the state. Despite his
arrogant rule, Vargas won credit by appointing some excellent men to office, by occasionally protecting the integrity
of his courts, and by improving the administration of government throughout the nation. Karl Loewenstein, in his
Brazil under Vargas, found much to remind him of pre-Nazi Austria, despotism mitigated by sloppiness. It was a
dictatorship, but an amiable one--although its amiability lessened during the war years. Vargas had appointed
himself father of his people, a role in which he delighted, and on the whole the people enjoyed it.
Civil liberties were curtailed. The press, radio, and schools came under the gloved hand of Getulios press
department, the DIP, presided over by the unsavory Lourival Fontes. A censor was assigned to each newspaper
office. No unauthorized dispatch could be sent out by foreign correspondents. Foreign newspaper men who were
friendly and reasonable were given generous privileges; and the unreasonable found it wise to leave. As an

example of Vargass ways with the press may be cited the case of O Estado do Sao Paulo, edited since the
1870s with stubborn independence, democratic zeal, and good taste. Its owner-editor, Julio Mesquita Filho,
grandson of the founder, supported Vargas in 1930, continued to support him in 1932 when the paulistas rebelled,
but finally broke with the dictator in 1937. Mesquita went to jail for six months, then into exile. In March, 1940,
police raided the newspapers plant, found machine guns and ammunition. (This startling discovery was
announced by the government three hours before the raid.) Seventeen members of the staff were jailed for two
days, and then released. The newspaper, a valuable property, was declared forfeited to the nation; publication was
shortly resumed under an editor appointed by Vargas.
Unlike the run of the mill Spanish American dictator, Vargas made good use of able men, many of whom
had scant sympathy with his methods. Afranio de Mello Franco, Vargass minister of foreign affairs during the first
three years, belongs to the fine tradition of Brazilians international lawyers. Born in Minas Gerais in 1870, he
entered the public life as a congressman in 1906. After 1917, he represented Brazil in many international
conferences, serving as a delegate to the League of Nations, and as a judge of The Hague Court. In 1930 he
became foreign minister and represented his country at the Seventh Pan American Conference in Montevideo in
1933. After his retirement in 1934, Mello Franco arbitrated the clash between Colombia and Peru over the Leticia
area in the upper Amazon. In 1938, at the Eighth Pan American Conference in Lima, he displayed wisdom in
reconciling the stubborn divergence of opinion between the United States and Argentina.
Oswaldo Aranha, ambassador to Washington and then foreign minister, was another of Vargas useful
colleagues. Tall and fair, Aranha was the handsomest statesman to represent Brazil through the days of war and
into the days of peace, when he became president of the Assembly of the United Nations. His skill was attested by
success in securing loans and grants of some $300,000,000 from Washington. Candid, open, friendly, he was
Vargass most effective spokesman, persuading skeptical outsiders of the outsiders of the dictators pure
democratic intentions. While others in Vargass circle made speeches which jarred democratic ears, Aranha was
always on the side of the Allies and of the United States. Cynical bystanders described him as Vargass American
Front.
There were others. A dictator needs a faithful army, and in his minister of war, Eurico Dutra, and chief of
staff, Goes Monteiro, Vargas had competent aides. Both seemed to waver on the issue of the Axis and Allies.
Both were decorated by Hitler for valued services by Brazil to Germany. This did not prove them pro-German,
simply pro-Brazilian. They held the army together and kept in power.
Vargas is rightfully credited with efforts to improve the living conditions of his people. He made a little
progress in providing better housing, more medical care, and increased wages. A fair appraisal of Vargas must
take into account the economic burdens of the land, the load of foreign debt, and the low purchasing power of the
people. In 1938 a government survey reported an average monthly wage of about $11.80 for all workers in
agriculture, commerce, and industry, both rural and urban. Jose Jobim adds further testimony, citing figures on
exports: in 1938 Brazil sold about four dollars worth of goods per capita in world markets-- a figure compared with
Denmarks $56.30, Argentinas $20.50. Brazils poverty appears in its federal budget which, in the years before the
war, was not much more than $200,000,000- little more than New York City was spending on schools alone. The
war brought brief prosperity, as the demand for Brazils goods increased and American war expenditures in Brazil
reached high levels. But it was a fictitious prosperity at best, canceled by a disastrous inflation. Vargas had little to
work with.
Industry, which had been enlarged during and after World War I, was given further stimulus by World War
II. Total industrial production in 1907 was about $35,000,000; in 1920 it was $153,000,000; in 1940, almost
$1,300,000,000; by 1943, well over $1,400,000,000. Industrial output had multiplied forty-three times in thirty-six
years. The output of the textile mills, chiefly in Sao Paulo, was valued at about $30,000,000 in 1926 and
$209,000,000 in 1942. In 1939 exports of textiles yielded about $1,500,000; in 1943, more than $66,000,000. In
the paper industry the output was about $25,000, in 1938, almost $500,000 in 1943. There was expansion in the
production of chemicals, leather products, rubber goods, cement, and machinery. The state of Sao Paulo was the
chief producer of all these goods.
Vargas did much to develop Brazils mineral resources, No one has computed these resources; scarcely a
third of the nation has been scientifically explored. But Brazil has almost every mineral and metal--chromite, quartz

crystals, mica, industrial diamonds, molybdenum, lead, vanadium, arsenic, and bauxite. Her manganese deposits
may be the largest of any nation. She has perhaps 23 per cent of the worlds known reserves of high grade iron
ore. The Itabira iron mountain in Minas Gerais is one of the largest deposits in the world. A beginning had already
been made in building steel mills; two plants in Minas Gerais and one in the state of Sao Paulo had turned out
some structural steel. Vargas sought to enlarge the steel industry and to keep its control in Brazilian hands.
Foreign operators--United States Steel, Krupps interests, perhaps the Japanese--were more than willing to take a
hand, but Vargas launched his National Steel Company in 1941, got loans from Washingtons Export-Import Bank,
and began construction of the Volta Redonda plant, ninety miles from Rio de Janeiro and 240 miles from Itabira.
This operation necessitated railroads and ships to bring coal from Santa Catarina, manganese from Minas Gerais.
Further loans from Washington speeded the work. The results were not spectacular when compared with
operations elsewhere, but the Brazilian company could report output for the year 1948 of 224,000 tons of pig iron,
243,000 tons of bar steel, about 62,000 tons of rails, and numerous other items.
President Vargass economic concerns ranged far afield; swamp lands in the state of Rio de Janeiro were
drained and opened to farming; highways and railroads were extended. In 1938 the National Petroleum Council
was launched to survey and drill wells, and the Brazilians were hopeful of being rid of dependence upon foreign
gasoline and lubricating oils. In 1939 the National Council of Hydraulic and Electrical Energy was organized to
exploit the vast unharnessed power of the nations rivers.
Under Vargas, Brazils trade increased. During the years 1934-37, Brazil operated under a barter
agreement with Germany. Locomotives, iron, coal, dyes, and chemicals were exchanged for Brazilian coffee,
cotton, tobacco, and oils. By 1937 Germany was selling twice as much as Brazil as was Great Britain, half as much
as the United States. After 1937 German trade fell off and the American increased. During World War II Brazil
looked chiefly to Great Britain and the United States. In 1943 Brazils exports were about $445,000,000, and she
had favorable balance of more than a half billion dollars in balances abroad.
Vargas and World War II
As the United States drew closer to war, Vargass sympathies were unclear. His generals had been
cultivated by Germany (the French had also sent military missions in the 1920s) and there was a queasy mistrust
in the hearts of democrats that the Novo Estado resembled German and Italian models, and that a proto-fascist
state was taking form on American soil. Vargas, it seemed, was sitting on the fence waiting to pick the victor.
Perhaps his policy was symbolized by sending one son to the United States for schooling, another to Germany and
Italy; prudence called for a crown prince in each camp. In the meantime, Vargas discouraged popular enthusiasm
for the Allied cause. His DIP ruthlessly censored news which stressed Allied victories. As late as January, 1941,
the newspaper Diario Carioca was closed for printing an article in praise of inter-American solidarity. When
Russian armies were at last defeating Germany, the Brazilian presses made it appear that Germany was still
victorious. This ambiguity caused grave concern in Washington. In June, 1940, after the fall of France and the
entrance of Italy on the Axis side, Franklin D. Roosevelt made a speech denouncing Mussolinis stab in the back.
The next day Vargas spoke on a battleship in Rio de Janeiro's harbor: Virile peoples must follow the line of their
aspirations. . . We are marching toward a future different from all we know in economic, political, and social
organization, and we feel that old systems and antiquated formulas have entered a decline. Washington asked
what Vargas meant. Meanwhile, there was no doubt that the majority of thoughtful Brazilians stood with the United
States, with the Allies, and against the Axis. But they had no voice, no free press, and no free platform. A popular
doggerel of this period started out: Don't speak; Getulio will do it for you--dont think; the DIP will do it for you.
By 1940 Washington was preparing for war, and Brazilian co-operation was important. Jefferson Caffery
ambassador to Rio de Janeiro, was assigned the task of persuading Getulio Vargas. It was not easy. Vargas and
many of his aides were still uncertain as to the outcome; pro-Allied populace had little outlet for their convictions.
Foreign Minister Aranha gave invaluable aid to the Allies. Caffery, an able if somewhat crusty diplomat, won
concession to build bases which later served American planes in the African campaign. By late 1940, the first
permissions had been granted, and American engineers were laying out army, navy, and blimp bases from Amapa
in far north, south through Belem, Sao Luiz, Fortaleza, Natal, Maceio, Recife, Bahia, Caravellas, and Santa Cruz.
Caffery had proved himself an excellent negotiator, Aranha a firm friend of the Allied cause.

After Pearl Harbor all the American nations were involved; Vargas knew it, but he was still cautious. In
January, 1942, Rio de Janeiro was host to a conference of the foreign ministers of all the American Republics. The
almost unanimous stand of the delegates for American solidarity against the Axis was chiefly due to Aranha, the
United States Sumner Welles, Uruguays Guani, and Mexicos Padilla, in the face of stubborn resistance from
Argentinas Ruiz Guinazu and Chiles Rossetti. Brazil was now officially on the Allied side, and on August 22
declared war. The United States furnished planes, ships, tanks, guns, and ammunition. A Brazilian expeditionary
force of 25,000 fighting men was sent to Italy and acquitted itself with credit. The bases lent by Brazil contributed to
the final victory.
One incident reveals Vargass halfhearted commitment to the Allied cause. In August, 1944, when the war
was all but won, Oswald Aranha was advertised to speak to the Society of the Friends of America (a pro-United
Nations body); the police padlocked the doors of the meeting place. Vargas refused to support his foreign minister,
and Aranha resigned.
The End of the Dictatorship
By the first days of 1945, there were clear signs of discontent with the dictatorship. Many politicians,
generals, and professional people began to show their hands. For some, the stand reflected prudence; they knew
that a dictator-bossed Brazil would have scant welcome at the peace tables. For others, it was simply a personal
play for power. For many, it was a deeply rooted desire for democratic rule. In February came the democratic
break through. Two newspapers suddenly began to talk of the election Vargas had promised, of the need for free
discussion, and in favor of the candidacy of Air Brigadier Eduardo Gomes. The DIP did not silence them; the
inference was that Vargas had decided to lose his hold. The news papers, such as were not owned by the
government or the Communists, published vigorous discussions of Brazils future.
National political parties took form. The National Democratic Union nominated Gomes, it had the support
of most moderate Liberals, many Conservatives, and others intent upon striking at Vargas. The Social Democratic
Party, backing Eurico Dutra, Vargas minister of war, made its chief appeal to those of the extreme right--with
Vargas blessing, they thought. The Communists, led by Luiz Carlos Prestes, finally released from prison, entered
the contest. As the year wore on, it became clear that Vargas was not to be easily deposed. A mysterious
movement sprang up with the slogan Queremos Getulio, We want Getulio; Brazil was plastered with the slogan on
billboards, in the press, in pamphlets. It was then revealed that the promoter of this ostensibly spontaneous
outburst was paying his printing bills from a loan of $14,000,000 granted by the national Banco do Brasil (that is,
Vargas).
Meanwhile, elections were scheduled for December 2. By September political prophets knew that Vargas
had no intention of quitting. Rumors spread that a military coup was planned, that prisons were readied. Now the
American ambassador, Adolf A. Berle, Jr., took a hand. Berle had come to Brazil in January, 1945, and had made
friends of those in power and in the opposition. Berle now decided to speak and on September 29 held a press
conference for Brazilian reporters; he spoke eloquently of the long friendship between Brazil and the United States,
and said that the pledge of free Brazilian elections, set for a definite date, by a government whose word the United
States has found inviolable, has been hailed with as much satisfaction in the United States as in Brazil itself. His
point was clear; he hailed the election, knowing full well that Vargas proposed to continue himself in power. Berle's
speech has been cited as another instance of American intervention in Latin Americas internal affairs--if so, it was
gentle and effective.
In October Vargas dismissed the capitals chief of police and installed his brother, Benjamin Vargas
(nicknamed O Beijo, The Kiss), who was notorious for his pilfering and exploitation of prostitution and gambling.
This affront to the dignity of the nation offended the generals, who demanded Vargas resignation. Forthwith, tanks,
funs, and troops surrounded public buildings. On October 29 Vargas resigned and flew to his farm in Rio Grande
do Sul. Chief Justice Linhares of the Supreme Court, who became provisional president, appointed an able
cabinet. The political campaign continued. The queremistas were noisy, Vargas now ordered them to support
Dutra. The election was held on schedule on December 2. Dutra won, two to one, over Gomez. The Communists
polled 10 percent of the votes. Meanwhile, Vargas was tending his cattle, still smiling.

Benjamin Keen - A Short History of Latin America, 448-356

V2

Vargas and the Bourgeois Revolution 1930-1954

The liberal revolution of 1930, whatever the motives of its participants, represented a victory for the urban bourgeois
groups who favored industrialization and the modernization of Brazils economic, political, and social structures.
But the bourgeoisie had gained that victory with the aid of allies whose interests had to be taken into account.
Getulio Vargas presided over a heterogeneous coalition that included conservative fazendeiros--who had joined
the revolution from jealousy of the overweening Paulista power but feared radical social change--and intellectuals
and tenentes who called for agrarian reform, the formation of cooperatives, and the nationalization of mines. On
the sidelines was the working class, vital to the development of Brazilian capitalism but a potential threat to its very
existence. Finally, Vargas had to take account of foreign capitalist interests, temporarily weakened but capable of
applying great pressure on the Brazilian economy when the capitalist world emerged from the depths of the Great
Depression Vargas strategy of attempting to balance and reconcile these conflicting interests--that is, to reconcile
the irreconcilable--helps to explain the contradictions and abrupt shifts of course that marked his career.
Vargas Economic and Political Measures
The most pressing problem facing the new government was to find some way out of the economic crisis. Vargas
did not abandon the coffee industry, the base of his political enemies, to its fate; he attempted to revive it by such
classic valorization measures as the restriction of plantings and the purchase of surplus stocks and the more drastic
expedient of burning the excess coffee. By 1940 some 60 million bags of coffee had been destroyed. Despite
these efforts, the level of coffee exports and prices remained low throughout the 1930s. The government had more
success with efforts to diversify agriculture. Production of cotton, in particular, grew with the aid of capital and labor
released by the depressed coffee industry, and cotton exports rose steadily until 1940, when the outbreak of war
interrupted their advance. But diversification of agriculture could not compensate for the steep decline in Brazils
import capacity, which was even lower in 1937 than in 1929. The key to recovery was found in import substitution
through industrialization.
The Great Depression did not create Brazilian industrialization, but it created the conditions for a new
advance. Beginning as a spontaneous response to the loss of import capacity that resulted from the catastrophic
decline of exports and a falling rate of exchange, industrialization received a fresh impetus from the Vargas policies.
He encouraged industry through exchange controls, import quotas, tax incentives, lowered duties on imported
machinery and raw materials, and long-term loans at low interest rates. Thanks to the combination of favorable
background conditions and the Vargas policy of state intervention, Brazilian industrialization, based entirely on
production for the home market, made notable strides in a few years: Industrial production doubled between 1931
and 1936. As early as 1933, when the United States was still in a deep depression, Brazils national income had
begun to increase; this indicated that for the moment, at least, the economy no longer depended, as had
traditionally been the case, on external factors but on internal ones.
Meanwhile, Vargas pursued an uncertain political course that now appeared to favor the left wing of the
revolutionary coalition, the tenentes, and now its conservative fazendeiro wing. The tenentes appeared to have
considerable influence over Vargas during the first two years of the provisional government; he used them as his
political lieutenants in various capacities, especially as interventores, or temporary administrators, in the states,
replacing unreliable elected governors. Believing that a strong centralized government was needed to carry out the
necessary structural reforms, the tenentes urges Vargas to remain in power indefinitely. Some tenentes alarmed
conservatives by their radical innovations; thus Joao Alberto, named by Vargas as interventores in place of the
elected governor of Sao Paulo, angered the Paulista elite by decreeing a 5 percent wage increase for workers and
distributing some land to participants in the revolution.
The Paulistas demanded the removal of Joao Alberto, but they wanted more; supported by oligarchical
elements in other states, they asked for a return to constitutional government through immediate elections,
preferably under the old federal constitution of 1891, which would most likely enable them to regain power in their

own state. Vargas sought to appease the Paulistas with concessions: He replaced Joao Alberto with a civilian from
Sao Paulo, appointed a conservative banker from the same state as his first minister of finance, and announced a
date for the holding of a constituent assembly.
Emboldened rather than appeased, the Paulistas launched a counterrevolutionary constitutionalist revolt in
July 1932. Lacking popular support either in Sao Paulo or in other parts of the country, it collapsed after three
months of halfhearted combat. But Vargas neither punished nor humiliated the vanquished rebels. Determined to
maintain and strengthen his ties with the Sao Paulo establishment, he made new concessions to it: He pardoned
50 percent of the bank debts of the coffee planters and ordered the Bank of Brazil to take over the war bonds
issued by the rebel government. After mid-1932 the influence of the tenente group over Vargas rapidly waned,
although individual tenentes of moderate tendency continued to hold important positions in the regime.
In February 1932, Vargas had promulgated an electoral code that established the secret ballot, one of the
major planks in the revolutionary program, lowered the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen, and extended the
vote to working women. The code, however, still denied the vote to illiterates, who formed the majority of the adult
population. A constituent assembly elected under this code drafted a new constitution, which was promulgated on
July 16, 1934. This document retained the federal system but considerably strengthened the powers of the
executive. The president was to serve for four years but could not succeed himself. The assembly, constituting
itself the first Chamber of Deputies, elected Vargas president for a term that was to extend until January 1938. A
novel feature of the new constitution, reflecting the influence of European corporatist doctrines, was the provision
for the election of fifty representatives of various classes and professions to the Chamber of Deputies, in addition to
two hundred and fifty representatives of areas and populations.
The section of the constitution on the economic and social order stressed the government's responsibility
for economic development. Article 119 declared that the law will regulate the progressive nationalization of mines,
mineral deposits, and waterfalls or other sources of energy, as well as of the industries considered as basic or
essential to the economic and military defense of the country.
The section on rights and duties of labor revealed the importance Vargas attached to the imposition of a
tutelage over the working class, a class to be courted through concessions but denied independence of action.
One of the first acts of the provisional government (November 1930) had been to create a Ministry of Labor, which
served as the government's agency in dealing with labor. Another decree (March 1931) authorized the ministry to
organize the workers into new unions, to operate under strict government control. The constitution of 1934
established a labor tribunal system, gave the government power to fix minimum wages, and guaranteed the right to
strike. Subsequent decrees set the working day at eight hours in commerce and industry, fixed minimum wages
throughout the country, and created an elaborate social security system that provided for pensions, paid vacations,
safety and health standards, and employment security.
In exchange for these gains, obtained without struggle, the working class lost its freedom of action. The
trade unions, formerly subject to harsh repression, but militant and jealous of their autonomy, became official
agencies controlled by Ministry of Labor. The workers had no voice in the drafting of labor legislation. Police and
security agencies brutally repressed strikes not approved by the government.
The labor and social legislation, moreover, was unevenly enforced, and employers frequently took
advantage of their employees ignorance of the law. The legislation did not apply at all to the great majority of
agricultural workers, who comprised some 85 percent of the labor force. Determined to maintain his alliance with
the fazendeiro wing of his coalition, Vargas left intact the system of patrimonial servitude that governed labor
relations in the countryside, just as he left intact the latifundio. The promises of agrarian reform made during the
campaign of 1930 and right after the revolution were forgotten.
Vargass concessions to the Paulista oligarchy and the ouster of reformist tenentes from positions of
power formed part of a rightward shift that grew more pronounced in 1934. This growing conservatism lost Vargas
support among liberal tenentes, intellectuals, and radical workers and drew especially sharp criticism from the
Communist party. Founded in 1922, the party had dismissed the revolution of 1930 as a struggle between two
factions of the bourgeoisie. The party gained growing influence after 1930 as a result of its anti-imperialist policies
and the prestige of its most famous recruit, Luis Carlos Prestes. Prestes had refused to take advantage of the
amnesty for political exiles proclaimed after the revolution but returned in 1934 to join the Communist party and
become honorary president of the Alianca Nacional Libertadora (National Liberation Alliance, or ANL), a popular

front movement that attracted middle class as well as working class support with its slogans of liquidation of the
latifundio, nationalization of large foreign companies, and cancellation of imperialist debts. The ANL was also
sharply critical of the inadequacies of Vargass labor and social legislation. Meanwhile, on the right there had
arisen a fascist movement (Integralismo, or Integralism), complete with the trappings of its European models,
including colored shirts (green), special salutes, and an ideology that denounced democrats, Communists, Masons,
and Jews as enemies of the state.
While tolerant of the Integralist movement, Vargas and an increasingly conservative Congress harassed
the leftist opposition as subversive. In March 1935, Congress enacted the National Security Act, which gave the
government special powers to suppress subversive activities. Denounced by the ANL as a monstrous law, it was
clearly directed at the left. In July, on the anniversary of the tenente revolt at Copabana in 1922, Prestes made a
speech in which he attacked Vargass failure to implement the tenente ideals and called for the creation of a truly
revolutionary and anti-imperialist government. Vargas responded by banning the ANL and ordering the arrest of
many leftist leaders.
With the legal avenues of opposition for the left disappearing, the ANL and one wing of the Communist
party began an armed uprising in November. Despite some initial successes, it was quickly crushed by government
forces and followed by a savage repression. There were some fifteen thousand arrests, and many prisoners were
tortured, some to death. Prestes and other leaders of the revolt were captured, tried, and sentenced to many years
in prison. The Communist party was banned and went underground for a decade.
Vargas as Dictator
The repression of the left paved the way for the establishment of Vargass personal dictatorship. A presidential
election was scheduled for January 1938, but under the new constitution Vargas was barred from succeeding
himself. He allowed candidates to emerge and campaign but meanwhile carefully prepared for the coming coup by
strategic interventions in the states and transfers in the army that filled key posts with reliable commanders. His
war minister, General Eurico Dutra, and the army chief of staff, General Goes Monteiro, played key roles in
planning and carrying out the coup.
On September 29. 1937, armed with the Cohen Plan, a crude forgery concocted by the Integralists that set
out a detailed plan for Communist revolution, Dutra went on the radio and demanded the imposition of a state of
siege. He had set the stage for the scrapping of what remained of constitutional processes. On November 10,
Vargas made a broadcast in which he canceled the presidential elections, dissolved Congress as an inadequate
and costly apparatus, and assumed dictatorial power under a new constitution patterned on European fascist
models. On December 2, all political parties were abolished.
The new regime, baptized the Estado Novo (New State), copied not only the constitutional forms of the
fascist regimes but their repressive tactics. Strict press censorship was established, and prisons filled with workers,
teachers, military officers, and others suspected of subversion. The apparatus of repression included a special
police force for hunting down dissidents; its methods included torture. Yet there was little organized resistance to
the regime. Labor, its most likely opponent, was neutralized by paternalist social legislation and doped by populist
rhetoric, and it remained passive or even supported Vargas.
The affinity between the Estado Novo and the European police states suggested to some observers that it
was merely a Brazilian variant on the Continental fascist model. Such pronouncements by Vargas as the
decadence of liberal and individualistic democracy represents an incontrovertible fact appeared to support this point
of view. Brazils growing trade and increasingly friendly relations with Germany and Italy also led to fears that the
country was moving into the fascist orbit. Between 1933 and 1938, Germany became the chief market for Brazilian
cotton and the second largest buyer of its coffee and cacao. German penetration of the Brazilian economy also
increased, and the German Bank for South America established three hundred branches in Brazil.
But Brazils economic rapprochement with Germany and Italy did not reflect sympathy with the
expansionist goals of the fascist bloc; Vargas, the great realist, sought only to open up new markets for Brazil and
to strengthen his hand in bargaining with the United States. Nor was there any true likeness between the internal
structures and aims of the Estado Novo and the European fascist systems, which arose in response to very
different economic and social conditions. Despite its authoritarian, repressive aspects, the Estado Novo continued

to struggle against neocolonialism and the effort to achieve economic independence and modernization.
Indeed, under the new regime the state intervened more actively than before to encourage the growth of
industry and provide it with necessary economic infrastructure. The constitution of 1937 repeated the restrictions of
the 1934 constitution on foreign exploitation of national resources. Rejecting laissez faire, the Estado Novo
pursued a policy of planning and direct investment for the creation of important industrial complexes in the basic
sectors of mining, oil steel, electric power, and chemicals. In 1940 the government announced a Five-Year Plan
whose goals included the expansion of heavy industry, the creation of new sources of hydroelectric power, and the
expansion of the railway network. In 1942 the government established the Companhia Vale do Rio Doce to exploit
the rich iron-ore deposits of Itabira; in 1944 it created a company for the production of materials needed by the
chemical industry, and in 1946 the National Motor Company began the production of trucks. In the same year,
Vargas saw the realization of one of his cherished dreams. The National Steel Company began production at the
Volta Redonda plant between Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Aware of the need of modern industry for abundant
sources of power, Vargas created the National Petroleum Company in 1938 to press the search for oil.
By 1941, Brazil had 44,100 plants employing 944,000 workers, the comparable figure for 1920 was 13,336
plants with about 300,000 workers. Aside from some export of textiles, the manufacturing industries served the
domestic market almost exclusively. State and mixed public-private companies dominated the heavy and
infrastructural industries and private Brazilian capital predominated in manufacturing, but the 1930s also saw a
significant growth of direct foreign investment as foreign corporations sought to enlarge their share of the internal
market and overcome tariff barriers and exchange problems by establishing branch plants in Brazil. By 1940
foreign capital represented 44 percent of the total investment in Brazilian stock companies. Vargas made no effort
to check the influx of foreign capital, perhaps because he believed that the growth of Brazilian state and private
capitalism would keep the foreign sector in a subordinate status.
The Estado Novo banned strikes and lockouts but retained and even expanded the body of protective
social and labor legislation. In 1942 the labor laws were consolidated into a labor code, regarded as one of the most
advanced in the world. But, as noted previously, it was unevenly enforced and brought no benefits to the great
mass of agricultural workers. Moreover, spiraling inflation created a growing gap between wages and prices; prices
rose 86 percent between 1940 and 1944, whereas between 1929 and 1939, they had risen only 31 percent. In
effect, inflation, by transferring income from wages to capitalists, provided much of the financing for the rapid
economic growth of the 1940s.
World War II accelerated that growth through the new stimulus it gave to industrialization. Brazil exported
vast quantities of foodstuffs and raw materials, but the industrialized countries, whose economies were geared to
war, could not pay for their purchases with machinery or consumer goods. As a result, Brazil built up large foreign
exchange reserves, amounting to $707 million in 1945. Most of the economic advance of the war years was due to
expansion and more intensive exploitation of existing plants or to the technical contributions of Brazilian engineers
and scientists.
However, Vargas adroitly exploited Great Power rivalries to secure financial and technical assistance from
the United States for the construction of the huge state-owned integrated iron and steel plant at Volta Redonda.
U.S. companies and government agencies were notably cool to requests for aid for establishing heavy industry in
Latin America. But Vargas hints that he might have to turn for help to Germany removed all obstacles. A series of
loans from the Export Import Bank made possible the completion of the Volta Redonda plant by 1946. By 1955 it
was producing 646,000 tons of steel, a major contribution to Brazils industrial growth. Volta Redonda was a great
victory for the Vargas policies of economic nationalism and state intervention in economic life. In return for
American assistance, Vargas allowed the United States to lease air bases in northern Brazil even before it entered
the war against the Axis. In August 1942, after German submarines had sunk a number of Brazilian merchantmen,
Brazil declared war on Germany and Italy. A Brazilian expeditionary force of some twenty-five thousand men
participated in the Allied invasion of Italy in 1944 and suffered relatively heavy losses in the fighting.
The paradox of Brazils participation in an antifascist war under an authoritarian regime was not lost on
Brazilians; the demands for an end to the Estado Novo grew stronger as the defeat of the Axis drew near. Ever
sensitive to changes in the political climate and the balance of forces. Vargas responded by promising a new
postwar era of liberty. In January 1945,, he announced an amnesty for political prisoners, promulgated a law
allowing political parties to function openly, and set December 2 as the date for presidential and congressional

elections.
A number of new parties were formed to fight the coming elections. Two were created by Vargas himself.
They were the Partido Social Democratico (Social Democratic Party, of PSD) and the Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro
(Brazilian Labor Party, or PTB). The PSD, the largest of the new parties, united pro-Vargas industrialists and rural
machines, above all. The PTB had its base in the government-controlled trade unions and appealed to workers
with a populist rhetoric proclaiming Vargas the Father of the Poor. The Uniao Democratica Nacional (National
Democratic Party, or UDN) was the most conservative and chiefly represented neocolonial agrarian and
commercial interests; it was strongly pro-American. Its position with respect to economic policy was that it is
necessary to call on foreign capital for the exploitation of our idle natural resources, assure it just treatment, and
allow it to repatriate its proceeds. Of the other national parties, the most important was the Communist party, led by
Prestes, which emerged from the underground with considerable prestige and strength.
A Military Coup
Vargas announced that he would not run for president but set the stage for a well-organized campaign by his
supporters, called queremistas (from the Portuguese verb querer, to want), who wanted Vargas to declare himself a
candidate in the forthcoming election. Soon after issuing the decrees restoring political freedom, Vargas moved to
the left in economic policy. In June he authorized the expropriation of an organization whose practices were
harmful to the national interest; the decree specifically named national or foreign enterprises known to be
connected with associations, trusts, or cartels.
The authorization decree, which was aimed at keeping down the cost of living, inspired alarm in
conservative foreign and domestic circles. The American ambassador, Adolph A. Berle, Jr., made no effort to
conceal his suspicion of Vargass aims. Senior military officers also regarded Vargass political maneuvers and
leftward move with growing uneasiness. The wartime alliance with the United States had accentuated their inherent
conservatism and made them ready to accept the gospel of free enterprise and American leadership in the cold war
against the Soviet Union and world communism.
On October 29, 1945, Generals Goes Monteiro and Eurico Dutra staged a coup, forced Vargas to resign,
and entrusted the government to Jose Linhares, chief justice of the Supreme Court, until after the election. The
new government promptly indicated its tendency by repealing Vargass antitrust decree and launching a
suppression of the Communist party. Ostensibly, the military had acted to defend democracy by preventing Vargas
from seizing power as he had done in 1937. But its democratic credentials were more than dubious; Goes Monteiro
and Dutra were, after Vargas, the chief architects of Estado Novo and had supported Vargass most repressive
measures. Vargas, says Richard Bourne, was right to suspect that behind the concern for democracy there was
also a hostility to state economic intervention of the sort that was building the Volta Redonda steel plant and a lack
of sympathy for his labor and welfare policies.
The military coup insured that Brazil would return to the parliamentary system under conservative
auspices, with two generals as the major presidential candidates, Eurico Dutra for PSD and Eduardo Gomez for the
UDN. Dutra won, while Vargas had the satisfaction of winning election as senator from two states and
congressman from six states and the Federal District. The newly elected Congress, sitting as a constituent
assembly, framed a new constitution that retained both the federal system and guaranteed civil liberties and free
elections, but it still denied the vote to illiterates and enlisted men in the armed forces--more than half the adult
population.
Under the mediocre, colorless President Eurico Dutra (1946-1951), neocolonial interests regained much of
the influence they had lost under Vargas. In his foreign and domestic policies, Dutra displayed a blind loyalty to the
anticommunist creed propounded by Washington. Vargas, wishing to broaden Brazils economic and diplomatic
contacts, had resumed diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union; Dutra found a pretext for severing those
relations. Alarmed by the growing electoral strength of the Communist party, Dutra outlawed the party, and
Congress followed his lead by expelling the partys elected representatives, seventeen congressmen and one
senator. Dutra exploited the resulting witch hunt to smash the independent, left-led labor movement; the Workers
Federation, organized in 1946, was declared illegal, and the government intervened in a large number of unions to
eliminate extremist elements. The imposition of a wage freeze and the failure to raise the officially decreed

minimum wage caused the real income of workers to drop sharply.

With respect to economic development, Dutra pursued a laissez faire policy that meant the virtual
abandonment of the Vargas strategy of a state-directed movement toward economic independence. Dutras
finance minister, Correia e Castro, openly declared the governments bias in favor of the neocolonial relationship
when he described Brazil as essentially an agrarian country, adding the essence of the Latin American economy,
and Brazil is an integral part of this area, is a certain concentration of effort in the export of primary products and
foodstuffs, as well as in the import of a wide variety of manufactured goods and processed foodstuffs. In conformity
with this point of view, the Dutra government removed all import and exchange controls and allowed the large
foreign exchange reserves accumulated during the war--reserves that Vargas had proposed to use for reequipping
Brazilian industry--to be dissipated on imported consumer goods, luxury goods in large part.
Attracted by the new economic climate, foreign capital flowed into Brazil. Direct investments by the United
States rose from $323 million in 1946 to $803 million in 1951. Meanwhile, seeking to curb inflation according to the
prescription of American advisers, the government pursued a restrictive credit policy harmful to the Brazilian
entrepreneurs and industrial growth. In 1947, after the negative results of these policies had become apparent and
the foreign exchange reserves had almost disappeared, the Dutra government set up a new system of import
licensing, with a scale of import priorities according to need, and adopted an easier credit policy. Thanks to these
measures, the last two years of the Dutra regime saw a revival of economic growth.
Vargass Return to Power
In 1950, having assured himself of the neutrality of the armed forces, Vargas ran for president with the support of
the PTB and a broad coalition of workers, industrialists, and members of the urban middle class. His campaign
concentrated on the need to accelerate industrialization and expand and strengthen welfare legislation. Defending
his past record, Vargas affirmed that his whole effort had been to transform into an industrial nation a country
paralyzed by the myopia of rulers wedded to the existing monoculture and to the simple extraction of primary
materials. Riding a wave of discontent with the economic and social policies of the Dutra regime, Vargas easily
defeated his two opponents.
Vargas inherited a difficult economic situation. After a brief boom in coffee exports and prices in 1949-1951, the
balance of trade again turned unfavorable, and the inflation rate increased. In the absence of other major sources
of financing for his developmental program, Vargas had to rely largely on the massive increase in the money
supply, with all its inevitable social consequences. Meanwhile, his national program of state-directed
industrialization, using state corporations as its major instrument, encountered increasing hostility from neocolonial
interests at home and abroad. In the United States, the Eisenhower administration decided that the Vargas
government had not created the proper climate for private investment and terminated the Joint United StatesBrazilian Economic Commission. Within Brazil, despite his sweeping victory in the election of 1950, Vargass
program faced sabotage at the hands of the rural forces that continued to dominate the majority of the state
governments and Congress. This hardening of attitudes signified that Vargass options and his capacity for
maneuvering between different social groups were greatly reduced.
In December, 1951, Vargas asked Congress to approve a bill creating a mixed public-private petroleum
corporation to be called Petrobras, which would give the state a monopoly on the drilling of oil and new refineries.
Petrobras illustrated Vargas belief that the state must own the commanding heights of the economy, it also
represented an attempt to reduce the balance of payments deficit be substituting domestic sources of oil for
imported oil. Vargas sought to appease domestic and foreign opponents by leaving the distribution of oil in private
hands and allowing existing refineries to remain privately owned, but almost two years passed before Congress,
under great popular pressure passed the law creating Petrobras in October 1953. However, Vargas proposal to
create a similar agency for electric power to be called Petrobras, which would supplement the power production of
foreign-owned public utilities, remained bottled up in Congress. The depth of nationalist feeling aroused by the
debate over Petrobras and Electrobras convinced foreign and domestic conservatives that Vargas was traveling a
dangerous road.

Vargas labor policy became another political battleground. Under Vargas, labor regained much of the
freedom of action that it had lost during the Dutra years. In December 1951, the government decreed a new
minimum wage that only compensated for the most recent price rises. In 1953, three hundred thousand workers
went on strike for higher wages and other benefits. In June of that year, Vargas appointed a young protg, Joao
Goulart, minister of labor. Goulart, a populist in the Vargas tradition, was sympathetic with labors demands. In
January 1954, observing that it is not wages which raise the cost of living; on the contrary it is the cost of living
which require higher wages, Goulart recommended to Vargas a doubling of the minimum wage. This
recommendation evoked a violent manifesto of the colonels, in which a group of officers charged that the
government was penetrated by communism and corruption, that the armed forces were being neglected, and that
the recommended new minimum wage would demoralize the badly underpaid officer class. Under military
pressure, Vargas dismissed Goulart, but in a May Day speed to workers he announced that the increased minimum
wage would be enacted and even praised the fallen minister of labor.
The battle lines between Vargas and his foes were being drawn ever more sharply. In speeches to
Congress, Vargas attacked foreign investors for aggravating Brazils balance of payments problem by their massive
remittances of profits and claimed that invoicing frauds had cost Brazil at least $250 million over eighteen-month
period. Meanwhile, attacks on him by the conservative dominated press and radio grew even bitterer; especially
vituperative were the editorials of Carlos Lacerda, editor of the ultraconservative Tribuna da Imprensa.
An effort to silence Lacerda presented Vargas enemies with a golden opportunity to destroy him.
Unknown to Vargas, the chief of the presidents personal guard arranged for a gunman to assassinate Lacerda.
The plot miscarried, for Lacerda was only slightly wounded, but one of his bodyguards, an air force major, was
killed. The resulting investigation revealed the complicity of palace officials and uncovered the existence of largescale corruption in the presidential staff. The chorus of demands for Vargas resignation was joined by the military,
which informed him on August 24 that he must resign or be deposed. Isolated, betrayed by the men he had
trusted, the seventy-two-year-old Vargas found the way out of his dilemma by suicide. But he left a message that
was also his political testament. It ended with the words:
I fought against the looting of Brazil. I fought against the looting of the people. I have fought bare-breasted.
Hatred, infamy, and calumny did not beat down my spirit. I gave you my life. Now I offer my death. Nothing
remains. Serenely I take the first step on the road to eternity and I leave life to enter history.
Jordan Young -The Brazilian Revolution of 1930 and the Aftermath, pp. 81-97

V3

Vargas and the Political Structure: 1930 to 1945

In the years between 1930 and 1945 Brazil was dominated by Getulio Vargas. He was the government for
fifteen years, and every major shift in national policy carried his imprint. During this period the countrys traditional
economic foundation was changed by the men from Rio Grande do Sul who surrounded Vargas and replaced the
Paulista coffee planters as the rulers of the nation. The one-crop economy gave way to a broader based
agricultural and industrial structure. Politically, the power shift is even more sharply etched. Sao Paulo and Minas
Gerais after 1930 no longer exclusively determined the affairs of the nation. Gaucho politicians swarmed into Rio
de Janeiro and in the next decade and a half took over the administrative machinery of Brazil.
The period 1930 to 1945 breaks clearly into three units. October, 1930, to July, 1932, was a period of
transition for the new regime. In July, 1932, a rebellion against Vargas broke out in the state of Sao Paulo but was
crushed by September. From September, 1932, until November, 1937, was another distinct unit of Brazilian
political history. A quasi-democratic state existed, which drafted and functioned under the 1934 Constitution.
November 10, 1938, to October 29, 1945, was the third and final period of the Vargas reign. Certain trends and
developments that were begun during these latter years still persist in the Brazilian contemporary political scene.
On October 29, 1945, Getulio Vargas was relieved of his office, and the military permitted to Brazil to resume a
republican and democratic form of government.
From October, 1930, to July, 1932, the aims of the revolutionaries were not clearly focused and as a result

they had few definite plans or programs to present to the people. It was government by improvisation. Almost
immediately a power struggle began between those elements within the revolutionary party who wished to bring
about profound social reforms, and those who desired technical reforms that would attack and solve the problems
of the day and leave the question of deep social changes for a later period. In this second group were Getulio
Vargas, Goes Monteiro and Oswald Aranha.
The more advanced and radical of the revolutionaries were in a weaker position, for they did not have
control of the new government machinery to carry out their rather vague ideas of social reform. Many lieutenants of
the earlier 1922 and 1924 rebellions were in this group, but they were quickly squeezed out of power by the
conservatives.
Thus the political reorganization that began in October, 1930, had few ideological guidelines. It was more
a pragmatic response to national problems viewed from the perspective of politicians from the state of Rio Grande
do Sul. Profound social and economic reforms were not foremost on the list of objectives of the leaders of the
revolution. Many of these may have felt there were injustices in the Brazilian political structure but that these were
purely of a me holistic nature. The most important items were improving the electoral machinery, establishing the
secret ballot and reducing the economic and political power of the state of Sao Paulo in the federal political
structure. But hard-core social and political reform programs were lacking. Some elements did feel that the bad
economic conditions of their period indicated that sharp breaks with the past traditions of Brazil were needed in the
area of social legislation. But the most powerful of the revolutionaries, Getulio Vargas and Goes Monteiro, were
cautious politicians.
The provisional government set up on November 3, 1930, clearly reflected the mixed reform-andconservative character of the revolution. Getulio Vargas, Goes Monteiro and Osvaldo Aranga put together the
following cabinet: Foreign Affairs, Afranio de Melo-Franco; Justice, Osvaldo Aranha; Treasury, Jose Maria
Whitaker; War, General Jose Fernandes Leite de Castro; Navy, Admiral Isaias de Noronha; Transportation and
Public Works, Captain Juarez Tavora; Agriculture, Joaquim Francisco Campos; and Labor, Lindolfo Color.
Basically, the cabinet was a conservative one with reformers Color and Campos given the newly created
ministries of Education and Labor. Juarez Tavora was perhaps the most radical, but his area of operation was the
northeast part of Brazil, which had only a secondary relationship to the heartland of the country. The War and Navy
ministries were essentially puppets, since Goes Monteiro had become chief of staff and dominated the armed
forces. Throughout the next fifteen years Vargas control of the country depended to a large extent upon the
support of Goes Monteiro and his command of the Brazilian military. It was difficult to separate the careers of the
two men.
General Goes Monteiro insisted that the illusion of legitimacy and continuity within the regular army be
maintained. Few high-ranking generals lost their posts, and no scars were opened up within the army as a result of
the revolution. Yet at the same time, Goes Monteiro was a realist. He took no chances with the army and
maintained an informal Revolutionary Army Staff Headquarters which kept the Brazilian military establishment off
balance. It was only on April 18, 1931, amid much public notice, that Goes Monteiro announced that the services of
the Revolutionary Army Staff Headquarters were no longer needed and it was to be disbanded.
Both the Foreign Affairs and Treasury ministries were given to men who were intimately connected by
previous experience and family ties with their assignments. The Agriculture post was given to Assis Brasil to
assure local political unity in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Osvaldo Aranha's appointment as Minister of Justice
was a popular one, as his flamboyant speeches kindled the imagination of the people.
To get the wheels of the government moving again, the executive office began to govern by issuing
presidential decrees. These decrees were considered legal and binding and carried the Presidents signature as
well as that of the appropriate cabinet minister.
Decree Law 19. 398 of November 11, 1930, set up the administrative machinery for the new provisional
dictatorial government. It was a relatively short document of eighteen articles, commencing with the simple
statement that Getulio Vargas was the chief executive with discretionary power delegated to him in every area of
the new provisional government. The second article dissolved the Congress. Article 5 suspended all constitutional
guarantees of the citizens. Article 11 changed most of the state governors and placed the various states under the
control of administrators called Interventores. These men were to be selected by Getulio Vargas and were to have
both executive and legislative power.

Article 11 turned out to be quite troublesome, and created problems that plagued the new revolutionary
government from 1930 to 1932. Many young military officials considered personally loyal to Getulio Vargas and
Goes Monteiro were sent to take over control of the various states. They were to organize political machines that
could be integrated with the central Administration. The problem was that the central government had no concrete
plans for the reorganization of the country, and Brazil had no tradition of strong national control in planning and
programming.
Selection of the Interventores for Sao Paulo was a very important decision, and when former Lieutenant
Joao Alberto Lines de Barros was appointed on November 24, 1930, the state was stunned. He was an unknown
quantity to the Paulista elite. At this point it is apparent that the death, early in 1930, of the Lieutenant Siqueiros
Campos, who was a Paulista and might have bridged to gap between the Gauchos and the politicians of Sao
Paulo, was a greater tragedy nationally than had been supposed. Joao Alberto, a northeasterner and a prominent
member of the Luis Carlos Prestes column, was keenly aware of the injustices of the Brazilian economic system
and felt, as did many, that the state of Sao Paulo was the direct cause of much of the poverty and misery existing in
the northeast. Northeasterners argued that they were a depressed colony of the Paulistas, supplying them with
cheap labor, raw materials, and secure markets for their manufacture red goods. Joao Alberto was, however,
trusted by both Getulio Vargas and General Goes Monteiro, insofar as Vargas and Goes trusted anyone.
The Vargas regime was aware that any successful national reform program had to be carried out first in
Sao Paulo. All political or economic proposals by the new Interventor would naturally reflect the attitudes of the
revolutionary government in Rio de Janeiro. Thus every move by Joao Alberto was closely scrutinized and
analyzed by Paulista political leaders.
No major actions were taken in December, but on January 5, 1931, through state Decree Law 4814, the
most vocal of the opposition newspapers was taken over by the revolutionaries. Joao Alberto was not going to
permit any resistance to his administration. When the Interventor next encouraged the organization of a club that
carried the interesting name Society of Friends of Russia, the Sao Paulo elite became clearly hostile. Joao Alberto
had further difficulty in building support in Sao Paulo when he decided to ignore the Democratic Party, which had
supported Getulio Vargas in the election and the revolution. The party was split on the issue of allying itself with
Joao Alberto and had little projection outside the capital. It soon became apparent that Joao Alberto was going to
create a political apparatus that would be linked closely with the Gauchos in Rio de Janeiro.
In the economic sector, the coffee interests were jolted by Decree Law 4815 of January 6, 1931, which
resulted in the reorganization of the Coffee Institute. It was now placed under the personal and direct control of the
Interventor. This meant that all stockpiling and marketing activities of coffee, both internally and externally, were to
be directed by the Vargas machine and not by the elite of the state of Sao Paulo. From this point on, a cold war
began in the state. On January 7. 1931, Decree Law 4819 was issued, stating that a special bureau would be set
up to assist needy rural workers. The Joao Alberto Administration had begun to build a following among the poor.
The resentment against the Vargas regime and the Joao Alberto that continued to build up in Sao Paulo
among the middle class and the elite was compounded of many factors. Foremost was the fact that Sao Paulo was
not being governed by Paulistas and the reforms being made were not those desired by the former political leaders
of the state. Finally, in July, 1931, Joao Alberto resigned as Interventor, as the Vargas Administration made an
effort to ease pressure in Sao Paulo by appointing Paulista political figureheads. However, the opposition
continued to mount and, in addition to constant assertions that the Sao Paulo government was mismanaged, the
Paulistas charged that Vargas was not honoring his pledge to give the Brazilians a new constitution. Paulistas
began to conspire against the Vargas regime. As early as March, 1931, a plan for an armed rebellion was
organized but collapsed when state military elements could not agree on a coordinated plan of action. Contact,
however, was made with discontented politicians in the states of Rio Grande do Sul and Minas Gerias.
The Vargas regime reacted to the growing discontent by promulgating Decree Law 21.402 on May 14,
1932, calling for elections on May 3, 1933, of representatives to a constituent assembly that would prepare a new
constitution for Brazil. The announcement came too late.
On July 9, 1932, an armed insurrection broke out in Sao Paulo against the government. The rebels
expected support from Rio Grando do Sul and from the commanding general of the Mato Grosso area, but no aid
was forthcoming from either area. General Bertoldo Klinger flew in from Mato Grosso but brought no troops with
him. Joao Neves and Borges de Medeiros broke with Vargas and tried to get Rio Grando do Sul to join the revolt,

but failed with Interventor Flores da Cunha switched his position at the last minute and remained loyal to Vargas.
Joao Neves statement to the nation rather accurately explained the political situation in Brazil at that time. The
Vargas government, he charge, was one of clubs and clans, of promises and fictions, of lies and imaginary salaries,
secret groups and favored persons without a program.
The federal government moved swiftly. General Goes Monteiro, who had briefly considered joining the
Paulista rebels, remained loyal to Vargas and dispatched government troops to surround the state. Support for the
federal government purred on from all the other sections of Brazil, with approximately three hundred thousand
troops involved. Nearly one hundred thousand Paulistas volunteered to fight the Vargas Administration. This was
a popular war, in contrast to 1924, when the Paulista population was untouched and indifferent to the appeals of the
army rebels. Failing to make good use of initial advantages, the Paulistas on the defensive and the fighting
reached a stalemate. Peace was negotiated on October 1, 1932, and the revolt ended. No reprisals were taken,
and Getulio Vargas promised to convene a constituent assembly promptly to prepare a new constitution for the
country.
Decree Law 22.400, issued in November, 1932, created a committee to prepare a preliminary constitution
to be discussed and voted on by a new constituent assembly in 1934. The committee was composed of politicians
from Rio Grande do Sul, Minas Gerais and northern Brazil. The group split: One faction favored a fascist-stateoriented constitution along more liberal lines of the nineteenth century. Vargas did not demonstrate approval or
disapproval of either group, though both attempted to win his favor. He apparently felt it unwise to take a strong
stand before all elements were clearly defined.
In 1933 the states began selecting candidates to run for seats in the constituent assembly. In most of the
states which had had a one-party system before in 1930 revolution, the same situation existed in 1933. As in pre1930 Brazil, in the smaller states the government was able, by direct or indirect means, to elect people whom it
favored. In Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio Grande do Sul, states that had developed some degree of political
sophistication before 1930, the contests between opposing party groups were lively. The Interventores managed
those in the other states.
The constituent assembly which met early in 1934 consisted of two hundred and fifty representatives from
various economic sectors who had the same status as the political representatives. The fifty delegates included
deputies for agriculture, industry, commerce, communications and labor. They were chosen through elections by
the members of the various economic organizations. The labor delegates were quickly dubbed pelegos, or agents
of the Ministry of Labor, whose orders they followed closely.
On July 16, 1934, the new Constitution was promulgated. Basically, it was a move toward greater
centralization of power in the hands of the national government. The legislative branch sustained the greatest
modification, with the Chamber of Deputies made more powerful. In addition to the traditionally elected
representatives, the fifty special deputies from the various economic sectors were to have seats in the Chamber.
The Senate was reduced in power. The Supreme Court remained basically the same, although it was granted the
additional right to declare a law unconstitutional. The presidential office was theoretically stripped of some of its
authority and a second term for the President was prohibited. In reality, however, the legislative branch was the
docile instrument of a strong chief executive. Anything and everything that Vargas wanted was granted.
The constituent assembly, when it finished work on the Constitution, constituted itself the first regular
Congress and elected Vargas President of the Republic for the four-year term 1934 to 1938.
The pace of events in Brazil in the period from mid-1934 to the coup detat of 1937 was swift. The
Congress, acting under the pressure of Getulio Vargas, who saw the political implications and power to be gained
by working with labor, enacted social legislation to aid the working class. Labor courts were set up, and some
serious attention began to be directed to the problems of lower-income groups in Brazil.
Communist activity increased during the period after the Constitution of 1934 was implemented. Although
illegal, the Communist party created a front organization, the National Liberation Alliance, which was under the
control of Luis Carlos Prestes. In July, 1935, Vargas outlawed the front organization, but it continued to agitate
against the government. In October a strike in northeastern Brazil involving a foreign-owned railroad, the Great
Western, was organized by the Alliance and violence resulted. On November 23, the National LIberation Alliance
attempted a revolt against the central government. Military units were approached, and the Third Infantry Battalion,
with headquarters at Praia Vermelho in Rio de Janeiro, a unit in Rio Grande do Norte and one in Pernambuco

joined the rebellion. The revolt did not succeed and was quickly put down. Luis Carlos Prestes and many others
were arrested and sentenced to jail.
The rise of a Fascist party was the focus of the next major group opposing the government of Getulio
Vargas. The Integralistas, led by Plinio Salgado and directed by a council of forty, were an extremely nationalistic,
Church-oriented political party that attracted Brazilians by blending Catholicism, mysticism, order and progress, with
saluting, green shirt uniforms and parades. With the financial support of the German embassy, the Integralistas
actually began to make serious inroads with their appeals to the masses.
In 1937 maneuvering began for the presidential elections that were to be held in the following year. Three
candidates seriously sought the presidency and campaigned vigorously. One, Jose America de Almeida, from
northeastern Brazil, had briefly been Minister of Public Works. Although a former member of the Vargas cabinet,
Jose America was not considered an official candidate of the government. Another candidate was Amanda Sales
de Oliveira of Sao Paulo, a popular local political leader. The sheer weight of the Paulista voting population with
whatever support could be picked up in other states, in a relatively free election, would probably have given this
candidate the election. The third candidate was the leader of the Integralist party, Plinio Salgado, another Paulista,
whose campaign was being skillfully managed by San Tiago Danas and A. Mercedes Filch.
The regime decided not to take a chance on the elections. On November 10, 1937, Vargas, with the
support of the armed forces, declared a national emergency, dissolved Congress and took over complete control of
the country. A new constitution was proclaimed, molded this time along totalitarian lines. O Estado Novo, the New
State, was announced, and Brazil quietly became a dictatorship. The cabinet remained basically the same, and the
country calmly went about its business. Over eighty Congressmen went to congratulate Vargas and assure him of
their loyalty. Many were later rewarded with administrative positions. The Integralistas applauded the move,
expecting to collaborate with Vargas.
Any effective protest to this turn of events had to come from Sao Paulo, and the efficient deployment of
federal troops in the city of Sao Paulo prevented this. The Paulistas did not want a repeat of 1932, and the
remainder of Brazil was inclined to go along with the Vargas coup.
General Goes Monteiro gave the following reasons for the golpe de estado of November 10. First, he
considered the coming presidential elections potentially dangerous to the political stability of the country, since a
victorious Paulista candidate might reverse policies adopted by the Vargas Administration. Second, Congress
presented a potential threat to the former army rebels, who were now high-ranking officers, as new legislation was
being considered which would severely punish officers who led rebellions against the civilian political structure.
Third, General Goes Monteiro noted the Interventor Flores da Cunha of Rio Grande do Sul had broken with Vargas
and was attempting to enlist the support of federal troops to carry out a counterrevolution against the central
government. Fourth, the Cohen Plan, a terrorist conspiracy of guerilla activity against the Vargas government, had
been uncovered by the secret police. (The charge has been made that this plan never existed and was simply a
fabrication by the army to justify the setting up of a dictatorship.) Fifth, General Goes Monteiro, the rationale behind
the 1937 coup is not easily explained and may lie elsewhere. The initial impact of the 1930 revolution had
prevented a more serious social and political revolution. The excitement of promised reforms and expected
changes had lasted until 1932, but by then there was a feeling that the revolution had run its course and Brazilian
politics had returned to its familiar mold. The only significant change brought about by the revolution was that
control of the national government had shifted from Sao Paulo to Rio Grande do Sul. The failure of the Sao Paulo
revolt in July, 1932, saved Rio Grande do Sul from losing mastery of the central government. The successful
mobilization of the army by General Goes Monteiro and the apparent unity demonstrated by the other states in
support of the Vargas regime during the Paulista revolt gave the Gauchos a fresh grip of the nation.
Beginning in 1934 with the drafting of the new Constitution, political affairs in Brazil took on the air of
unreality. The country was not governed dictatorially, but everyone watched the Vargas Administration cautiously.
The influence of the central government was evident in the smaller states, as it had been throughout Brazilian
history, but basic economic and social problems were not being solved. As a result of this lack of a successful
program on the part of the Vargas team, political extremists from both the left and the right attacked the government
for not doing enough to help the people. The uncertainty and aimlessness of the Vargas Administration had been
brought out by the 1937 presidential campaign. Apparently General Goes Monteiro acted with the approval of
Getulio Vargas to end this period of indecision. The military had once again save the political life if Getulio Vargas.

It was clear that the army trusted the Gaucho politician but did not feel the same way toward the other men who
were running for the presidency.
Brazil was governed from 1937 to 1945 by laws that were issued by the executive office, the government
again was one man, Getulio Vargas. Political parties were wiped out by presidential decree on December 2, 1937.
Two achievements of the regime were nevertheless to have great impact on contemporary Brazil. The first was the
acceleration of the movement toward economic nationalism and the second, the enactment of social legislation.
There has always been a latent feeling in Brazil that the industrial development of the country has been
retarded by the operations of foreign investors, especially, after 1930, by United States corporations. An attempt
was made in the first year of the Vargas regime to challenge this situation. A Decree Law of December 12, 1930,
stated that two-thirds of the labor force of all firms operating in the country must be Brazilian nationals. This law
was not enforced very strictly and was amended in 1939 by Decree Law 1843.
Various commissions, councils, departments, institutes and government banks were organized; however,
the economic council that was decreed was not created. It was a blend of government planning and free
enterprise.
The best example of the mixed corporation in Brazil was the Brazilian national steel company, which took
shape in January, 1941. The steel plant at Volta Redonda, which the United States helped finance and install in
Brazil, played a great role in pushing the country toward industrialization. The Brazilian army's interest in
armament, the social implications that industrialization would bring, considerations of higher standards of living and
the Nazi threat were all involved in the decision to start the plant.
After 1937 the focus of the government domestic program was on the urban working-class groups.
Provisions in article 137 of the 1937 Constitution included annual holidays with pay, minimum wages, an eight-hour
day, social security, and medical institutes. Unions were legalized but were kept under close government
supervision. Articles 145 to 153 established government control over certain industrial areas that Vargas and his
planners considered crucial.
The political implications of these moves are clear, for the growing urban proletariat became one of the
supporting pillars of the Vargas Administration. The remained loyal to Vargas even after he had been ousted from
office.
In 1938, Vargas eliminated his disillusioned right-wing opponents, the Integralistas, when they made a
clumsy and ill-timed attempt to kill him. Entering the presidential residence late at night, the followers of Plinio
Salgado fought a running pistol duel with Vargas and his daughter before they were captured.
As the German embassy was linked to the Integralista party, the open admiration that both Vargas and
General Goes Monteiro had for the Nazis began to cool. At the same time, Brazilian-American relations began to
improve. Osvaldo Aranha, who served as ambassador in Washington and later become Foreign Minister, worked
closely with Jefferson Caffery, the United States ambassador in Brazil. Negotiations were worked out in 1940
whereby the Brazilian government granted the United States, first, naval bases in Recife and Bahia and then,
shortly after Pearl Harbor, air bases and additional naval installations. Brazil declared war on Germany and Italy in
August, 1942, when five Brazilian merchantmen were sunk by German submarines. A Brazilian army later fought in
Italy under the command of General Mark Clark.
As the Allies began to win in Europe, the repercussions were felt in Brazil. In April, 1944, Vargas indicated
in his usual ambiguous style that the end of the war would perhaps bring free elections to Brazil. In August, 1944,
however, Vargas broke temporarily with Osvaldo Aranha, whose enthusiastic endorsement of the United Nations
through the Society of Friends of America was considered a potential threat to the political stability of the nation by
the military. They feared that the organization might become a rallying point for democratic opponents of the
Vargas regime. The army padlocked a meeting hall one night in 1944 when Aranha was to give an important
speech, and in protest he resigned from the government.
The year 1945 was the final one of the Vargas dictatorship. It began auspiciously with the arrival of a new
American ambassador, a prominent New Dealer, Adolph A. Berle. In February, 1945, the Organization of American
States convened a special Inter-American Conference on Problems of War and Peace in Mexico City. By the Act of
Chapultepec the member countries adopted the principle that an act of aggression by any nation against an
American state would be considered an act of aggression against all. Argentina was not permitted to sign the act

until she had declared war on the Axis, and she was admitted to the United Nations only under protest from the
Russians. There were unconfirmed rumors that the Russians would not permit Brazil to take a seat in the United
Nations unless the country held elections and returned to democratic government. The aim of the Russians was to
give as much support as possible to the jailed Communist leader, Luis Carlos Prestes.
Getulio Vargas stated in February, 1945, that general elections would be held in December of that year to
select a new President, Chamber of Deputies and Senate. During the last week in February press censorship was
lifted and the Brazilians read a wave of denunciations of the Vargas regime. Political parties began to take shape
promptly. The two major parties that appeared were both conservative. The National Democratic Union (Uniao
Democratica Nacional; UDN), an urban-based party that contained many wealthy industrialists, selected as its
candidate for the presidency Air Brigadier General Eduardo Gomes. The party favored mildly liberal reforms;
however, the most prominent men in the party were odd political bedfellows. Sprinkled among the founders were
Osvaldo Aranha, Julio Prestes, President-elect in 1930, former President Artur da Silva Bernardes, Assis
Chateaubriand, who controlled the largest newspaper chain in the country, and Francisco Campos, who had written
the 1937 Constitution for Vargas.
The other party, the Social Democratic Party (Partido Social Democratico; PSD), inherited the mantle of
government. Their candidate was Getulio Vargas Minister of War, Eurico Gaspar Dutra. The PSD had strength in
Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio Grande do Sul, and its position in the smaller states was unassailable where the
government was the major political force. In the north east and the interior, the traditional rural aristocrats had
either collaborated closely with the Vargas machine or had been forced out of politics.
A third, smaller party organized by the government was called the Brazilian Labor party (Partido
Trabalhista Brasileiro; PTB), in which the official unions worked closely with the Minister of Labor. They began to
demand that Vargas remain as dictator of the country. Within the Labor party and at the same time directly
responsible to Vargas was a small but vocal group which became known as Queremistas (We want Vargas).
Other parties began to appear but none was to have the congressional strength of the three mentioned. In
April, 1945, the Communist leader, Luis Carlos Prestes, was released from prison and promptly backed Getulio
Vargas, calling him a great democrat. Vargas had apparently worked out a modus Vivendi with Prestes in true
Brazilian style. The army watched uneasily as the Communist party was permitted to function and began to
organize for the coming election.
In September, 1945, as the December election date drew closer, there was some apprehension that
Vargas might organize a coup detat similar to that November, 1937. When Vargas replaced the chief of police of
Rio de Janeiro with his disreputable brother Benjamin Vargas, suspicion grew in army circles that it was just a
question of time until Vargas would announce that he was staying on.
The American embassy apparently learned details of a Vargas plot to call off the elections and stay in
power. Ambassador Verle made an extremely pointed speech in which he declared: Public opinion has rejoiced
over the steady Brazilian determination to develop and use the institution of democratic government, and has
acclaimed the steps taken by the Brazilian government to reach the goal of constitutional democracy. The pledge
of free Brazilian elections set for a definite date, by a government whose word the United States has found
inviolable, has been hailed with as much satisfaction in the United States as in Brazil itself. The speech was
delivered to an audience of UDN political leaders.
Vargas may have been watching the events in Argentina. There Juan Peron had been imprisoned by the
army, and Evita, his wife, called out the packing-house workers to free him (October 9 to 17, 1945). At precisely the
same time, Vargas was maneuvering in Brazil and receiving reports concerning the successful use of labor unions
by Peron to thwart the Argentine military, from his close Gaucho friend, Batista Luzardo, who was serving as
ambassador in Argentina.
Worried Brazilian military men Vargas uneasily. Gernaeral Goes Monteiro met with General Eurico Dutra
and Brigadier General Eduardo Gomes, and all agreed that Vargas might be attempting a move that would halt
elections and perhaps endanger the military establishment. The decision was reached to end the Vargas reign and
install the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court as temporary head of the government until elections were held in
December. To prevent Vargas from outmaneuvering them, they acted quickly. On October 17 teletype messages
were sent by General Goes Monteiro to all commands--and tanks rumbled out to take positions around the
presidential palace. The army had retired peacefully to his ranch in Sao Borja in southern Brazil. The circle had

closed. Vargas had returned to his native home.

What had the fifteen years meant to Brazil? No one could turn the clock back. Brazil would never return
to her pre-1930 condition, either politically or economically. Yet the Vargas period is not all black and white.
From the political perspective, Brazil had both suffered and benefited. It suffered in that fifteen years of
political education had been denied to the Brazilian electorate. The give and take of a democratic society is not
easily learned, and the Brazilians were slowly edging toward more and more participation in politics from the
inception of the republic in 1889 to the 1930 election. But for fifteen years decisions were made for the Brazilians,
and a generation grew up without having voted or heard opposition politicians argue positions. Political parties had
to develop and build followings. But more important, a deep sense of cynicism regarding politicians developed in
the fifteen years that the Vargas men controlled the government. Though Getulio Vargas may not have enriched
himself, there is no question that the men around him amassed fortunes and used their power to give favors to
others. Personal relationships were more important than the laws of the nation. A vast network of economic and
political power relationships developed which caused havoc and disrupted political life from 1945 to 1965.
Brazilians had benefited politically in that there existed in 1945 a pluralistic power base unintentionally
provided by the Vargas dictatorship. Bringing the working class into the political arena, Getulio Vargas had
accomplished what the Argentine governing class was unable or unprepared to do. In the urban centers the
Brazilian working class was able to make the transition to participation in the political activities of the country without
violence. The Vargas regime had permitted and encouraged the maturation of that sector of society, so that when
the country returned to democratic procedures, labor took a role in the give and take of everyday politics and
received benefits from the political structure. The lower-income groups on Brazil were not systematically excluded
as they were in other Latin American countries. Nor did they have to tear their demands from the government
through bloody power struggles, as occurred in Mexico, Cuba, and Colombia. The government in Brazil during the
dictatorship and the period following was not an enemy of the working class, but a government that responded
somewhat to its demands. During the dictatorship it had been a benevolent leader; in the period that followed,
pressure through balloting and other organized maneuvers was sufficient. Whether this type of development would
have been permitted or encouraged by the Paulista elite is an open-ended question.
Another benefit of the Vargas period was the temporary breaking of the dominance of the state of Sao
Paulo over the rest of the country. For too long the fortunes of Brazil had been determined by the interests of this
very powerful and important state. What was good for Sao Paulo was good for the remainder of Brazil. Sometimes
this may have been true; often it was not. Often Paulista businessmen made the north of Brazil their own type of
colony. The north and the northeast were secure markets and also the source of raw materials for southern Brazil.
The Vargas period to a slight degree dislodged the complete power control of Sao Paulo over the country.
Credit should be given to Getulio Vargas for his conscious attempt to break down the strong regional
sentiments that existed before 1930, for Brazil during the Vargas period became more of a unified nation.
Regionalism still existed, to be sure, and exists today in Brazil; but for the first time in modern Brazilian history a
chief of state had spoken to Brazilians from a non-Paulista base.
Thus, the Vargas epoch was a mixture of gains and benefits in some sectors, setbacks and negative
results in others. Nevertheless, by comparison with other Latin American countries during the same time span, in
Brazil the era was one of economic and social progress and continuous development.
James Cockcroft - Neighbors in Turmoil Latin America, pp. 550-551

V4

Corporativism and Populism: The Vargas Era, 1930-1954

A civilian-military coalition toppled the Old Republic and introduced an authoritarian system that eliminated elections
most Brazilians viewed as fraudulent to begin with. The new system was led by Getulio Vargas, a short,
bespectacled man from a southern ranching family who spoke poorly and made sardonic jokes. Vargas started his
career in the army, got a law degree, and became a state governor in the late 1920s. As Brazils new president, he
gathered around him a group of liberal intellectuals and dedicated reformers, including survivors of the tenentes
movement.

Because of the many reforms he introduced, Vargas was popular. He was even able to walk the streets
without bodyguards. People called him simply, Getulio. His reforms included the vote for 18-year-olds and working
women (but not illiterates, the majority of the population); social security; an eight-hour workday; a minimum wage;
legality for trade unions and the right to strike; construction of schools; and a career civil service based on merit.
When not co-opting opposition movements by bringing their leaders or their programs into the government,
Vargas and the military put them down. Thus in 1932 he swiftly ended a revolt by Paulista oligarchs. A big
landowner himself, Vargas wanted Brazil to industrialize. In 1935 he crushed an uprising by a popular front of
Socialists, former tenentes, and Communists. He arrested 15,000 and jailed the popular Prestes, by then a
member of the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party, founded in 1922). Prestes was not released until 1945. Several
leftist prisoners died under torture. In 1938 Vargas personally opened fire on Fascists attacking the presidential
palace. They were a handful of fanatics from the outlawed Integralist movement sponsored by Hitlers Nazi
Germany and some of the oligarchy.
Vargas moved erratically between reformism and repression, elections and coups, finally consolidating his
power in 1937 by creating the Estado Novo or New State. It curtailed states rights that had favored the regional
oligarchies. It banned strikes and lockouts. Vargass centralized, authoritarian system of governance, like Perns
in Argentina, was classically populist and corporativism. In the name of class harmony and the nation it promised
something for everyone and incorporated the two main groups of society--employers and workers-- into sindicatos
under state regulation and tutelage. By claiming to place national above regional or class based interests, Vargas
was able to steer Brazil down the road of industrialization without seriously disrupting existing power relationships.
Vargas and his successors increased the states role in the economy. Compared with foreign investors,
Brazils oligarchs and industrialists were too cautious or too weak to lead the way. As foreign capitalists turned their
attention to resolving the Depression and producing for World War II, Brazil expanded it manufacturing industry for
the internal market. By 1941 the number of manufacturing plants was triple the number in 1920 and employed
nearly a million workers. Vargas, although he spoke like a nationalist, welcomed foreign investment. In 1940
foreign capital still accounted for nearly half of Brazils stock holdings.
Internationally, Vargas expanded trade with Germany and then told the United States that Germany was
anxious to set up a steel industry in Brazil. In this way he obtained a U.S. loan to help finance construction of the
National Steel Company (1941). He also took the U.S. side in World War II, during which U.S. training and arms
shipments helped convert Brazils armed forces into a powerful military machine. Vargas set up government
enterprises to produce engines, trucks, materials for the chemical industry, armaments, and ships.
After World War II Brazilians in the trade unions, private industry, and the middle classes clamored for their
democratic rights. Proclaiming an amnesty for political prisoners, Vargas called national elections. Then he
threatened to expropriate national or foreign enterprises known to be connected with associations, trusts, or cartels.
U.S. Ambassador Adolph A. Berle, Jr., later to become a prominent voice in President John F. Kennedys Alliance
for Progress, reacted by proclaiming U.S. interest in an end to Vargas Estado Novo and a return to parliamentary
democracy.
On October 29, 1945, conservative military officers ousted Vargas and set up national elections for a
parliamentary system. General Eurico Dutra, a coup leader, won the elections and served as president from 1945
to 1951. Dutras government broke relations with the Soviet Union, outlawed the PCB, purged the military of
nationalist elements, and launched a witch-hunt against reformers and leftists. It sent interventors to take over
trade unions. It squandered Brazils foreign exchange reserves that were accumulated during the war by allowing
unchecked imports of consumer and luxury goods. It threw open the doors to foreign capital. Direct U.S.
investments tripled to nearly a billion dollars by 1951.
In the 1950 elections Vargas, as popular as ever, won the presidency. He ran as the candidate of the PTB
(Brazilian Labor Party) and had the backing of most workers, some industrialists, and many from the intermediate
classes. During his second presidency (1950-1954) Vargas renewed his campaign to have the state lead Brazil to
the modern industrial age. He established the National Economic Development Bank (1952) and state oil company
Petrobras (1953). But his every move was watched suspiciously by the conservative military and Brazils freeenterprise elites. The right-wing press lambasted his as a dictator.
According to Gilberto Freyre, a prominent Brazilian intellectual known for his anti-Vargas positions, Vargas
asked him in 1954 to help map out an agrarian reform that would expropriate the big estates to the fazendeiros.

That may have been Vargass final undoing.

On August 24, 1954, the military told the 72-year-old Vargas he must resign or be deposed. Vargas chose
suicide instead. He left behind a note denouncing foreign capitals looting of Brazil.
George Pendle - A History of Latin America, pp. 200-203

V-5

After Mexico, Brazil--in her more gentle fashion--set an example in the adaptation of caudillismo to
twentieth-century circumstances. In 1930--a critical year in which Latin America felt the effects of the world-wide
depression and Brazil was encumbered with a vast unsold stock of coffee--a body of army officers and disaffected
politicians moved upon Rio de Janeiro and place Getulio Vargas, governor of the southern state of Rio Grande do
Sul, in the presidential palace. For fifteen years Vargas ruled Brazil as a benevolent dictator.
Vargas (b. 1883) was a competent, amiable little man. Rio Grande do Sul is Brazils pastoral gaucho
state, and Vargas had something of the gaucho in his character. But Gilberto Freyre wrote that the people of the
south--being in part the descendants of Indians who had been educated by Spanish Jesuits--were not typical
gauchos, in the Rio de la Plata meaning of the term.
The men of Rio Grande do Sul are instinctive, fatalistic, proud, dramatic, and almost tragic in their
reactions to crises. Getulio Vargas seems to be a sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in that he has something of the
Jesuit but something also of the Indian. He is avid for power and domination, but he has also stood for the common
people and for the revolt against sterile conventions and powerful plutocratic groups. Characteristically he gave his
first child the name Luther; and the first thing he ever wrote as a young man was an article in defense of Zola.
In 1942 a U.S. journalist described Vargas as able, friendly, slippery . . . He seldom disagrees with
anyone. He may delay or equivocate, but he almost never says an outright No. He has very few enemies, and he
seldom bears grudges. No dictator is so little vengeful.
The Vargas dictatorship was a period of exuberance and progress. In 1943 an enlightened labor code
was enacted which largely prevented the ruthless exploitation of workers in the urban industries. The government
initiated many public works, which were of lasting benefit. They encouraged the expansion of Brazils important
steel industry at Volta Redonda and, with the help of U.S. loans, kept steel production in Brazilian hands. During
the Second World War (Brazil declared war in the Axis in 1942) many other industries -- notably the manufacture of
textiles, paper, and chemicals -- expanded enormously.
It was during this period, too, that Brazils modern architectural movement began. The starting-point was
in 1936, when the French architect Le Corbusier, at the invitation of Vargass Minister of Education, travelled (by
Zeppelin) to Rio de Janeiro to give advice on the layout of a university city and on the design for new headquarters
for the Ministry of Education. It was a momentous visit, for its influence is apparent today in the clean, light, colorful
modern buildings of all Brazils cities -- and, indeed, of most of the chief cities of Latin America.
This was just the right moment for the birth of an imaginative architecture. Brazil was developing
economically, and the Brazilians were aware more than ever before of their countrys potentialities. Also Brazil is a
prolific land, where the climate favors the good life and requires the minimum of technological assistance.
Le Corbusier worked in Brazil for several weeks the leading Brazilian architect, Lucio Costa, and a small
group of younger men -- among them Oscar Niemeyer. Under Niemeyers direction the Ministry of Education
building was finished in 1943. Still the most distinguished building in the centre of Rio de Janeiro, it incorporates
several of Le Corbusiers favorite devices, such as brise-soleil (louvered screens to protect the windows from the
glare of the sun) and pilotis (pillars on which the whole building is raised off the ground). These devices, or
variations of them, have now been used widely in Brazil. Sun glare is one of the main difficulties which every
Brazilian architect has to contend with, and pilotis have also served a practical local purpose, because in Rio de
Janeiro the by-laws governing the height of buildings have permitted an extra floor to be added if the ground floor is
left open. The high cost of building sites encouraged developers to take advantage of this regulation. Le Corbusier
reminded the Brazilians of the existence and modern possibilities of the azulejo -- the Portuguese blue ceramic tile
which at that time was identified only with old colonial buildings. The two decades that followed Le Corbusiers visit
were imbued with the most ardent architectural optimism, a kind of creative lust which permeated Brazil's architects,

clients, public administrators, and the man in the street. Brasilia -- Brazils modern capital city, inaugurated in 1960
-- is the movements most spectacular product.
Under Vargas there was a substantial improvement in education -- achieved as a result of strengthening
federal authority at the expense of the provincial states -- and in the medical services.
Brazilians, however, are attached to the forms of constitutionalism, and Vargass dictatorial methods
offended their dignity. By 1945 discontent had grown so strong that the army compelled him to resign, and he
retired quietly to his cattle ranch in Rio Grande do Sul.
Nevertheless Vargas remained popular with the masses, and in 1950 he returned to the presidency by free
election. This second period in the war was an anti-climax. Vargass vigor and ability were in decline; his
entourage were incompetent and corrupt; and in 1954, discouraged, he committed suicide.

Nelson Sodre
"The Vargas Era", Latin American Civilization: The National Era Vol. II, pp. 326-330

V6

The Vargas Era

The collapse of Brazils coffee industry in 1929-1930 had serious political and economic consequences.
Widespread distress and discontent with Paulista domination of the national government brought to power a
caudillo from the cattle raising state of Rio Grande do Sul--Getulio Vargas. In the protective shadow of the Great
Depression, and with lavish assistance from the strongly nationalistic Vargas government, Brazils infant industries
made large progress. Meanwhile Vargas governed with an authoritarian regime that borrowed many of its trappings
from the fascist states of Europe. Toppled by an army revolt in October 1945, in the election of 1950 he was
returned to the Presidency by a large popular majority. His death by suicide in 1954 closed a formative epoch of
Brazilian history. The Brazilian Marxist historian, Nelson Werneck Sodre, offers a social and economic
interpretation of the Vargas Era.
The principal problem posed by a crisis of such grave proportions and profound effects (the collapse of
1929-1930) was to find some way out for the Brazilian economy. The first reaction took the form of efforts to
maintain export levels with products other than coffee, for the national economy depended on exports and one
could not at once alter this long established fact. As a result of favorable external conditions and the use of
production factors released by the decline of coffee, cotton began to assume importance as an agricultural product.
The gold value of exports had been steadily declining since 1910; with the coming of the crisis the fall became
catastrophic. The annual average value of exports in the period 1926-1930 barely had been 88,200,000 pounds
and in the five-year period 1931-1935 was barely 38,000,000 pounds with a resulting sharp decline in the value of
the national currency. Consequently Brazil began to import less, the volume of imports being reduced by twothirds. Import capacity did not recover during the decade of the thirties; in 1937 it was even lower than in 1929. But
if the reaction to the crisis were limited to substitution of cotton for coffee, former levels of development could not be
attained. Events proved, however, that a more effective adjustment was possible. In 1933, when the United States
still gave no signs of economic recovery, Brazils national income had already begun to increase. This proved with
absolute clarity that the Brazilian recovery did not depend, as had traditionally been the case, on external factors,
but rather on internal factors. This pointed to a new factor in national economic life.
The growth of the domestic supply of goods compensated for the decline in imports, and the he domestic
demand proved to be a dynamic element of the national economy. The process was marked by transfer of capital
from one field to another, and not just from coffee to cotton, but from the agricultural sector to others, above all to
the industrial sector. Henceforth every theory or plan that did not take into account the domestic market was
condemned to failure or discredit. The textile industry, which did not regain the levels attained during the First
World War until 1929, rose from a production of less than 500,000 meters in 1929 to 640,000,000 in 1933 and
915,000,000 meters in 1936. And the reaction was not limited to consumers goods: in 1932 the production of

capital goods rose by 60% over the figure for 1929, while imports fell to a fifth of the pre-crisis level. By 1935 liquid
investments had surpassed 1929 levels. It was clear that the Brazilian economy had not only found within itself the
stimuli needed to cope with a crisis of foreign origins, but had managed to produce the greater part of the goods
needed to increase its productive capacity.
Between 1929 and 1937 industrial production increased by almost 50%, and primary production for the
internal market almost 40%. Despite the depression, the national revenue increased in this period by 20%, with an
annual per capita growth of 7%. Countries with similar economic structure which followed an orthodox economic
policy, dictated from outside, had not emerged from the depression by 1937. The importance of this crisis for Brazil
consists in the response given by the new factors to the difficulties it posed and in the dynamism is imparted to
Brazilian development. Freed for imperial pressure, these factors revealed an unprecedented capacity for national
capital formation. In 1930 the annual service of the foreign debt required more than a million and a half contos de
reis, while Brazils net returns from foreign trade did not come to half a million contos. Consequently the
suspension of this debt service represented a very great stimulus to the development of national productive forces,
hitherto encased in the old production relations that were temporarily weakened by the crisis.
The economic recovery of Brazil, with the emergence and vigorous functioning of the new factors, threw
into sharp relief the figure of Getulio Vargas, who arrived on the crest of the revolution of 1930, the first Brazilian
revolt that issued from the periphery of the country yet managed to triumph in the center, and the first such
movement to display national characteristics, erupting in various regions of the country. While the victors prepared
to give the country a new constitution, the Vargas government mirrored the struggle between the seigniorial class,
entrenched in the latifundio but a participant in the revolution, and the middle class, which was one of its dynamic
elements: the Constitution of 1934 reflected this collision. But the working class, which received the revolution with
sympathy, although not a participant in it (despite the fact that since the strikes of 1917 it had already attained a
relatively important political significance) began to play its own role on the political stage. The heterogeneous
currents represented in the revolution were reflected with reasonable proximity in the variety of operating forces.
The general unrest, the clash of tendencies, the appearance of extreme factions, reflecting developments
in the international plane led, first, to the pronounciamento of 1935, in which a national democratic front, accused of
being communist, gave rise to an armed movement, and that of 1938, when a Fascist group attempted to seize
power through a coup dtat in the capital of the Republic. The growing ascendancy of fascism on the international
plane permitted Vargas to establish in 1937 the Estado Novo, a regime that, behind its facade of a police state and
an apparatus of violence unheard-of in Brazil, nevertheless represented a way of achieving --or rather attempting to
achieve some of the transformations characteristic of the bourgeois revolution, but without participation of the
proletariat. For the rest, the Estado Novo attempted to mask and restrain the ever growing contradictions within the
Revolution, seeking to reconcile the irreconcilable. The Estado Novo created a legislation with the unequivocal
nationalist tendencies, imposed a tutelage in the form of social legislation over the working classes, and pursued a
foreign policy that sought above all the development of trade with foreign countries, notably with right-wing regimes;
Germany became the second largest market for Brazilian products, achieving parity with the United States, which
had held the first place.
When World War II broke out, Brazil was ruled by this regime, and Vargas as dictator pursued a policy of
conciliation and compromise. But the change in the character of the war as a result of an alliance of countries with
the most diverse systems against the totalitarian powers; the aggression suffered by Brazil as a result of the
torpedoing of its merchant ships while transporting troops in accordance with security agreements it had made with
its traditional allies, profoundly influenced internal policy: Brazil was drawn into the war, and at its end constitutional
norms again prevailed. The return to constitutionality took place under totally new conditions, for the military victory
against Nazism gave ascendancy to the democratic forces, and the old contradictions grew even sharper. Vargas
sensitivity to the new conditions, the fact that he offered solutions that favored, to a certain point, the classes
opposed to imperialism and the latifundio, led to his sacrifice: a military coup overthrew him in 1945. But the
democratic interlude was of short duration: the government of President Dutra, resulting from the elections, carried
out a policy advantageous to imperialism and the latifundio, and favored the traditional forces, which, uniting more
firmly the weaker they became, sought desperately to halt the profound transformations through which Brazil was
passing, and which even the Estado Novo could not halt.
Vargas returned to the helm as a result of an electoral victory (1951), after Dutras disastrous policy had

exhausted the foreign exchange reserves built up during the War by virtue of the fact that imports were practically
suspended; the decline in imports was accompanied by large advances in the process of industrialization, which
was about to culminate in the creation of a heavy industry as a result of the formation of the National Steel
Company, a state enterprise of large proportions, and the opening of legislative debates concerning the state
monopoly of oil exploitation, a monopoly (Petrobas) that was promptly established by law (1953). These changes
led to a strengthening of the role of the state, and for this reason the reactionary forces directed their principal
attacks against it. Shortly thereafter Vargas denounced the spoliation resulting from the export of the profits of
foreign enterprises, and returned to his habitual policy of advance and retreat--a policy which only served to weaken
him. This tactic clearly reflected the vacillations of the Brazilian bourgeois, simultaneously fearful of the strength of
the working class and oppressed by imperialism, and therefore under pressure from both extremes. Getulio
Vargas, representative of the bourgeois revolution, sought to continue playing that role under ever more difficult
conditions, but without the participation of the proletariat. This made enormously difficult the formation of a broad
political base for the solution of the problems which he so effectively denounced and so timidly confronted. His
uncertain destiny depended on the course of events. Alone, without the support of those who could have defended
him, as a result of his systematic retreats and his political actions against the democratic and nationalist forces, he
again failed to finish his term of office: on August 24, 1954, he found escape from his dilemma in suicide. But he
left an enlightening denunciation, the most tremendous a man of his class had ever written of imperialism: a
testamentary letter in which he indicated the true character of the internal conspiracy that caused his death. The
instantaneous popular outcry provoked by his resignation and suicide prevented the reactionary forces from
carrying out their plans to their logical conclusions. They could not prevent the holding of presidential elections or
the assumption of power by the President-elect. The election and inauguration of Juscelino Kubitschek (1936),
particularly after the military intervention of November 11 in favor of legality, undoubtedly represented a rout for
imperialism.
The epoch of Vargas marks the beginning of a process to be known as the Brazilian Revolution: the
structural transformations the country needed demanded sweeping reforms and gave rise to events that showed
the rapidity with which the Brazilian economy was being transformed. Vargas represented better than any other
figure the first stage of that revolution by his false starts and conciliatory attitudes, by his tendency to put off
solutions, by his correct vision and his weakness when it came to concrete acts, and above all by his fear that the
Revolution might go beyond the limits of bourgeois interests.

Bradford Burns, Nationalism in Brazil: A Historical Survey, pp. 72-89

V-7

Getulio Vargas and Economic Nationalism

As long as coffee sold reasonably well on the world market and returned the profits necessary to maintain Brazils
progress, there was little that the nationalists could achieve in the way of basic political or economic reforms.
Coffee sales fluctuated widely, but generally the profits kept returning. Under the Old Republic, Brazil enjoyed a
virtual monopoly over the world market, furnishing 70 percent of the coffee consumed. Coffee beans accounted for
about 70 percent of Brazils exports during the decade of the 1920s. Clearly the well-being of the national
economy depended on the sale of that single export. It is not surprising therefore, that the three major coffeeproducing states--Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro--came to dominate all aspects of the national life.
Well before the end of the empire, they exercised economic control over the country; after the advent of the
republic, they assumed political direction as well. The first three civilian presidents, Prudente de Moraes Barros,
Manuel Ferraz de Campos Salles, and Francisco de Paula Rodrigues Alves, were from Sao Paulo. With only a few
exceptions, the other presidents also came from the three coffee states. National politics depended upon the
desires of the governors of those states. As might be expected, the coffee presidents enacted policies highly
favorable to the coffee interests. Commenting on the situation, in 1097, G. L. Lorrillard, First Secretary at the U.S.
Legislation, wrote to Secretary of State Elihu Root:

At the present time there exists a group of persons which is stronger than the Executive and Congress
combined. AS is universally admitted here, never before has the country and especially everyone connected with
the government been so much under the influence of the coffee planters as at the present and any measure
which is seriously desired by that element is sure of immediate passage by Congress.
The power of the coffee interests remained firm until the world economic crisis of the 1930s. Coffee prices
plummeted from 22.5 cents a pound in 1929 to 8 cents in 1931. IN the 1920s, Brazil shipped 805.8 million pounds
of coffee abroad, in the 1930s, only 337 million pounds were sold. By 1930, Sao Paulos warehouses groaned
under the weight of 26 million bags of coffee beans--more than the world consumed in an entire year. The ensuing
panic revealed the general sterility of the Old Republic. With the coffee money removed, its base of support was
minimal.
The nationalists were among those disgruntled with the Old Republic. They suspected the coffee growers,
who were intimately linked to the world markets, of being far too international in outlook. They also viewed with
alarm the growing regionalism, which the permissive Constitution of 1891 seemed to encourage. The militia of the
state of Sao Paulo, for example, had its own French military instructors and was at a strength and readiness
capable of challenging the federal army. In some state capitals, the state flag flew from every mast, while one
searched in vain for Brazilian colors. The nationalists felt the time appropriate to establish a government better
suited to the times and to their goals. They were therefore only too happy to cooperate with other forces desirous
of change or jealous of the monopoly the coffee interests exercised over the nations economic and political life.
The political forces outside the coffee triangle had long sought to wrest power from Sao Paulo, Minas
Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro. Plucky Rio Grande do Sul provided the leadership for these forces, and in 1930, a split
between the two major coffee states, Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais, over the presidential succession provided the
opportunity for action. The dissident forces combined to form the Liberal Alliance. The elections of 1930 pitted the
Alliance candidate, Getulio Vargas of Rio Grande do Sul, against the government candidate, Julio Prestes of Sao
Paulo, a protg of President Washington Luis. Defeated in the elections, which they complained were controlled
by the government - a safe enough charge to make under the Old Republic - the adherents to the cause of the
Liberal Alliance rebelled. Their forces marched on Rio de Janeiro from North, South, and west to prevent Prestes
from taking office. Before a final showdown, the military intervened to depose President Luis and to summon
Vargas to the presidency.
The Revolution of 1930 wrested power from the coffee interests and put it in the hands of an energetic
gaucho. Short, wiry, with a winning smile, and gifted with unusually keen political intuition, Getulio Vargas
understood and appreciated the potential of nationalism and the significance of the events of the 1920s. He
characterized his own government as profoundly nationalistic. Upon taking office, he surrounded himself with
idealistic tenentes, the young army officers who had supported the rebellion, and, in some cases, participated in the
uprisings of 1922 and 1924. Vargas appointed these tenentes as state governors and as advisors. The army
officers, as well as most of the nationalists, supported Vargas because he denounced the traditional politics of the
Old Republic and offered hope for far-reaching reforms. He seemed to the nationalists a promising leader who
would modernize Brazil, break with the outdated patterns of the past, and propel the country into the twentieth
century. They preferred his authoritarian renovation (Vargas often employed the word renovar in discussing the
future of the nation) to the masquerade of democracy that in their opinion had characterized the politics of the Old
Republic.
The task confronting Vargas was neither easy nor unchallenged. He faced a variety of difficult problems a
civil war in 1932, in which Sao Paulo threatened the federal government and national unity; unemployment; falling
export prices; declining hard currency reserves; and reviving militarism. Although most of the nation accorded him
sympathetic support as he struggled with those problems, Brazilians never lost their desire to return to constitutional
government. In 1933, Vargas unenthusiastically convoked a constituent assembly; the following year, it produced a
new constitution and dutifully elected him to the presidency for a four-year term.
Still, Vargas did not lack for critics. The major challenges to his administration and policies came from the
political parties. As in the past, the majority of parties were regional groupings dependent on local personalities for
their vigor. The only parties with strong national organizations were on the far left and the far right, the Communists
and the Integralists.
The Communist Party (Partido Comunista Brasileiro, or PCB), founded in 1922, was particularly active

during the early 1930s. One faction of the Party organized a popular front organization, the Alianca Nacional
Libertadora (National Liberation Alliance), or ANL.), which took shape in 1934. Luis Carlos Prestes, the romantic
revolutionary who had led the march through the interior, now the leader of the PCB, served as honorary president.
The ANL advocated the nationalization of foreign-owned businesses and attacked the latifundio system. The
program attracted many supporters who did not consider themselves Communists but who passionately desired the
modernization and development of Brazil. However, in 1935 the Party discredited itself by fomenting bloody
uprisings in Recife, Joao Pessoa, and Rio de Janeiro, murdering officers and enlisted men. Vargas forced the
Communists to disband, and they ceased to be an active force for a decade.
The right-wing Integralist party was founded in 1932, in frank imitation of the European counterparts, the
Integralistas had their own symbol (the sigma), flag, and shirt color (green). Nationalistic and somewhat mystical in
its appeal, the party emphasized order, hierarchy, and obedience. It advocated an integral state under a single
authoritarian head of government. The party identified the enemies of the nation as democrats and Communists,
as well as Masons and Jews. A cult of nationality was encouraged. Plinio Salgado and Gustavo Barroso, both of
whom were writers of considerable talent, emerged as the partys principal intellectual leaders. Their speeches,
essays, and books resounded with nationalistic phraseology. Salgados Nose Brasil (Our Brazil), published in
1937, is a glorification of the fatherland that recalls the exaggerations of Celsos work at the opening of the century.
The was no official connection between the Integralist party, with its nationalist doctrine, and the government, with
its nationalistic programs, although some highly placed officials, such as General Goes Monteiro, Chief of Staff of
the Army, were Integralists. Nor was there any official link between the party and the Roman Catholic Church,
although many members of the Catholic hierarchy lent the party their support and prestige.
The well-organized Communists and Integralists were a formidable threat to Vargas, and the weak,
regional parties a hindrance to his plans for national unity. On November 10, 1937, claiming that the presidential
campaign was threatening national tranquility and harmony, Vargas canceled the forthcoming elections, dismissed
the Congress, closed the state legislatures and replaced the elected governors with his own appointees, and
abolished all political parties. His actions established the authoritarian Estado Novo (New State), and he ruled
unchallenged for the next eight years.
The major problems confronting Vargas during his long first administration (1930-45) were economic ones.
The sudden fall of coffee prices on the world market had ruined Brazil financially. There were two possible longrange solutions to this crisis. The first was to diversify the economy. Brazil had traditionally been dependent on a
single raw product for export: if it was not brazilwood, it was sugar; if not sugar, gold, if not gold, coffee. Dependent
on the whims of foreign markets, Brazil had little control over its own economic destiny. Diversification would
obviously eliminate some of this risks that reliance on a single export entailed. A second solution, and a corollary of
the first, was to accelerate industrialization. On the one hand, industrialization would help to diversify the economy;
on the other, it would help to prevent precious foreign exchange from being spent to import what could be
manufactured at home. Vargas adopted both solutions and launched an energetic economic development
program. In introducing government planning and participation on a large scale into the economic life of the
country, Vargas fulfilled the aspirations of the nationalists, who were becoming more economically oriented.
The Vargas era marked a definite shift of emphasis from cultural and political nationalism to economic
nationalism. Economic nationalism was by no means a novelty of the 1930s, although it was in that decade that it
received primary emphasis for the first time. As we have seen in the preceding chapters, the roots of economic
nationalism extended back into the eighteenth century. Its manifestations were sporadic but intense in the
nineteenth century. The British and the Portuguese particularly felt its barbs. A fiery article that appeared in a Rio
de Janeiro newspaper, A Liga Americana, in 1839 exemplified the form that incipient economic nationalism took.
Headlined Measures Appropriate for Developing Brazilian Nationality and Industry, the article decried the lack of
protection for local industry and criticized the foreign merchants resident in Brazil.
Modern economic nationalism in Brazil has its origins in the writings of Alberto Torres (1865-1917). In a
series of books published between 1909 and 1915, Torres equated economic development and nationalism. The
equation was simple but important. The nationalists would later seize upon it as the magic formula for the future.
Torres was clearly disillusioned with the Old Republic. He argued that the federal government should be granted
greater powers. Even then, however, it could not be expected to exercise real sovereignty or manifest true
nationalism if the nation did not control its own sources of wealth, its industry, and its commerce. He discussed this

point in detail in his O Problema Nacional Brasileiro (The National Brazilian Problem), published in 1914:
Above all else, the independence of a people is founded on their economy and their finances...In order for
a nation to remain independent it is imperative to preserve the vital organs of nationality: the principal sources of
wealth, the industries of primary products, the instrumentalities and agents of economic circulation, transportation
and internal commerce. There must be no monopolies and no privileges...A people cannot be free if they do not
control their own sources of wealth, produce their own food, and direct their own industry and commerce.
This pioneer economic nationalist argued that the Old Republic had turned over its economic destiny to
foreigners, who had sown their capital without restriction and were reaping an abundant harvest. He proposed a
limit on foreign investments. Without a stronger government and without control over its own economic destiny,
Brazil would continue to be a dispersed, amorphous nation in an almost liquid state...a nation composed of
admirable individuals morally united but with no social character, an assembly of races and types without a national
model--in short, a nation without nationality. Torres clearly indicated the path economic nationalism should take.
The nationalists began to follow his guideposts in the 1930s. Certainly Torres ideas fitted the plans of Getulio
Vargas perfectly; a second edition of O Problema Nacional Brasileiro was published in 1933, just as the
nationalists campaign for economic development got underway.
The nationalists insisted that only through economic development could Brazil become truly independent.
The nations traditional economic dependence had inhibited its exercise of political independence. The nationalists
realized that Brazil in fact still retained its colonial status, that colonial economic institutions and patterns survived.
A rural oligarchy, in alliance with foreign capital, perpetuated the mercantilist system, and the vestiges of
colonialism arrested the nation's development. Beginning in the 1930s, therefore, Brazilian nationalism, like that
flourishing in the rest of Latin America and in other underdeveloped areas, became increasingly characterized b
resentment of foreign capital and foreign personnel, suspicion of private enterprise, a growing preference for state
ownership, emphasis on industrialization, encouragement of domestic production, and a desire to create or
nationalize certain key industries such as oil, steel, power, and transportation.
The struggle to industrialize Brazil reached back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Although King
Joao VI had lifted the ban on manufacturing in Brazil as early as 1808, the real impetus for industrialization came
later--in 1844, when the British trade preference was ended and the first significant tariff enacted, and in 1850,
when termination of the slave trade freed capital for investment. In 1850, there were more than six hundred
factories, employing some 54,000 workers. The textile industry was the most highly developed; other important
industries were food, chemical, wood, and metal products. In 1882, the Associacao Industrial, an organization to
encourage and protect national industry, was formed. The associations publication, O Industrial, urged
industrialization as a means to obtain economic independence and resolve major national problems. Nationalists at
the turn of the century also voiced their opposition to the increasing number of foreign companies. Between 1899
and 1910, only 41 national companies were formed, but 160 foreign companies were authorized to operate in
Brazil.
The leaders of the Old Republic had made repeated attempts to industrialize the country. Their efforts met
with dramatic success after the outbreak of World War I, when isolation from Europe forced the nation to rely on its
own industry. It was during this period that Sao Paulo emerged as the dynamic center of the new industrialization.
The total value of the products manufactured in that state tripled between 1915 and 1920. The progress was so
impressive that in 1928, President Washington Luis observed that industrialization had become a way of life in
Brazil; at the same time, Cassiano Ricardo saluted this urban, industrial future in his celebrated poem Martim
Cerere.
The world economic depression of the 1930s further stimulated industrialization, as Brazil was once
again forced either to manufacture its own goods or to do without. New textile, leather-processing, chemical, and
machine industries appeared. By 1938, industrial production was valued at over a billion dollars, twice that of
agricultural production. World War II provided a third impulse to economic growth. During the war years, Brazil
built up vast foreign-exchange reserves from its sale of goods abroad. These were all squandered within two years
after the end of the war. The new foreign-exchange crisis again forced the country to substitute locally produced
goods for imported ones. During those industrial booms, Sao Paulo retained its economic leadership. Names such

as Matarazzo, the captain of a vast industrial empire centered in Sao Paulo, symbolized the growth of big business.
By mid-century, Brazil had become the most industrialized nation in Latin America. Industrialization set in
motion changes that revolutionized Brazilian life. It created new centers of wealth and political power. It challenged
the traditional social structure by giving preference to personal skills and adaptability over family lineage. Under the
impact of industrialization, the middle class grew rapidly in both size and influence. The newly organized trade
unions welcomed reform and on occasion exerted pressure for it. The Vargas years marked the turning point in all
these developments.
Yet industrial growth depended on the well-being of the vast agricultural sector of the economy. Vargas
recognized the importance of the coffee industry, which continued to account for approximately 50 per cent of the
nations exports. He encouraged the signing of international agreements under which nations agreed to purchase
specific amounts of coffee; these agreements replaced the discredited valorization scheme, under which surpluses
were stored at government expense until prices rose. The President also encouraged the development of the cattle
industry, and the mechanization of the sugar industry.
Industrialization also depended on the protection of the countrys natural resources. The nationalists had
long been critical of foreign exploitation of Brazils natural wealth. In the 1920s, they had mounted a campaign
against Percival Farquhar, an adventurous North American investor in Brazilian railroads and mines. Farquhar ran
into fierce opposition from the nationalists when he obtained the Itabira iron-ore concession. President Arthur
Bernardes took up the nationalist cause and eventually forced cancellation of the concession. The final result was
an amendment to the Constitution of 1891: Mines and mineral deposits necessary for national security and the land
in which they are found cannot be transferred to foreigners. (Article 72.) The amendment was a major victory for
nationalists. A similar restriction appeared in the Constitution of 1934: The law will regulate the progressive
nationalization of mines, mineral deposits, and waterfalls or other sources of energy, as well as of the industries
considered as basic or essential to the economic and military defense of the country. (Article 119.) The Constitution
of 1937 included the same provision except that the word nation was substituted for country. (Article 144.)
Accordingly, Vargas placed restrictions on foreign companies that discouraged or controlled their exploitation of
Brazils natural resources. In 1942, he established the corporation Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (Doce River
Valley Company) to exploit the rich iron-ore deposits of Itabira; iron ore production quintupled between 1939 and
1951, with most of the increase occurring after 1946.
Vargas further boosted national pride and self-sufficiency by authorizing the construction of the first steel
mill in Brazil. Plans for the mill were drawn up in 1940, and in 1946 the mill at Volta Redonda went into operation.
By 1955, it was producing 646,000 tons of steel; by 1963, this output was doubled.
But the symbol of economic nationalism, for Brazilians as well as for all Latin Americans, was petroleum.
The nationalists believed that the discovery of oil was not only economically desirable but would guarantee Brazils
achievement of world power status. At first, Vargas understood the importance of petroleum purely as an economic
matter. He established the National Petroleum Council to coordinate and intensify the search for oil, and in 1939,
the first successful well was drilled: oil gushed forth from the Brazilian soil. The nationalists-who were unwilling to
see the oil, or the profits from its exploitation, siphoned off to foreign countries-then called for the creation of a
national oil industry. Oil soon came to dominate their thoughts, and in the words of one contemporary nationalist, it
became the backbone of nationalism. In time, Vargas came to see the emotional significance of oil to the
nationalists, and he duly paid homage to the symbol. Whoever hands over the petroleum to foreigners threatens
our own independence, he remarked.
During his second administration (1951-54), Vargas exploited that symbol in a bid for wider support. In
1951, he proposed the creation of Petrobas, a state monopoly on all activities connected with the exploration and
development of petroleum resources. Its creation, in 1953, followed a national campaign in which the cry O
petroleo e nosso! (The Oil is Ours!) echoed throughout the land. The establishment of Petrobas was a victory for
the nationalists. They had triumphed over those who argued that it would be more economical for experienced
foreign companies to drill for oil and pay Brazil a royalty on whatever was pumped out. The nationalists would have
none of that argument. At any rate, the question was an emotional, not economic, one. In the words of one
nationalist, the Brazilian people . . . struggled for the creation of a state monopoly because they believed that in
that struggle they were defending national sovereignty. The confessed goal of Petrobas was to contribute to the
economic independence of Brazil: Vargas own phrase was to create national liberty. The nationalists succeeded in

convincing the masses that a national oil industry represented sovereignty, independence, power, and well-being.
For the first time, they stirred up popular support for a nationalist cause. Petrobas remains the major single
permanent achievement of the nationalists. The emotions aroused by its creation recall the dramatic nationalization
of the oil industry in Mexico, in 1938.
The growth of industry and the attendant urbanization provided the conditions to Brazilian nationalism.
One of the most significant of these was his alteration of the source of leadership of the nationalist movement by
greatly strengthening the federal government. Vargas helped to create the strongest federal government to that
time in Brazil; it took over much of the power and influence formerly enjoyed by the state governments. Within the
federal government itself, the executive emerged supreme. A stronger , more vigorous president helped to bring a
new order and unity to the nation. The expanding road, rail, and air networks facilitated Vargas ability to reach out
to the remotest regions of Brazil with a speed his predecessors never dreamed possible.
Vargas also used the public school system to encourage the growth of national feelings. In 1930, he
created the first Ministry of Education, and installed his trusted advisor Francisco Campos as its first Minister.
Among Campos policies to nationalize education, perhaps the most important was the requirement that all
instruction be given in the Portuguese language; the regulation was aimed at accelerating the Brazilianization of
European immigrants, particularly in the South, where there were large concentrations of Germans, Poles, and
Italians. In a speech in Blumenau, Santa Catarina, a center European settlement, the Vargas-appointed governor,
Nereu Ramos, defended the new education policy:
It cannot surprise anyone that the Estado Novo is taking the necessary steps to integrate within the Brazilian soul
once and for all those born on our soil who are alienated from it by language, customs, traditions, and education. . .
The hour of rebirth is upon us. With the Constitution of November 10, a stronger and more united Brazil emerges.
The first condition for that supreme national realization is that in none of its regions prevails or predominates, by
neglect of the government or by resistance from aliens, a language which is not ours, traditions other than those
from our own past, glories that are not connected with our heroes.
Stronger emphasis was also placed on the teaching of Brazilian history; for the first time, chairs of
Brazilian history were established in the universities. The aims of the Vargas educational program were summed
up in 1940 by Minister of War (and later President) General Eurico Dutra. The principal objective of education is to
create a national consciousness, he said, and he went on to emphasize that the schools had the duty to encourage,
a mentality capable of disposing public opinion favorably toward nationalism. Vargas also created the National
Service of Historic and Artistic Patrimony, one of whose principal projects was the creation of the Imperial Museum
in Petropolis, a monument to the glories of the empire.
Vargas did not hesitate to use the institutions and power of the state to promote nationalist goals--a
method that was very much in vogue in Europe in the 1930s and which was being perfected by the Latin
American caudillos. As a result, the state replaced the intellectual as the primary guardian and promoter of
nationalism. Although many intellectuals were employed by the government in the 1930s and throughout most of
the 1940s, they played a secondary role. With the end of the Estado Novo, they regained their position of
leadership. Yet the intellectuals would never again exercise the monopoly over the nationalist movement that they
had held prior to 1930--too many others vied for this position.
Vargas can also be credited with broadening the base of support of nationalist policies to include
increasing numbers of the military, industrialists, intellectuals, politicians, and middle class. Most important, he
succeeded in winning the urban proletariat to the nationalist cause. He achieved this partly by reaching out to them
through the school system, the growing number of newspapers, and the burgeoning radio industry. He also won
their support through his governmental policies. Vargas nationalized the job market by limiting the number of
foreigners who could be employed and by restricting many public offices to native-born Brazilians. He also
restricted immigration, a policy sanctioned by the Constitutions of 1934 and 1937. Through his paternal labor and
welfare program--the establishment of minimum wages and maximum hours, job security, paid vacations, among
others--he made the workers feel that they had more at stake in the government than ever before. The nationalism
Vargas expressed came to have a practical meaning for the working class. It meant more than slogans; it meant
jobs, personal pride, and economic advancement. In a very practical way they could identify with it.

But Vargas also excited the imagination of the masses with less tangible aspects of nationalism. For
example, he adopted the theme, popularized by the nationalists in the 1920s, that the Brazilian West was a key to
the realization of the national potential. Vargas often defined his plans for a march to the hinterlands, the March to
the West. The development of that great, promised land was to be the true sense of Brazilianism. In his essay A
Marcha para o Oeste, Couto de Magalhaes e Getulio Vargas (The March to the West, Couto de Magalhaes and
Getulio Vargas), Ildefonso Escobar hailed Vargas as the heir of the bandeirantes and the realizer of the dreams of
countless patriots who had struggled to open up the Brazilian interior. Although the essay exaggerated Vargas
accomplishments, his administration did in reality enact programs for the arid sertao of the Northeast and the
slumbering Amazon Valley.
The economic policies of the Vargas government also appealed to the growing number of industrialists,
who had emerged as an important factor in the economy. They were not concerned with exporting raw materials or
importing manufactured goods. The produced for the internal market, which they wanted to protect and to expand.
They appreciated the benefits of economic nationalism. The more enlightened industrialists also understood that
Vargas labor policies would in the long run increase the market for their goods.
Despite Vargas many contributions to national growth, the country began to chafe under his authoritarian
rule after a decade and a half. The Brazilians sardonically noted that they supported the Allied effort to eliminate
dictatorship in Europe while living under their own dictator at home. By late 1944, their desire to return to a
democratic system was unmistakably clear. Vargas, acceding to the mounting pressure, agreed to hold elections in
December, 1945. The government relaxed its political controls, and a variety of political parties emerged. Three of
them achieved national importance and, despite their weaknesses, can be regarded as the first nationwide
democratic parties in Brazilian history. The Partido Social Democratico (Social Democratic Party, of PSD), founded
by Vargas himself, represented urban, moderate, middle-class interests. The Uniao Democratica Nacional
(National Democratic Union, or UDN), founded by the opposition to Vargas, tended to support conservative
doctrines and to favor the interests of the traditional oligarchy. The Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro (Brazilian Labor
Party, or PTB), also founded by Vargas, appealed to the workers and expressed a leftist ideology. The leadership
of the PTB was predominately middle-class in origin and was vociferously nationalistic. The three parties were to
contribute significantly to the growth of Brazilian democracy.
As the date for the elections approached, Vargas hinted that he might like to continue in office. Rumors
spread that the President was once again going to cancel an election. In late October, 1945, the military
intervened to depose the President and guarantee the elections. The candidate of the PSD and the PTB, General
Eurico Dutra, was elected and took office in 1946 for a five-year term. Dutra proved to be not unsympathetic to
Vargas, who at the last moment had given the General his endorsement, and his administration continued many of
the Vargas policies. Dutras proposed five-year development plan also pleased the nationalists, who saw their
hopes for an industrialized Brazil beginning to be realized.
In the elections of 1950, Vargas was returned to office as democratically elected president. If anything, he
was more nationalistic in both his pronouncements and his actions during his second administration than in his first.
As we have seen, it was during this administration that he created Petrobras and attempted to extend government
control over energy and power resources; he also inaugurated his own five-year plan for industrialization.
Ironically, much of Brazils remarkable industrial progress during these years was due to the mounting
investment of foreign capitalists, whom the nationalists, as always, suspected of a variety of evil motives. Vargas
became even more outspoken in his criticism of foreign ownership of industry, and he launched a bitter attack
against foreign investors, accusing them of bleeding Brazil. The nationalists cheered each pronouncement. Yet
funds continued to flow in from abroad, and industrialization expanded at a rapid pace.
Clearly, Vargas had mastered the rhetoric of the nationalists and adapted it to his own purposes. He relied
upon the popular appeal of nationalism more than he had in the past, and these nationalist feelings strengthened
his second administration which was less stably anchored than his first.
Yet after two years in office, the aging President found himself in grave difficulties. The increasingly
complex social and economic problems facing Brazil puzzled him. He had also lost some of his flexibility and
adroitness. Showing an inability to govern within the framework of the democratic system, he resorted to some of
his former strong-arm tactics. Corruption surrounded the presidency, although Vargas himself was apparently an
honest man. When the attempted assassination of a persistent critic was traced to Vargas personal bodyguard, the

army stepped in once again and demanded his resignation. Vargas replied by committing suicide, on August 25,
1954. He left behind suicide note (over which there has been speculation as to its authenticity), which echoed his
nationalist sentiments. He wrote of years of domination and looting by international economic and financial groups
and of a subterranean campaign of international groups joined with the national groups revolting against the regime
of workers guarantees, and boasted: I fought against the looting of Brazil. The note has become a nationalistic
document, and nationalists have not hesitated to use it in attacking their enemies both at home and abroad.
An era ended with the death of Getulio Vargas. For nearly a generation, he had guided, directly or
indirectly, the course of Brazilian development. During those years Brazilian nationalism began to follow a more
economically oriented course, its leadership passed from the hands of the intellectuals to the government, and its
base of support expanded. In the meantime, an entirely new school of nationalists, imbued with the ideology of
economic development and accustomed to the governments role in fostering and directing nationalism, had
emerged. Greater activists than their nineteenth- and early twentieth-century predecessors, they were eager to
assume political leadership and to implement their ideas. The opportunity was offered to them in the following
decade.
John Johnson - The Military and Society in Latin America, pp. 204-209

V7

When rebel bands took to the field and it became apparent that the sympathies of the public were
overwhelmingly on the side of the revolutionaries, senior officers of the regular forces determined to remove the
legal regime and turn the government over provisionally to Getulio Vargas, in whose name the civil wars were being
carried on. Since the senior officers had vigorously opposed reincorporating the tenentes into the army and had in
fact kept them in exile for several years, and since the evidence strongly suggests that the military leadership
originally had been content to accept the electoral returns as they were reported by the reactionary and corrupt
civilian element with whom the armed forces had cooperated throughout most of the post-World War I years, one
must search elsewhere for the explanation of the armed forces response in this situation. Proceeding from the
possible to the probable, the arguments seem to run somewhat as follows: (1) The officers felt that, with the country
returned to peace, they could take over the movement. (2) There was nothing in Vargass background to suggest
that he posed a serious threat to the status quo, and the armed forces therefore trusted him with power. (3) If
Vargas and his closest advisors, who included some tenentes, had been interested in violent reform, they could
have been countered by the many intellectuals who were in the Liberal Alliance not because of an interest in radical
change but because they wanted to see the administration of the republic reformed. (4) The officers reasoned that
in view of the public sympathy for the rebels, putting down the revolt and sustaining the old group in power would
not be worth the price, if it could be accomplished at all. (5) The officers recognized that the struggle for power had
permitted a vacuum to form, and in their assumed role as arbiters of the nations destiny in the social convulsions
which disturbed normal Brazilian life they were obliged to return the country to the rule of law, and this could be
done safely and effectively only by giving power to the rebels.
Of the five propositions set forth above, only the last two need elaboration; the first one cannot be
sustained in view of the apolitical role the national armed forces played before and immediately following the revolt,
and the possibilities presented in the second and third are in fact embodied in and superseded by the last
proposition. Of the officers based their decision on the fourth proposition, they were acting in accordance with good
Brazilian military tradition. The evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that before 1930, as well as since
then, the Brazilian armed forces in this century have sought consciously to avoid moves that would provoke bitter
popular resistance. They have not always succeeded, but their record is good, and it is better than any Spanish
American republic except Uruguay.
If their decision was based upon the thought contained in proposition five--that the armed forces were
determined to exercise a moderating power, as Pedro had done during the empire--then the officers were
reaffirming what was the armed forces most strongly held political tenet. As far as they were concerned the
civilians had failed to resolve their differences and the country was faced with the question of legality, which they
felt obliged to decide in the interest of restoring order.
As recently as August 1962, during the dispute between the executive and legislative branches of the
government over the return to the presidential system, highly placed armed forces officials stated that the services

might eventually be compelled to arbitrate the dispute but that in the meantime they would not prejudice the
democratic process by taking sides, nor should their loyalty to the President, which was both proper and normal, be
construed as prevailing over their loyalty to the government as a whole. They were saying to the civilians what the
armed forces have said many times in Brazil: Settle your differences without exhausting yourselves in division or we
will settle them for you. In 1960 one of the half-dozen top Brazilian army officers told this author that the armed
services would have to play the role of guardians of the constitution for the next twenty years at least.
The revolution in 1930 propelled the armed forces into the center of Brazilian politics and the focus of
power has resided in them ever since. Getulio Vargas, during his fifteen-year dictatorship, was never able to
extricate himself from their influence. Since 1945, when the dictatorship was terminated, the president has had to
have his dispositivo militar, a group of officers who guarantee him. The record of the officers has been spotty. On
several occasions they have seemed to play well the role they have assumed. On other occasions they have taxed
the patience of those civilians who looked to the armed forces to guarantee the democratic process. More
significantly, perhaps, within the last decade the representatives of the armed forces again have become
increasingly prone to take public positions on policy conflicts rather than being content to arbitrate the differences
that arise from civilian debate.
During the 1930s and early 1940s the armed forces drained the reservoir of good will they had filled by
participating in the overthrow of the old regime. Vargas briefly catered to the tenentes who swarmed into
administrative posts without reference to their capabilities of experience, but many of them had deserted him by
1932 and supported the Sao Paulo revolt. The dictator, meanwhile, appeased the regular officers by spending
recklessly on guns, armored vehicles, airplanes, and naval vessels. When the Sao Paulo revolt broke out in 1932,
the main body of the armed forces remained loyal to the government, but large numbers of officers individually
deserted to the rebel forces. Shortly after the uprising was suppressed, a scattering of officers and non-coms
became involved in the abortive communist revolt of 1935, which was staged in an effort to seize control of the
army preparatory to taking over the entire government. In that revolt the pro-communist forces relied almost
entirely upon the regular forces for their fire power. The anniversary of the putsch is observed each year and
serves to strengthen the militarys aversion to communist attempt are entitled to a special one-rank promotion upon
retirement. Two years after the revolt, and partly as a reaction against communism, both the regular forces and the
tenente contingent, represented by Cordeiro de Farias, Juarez Tavora, and Gomes, among others, did not raise
their voices against Vargas when he decreed the Estado Novo, which was in essence a neofascist corporate state
with much of its fascist paraphernalia, including a new nationalism borrowed from the Old World. Then the armed
forces sat back as the dictator redeemed his pledge of a political renovation by imposing severe curbs on civilian
political activities.
By the outbreak of World War II some officers close to Vargas, such as Goes Monteiro, had become
fascinated by Nazism and fascism they tried, without success, to dissuade the dictator, who had earlier been
disposed rather favorably toward Germany and Italy, from aligning Brazil with the West. But once in the war, the
prestige of the services soared as Brazilian troops became the first from Latin America to fight in Europe, and by
the war's end not only had the Brazilian military come of age as a fighting force but its leadership was clearly prodemocratic. Meanwhile, the officers nationalistic aspirations were satisfied somewhat by United States
commitments to provide machinery, capital, and technicians for the construction of an integrated iron and steel
plant at Volta Redonda following Brazils leasing of land for airstrips along the Hump. There were striking
manifestations of the new military mind during the half-decade after the end of the war. In October 1945, officers,
reflecting the general repugnance of the Western World to totalitarianism following the defeat of Germany and Italy,
forced Vargas into retirement when it appeared that he might renege on his promise to hold general elections.
Then they turned the government over to Chief Justice Linhares of the Supreme Court, who ordered that the
election be held as scheduled.
The public, uncertain of what had occurred during the Vargas dictatorship, instinctively turned to the
military. Both the major parties named armed forces generals to head their presidential tickets and at the polls the
public voted the colorless and unimaginative Eurico Dutra into office. The Generals administration devoted itself to
taking the nations pulse as it returned to the democratic system. The armed forces tended to withdraw from public
view, and their representatives remained undecided as the meaning of the vastly broadened political base as
indicated by the extended electorate and the strong showing of the communists, who captured approximately 10

percent of the vote in the 1945 and 1947 elections.

There was a recrudescence of military politics in 1950, and since then the armed forces have at evershortening intervals served notice that they consider themselves the court of final political resort. Vargas had to
have the tacit consent of the military in order to return to power through presidential elections in 1950. In 1953
some officers, in spite of strong opposition from their colleagues, intervened openly in political affairs for the first
time since 1945 and in February 1954 forced the dismissal of Vargas Minister of Labor Joao Goulart, who had been
appealing demagogically to labor. And after an air force officer was accidentally shot in what appears to have been
an attempt masterminded by members of Vargas bodyguard on the life of Vargas-baiting Carlos Lacerda, editor of
Tribunan de imprensa, and now conservative, publicity-seeking governor of Guanabara state, dominant groups in
the three services demanded Vargas immediate withdrawal from government. Rather than accede to their
ultimatum, the President committed suicide on August 24.
Simon Collier,ed.,et al
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Latin America and the Caribbean, pp. 270-272

V-8

Getulio Vargas, 1930-45

1930 resembled 1889; the revolutionaries came to power unexpectedly and without a common program. Most of
them were old-guard politicians, whose main aim was to end Sao Paulos domination, but there were two more
extreme groups. The democrats, who were concentrated in Sao Paulo, wanted free elections and an end to the
power of the political bosses; the tenentes, the radical army officers, wanted to regenerate Brazil under the
leadership of the army. Vargas as president played the various groups off against each other, using his gift of
pragmatism to climb gradually to supreme power. At first he handed power over to the tenentes, and abolished the
state governments. They introduced a mass of social reforms such as compulsory education, labor laws, and
attempts at moral improvement, but failed for the same reasons as the Jacobins; they were too few, they were
divided, and they had no organized popular support. In the end they became members of the political elite or
returned to the army.
But the tenentes achieved one negative result; they provoked and angered the older politicians. This was
especially true in Sao Paulo, which lost in 1930 and where Vargas had placed an outsider in temporary power. In
1932 the state seceded from the federation; this caused a serious crisis for Vargas, who was forced to promise a
return to constitutional government in order to prevent other states joining in. The bargain worked, the rising was
suppressed, Vargas treated Sao Paulo with great leniency, and a constituent assembly was duly elected in 1933.
Most of its members were traditional oligarchs, but it carried out several reforms to satisfy the democrats, such as
votes for women and proportional representation. Vargas was elected president for four year; the whole episode
was a good example of his ability to be all things to all men.
The return to a constitutional government satisfied the oligarchs and the democrats, while the tenentes
had shot their bolt. But this did not bring peace to Brazil. The revolution and the world depression had shaken the
power of the landowners; the mass of the people were still largely outside politics, but the middle and lower middle
classes, previously employed in professional occupations, were seriously affected. As a result they joined mass
political movements, the first to appear in Brazil. The National Liberation Alliance (ANL) was a popular front
controlled by the Brazilian Communist Party, but appealing to many progressives and lower-middle-class people;
Brazilian Integralist Action (AIB) was a radical nationalist movement which borrowed many trappings from European
fascism and was strongly backed by the German minority, but which appealed to middle-class people who wanted
to regenerate Brazil. By 1935 these movements had about half a million members (out of an electorate of 2
million), and their demonstrations and street fighting frightened the elite, who were not used to mass political
mobilization.
Vargas, as usual, exploited the situation for his own ends; he frightened the old politicians into giving him
more and more power. The ANL was first to fall into his trap; it attempted an unsuccessful coup in November 1935,
spearheaded by non-commissioned officers in the army. Many officers were killed and the rebels were very harshly
treated; this illustrates the elites shock at radical mass movements and also Vargas determination to prevent

anyone but himself from organizing mass support. In 1937-8 it was the Integralistas turn to be crushed by Vargas
political cunning; first he forestalled an Integralista victory in the presidential elections by abolishing the constitution,
then he dissolved the movement when it staged an unsuccessful coup (May 1938). After eight years of dividing in
order to rule, Vargas was supreme.
From 1937 to 1945 Vargas ran a mild dictatorship, called the New State (Estado Novo) after Salazars
regime in Portugal. It was not fascist, although several fascists (or at least fascist-leaning men) sat in Vargass
cabinet and a corporativist constitution was drawn up and partially implemented. Vargas never formed a totalitarian
political movement and never seriously attempted to be a charismatic dictator; his regime was more like that of an
eighteenth century despot -- personal government through an administrative regime of hand-picked experts. He
successfully created the image of a paternal estate owner, O Paizinho do Povo (the daddy of the people), while
quietly transforming Brazil.
Vargass chief problems were centralization, industrialization, and nationalism. Centralization came first;
the president now controlled the whole of Brazil to a degree unequaled since 1889. The states powers were greatly
reduced, an event symbolized by the burning of their flags -- from now on Brazil was to have only one flag. The
machine of government had been greatly expanded since 1930 with the creation of labor and industry ministries;
now it was brought under the control of the Public Service Administrative Department (DASP), a body of specially
chosen advisers to ministers intended to be the equivalent of the British administrative class. As with much of
Vargass work, the experiment was not entirely successful, but it did unite Brazil more than ever before.
Another major feature of the Estado Novo was the states role in laying the foundations for industrial
growth. The government attempted to improve the railways and began the creation of a road network, while the
coming of the airplane made it possible to link Brazil up effectively for the first time. The regimes great showplace
was the Volta Redonda steel mill, which opened in 1941 and was intended to mark Brazils coming of age in
manufacturing. Again, these efforts were partially successful; industry did begin to develop, but the country
remained dependent on agriculture for its major exports. The government tried to rescue staples like coffee and
sugar by organizing state marketing systems, but they remained largely at the mercy of the international market.
The Estado Novo also tried to create an atmosphere of popular mobilization and national pride by
propaganda and encouragement of sport and folklore. Every radio station spread government information by
means of a compulsory Brazilian hour, although this inevitably aroused counter-productive ribaldry. The
government was more successful in its search for prestige through football, which was rapidly becoming the
national obsession, and attempts were made to organize Carnival and to use popular music and art to create a
favorable image. Again this effort was largely nullified by the Brazilian talent for ridicule, but Brazilians did take
more pride in themselves as a result.
The end of the Estado Novo was brought about by external events--notably the entry of the United States
into the Second World War. Brazil, as usual, followed the North American lead, and benefited from large amounts
of aid; in return Brazil patrolled the South Atlantic and sent an expeditionary force to Italy. But it was obviously
incongruous for an authoritarian regime to be fighting for democracy, and Vargas began (with his usual
pragmatism) to propose a return to constitutional government. From 1942 he began to encourage the organization
of the new skilled working class into government-run trade unions, which provided benefits for their members and
some degree of protection (although independent workers action was deterred). This was supplemented by more
traditional patronage in the form of gifts to the unorganized poor and the promotion of a cult of Vargas among the
unsophisticated. In 1945 the president announced elections for a constituent assembly, and began to build a new
political machine. This consisted of two political parties appealing to different bases of support. The Social
Democrat Party (PSD) belied its name; it was a conservative coalition of pro-Vargas landowners, who still controlled
the rural vote, and businessmen who had benefited from the expansion of the Estado Novo. The electorate now
included a large block of skilled urban workers; Vargas appealed to them through the Brazilian Labor Party (PTB),
based on his trade unions. There were also opposition parties, the most important being the National Democratic
Union (UDN), a liberal coalition of anti-Vargas landowners and middle-class people who believed in human rights
and honest government and saw Vargas as a dictatorial demagogue.
The PSD PTB coalition won the 1945 elections but, ironically, it did not help Vargas; he was at this point
overthrown by the army, whose commanders suspected that he intended to keep himself in power yet again; they
also feared his appeal to the masses. Nonetheless the election showed the huge changes which had occurred in

Brazil since 1930. Then the electorate had been 2 million; now it was 7.5 million. Then most of the electors had
voted at the command of the landowners; now there were national political parties (at least in name), and the
opposition got 40 per cent of the vote. Large areas of the interior remained politically and economically backward,
but leadership had passed to the cities, with their European-style middle and working classes. Like Peter the Great
in Russia, Vargas had not totally modernized his country, but he had given it a decisive push forward.
The democratic republic, 1946-1964
Brazils experiment with modern democracy lasted eighteen years, and was stormy as well as short. Only two
presidents, Dutra (1946-1951) and Kubitschek (1956-1961) completed their terms at the appointed time: Vargas
(1951-1954) ended his second term by committing suicide, Cafe Filho (1954-5) and Quadros (1961) resigned, and
Goulart (1961-4) was deposed. The reason for this, apart from the incompetence of the incumbents, was that the
Brazilian political system had become less controllable. In the first republic the quarrels of the state elites had
brought about the revolution of 1930; the landowners were still a powerful force, and they had been joined by the
middle classes and the skilled urban working classes. By the 1960s the unskilled urban workers and the peasants,
hitherto voiceless, were also making demands on the system. In a society that ran on patronage the presidency
could only hope to satisfy so many demands when the economy was booming; when resources were scarce the
flimsy facade of constitutional government was torn to pieces by the conflicting demands of the different interest
groups.
The presidency of Eurico Gaspar Dutra, a conservative general (1946-1951), was relatively quiet; the
political system had not fully developed and Brazil was prosperous as the result of the Second World War. The two
main developments were the banning of the Communist Party, which had shown surprising strength by gaining 9
percent of the votes in 1946, and the consequent growth of the PTB under Vargas, who began to campaign for a
second term in office in 1948. Vargas appealed to the electorate on the social achievements of his last years in
office, and won the 1950 presidential elections by effective use of public relations for the first time in Brazil. He got
over 5 million votes, a record in presidential elections, but under half of the total vote--another sign that the
electorate were voting freely and that the oligarchs no longer controlled the system.
Vargass second presidency was a failure. The complexity of political life had vastly increased since 1945;
the post-war boom was over; the president himself was nearly seventy and his political grip was weakening.
Vargas made two major mistakes; he alienated everyone by his mismanagement of the economy (inflationary wage
increased followed by a stabilization plan), and he angered his political supporters by his promotion of his protg
Joao Goulart, who he made Labor Minister and put in charge of the trade unions with all their opportunities for
patronage. But Vargass final downfall was due to his resentment of opposition. In August 1954 an assassination
attempt was made on a muckraking journalist, Carlos Lacerda; violence at national level broke the unwritten rules of
Brazilian politics, and the armed forces were also angered, since an Air Force major had been killed trying to
protect Lacerda. Investigations showed that the killing had been ordered by the presidents chief bodyguard; senior
officers demanded the presidents resignation, and Vargas responded by committing suicide. His death, and the
wills issued in his name, created a Vargas legend; he was supposed to have dies as a sacrifice protecting the poor
and humble. At any rate he had taken vital steps towards modernization and created both a middle class and a
skilled proletariat.
But Vargas suicide had shown up the strains within the political system, and these got worse after his
death. The president was elected separately from the vice-president, with the result that Vice-President Joao Cafe
Filho, who succeeded Vargas, belonged to the opposition UDN, and throughout his term there was trouble with
Congress. Vargass political machine showed its durability by winning the 1955 elections, with Juscelino
Kubitschek of the PSD gaining the presidency and Goulart of the PTB the vice presidency, but the armed forces
had to intervene again to prevent any anti-Vargas factions from staging a coup. The running of Brazil was
becoming increasingly dependent on the military.