Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Brazilian Revolution of 1930: The Legacy of Getúlio Vargas Revisited

2023; Duke University Press; Volume: 103; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-10216772

1527-1900

Joel Wolfe,

Youth, Politics, and Society

Luciano Aronne de Abreu and Marco Aurélio Vannucchi have put together a good collection of essays by Brazilian scholars on a wide variety of subjects that shaped Brazil during Getúlio Vargas's first period of rule (1930–45). There is some original research in a few of the chapters, while others rely on the secondary literature. All the essays do an excellent job of situating new arguments about the period in the appropriate historiographical context. The book is highly recommended for graduate and advanced undergraduate students, and for non-Brazil specialists among faculty.The editors make a logical and important point about the Revolution of 1930 that first brought Vargas to power. It did indeed usher in an era of significant changes, especially in terms of the state's role in the economy and social relations, but those changes did not preclude aspects of previous eras from being part of the new order. The editors then allow the nine substantive chapters to demonstrate that through cases studies. Adriana Barreto de Souza's chapter on the armed forces under Vargas leads off, and that is significant. Most scholars of the era, other than specialists on the military, tend to ignore just how central the armed forces were to Vargas's ascension to power, his struggle against the Paulista elite in 1932’s civil war, the establishment of the Estado Novo in 1937, and his ouster in 1945. An unsurprising, but little discussed, fact of military-civil relations at this time is that the army's budget grew substantially under Vargas, both in real terms and as a percentage of total government spending.Ângela de Castro Gomes's chapter on Vargas's trabalhismo provides an outstanding synthesis of arguments that she has made in a number of outstanding books. She is particularly good in differentiating between Vargas's labor politics and populism. Gomes focuses on the macro level and so does not analyze the impact of these policies on Brazil's working people, but she does provide some interesting clues about their limitations, including the fact that during the Estado Novo, the number of unions in Brazil increased, but the number of unionized workers declined.Bernardo Buarque de Hollanda and Rodrigo Saturnino Braga write about the ways that football grew institutionally and in popularity under Vargas. The development of World Cup play beginning in 1930, but especially the 1934 tournament, dovetailed perfectly with Vargas's expansion of the central state's role in so many facets of Brazilian society. This chapter is a bit marred by its failure to address key works in the historiography and to put football in the broader context of nationalism and sport in this era, but it is still an interesting and valuable contribution. Carla Brandalise's analysis of Brazil's fascist Integralists, on the other hand, goes out of its way to put its subject into both a national and international context. Her well-drawn conclusion is that the Brazilian movement had a lot in common with European movements and was therefore a Latin American expression of fascism.Essays on intellectuals under Vargas by Helena Bomeny and the ways that intellectuals and politicians used ideas about the Revolution of 1930 to justify and shape the Estado Novo by Luciano Aronne de Abreu and Cássio Albernaz demonstrate how ideas that had been circulating since the 1910s, but especially in the 1920s, shaped Vargas's thinking and policies. Intellectuals and some military men provided the framework for rejecting the Old Republic's economic and partial political liberalism. Many of those ideas also shaped economic policymaking during this first Vargas era. Marco Aurélio Vannucchi's analysis of conservative modernization at this time details the connections between the authoritarian nature of the regime's industrial, military, and intellectual supporters and the ways that the Estado Novo played out. Using a framework introduced in the 1960s by Barrington Moore, Vannucchi details how the Estado Novo succeeded in dramatically expanding industrial production through state interventions and partnerships, and how it did so often at the expense of the majority of Brazilians, including industrial workers who were supposed to benefit from expanded social programs and unionization.Pedro Henrique Pedreira Campos's chapter on the economy fits well with Vannucchi's work. Campos demonstrates clearly the expansion of Brazilian industry through a combination of the natural protectionism of the Great Depression and World War II, and the activist state that created state agencies to transform the economy. This chapter details how industrialists organized politically to push for state action on their behalf, and their success in leveraging that power. The only chapter that deals directly with political organizing and pressure is Petrônio Domingues's study of Black associational life under Vargas. Domingues recounts the history of the Frente Negra, as well as other lesser-known Afro-Brazilian political and social groups from the Vargas years. He notes that the Frente Negra's 1936 move to transform itself into a political party brought about its demise because Vargas shut down all political parties when he declared the Estado Novo in 1937.Collectively, the essays in The Brazilian Revolution of 1930 succeed in providing a great deal of new analysis of the Vargas years and are certainly worth reading. The chapters on the industrialists' political pressure in shaping the economy and on Afro-Brazilian associational life, however, point to the volume's one real weakness: there is not much here on the Brazilian people under Vargas. This book details well the ideologies and policies of the era but not how they affected the Brazilian population and how Brazil's people reacted to them. The book is nonetheless a very well-done introduction to the era by a number of leading Brazilian scholars.