Vargas Administration Research Articles

Populism and Professionalism in Brazilian Football during Getulio Vargas’s Regime (1930–1945)

During the first Getúlio Vargas administration (1930–1945), professional sport was established in Brazil. In a regime deeply marked by its pro-labour policies, one may at first think that professionalism was supported by the national government. However, that was not the case in Brazil. The struggle between professionals and amateurs created a schism in Brazilian sports that would last from 1933 to 1937 and that would still reverberate in the governmental intervention in sports in 1941. This article aims to analyse the relationship of Brazilian football ruling elites and the populist government of Getúlio Vargas in order to understand not only the top-down mobilization of sports by the authoritarian government of Vargas, but also the bottom-up initiatives that led the agents of the football elites to press for their own agendas.

The Dual Effect of Corporatism: The Control and Strengthening of Civil Society in Brazil, 1930–1945

This article examines the relationship between state and civil society in the first Vargas administration (1930–1945). It looks at a type of corporatist political incorporation of the business class and urban workers, especially the professions, and seeks to highlight the dynamic and class‐based nature of this process. Furthermore, it demonstrates that, in spite of the predominance of the state in relation to civil society, corporatism implied gains and losses (in different qualities and quantities) for both. Finally, it argues that in a general form in the period studied corporatism resulted in the increase of state control over social groups, but it points to an undesired effect for the state: the contribution of corporatist organisation to the (partial) autonomisation of civil society at the end of the Estado Novo.

Shifting the Meaning of Democracy: Race, Politics, and Culture in the United States and Brazil. By Jessica Lynn Graham (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2019) 392 pp. $85.00 cloth $39.95 paper

This important study “analyzes the…emergence of racially inclusive nationalisms” as dominant state narratives in Brazil and the United States between 1930 and 1945. Graham looks at how this shift occurred and the way that it related to concepts of democracy and to the relations between the two countries, especially during World War II. Graham refers to articulations of inclusive race-based nationalism as “racial democracy,” which she applies to both Brazil and the United States in this period (6–7). This study focuses almost entirely on political narrative and its relationship to the political and economic context of the time. Graham does not analyze the actual conditions related to race in either country but only the political narratives of the time and how they related to each country and to the war.Both countries used these ideas to ward off charges of being undemocratic, though in different ways. The Brazilian narrative claimed that “racial harmony” and the centrality of African-derived culture made their dictatorship under Getulio Vargas “democratic.” At the same time, the U.S. narrative suggested that its political democracy essentially legitimated its tortured race relations. Brazil and the United States worked together to legitimize each other’s racial and democratic images to strengthen their wartime alliance. They collaborated on cultural productions and supported non-action-oriented forms of racial democracy. Brazil’s demarginalization of black culture, which was part of the shift to racially inclusive nationalism, was reflected, for example, in the perception of samba as “nefarious” or witchy to a view of it as a “national treasure” legitimated by the Vargas administration. Similarly, in the United States, jazz, which mainstream society in 1922 might have slighted as “so-called music,” by the 1940s had become “the best of authentic U.S. musical culture and … project[ed] an image of a racially harmonious nation.”Graham argues convincingly that the picture of racial democracy that emerges from this study is a doctrine that “was—and is contingent upon place and time” (262); both countries based their narratives on a denial of real circumstances with regard to race and democracy. She believes that this approach to national narrative continued in both countries during the Cold War, and in Brazil was used to legitimate the military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985 (262). These doctrines also had the effect of identifying black activists in both countries as threats to national security. In Brazil, authorities depicted shanty towns as hotbeds of communism, and Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s Committee on Anti-American Activities similarly accused U.S. black activists of communism. Demarginalization may have resulted in black culture becoming more visible and some black artists becoming more prosperous, but, as Graham points out, most often through the mediation of such white entertainers as Carmen Miranda or Elvis Presley.This study’s presentation of the issues of race and democracy in the United States and Brazil carefully places the issues, and how they were viewed in each country, in dramatic historical perspective.

Developmentalism and neo-conservationism in the Vargas Era, 1930-1945: the scientific and political work of Paulo Campos Porto

The botanist Paulo Campos Porto's participation in the state apparatus during the Vargas Era is discussed, focusing on the guidelines he established for the Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro during his first years running the institution and also during his leadership of the Bahia state Department of Agriculture. The aim is to contribute to the comprehension of aspects of the work of scientists and technical specialists during the Vargas administration. Furthermore, by gaining an understanding of the botanist's involvement with this administration and how the institutions he ran collaborated with its political project, the idea is to enable the perception of certain nuances in developmentalism at the time, such as a convergence with the precepts of conservationism.

The National Commission of Social Welfare: State planning and social policy, 1951-1954

The article analyzes the creation of the National Commission of Social Welfare (Comissão Nacional de Bem-Estar Social) during the second Vargas administration (1951-1954). Presidential communiqués and the private archive of Alzira do Amaral Peixoto Vargas are used to characterize the context of the founding of the commission and its liaison with international entities involved in the planning of social welfare policies.

The European Utopia in Zweig’s Brazil. A Land of the Future

The publication in 1941 of Stefan Zweig’s Brazil. A Land of the Future (Brasilien. Ein Land der Zukunft) was met both with great enthusiasm and harsh criticisms. Many reviewers thought that Zweig’s view of the country was too exotic, naive, idealistic, utopian, and even the result of the propaganda efforts carried out by the Vargas administration. In an attempt to understand and bridge the gap between Zweig’s idea of Brazil and the country’s «reality», this article analyzes the text hand in hand with Zweig’s memoirs and other of his non-fiction works from the perspective of his utopian thinking and ethical commitment to the notions of freedom, peace, cosmopolitanism, tolerance, and common understanding.

Transformation of Japanese Schools before and after WWII: Impact of Brazilian Nationalism on Japanese Immigrants’ Primary Education and Self-identity

This article discusses the changes in the role and function of Japanese schools in Brazil before and after WWII vis-a-vis the host country’s social and political environment, with emphasis on the pressure from nationalism on Japanese immigrants’ education exerted by the Vargas administration. The impact of the policy was both significant and turbulent. It had become one of the main causes of the drastic changes in the national identity and character of Japanese primary schools after the Pacific War, with tragic consequences for the Japanese immigrants. Before WWII, Japanese immigrants had gradually advanced their status from contracted labourers to independent farmers, forming Japanese colonias (settlements) on government-allocated uncultivated land. They were eager to give their children elementary level education, and in remote areas, they had no choice but to provide this education principally in the Japanese language. These schools therefore became targets of the anti-Japanese movement that began in the 1920s, peaked in the 1930’s, and was phased out in the 1940s. Just before WWII, however, President Getulio Vargas developed a nationalistic policy which encompassed education; foreign schools were oppressed, and in 1938, most Japanese primary schools were closed. In addition, there was a ban on holding meetings and public gatherings, and Japanese newspapers were abolished. This was a traumatic situation that made Japanese-Brazilians pessimistic about the future, and their despair pushed them closer to supporting the goals of their Japanese homeland. The conflict between Brazilian and Japanese nationalism took place in primary education, which saw a tragic confrontation among immigrant groups, and resulted in a radical change of public opinion, as well as in the primary schools themselves.

The Vargas Administration and the Proposal of the ABC Pact: The Place of Peronist Argentina in Brazilian Foreign Policy

Abstract: To return to the history of Brazil’s participation in South-American economic regionalism has gradually become of paramount need as the issue of regional integration is at the top of the country’s foreign policy agenda. This article aims to contribute with a study of this participation, by examining the failed attempt to revive the ABC Pact in the Brazilian political arena in the 1950s. Based on many documentary sources, our goal is to analyse the internal and external conditions that ended the Vargas Administration’s engagement in the Peronist proposal to build an economic bloc among Argentina, Brazil and Chile through a customs union. Herein, we present the reasons that led to the adoption of a realistic and pragmatic position by the Brazilian government regarding the ABC project, which were far removed from any possibility of getting involved in the project or even from not frustrating early expectations.

The Triumph of Brazilian Modernism: The Metanarrative of Emancipation and Counter-Narratives by Saulo Gouveia

Reviewed by: The Triumph of Brazilian Modernism: The Metanarrative of Emancipation and Counter-Narratives by Saulo Gouveia Sarah J. Townsend KEY WORDS Modernism, Modernismo, Modernist, Modernista, Avant-Garde, Vanguard, Brazil, Literature, Literary Historiography, Canonization, National Identity, Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade, Paulo Prado, Patronage, Getúlio Vargas, Saulo Gouveia, Sarah J. Townsend Gouveia, Saulo. The Triumph of Brazilian Modernism: The Metanarrative of Emancipation and Counter-Narratives. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2013. 296pp. Given the recent decline in the fortunes of modernismo, it is hard not to hear an ironic ring in the title of Saulo Gouveia’s The Triumph of Brazilian Modernism: [End Page 241] The Metanarrative of Emancipation and Counter-Narratives. Not so long ago, new appraisals of Oswald or Mário de Andrade could command an immediate audience; despite disagreements over their respective merits, there was a sense that the debates in which they had been engaged were still relevant, or at least worthy of an occasional reread. Today, however, my unscientific impression is that modernismo has become passé. If Brazilian literary studies currently has a center of gravity, it is well disguised, and when it comes to discussions about modernism and the avant-gardes, concretismo and the media art of the sixties and seventies seem to be where the action is. Increasingly, when critics turn back to the twenties and thirties, it is to explore alternative currents and concerns long overshadowed by a select group of artists who in their moments of greatest hubris claimed to have thrown off the shackles of cultural dependency and thrust Brazilian culture onto the modern stage (whatever that means). But this shift in the status of modernismo—its redefinition as an outmoded avant-garde—also presents the possibility of looking at it anew. In this spirit, The Triumph of Brazilian Modernism casts a critical eye over the movement’s most cherished myths and scrutinizes the process of its institutionalization and canonization. Renouncing any claim to offer a “totalizing” account, Gouveia describes his aim as a modest “attempt to cause a disturbance in the chain of signification that structures the conventions prescribed by the predominant discourse of Modernism” (21). His main targets are the avant-garde rhetoric of rupture; a mode of “aesthetic criticism” that equates formal innovations with oppositional politics; and the related failure to account for modernismo’s ties to the economic elite and the state. Other critics have made these points, and The Triumph of Brazilian Modernism reads more like a recap and synthesis of previous critiques than a radically new intervention. Yet all it takes is a glance at the back covers of any number of other books published during the last decade—particularly those by Latin Americanist scholars in the United States—to realize just how resilient the redemptive interpretation of modernismo is. The first part of the book outlines a genealogy of the modernista “metanarrative,” which depicts the movement as the protagonist of a heroic struggle for emancipation—emancipation from the Parnassian aesthetics and positivism of the nineteenth century, emancipation (i.e., autonomy) of the Brazilian intelligentsia, and emancipation of the Brazilian people via the creation of an authentic national culture. Few critics would dispute that such a story exists, and the long foray into Jean-François Lyotard’s presentation of the concept of metanarrative in The Postmodern Condition might not have been necessary to prove the point. Gouveia’s more contentious claim is that this metadiscourse or grand récit helped underwrite the legitimacy of the Brazilian state. Chapter one draws on the work of Sérgio Miceli and others to show how [End Page 242] modernistas of divergent political affinities accepted posts in the Vargas administration following the top-down Revolution of 1930; it also offers an overview of their involvement in the foundation of public universities, including the oft-cited case of the Universidade de São Paulo. For Gouveia, the upshot is that modernista writers were in a position to become their own editors and critics, and the criteria they used to judge literary value helped pave the way for their definitive canonization in the 1950s by a subsequent generation of scholars and writers, including Haroldo...

DOPS, a cidade de Rolândia (PR) e a repressão aos imigrantes de origem alemã (1942-1945)

O artigo analisa as ações realizadas pela Delegacia de Ordem Política e Social (DOPS) contra os imigrantes alemães, na cidade de Rolândia/PR, no período de 1942 a 1945. Durante a II Guerra Mundial e a adesão do Brasil aos países Aliados, os imigrantes dos países do Eixo foram vigiados e controlados pela polícia política do governo Vargas. A constante referência aos alemães acabou gerando a construção de mitos, como o da “conspiração alemã” e o da “Alemanha Antártica”, que ajudaram a legitimar a “lógica da desconfiança” sobre esses imigrantes. A construção de mitos políticos respaldou, no imaginário social, a atuação da polícia política, legitimando as suas ações de vigilância, controle e repressão.

Another Dante's inferno in a gold mine during the Vargas era: Nova Lima, Minas Gerais

This article analyzes the control strategies in place at Morro Velho mine in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, and the changes after the implementation of labor legislation during the Vargas administration. The diseases common amongst mine workers, silicosis and arsenicosis, are investigated through statements given by former miners and a book by an anonymous author that discusses the diseases and the power relations between employers and employees, identifying the limitations of the legislation and the workers' struggles. The book presents a striking story of how for many years the British company side-stepped laws such as the insalubrity premium, a right which other mining companies, not only of British ownership, flouted and still flout in different parts of the world.

Desenvolvimentismo e política econômica: um cotejo entre Vargas e Perón

O artigo compara a política econômica de duas experiências desenvolvimentistas na América Latina: o primeiro período governamental de Vargas (Brasil, 1930-1945) e Perón (Argentina, 1946-1955). Embora aceite a semelhança entre ambas, comumente mais enfatizada pela literatura, procura mostrar certas diferenças entre elas em matéria de natureza econômica. Defende que, enquanto Vargas centravase em medidas para mudar a estrutura econômica do país, com ênfase à industrialização, Perón deu maior prioridade à redistribuição de renda do que a mudanças no modelo econômico, o qual já vinha sendo implementado na Argentina antes de seu governo.

Migrações rural-urbanas entre descendentes de escravos no litoral do Rio Grande do Sul em meados do século XX

It is known that the existence of labor laws in Brazilian cities during the years of the Getúlio Vargas administration and their inexistence in rural areas generated migrations from the hinterland to the cities (Gomes, 2005, p. 240-241). This articlediscusses, through the methodology of oral history, how this process was experienced by descendants of slaves from the rural area of the town of Osório who, in the search for new prospects for their lives, moved to cities such as Osório, Capão da Canoa and Porto Alegre. The article investigates what reasons beside the labor legislation led themto the cities and also asks about their occupations once they were living in urban areas.Key words: migrations, labor laws, littoral of Rio Grande do Sul, descendants of slaves.

Migrações rural-urbanas entre descendentes de escravos no litoral do Rio Grande do Sul em meados do século XX

It is known that the existence of labor laws in Brazilian cities during the years of the Getulio Vargas administration and their inexistence in rural areas generated migrations from the hinterland to the cities (Gomes, 2005, p. 240-241). This article discusses, through the methodology of oral history, how this process was experienced by descendants of slaves from the rural area of the town of Osorio who, in the search for new prospects for their lives, moved to cities such as Osorio, Capao da Canoa and Porto Alegre. The article investigates what reasons beside the labor legislation led them to the cities and also asks about their occupations once they were living in urban areas. Key words: migrations, labor laws, littoral of Rio Grande do Sul, descendants of slaves.

O mito do populismo econômico de Vargas

The myth of Vargas' economic populism. The Second Vargas Administration in Brazil (1951-1954) is commonly associated with the phenomenon of populism. However, based on the models of economic populism, it is clear that the economic policy of the period is not the one shown by those models. Besides, based on this historic experience, it is advocated that there is no incompatibility between developmentalism and the adoption of macroeconomic stability-oriented measures.

Nem ortodoxia nem populismo: o Segundo Governo Vargas e a economia brasileira

O artigo tem por objeto a economia e as controvérsias sobre a política econômica do Segundo Governo Vargas (1951-1954), bem como de seu significado histórico. Como opção metodológica, parte das diferentes ênfases dadas à implementação da política econômica ao longo do período, as quais são analisadas pari passu às principais correntes que dividem seus analistas e intérpretes.

Pesquisa documental sobre a história da hanseníase no Brasil

This article corresponds to part of the results of a research on leprosy-related sources developed in several institutions in the city of Rio de Janeiro. At Real Gabinete Português de Leitura, Arquivo Nacional and Biblioteca Nacional, banks, indexes, official documents and photos on the administration of leprosaria and articles on the treatment of the disease have been investigated. At Centro de Pesquisa e Documentação de História Contemporânea do Brazil (CPDOC-FGV), several files have been researched, mainly those with information on the health policies of the first Vargas administration (1930-1945). This research is part of the International Leprosy Association Global Project on the History of Leprosy. Its results can be accessed at the site http://www.leprosyhistory.org

Bolivian Oil and Brazilian Economic Nationalism

Early in 1938, Brazil signed a treaty with Bolivia that would open part of the apparently oil-rich Chaco region to Brazilian exploitation. Up to that time, Brazil's growing but still negligible national effort to find oil within her own territory had proved fruitless; the treaty, however, seemed to guarantee it a supply of oil not controlled by the great international petroleum companies, an important proviso during the nationalistic Vargas administration. Yet Brazil failed to pursue the prospect opened by the treaty until the 1950s, and then its attempts to implement it were defeated by internal economic nationalism. This essay deals with Brazil's abortive efforts in the 1950s to frame and implement a policy for developing its oil concessions in Bolivia. The incident is an isolated example of the difficult international relations which prevail in Latin America.