Elite's Recomposition and State-Building in Contemporary Brazil (1920-1964)

Abstract

Brazil today is considered, on the international scene, as an emerg ing nation, doted with an integrated industrial complex, as well as on a mod em system of education and research and on means of communication (tele phone, radio, television, internet, etc.) which permit the rapid and efficient circulation of information. None of these characteristics would have been valid prior to 1930, when the country presented an economy dominated by the ex portation of tropical products, political power was fragmented into more than twenty federal units with no real coordination by the central government in stalled in Rio de Janeiro, intellectual life was restricted to a few old exportation ports. - This paper aims at a better understanding of how Brazil transformed itself during the 20th century, from a structured archipelago around islands of agro-industrial plantations (coffee, sugarcane, etc.) to a continent marked by fast industrialization. Beside these evolutive perceptions of Brazil's space, we must take into account the social and intellectual courses of the key leaders during the 1930's uprising, such as Juarez T?vora and Jose Americo de Almeida from the North, or Getulio Vargas and Osvaldo Aranha from the South, the most significant figures of the national movement. - All these lead ers come from the same social background of agrarian elites, but they had es tablished political parties supporting very different ideologies, from national ism to the acknowledgement of the US hegemony, from the labour party to liberalism. The paths of these elites show fairly well the diverse alternatives which have marked state-building and nation-building in contemporary Brazil. Brazil today is considered, on the international scene, an emerging nation, doted with an integrated industrial complex which depends on renewable and non-renewable (alcohol carburant and petroleum) sources of energy, as well as on a modern system of education and research and on means of communication (telephone, radio, television, internet, etc.) which permit the rapid and efficient circulation of information. None of these characteristics would have been valid prior to 1930, when the country presented an economy dominated by the expor tation of tropical products, political power was fragmented into more than twenty federal units with no real coordenation by the central government in stalled in Rio de Janeiro, intellectual life was restricted to a few old exportation ports, which also accumulated religious, administrative and judiciary functions.