The Political Economy of the 'Politics of the States': Minas Gerais and the Brazilian Federation, 1889-1900

Abstract

For most of the 1890s Brazilian state presidents and federal representatives of Minas Gerais lacked influence in federal politics. What had begun as a deliberate policy of neutrality and self-imposed isolation eventually became a position of weakness and internal division, made manifest when changing circumstances and perceptions induced a desire to re-assert the voice of the state at federal level. Antonio Olinto dos Santos Pires, at one time Minister of Industry, Transport, and Public Works, pointed in April 1896 to the neglect of the interests of the state in the federal Congress, and contrasted the ineffective performance of federal representatives with the 'preponderant role in the labours of the legislature' which Minas should have had by right, in view of its importance and the number of its deputies.1 Despite his efforts, the Partido Constitucional Mineiro disintegrated when Glicerio's Partido Republicano Federal (PRF) itself fell apart in 1897. To Joao Dunshee de Abranches, a contemporary journalist and politician who subsequently produced a detailed account of the collapse of the PRF, it seemed that the Minas delegation of this period was 'an agglomeration of groups without cohesion and without power, locked in mutual combat over interminable internal dissensions'.2 Yet within a couple of years Minas had achieved at federal level a position of influence second to none. The state provided a virtually uninterrupted sequence of Presidents or Vice-Presidents of the Republic between 1902 and 1930, and played a dominant role in federal politics throughout the period. It is this transformation in the fortunes of the state, launched with the alliance cemented between Silviano Brandao and Campos Sales in 1899, that is the subject of this paper. It will be argued here that the politics of the period, at state and federal level, can only be fully understood in terms of the interplay of economic interests and policy preferences arising out of the changing impact throughout the economy of the fortunes of the leading coffee export sector.