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In Brazil's history, the Vargas era (Portuguese: Era Vargas; ) is the period from 1930 to 1946 when the country was governed by Getúlio Vargas. The period is subdivided into the Second Brazilian Republic, from 1930 to 1937, and the Third Brazilian Republic, or Estado Novo, from 1937 to 1946.
The Brazilian 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.
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.Fridell, Gavin. Fair Trade Coffee, pg 120) 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.
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 Grande Seca, 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.
The tenentes also played a key role in influencing economic policy, like supporting state intervention in the support of coffee, and also encouraging a shift from export to non-export agriculture and industry. They also influenced social policy, supporting state intervention in trade unions to promote their growth, and to extend welfare measures to workers and their family.
Eventually, the tenentes lost their influence due to their growing reliance on Getulio Vargas and their lack of deep rooted connections with most of Brazilian society. They also did not have a coherent ideology and never had a cohesive plan for government even if they were to take over Vargas's government. The October 3rd Club was disbanded in 1935 as the result of internal ideological conflict.
With the northeastern oligarchies now incorporated into the ruling coalition, the government focused on restructuring agriculture. To placate friendly agrarian oligarchs, the state left the impoverished domains of the rural oligarchs untouched and helped the sugar barons cement their control of rural Brazil. The peasantry, surprising many accustomed to overlooking Brazil's peripheral regions, was not that servile. Banditry was common but so were messianism, anarchistic uprisings, and tax evasion, all common practice before 1930. The government crushed a wave of banditry in the northeast which was known as cangaço, reversing the drastic (but gradual) decline of the northeastern latifundium from the 1870s to the 1930 revolution. At the expense of the indigent peasantry—85 percent of the workforce—Vargas reneged on his promises of land reform and denied agricultural workers the working-class gains in labor regulations. Opposition arose among the powerful paulista coffee oligarchs to this intervention and to increasing government centralization, its increasingly populist and fascist stances, its protectionist and Mercantilism policies (protecting politically favored producers at the expense of consumers), and the increasingly-dictatorial Vargas himself.
The appeasement of landed interests (traditionally dominant forces in Brazil) required a realignment of Vargas' coalition, forcing him to turn against its left wing. The influence of the tenentes group over Vargas rapidly waned after mid-1932, although individual moderate tenentes continued to hold important positions in the regime. The ouster of the center-left tenentes from his coalition marked his rightward shift by 1934.
A conservative insurgency in 1932 was the turning point to the right. After the July Constitutionalist Revolution — a thinly-veiled attempt by the paulista coffee oligarchs to retake the central government — Vargas tried to recover support from the landed elites (including the coffee growers) to establish a new alliance.
The revolt was caused by Vargas' appointment of João Alberto, a center-left tenente, as an interventor (provisional governor) in place of the elected governor of São Paulo. The paulista elite loathed Alberto, resenting his centralization efforts and alarmed by economic reforms such as five-percent wage increase and the minor distribution of land to participants in the revolution. Amid threats of revolt, Vargas replaced João Alberto with a civilian from São Paulo, appointed a conservative paulista banker as minister of finance, and announced a date for a constituent assembly. This did not satisfy the Paulista elite and may have even strengthened it; Vargas was now seen as a devious liar who was only satisfying them in order to hold on to power. They launched a revolt in July 1932 which collapsed after three months of armed combat.
Despite the attempted revolution, Vargas was determined to maintain his alliance with the farmer wing of his coalition and to strengthen ties with the São Paulo establishment. Further concessions alienated the coalition's left wing, especially the failure to honor land-reform promises made during the 1930 campaign. Vargas pardoned half the bank debts of the coffee planters, who maintained a grip on the state's electoral machinery. To pacify his paulista adversaries after their failed revolt, he ordered the Bank of Brazil to honor issued by the rebel government.
Vargas was increasingly threatened by pro-communist elements critical of the rural latifundios by 1934, who sought an alliance with the country's peasant majority by backing land reform. Despite his populist rhetoric, Vargas was ushered into power by planter oligarchies in remote regions amid a revolution and was in no position to meet communist demands.
In 1934, an indirect presidential election was held, meaning only members of Congress could vote. The government candidate was Getulio Vargas, and the opposition candidate was Borges de Medeiros, former governor of Rio de Janeiro. Vargas won the election with 159 votes to Medeiros' 75.
Now armed with a new constitution, primarily influenced by European fascist models, Vargas began reining in moderate and turning against the tenentes. More concessions to the latifundios pushed him toward an alliance with the integralists, Brazil's fascist movement. Vargas' regime between 1934 and 1945 was characterized by the co-opting of Brazilian unions through state-run, sham syndicates and suppression of opposition, particularly from the left.
The Great Depression that brought Vargas to power sparked calls for social reform, countered by the mass mobilization of a potential new enemy: the urban proletariat. Vargas tried to impose a paternalistic tutelage over the working class to control and co-opt it. His supporters began to view labor, which was larger and better organized than it had been after the First World War, as a threat.
Vargas could unite the landed elites to stem the communists. With the cangaço repressed in the northeast, the new bourgeoisie and the landed oligarchs shifted their fears to the trade unions and socialist sentiments of the urban proletariat. Often composed of immigrants, the proletariat came from the more-urban southeast and was more European in population, culture, ideology, and industrial development. Vargas' alliance with labor disintegrated by 1934, and the country began a period of agitation. By mid-1935, Brazilian politics were destabilized.
Vargas focused on the two national ideological movements which were committed to European-style mass mobilization: one pro-communist, and the other pro-fascist. More intimidating was the National Liberation Alliance (ANL) launched in 1935, a left-wing popular front of socialists, communists, and other progressives led by the Communist Party and Luís Carlos Prestes. A revolutionary forerunner of Che Guevara, Prestes led the futile Coluna Prestes through the rural Brazilian interior after the failed 1922 tenente rebellion against the coffee oligarchs. This experience left Prestes and some of his comrades skeptical of armed conflict, and their skepticism helped precipitate the 1960s schism between hard-line Maoism and orthodox Marxist–Leninism which persists in the Brazilian Communist Party. With center-left tenentes out of the coalition and the left crushed, Vargas turned to his base of support on the right in a crackdown on the ANL. As his coalition moved to the right after 1934, Vargas' ideology remained ambiguous. Integralism, with a rapidly-growing membership by 1935, began filling this ideological void (especially among the approximately one million Brazilians of German descent).
Plínio Salgado, a writer and politician, founded Brazilian Integralist Action in October 1933.De Mattei, Roberto. The Crusader of the 20th Century, 1998. (pg 52) 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 Brazilian Navy.
The constitution established a new Chamber of Deputies that placed government authority over the private economy and established a system of corporatism aimed at industrialization and reduced foreign dependence. These provisions designated corporate representatives according to class and profession, organizing industries into state syndicates but generally maintaining private ownership of Brazilian-owned businesses.
The 1934–37 constitution and, especially, the Estado Novo heightened efforts to centralize authority in Rio de Janeiro and limit provincial autonomy. This progressive role sought to consolidate the 1930 revolution, replacing the power of the paulista coffee oligarchs with a centralised policy that respected local agro-exporting interests and created an economic base for the new urban sectors. State government would be rationalized and regularized, freed from the grip of coronelism.
The constitution established a more direct mechanism for the federal executive to control the economy, pursuing a policy of planning and direct investment in the creation of industrial complexes. State and mixed public-private companies dominated heavy and infrastructure industries, and private Brazilian capital predominated in manufacturing. Direct foreign investment increased during the 1930s 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. The state emphasized the economy's basic sectors, facing the difficult task of forging a viable capital base for future growth in mining, oil, steel, electric power, and chemicals.
The communists had attempted to take over the government in a botched November 1935 coup attempt. After the failed uprising, the National Congress had given greater powers to Vargas and approved the creation of a in a statute adopted on 11 September 1936.
In his of 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 Secret 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 (Superior Tribunal Militar), Brazil's court of appeals 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.
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 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.
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.
The two candidates for the scheduled election, Eurico Gaspar Dutra and Eduardo Gomes both 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.
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