In Brazil's history, the Vargas era (Portuguese: Era Vargas; ) was the period from 1930 to 1946 when the country was governed by Getúlio Vargas. The period can be subdivided into the Second Brazilian Republic, from 1930 to 1937, and the Third Brazilian Republic, or Estado Novo, from 1937 to 1946.

The Revolution of 1930 marked the end of the First Brazilian Republic. The coup deposed President Washington Luís and blocked the swearing-in of president-elect Júlio Prestes on the grounds that the 1930 election had been rigged by his supporters. The 1891 Constitution was abrogated, the National Congress dissolved, and the provisional military junta ceded power to Vargas. Federal intervention in state governments increased, and the country' political landscape was altered by suppressing the traditional oligarchies of the states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais.

After assuming power, Vargas governed by decree as head of the provisional government instituted by the revolution from 1930 to 1934, before the adoption of a new constitution. Following the adoption of the Constitution of 1934, which was drafted and approved by the National Constituent Assembly of 1933–1934, Vargas was elected by Congress and governed as president with a democratically elected legislature. Vargas' presidency was to end in 1938, however, in order to stay in power, he imposed a new dictatorial constitution in a coup d'état and shut down the legislature to rule Brazil as a dictator, thus initiating the Estado Novo.

The ousting of Vargas and the Estado Novo regime in 1945 led to the restoration of democracy in Brazil with the adoption of a new democratic constitution in 1946, marking the end of the Vargas era and the beginning of the Fourth Brazilian Republic.

Fall of the First Republic

The tenente rebellions did not significantly impact the bourgeois social reformers in Brazil. However, the entrenched ruling coffee oligarchy was vulnerable during the economic upheaval of 1929.

Brazil's vulnerability in the Great Depression was rooted in the dependence of its economy on foreign markets and loans. Despite some industrial development in São Paulo, coffee and other agricultural exports were the mainstay of the economy.

Days after the U.S. stock market crash on 29 October 1929, coffee prices fell. Between 1929 and 1931, coffee prices fell from 22.5 cents per pound to eight cents per pound. As world trade contracted, coffee exporters experienced a large drop in foreign-exchange earnings.

The Great Depression had a dramatic effect on Brazil. The collapse of Brazil's valorization (price support) program, a safety net in times of economic crisis, was intertwined with the collapse of the central government and its base of support in the landed oligarchy; the coffee planters had become dangerously dependent on government support. The government was not short of cash needed to bail out the coffee industry after the post-World War I recession, but world demand for Brazil's primary products had fallen too drastically between 1929 and 1930 to maintain government revenues. The country's gold reserves had been depleted by the end of 1930, pushing its exchange rate down to a new low, and the program for warehoused coffee collapsed.

The government of president Washington Luís faced a deepening balance-of-payments crisis, and the coffee growers had an unsellable harvest. Since power rested in a patronage system, wide-scale disruptions of the delicate balance of regional interests left the Luís regime vulnerable. Government policies favoring foreign interests exacerbated the crisis, leaving the regime alienated from almost every segment of society. After the Wall Street panic, the government tried to please foreign creditors by maintaining convertibility according to the principles of foreign bankers and economists who set the terms for Brazil's relations with the world economy; this had no support from any major sector of Brazilian society.

Luís clung to a hard money policy despite capital flight, guaranteeing the convertibility of the Brazilian currency into gold or British sterling. The government was forced to suspend currency convertibility when its gold and sterling reserves were exhausted amid the collapse of the valorization program, and foreign credit evaporated.

Washington Luís's decision to choose Júlio Prestes as his successor precipitated the fall of the First Republic, as Prestes was, like him, from São Paulo, which broke the traditional rotation of the presidency between São Paulo and Minas Gerais.

Rise of Getúlio Vargas

A populist governor of Brazil's southernmost Rio Grande do Sul state, Vargas was a cattle rancher with a doctorate in law and was the 1930 presidential candidate of the Liberal Alliance. A member of the local landed oligarchy who rose through the system of patronage and clientelism, he had a fresh vision of how Brazilian politics could be shaped to support national development. Vargas came from a region with a positivist and populist tradition, and was an economic nationalist who favored industrial development and liberal reforms, built up political networks and was attuned to the interests of the rising urban classes. He relied on the support of the tenentes of the 1922 rebellion.

thumb|left|alt=Getúlio Vargas in uniform, surrounded by a large group of people|Vargas after the 1930 revolution which began the Vargas eraWith the urban bourgeois groups, northeastern sugar barons had a legacy of longstanding grievances against the southern coffee oligarchs. Northeastern landowners opposed Washington Luís' 1930 discontinuance of Artur Bernardes' drought-relief projects. The decay of the northeast sugar oligarchies began dramatically with the severe drought of 1877, combined with the rapid growth of coffee-producing São Paulo. After the abolition of slavery in 1888, Brazil saw a mass exodus of emancipated slaves and other peasants from the northeast to the southeast, ensuring a steady supply of cheap labor for the coffee planters.

Under the Old Republic, Brazil's presidency was dominated by the southeastern states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais (Brazil's largest, demographically and economically) in the so-called café com leite ("coffee with milk") politics. Given the grievances with the ruling regime in the northeast and Rio Grande do Sul, Vargas chose João Pessoa of the northeastern state of Paraíba as his vice-presidential candidate in the 1930 presidential election.

As a candidate in 1930, Vargas utilized populist rhetoric to promote middle-class concerns, opposing the primacy (but not the legitimacy) of the São Paulo coffee oligarchy and the landed elites who had little interest in protecting and promoting industry. Behind the façade of Vargas' populism lay the ever-changing nature of his coalition. Locally-dominant regional groups – the gaúchos of Rio Grande do Sul and the sugar barons of the northeast – ushered the new urban groups into the forefront of Brazilian political life, tilting the balance of the central government toward the Liberal Alliance.

Vargas understood that with the breakdown of relations between workers and owners in Brazil's growing factories, workers could become the basis for a new form of political power: populism. He gradually established mastery of the Brazilian political world, and remained in power for 15 years. As the stranglehold of the agricultural elites eased, urban industrial leaders acquired more influence nationally and the middle class strengthened.

In addition to the Great Depression and the emergence of the Brazilian bourgeoisie, the country's inter-regional politics encouraged the alliance Vargas forged during the Revolution of 1930 between the new urban sectors and landowners hostile to the government in states other than São Paulo.

Second Brazilian Republic

Vargas' tenuous coalition lacked a coherent program beyond a broad vision of "modernization". He tried to reconcile the divergent interests of his supporters with social reform between 1930 and 1934, with his policies increasingly reliant on populism.

The tenentes

In the first year of the Vargas regime, the tenentes, the dominant forces of Vargas' inner circle, attempted to differentiate themselves from the dissident oligarchical politicians of the Old Republic, as well as other sectors of the new government by branding themselves as the "true revolutionaries". The tenentes also formed a revolutionary legion with branches in many states in order to spread their revolutionary ideas. The legions' first major parade in São Paulo had noticeable fascist undertones. The Constitution was a compromise between two factions, the centralisation faction, and the federalisation faction. The result was a constitution had some reactionary elements and other elements which were in favour of the advancement of Brazilian culture. Vargas had concerns regarding the constitution, as he believed that it was too liberal and restricted his ability to govern. His party had fascist and Nazi symbolism, and used the Roman salute. It had all the visible elements of European fascism: a green-shirted paramilitary organization, street demonstrations, and aggressive rhetoric partially financed by the Italian embassy. The integralists borrowed their propaganda campaigns from Nazi materials, including excoriation of Marxism and liberalism, and support of nationalism, antisemitism and Christian virtues. They were supported by military officers, especially in the navy.

Foreign Relations

In the years of 1933 and 1934, Vargas, and the Brazilian government focused on developing foreign relations.

In his 10 November 1937 radio address, Vargas invoked the alleged communist threat, decreed a state of emergency, dissolved the legislature and announced the adoption by presidential fiat of a new, authoritarian constitution that placed all governing power in his hands. The 1934 constitution was abolished, and Vargas proclaimed an estado novo.

The powers of the National Security Tribunal were streamlined in the Third Brazilian Republic, and it focused on prosecuting political dissenters. Police powers were enhanced with the establishment of the Department of Political and Social Order (Departamento de Ordem Política e Social, or (DOPS), a political police and secret service. When it was created in 1936, the National Security Tribunal was supposed to be a temporary court; defendants could appeal its judgements to the Superior Military Court, Brazil's highest court for the armed forces, which was subordinate to the nation's supreme court. Communists and others accused of plotting coups were judged by the military court-martial system (with the National Security Tribunal the trial court for those cases), rather than by ordinary courts. The National Security Tribunal became a permanent court in the Estado Novo, autonomous from the rest of the court system. It gained authority to adjudicate cases involving communist conspirators and other coup plotters, and tried anyone accused of subverting or endangering the Estado Novo regime. Extrajudicial punishments were imposed by the police, especially the DOPS.

The 1937 constitution provided for elections to a new congress and a referendum confirming Vargas' actions. Neither was held, ostensibly due to the dangerous international situation. Under a transitional article of the constitution pending new elections, the president assumed legislative and executive powers; Vargas ruled for eight years under what amounted to martial law. According to the 1937 constitution, Vargas should have remained President for only six more years (until November 1943); he remained in power until he was overthrown in 1945. The Estado Novo dictatorship curtailed the autonomy of the judicial branch and the Brazilian states governed by federal interventors, who had legislative and executive powers (supposedly temporarily).

In December 1937, one month after the Estado Novo coup, Vargas signed a decree disbanding all political parties, including the fascist Brazilian Integralist Action (Ação Integralista Brasileira, or AIB). The integralists had, until then, been supportive of Vargas' anti-communist measures. Angered by the AIB suppression, they invaded the Guanabara Palace in an unsuccessful 11 May 1938 attempt to depose Vargas.

thumb|upright=1.35|alt=A green banknote|Ten-[[Brazilian cruzeiro (1942–1967)|cruzeiro banknote with a portrait of Vargas]]

Between 1937 and 1945, during the Estado Novo, Vargas intervened in the economy and promoted economic nationalism. Known by his supporters as the "Father of the Poor", he provided them with tools to help improve their agrarian way of life.

During this period, a number of industrial bodies were created:

  • The National Petroleum Council (Conselho Nacional do Petróleo, or CNP)
  • The Administration Department of Public Service (Departamento Administrativo do Serviço Público, or DASP)
  • The National Steel Company (CSN)
  • The Rio Doce Valley Company
  • The São Francisco Hydroelectric Company (Companhia Hidro-Elétrica do São Francisco)
  • The Fábrica Nacional de Motores (FNM)

The Estado Novo affected modernist architecture in Brazil, implementing large-scale, incomplete urban planning. Curitiba, one of the world's best-planned cities, was planned by Alfred Agache during the Estado Novo.

Measures to restrain opposition included the nomination of intervenors for the states and media censorship by the Department of Press and Propaganda (Departamento de Imprensa e Propaganda, or DIP), which attempted to shape public opinion.

Vargas issued the Consolidation of Labor Laws (CLT) in 1943, guaranteeing job stability after ten years of service. The decree provided weekly rest, regulated the work of minors and women, regulated night-time work and set an eight-hour work day.

Tensions with Argentina

The liberal revolution of 1930 overthrew the oligarchic coffee-plantation owners and brought to power an urban middle class and business interests that promoted industrialization and modernization. Promotion of new industry turned around the economy by 1933. Brazil's leaders in the 1920s and 1930s decided that Argentina's implicit foreign-policy goal was to isolate Portuguese-speaking Brazil from its Spanish-speaking neighbors, facilitating the expansion of Argentine economic and political influence in South America; they also feared that a more-powerful Argentine Army would launch a surprise attack on the weaker Brazilian Army. To counter this threat, Vargas forged closer links with the United States; Argentina moved in the opposite direction. During World War II, Brazil was an ally of the United States and sent an expeditionary force to Europe. The United States provided over $370 million in Lend-Lease grants in return for rent-free air bases (used to transport American soldiers and supplies across the Atlantic) and naval bases for anti-submarine operations. Argentina was officially neutral, at times favoring Germany.

World War II

thumb|alt=Drawing of a large hand and forearm pulling a U-boat out of the water|Brazilian propaganda poster announcing its declaration of war on the [[Axis powers, 10 November 1943. The caption reads, "Brazil at war ... Opening the road to victory"]]

At first, Brazil had a neutral stance on the war. 40% of Germany's cotton was imported from Brazil, and Brazil itself had large migrant communities from the countries of the Axis Powers. (Germany, Italy and Japan) Vargas' main goal at the time was to facilitate Brazil's economic growth, and in order to do this, he needed to stay neutral between the soon-to-be Axis and Allies. However, after Pearl Harbor, Brazil's entry into the war became a matter of time, as it became clear that the Axis were a threat to the New World. The U.S. financed Brazilian iron-ore extraction and steel production and placed military bases along the country's north and northeastern coasts, headquartered in Natal. With the conquest of Southeast Asia by Japanese troops, allied companies also heavily invested into Brazilian rubber extraction after British Malaya fell, which was the allies' biggest producer and exporter of rubber, resulting in a second rubber boom and the forced migration of "soldados da borracha" (rubber soldiers) from the drought-stricken northeast to Amazônia.

After the sinking of over 25 Brazilian merchant ships by German and Italian submarines in 1942, popular mobilization forced the Brazilian government to abandon neutrality and declare war on Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in August of that year. A government decision to send troops was not made until January 1943, when Vargas and U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt met in Natal and the Brazilian Expeditionary Force (BEF) was created. In July 1944, the first BEF group was sent to fight in Italy.

Soon after the war, fearing the BEF's popularity and possible political use of the Allied victory by some of its members, the Brazilian government decided to demobilize. BEF veterans were forbidden from wearing military decorations or uniforms in public, and were transferred to outlying regions or border garrisons.

End of the Vargas era

Brazilian participation in World War II increased pressure in favour of re-democratisation. Although the regime made some concessions (such as setting a date for presidential elections, amnesty for political prisoners, abolishing state censorship, freedom to organize political parties, and a commitment to a new electoral law), Vargas could not retain support and was deposed by the military in a coup launched from his War Ministry on 29 October 1945.

The two candidates for the scheduled election, Eurico Gaspar Dutra and Eduardo Gomes, agreed that the chief justice of the supreme court, José Linhares, should be the interim president. Hence, he was summoned to assume the presidency. The office of vice-president had also been abolished and no legislature had been elected under the 1937 constitution, making the chief justice first in the line of succession by default. Linhares immediately brought forward the date for presidential elections and a constituent assembly and replaced all state interventores, mostly with members of the judiciary. Elections were held in December 1945, and Linhares remained in office until the inauguration of the Assembly and President Eurico Gaspar Dutra on 31 January 1946. This marked the end of the Estado Novo and the beginning of the Fourth Brazilian Republic.

See also

  • Estado Novo (Portugal)
  • Second presidency of Getúlio Vargas

References

Bibliography

  • in Portuguese
  • Brazil Now.Info Estado Novo.
  • Garfield, Seth. "The Roots of a Plant That Today Is Brazil: Indians and the Nation-State under the Brazilian Estado Novo" Journal of Latin American Studies Vol. 29, No. 3 (Oct., 1997), pp. 747–768