Vargas Government Research Articles

Cannibalizing Bach: Villa-Lobos in Europe, 1936

Abstract During the 1930s, Heitor Villa-Lobos concentrated his efforts on coordinating Brazilian musical education. As such, he changed his compositional style and did not travel to Europe again until 1936. This article examines Villa-Lobos's trip to Europe in 1936, drawing on Florencia Garramuño's call to ‘incorporate avant-garde voyages as founding moments’ for an autochthonous national character in music. During his journey, Villa-Lobos represented Brazil in different settings: as a deputy at the International Congress of Music Education in Prague and as a composer in under-the-radar political negotiations with Nazi Germany in Berlin. Considering the authoritarian Vargas Regime, Brazilian modernism, and the dialectical relation between nationalism and internationalism, I argue that this trip served as a catalyst for a new creative phase, culminating in the series of Bachianas brasileiras, a resignification of J. S. Bach's music and legacy in the context of his interpretation of Brazilian Antropofagia (cultural cannibalism).

Social assistance and its strengths, rescue of a job in a municipality in the south region of Fluminense

Social Assistance started in Brazil in the 1930s under the Getúlio Vargas government, but focused on the worker and his family. Over the years, governments have been paying more attention and laws have been created to improve Social Assistance. The objective of this research is to show the functioning of these social policies, with their laws and bodies aimed at assisting those who have their rights neglected in some way. We will give a more special focus to Host Institutions (Lar Acolhedor) and Pop Center (Street Population), understanding the relationship between the two, and what measures can be adopted for a more effective result in the objectives and goals directed to each one. The methodology used was bibliographic research. Some bodies related to Social Assistance, and the work performed by them, were pointed out, aiming at a better performance so that assistance and its benefits are taken to those who need it.

Sweet Fuel: A Political and Environmental History of Brazilian Ethanol

Sweet Fuel: A Political and Environmental History of Brazilian Ethanol

BRAZIL AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR: CIVIC DEMONSTRATIONS AND NATIONALIZATION

Background: During World War II (1939 - 1945), the National Defense League organized, in Porto Alegre, a series of commemorations with the objective of civic exaltation and patriotic mobilization. Aim: This work aimed to analyze civic solemnities of the week of the fatherland, highlighting how a campaign of patriotic exaltation was carried out, in addition to the mobilization for the nationalization of German and Italian immigrants and the acculturation of their children, the so-called coloninhos. Methods: Analysis of a work edited by the National Defense League, called Activities of 1943. Analysis of the mobilization of society around civic commemorations, organized by the National Defense League. Analysis of the speeches made by the state interventor at the time, General Cordeiro de Farias. Results and Discussion: The National Defense League made an intense mobilization of Brazilian society around the patriotic celebrations in the week of the Fatherland (September 1st to 7th), in 1943, when the Getúlio Vargas government was preparing troops to fight in Europe alongside the Allies and against the Axis countries during World War II. The images, photos, and speeches given at the festivities were edited and later published in a book. In Porto Alegre, there was a campaign for the population to participate in the celebrations actively. Parades were also held in Porto Alegre with children, sons, and daughters of German and Italian immigrants. Furthermore, the Defense League spoke about the acculturation of the children of immigrants (coloninhos), as they supposedly could become spies for enemy countries. Despite Brazil being under the dictatorial government of the Estado Novo, clearly fascist inspired and inaugurated by Getúlio Vargas in 1937, the Defense League defended that it was a democratic and receptive government. Conclusions: Due to the actions of the Defense League, it was necessary that it actively participate in activities, that it was willing to fight against Brazil s enemies. It would also be necessary to nationalize and acculturate the children of German and Italian immigrants, to demonstrate that Brazil was open to receiving them.

Napalm Colonization: Native Peoples in Brazil's Aeronautical Frontiers

AbstractThis article investigates how aviation shaped Brazilian frontier colonization beginning in the 1940s and how Indigenous peoples came to use aviation for their own purposes. Backed by a technocratic ideology, the Getúlio Vargas regime saw aeronautics as a fix for the state's lack of control over the frontiers. Beginning with its March to the West program, the government used aviation to quickly explore and colonize vast territories previously out of its reach. The military radically transformed this method in the 1960s, using napalm and paratroopers to quickly create outposts and settlements. This article introduces the term aeronautical frontier to define unique regions where flying was the primary mode of transportation. While much of the discourse on Indigenous peoples and aviation has focused on defensive reactions to the incoming airplanes, this article shows how Native Brazilians appropriated the technology for their own means, mastering it for their own use in aeronautical frontiers.

A SAÚDE PARAIBANA NOS ANOS 1930

Analisamos a reorganização da Diretoria Geral de Saúde Pública da Paraíba, realizada em 1935, buscando compreender como ela dialoga com o projeto de centralização política e com a ideologia de valorização do trabalho implementados ao longo do governo de Getúlio Vargas. Na saúde pública paraibana, estes processos foram traduzidos em uma maior capilarização socioespacial da ação estatal e no incremento de ações voltadas à saúde do trabalhador, suscitando novas práticas de cuidados com o corpo e produção dos espaços. Para a construção da narrativa, recorremos a notícias publicadas por jornais locais, as quais foram analisadas a partir de uma perspectiva teórica foucaultiana, com ênfase no conceito de “disciplinarização”.

Shifting the Meaning of Democracy: Race, Politics, and Culture in the United States and Brazil by Jessica Lynn Graham

Reviewed by: Shifting the Meaning of Democracy: Race, Politics, and Culture in the United States and Brazil by Jessica Lynn Graham Travis Knoll Shifting the Meaning of Democracy: Race, Politics, and Culture in the United States and Brazil. By Jessica Lynn Graham. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019, p. 392, $29.95. This richly sourced and concisely written expansive diplomatic and cultural history brings the growing scholarship on Black internationalism (Keisha Blain 2018, 2021; Sarah Azaransky 2017) in conversation with the vast national literatures on race relations in two countries with the world's largest African diasporas. Graham's traces "the co-constitutive emergence of racially inclusive nationalisms as Brazilian and US state doctrine" (2) during the presidencies of Getúlio Vargas and Franklin Roosevelt. These doctrines responded to Communist and fascist efforts to undermine liberal democracy as incapable of delivering for its citizens. She divides fascist, Communist, and liberal democratic treatments of race into four categories: racial realism, racial denial, racial dissuasion, and racial obstructionism (8). Communist competition drives the first chapter, beginning with the Third Communist International (1919-1943), or the Comintern's, efforts to bring U.S. and Brazilian Blacks into worldwide struggles, especially in Asia (43). The Comintern exploited the new racial rhetoric ushered in by the New Deal even as it clashed with rival organizations like with Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, which preached self-sufficiency and conservative bourgeois values. While US communists made racial struggle a cornerstone of their anti-imperialist agenda, the Comintern had to pressure the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) to admit Brazil had a racial problem, something it only did after stiff competition from Brazilian Integral Action (AIB) and Arlindo Veiga dos Santos' Brazilian Black Front (FNB). The second chapter lays out how Getúlio Vargas' Estado Novo and US government officials made racial plurality central to their anti-Communist efforts. Graham counters traditional scholarship that says the United States incorporated racial democracy in the 2000s, centers important right-wing actors, and shows elements of the Vargas regime highlighting racial plurality in a more forceful and confident manner than its US counterpart. The United States' response to Communism's assertion of a more racially equal society suffered from divisions embodied by the struggle between New York Rep. Hamilton Fish, who acknowledged racial inequality, and Texas Rep. Martin Dies, who denied it. Blacks in turn sought to cast the Ku Klux Klan and other rightist domestic terror groups as more dangerous than either German fascism or the Soviet Union. Architects of the Estado Novo, such as Francisco Campos, sought to frame democracy as stability, the state's defense of itself (90-91), through cultural events like the Estado Novo Exposition and books like Brazil is Good (92-93). [End Page 583] Chapter Three explains how pre-war fascists Plínio Salgado and African-American Lawrence Dennis claimed the democratic mantle and contested US definitions of democracy. As portrayed in works such as the National Socialist Handbook for Law and Legislation (1934/5) and Hitler Speaks (1939), US-style democracy was a sham that neither provided order nor lived up to the multi-racial ideas for which the system ostensibly advocated. The Nazis believed that this contradiction would lead Brazil into their camp, but Brazilian Integral Action (AIB) was put off by the Nazis' racial exclusivity and instead mixed Italian fascist ideas with homegrown discourses of racial harmony. This racially plural fascism influenced Black activists like Veiga dos Santos (and, in his early years, Abdias de Nascimento). Dennis longed for a modified version of US fascism which would embrace efficient government, discard racial superiority, and reject imperialistic ambitions. Other Brazilian and US Blacks such as Júlio Romão, Joel Augustus Rogers, and Adam Clayton Powell dissented from these fascist organizations but lamented that the sad example of race relations in liberal democracies was a poor counterpoint to fascist pretentions. Chapter Four covers the use of New Deal-era radio programs such as Harold Ickes' Radio Education Project and the Estado Novo's support for samba schools to juxtapose democracy's racial tolerance with fascism's racial chauvinism. Though centering Blacks, these programs often celebrated formal abolition while absolving the two...

Physiognomies of Performance: The Corollary of Representation in the Work of Abdias do Nascimento

Physiognomies of Performance:The Corollary of Representation in the Work of Abdias do Nascimento Juan Suárez Ontaneda Infelizmente, as circunstâncias não permitiram a repetição daquele espetáculo, pois o palco do Teatro Municipal havia sido concedido ao TEN por uma única noite, e assim mesmo por intervenção direta do Presidente Getúlio Vargas, num gesto mínimo insólito para os meios culturais da sociedade carioca. (Nascimento 214)1 The quote above is perhaps the only evidence available about how Abdias do Nascimento secured Rio’s most elite and exclusive venue in order to perform a play with an entirely black cast.2 Nascimento secured the Municipal Theater through the direct intervention of Getúlio Vargas, the dictator that governed Brazil during the Estado Novo [New State] period (1930–1945), and was later elected in free [End Page 313] election in 1950 for a second term.3 Despite the scant evidence about the negotiation between Nascimento and Vargas, the account by Nascimento foregrounds two central elements I would like to discuss in this article: Nascimento’s definition of spectacle, and his definition of performance. First and foremost, by understanding the meaning of spectacle (or “espectáculo”) we can assess the importance of “performing” as a method to intervene into the public sphere and discuss ideas about race and racism. Nascimento’s writing about the concept of spectacle is closely associated with the idea of venue: in this case, with the Municipal Theater. In other words, for Nascimento, the content of the spectacle was as important as the place where the spectacle was performed. In addition to the connection between space and spectacle, by focusing on how Nascimento spoke about race and performance we can also analyze the connection between writing about specific performances, and the act of performing itself. In that sense, the purpose of this essay is to analyze how Abdias do Nascimento understood the concept of “performance” and “performing” in connection with race and blackness in Brazil. Abdias spoke about performing as a discursive strategy to mobilize the issue of race through embodied representations. By way of this discussion, I will show how the work of Nascimento centered the body and the stage as central components of his racial activism. Nascimento was profoundly concerned with the intersection between his position as an Afro-Brazilian artist, the visual politics of blackness in Brazil, and the language available to speak about race in mid-twentieth century Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. The two largest cities of Brazil were central to the TEN [Teatro Experimental do Negro—TEN henceforth] because Nascimento founded his experimental theater in Rio, but he began his corollary of representation—as I suggest—through his writings at the São Paulo state prison. Nascimento’s intervention into the public sphere through his performances resulted in a critique of racial exceptionalism in Brazil. The Brazilian strand of racial exceptionalism, democracia racial [racial democracy], took roots in 1933 with the publication of Casa Grande e Senzala (translated as The Masters and the Slaves), the seminal work of Gilberto Freyre, a sociologist from northern Brazil. Nascimento dialogued directly with Freyre, inviting him to write an article in the periodical he edited: Quilombo. While Paulina Alberto (2011) and Elisa [End Page 314] Larkin Nascimento (2006) have written thorough accounts about the racial and political context of Quilombo and the TEN, I am interested in examining how the performative language engineered by Nascimento since his beginnings with the “Teatro do Sentenciado” [Theater of the Sentenced] informed the discursive trajectory of both his periodical Quilombo and his theatrical troupe, the TEN. Considering Nascimento started the “Teatro do Sentenciado” while an inmate at the São Paulo State Prison in 1943, the intellectual history of democracia racial during the Vargas regime intersects with the performative history of Nascimento and his different thespian projects. Vargas centered nationalism during both of his regimes; this meant acknowledging Afro-Brazilian culture as a pivotal component of Brazilian national identity, but it meant as well shaping policies and cultural institutions insofar they were subservient to the popularity of his regime. George Reid Andrews (2004) has analyzed how Vargas, like many other Latin...

Das armas às urnas: a participação dos coronéis da Bahia na Revolução de 1930

Resumo Este artigo discute a participação dos coronéis do interior da Bahia na Revolução de 1930, desde a campanha da Aliança Liberal até a centralização do poder federal no estado, sob o governo de Juraci Magalhães, no ano de 1933. Com base na análise de cartas, telegramas e jornais da época, demonstra-se como esses homens do interior, que antes conduziam com armas sua atuação política, na Primeira República, passaram a utilizar as urnas após a vitória do movimento revolucionário de outubro de 1930, num constante processo de acomodação política que marcou o governo Vargas na Bahia.

CONTRA O LIBERALISMO E O COMUNISMO: UMA DEMOCRACIA AUTORITÁRIA

RESUMO Tratamos dos primeiros 15 anos do governo Vargas, de sua legislação trabalhista e de sua atitude diante da valorização do trabalho e do trabalhador. A partir da análise das lutas do movimento operário, da pesquisa em jornais, programas e documentos de Vargas, verificam-se seus objetivos: o de elaborar uma legislação trabalhista, que contempla e submete os trabalhadores; o de forçar os empresários a respeitarem tal legislação, tendo como objetivo obter paz social, a verdadeira democracia, que só poderia ser mantida pondo fim ao liberalismo e governando por meio do centralismo autoritário, a que chamava de democracia autoritária.

Por que não posso “querer fixar o sol e observar a lua”?: “Desviantes” do trabalho e seu adoecimento na Colônia Juliano Moreira-RJ (1930-1945)

Neste artigo, analisamos a história de homens internados na Colônia Juliano Moreira (CJM) que apresentaram indícios em suas documentações de internações de doenças mentais relacionadas com o trabalho. A metodologia de trabalho foi o levantamento e seleção do grupode internos, analisando as principais fontes documentais: os prontuários dos internos. No Brasil, foi durante o governo Vargas que o trabalho e o trabalhador foram sendo alvos de políticas públicas mais intensas na busca da construção da “nação”. Do indivíduo homem, provedor da família e cidadão trabalhador produtivo se esperava que fosse um "respeitável" chefe de família, gozando de boa saúde e muito disciplinado, a base da construção nacional. Assim, qualquer desvio nesse modelo – fosse por indisciplina ou esgotamento físico e mental decorrente das atividades e das condições de trabalho – tornava esses homens “desviantes” do projeto de nação e sociedade que se defendia naquele momento e, portanto, passíveis de serem considerados “loucos” e internados em instituições psiquiátricas para tratamento erecuperação.

Questões curriculares na era Vargas (1930-1945): o caso da Escola Étnica Japonesa Visconde de Cairu

Este artigo problematiza questões curriculares da Era Vargas ao analisar as práticas curriculares da escola étnica Japonesa Visconde de Cairu, em Campo Grande, no sul de Mato Grosso. Focaliza o governo Vargas e as políticas educacionais que atingiram as propostas curriculares voltadas aos imigrantes japoneses, por meio da análise de decretos, entrevistas e livros da memorialística. Os resultados sinalizam que os Decretos-lei (1930-1945) promoveram a política nacionalista de Vargas, bem como prescreveram um currículo mínimo obrigatório de controle pedagógico nas escolas de cunho étnico. O nacionalismo impediu o funcionamento de escolas, proibiu o uso de materiais didáticos em língua estrangeira, restringiu a direção da escola a brasileiros natos e, consequentemente, inibiu a atuação dos imigrantes.

The transition debate in Brazilian history: The bourgeois paradigm and its critique

AbstractThe origins of capitalism in Brazil have been traditionally overlooked by the literature on its developmental trajectory, either considered as an outcome of colonial exploitation or described through a broad notion of ‘bourgeois revolution’. The recent discussion between the consequentialist interpretation of bourgeois revolutions and the Political Marxist critique of the bourgeois paradigm allows for a reassessment of these narratives, with a stronger emphasis on the specific disputes of early‐20th‐century Brazil. In this paper, I engage with Florestan Fernandes as the main representative of the bourgeois paradigm within Brazil. As an alternative, I present a reassessment of the ‘capitalist transition’ understood as a set of social property relations organised around market dependency. By tracing this form of market dependency through Brazilian historiography, I present a narrative that posits the development of capitalism in Brazil through the nonrevolutionary rise of an industrial bourgeoisie during the Old Republic and the competing strategies of declining (British) and rising (US/Germany) financial imperialism in the 1920s. Therefore, it highlights the role of (geo)political disputes by pointing towards the policy changes introduced by the Vargas regime in the 1930s as a key factor in the transition to capitalism in Brazil.

Debret, Gilberto Freyre, Cecília Meireles: representaciones del comercio callejero en Brasil y sus influencias orientales y africanas

Street trade has existed in Brazil since the colonial period, practiced by free blacks and slaves. The objective of this study is to show aspects of this trade in cities such as Rio de Janeiro and Recife, from the imperial period to the Estado Novo de Vargas government, marking Eastern influences, especially Islamic, introduced by Portuguese slaves and colonizers, until the arrival of New European immigrants in the first decades of the 20th century. It is based on the analysis of extracts and images of works by three authors: Jean-Baptiste Debret, in Viagem Pitoresca e Histórico ao Brasil (1835-1839); Gilberto Freyre, in Casa-grande & Senzala (1933), Sobrados e Mucambos (1936) and Guia prático, histórico e sentimental do Recife (1934); Cecilia Meireles (1941), in the chronicle “Through the Rio Streets”, published in Travel in Brazil magazine, illustrated with photographs by Jean Manzon, which records the insertion of the European immigrant in the street trade of Rio de Janeiro. It is also intended to show the intersection between this trade and the conceptions of traveler and tourist.

O olhar do viajante e do turista em representações do comércio de rua no Brasil por Debret, Gilberto Freyre e Cecília Meireles

Street trade has existed in Brazil since the colonial period, practised by free blacks and slaves. The aim of this study is to show the changes in this trade in cities such as Rio de Janeiro and Recife, from the Imperial period to the Estado Novo of the Vargas government, marking Eastern influences, especially Islamic, introduced by slaves and Portuguese slaves and colonisers, until the arrival of New European immigrants in the first decades of the 20th century. The study is based on the analysis of extracts and images of works by three authors: Jean-Baptiste Debret, in Viagem pitoresca e historica ao Brasil (1835-1839); Gilberto Freyre, in Casa-grande & Senzala (1933), Sobrados e mucambos (1936) and Guia pratico, historico e sentimental do Recife (1934); Cecilia Meireles (1941), in the chronicle Pelas ruas do Rio, published in Travel in Brazil magazine, illustrated with photographs by Jean Manzon. It is also intended to show the intersection between this trade and the conceptions of traveller and tourist.

The Hospital Proletário in João Pessoa: limits and possibilities for worker healthcare (Paraíba, 1930s)

We discuss the attempt to establish the Hospital Proletário in the capital of the state of Paraíba in the 1930s. To this end, we problematized the coverage in the newspaper A União on this episode. The involvement of different actors - workers, associations and physicians - reveals the emergence of a new way of thinking and implementing healthcare policies. According to the Vargas government's national construction plan, actions like this were intended to ensure healthy workers - ready for the market and useful for the country. Despite its failure, the hospital project provided evidence of the different concepts of worker health during the Vargas Era. We identified the concepts of "health interdependence," "social medicine," "regulated citizenship" and the "labor movement."

Instituições e desenvolvimento econômico: o direcionamento da política econômica brasileira durante o Estado Novo

O objetivo do artigo é averiguar o sentido da política econômica do Governo Vargas, realizada durante o Estado Novo, diante da conjuntura internacional restritiva acarretada pela Segunda Guerra Mundial. Para tanto, foram analisados, dentre outros, discursos do Presidente Getúlio Vargas e do Ministro da Fazenda, Artur de Souza Costa, e o Balanço Geral da União, de modo a comparar suas intenções com os resultados obtidos. O texto indica que ocorreram mudanças no ambiente institucional voltadas a contribuir para o uso ponderado de determinados instrumentos de política econômica, marcado por limitações instituídas pelo estabelecimento de regras formais. Além disso, foram criadas instituições formais com o intuito de promover cooperação para oportunizar condições financeiras favoráveis para a melhora da economia nacional no pós-guerra.

Dependência e autonomia nas políticas externa e tecnológica do Brasil, 1951-79

Este artigo examina um conjunto de políticas externas do Brasil do ponto de vista de suas conexões com as políticas tecnológicas no segundo governo Vargas (1951-4) e nos governos Kubitschek (1956-61), Jânio Quadros e João Goulart (1961-4), Costa e Silva (1967-9), Médici (1969-74) e Geisel (1974-9). A partir de uma discussão sobre os vínculos entre dependência e autonomia tecnológica nas relações centro-periferia do capitalismo mundial, investiga as convergências entre política externa e política tecnológica. A hipótese que move o trabalho é que ao longo do período 1951-79 os formuladores das políticas externa e tecnológica se tornaram crescentemente conscientes da relação entre autonomia tecnológica e desenvolvimento, e buscaram criar sinergias entre uma política e outra. A análise desses dois conjuntos de políticas permite compreender as prioridades e o real alcance e constrangimentos que uma impôs à outra.

“Developmentalist Brazil” (1945-1964) as a concept: historicizing and (re)periodizing development in Brazil

ABSTRACT The paper presents an alternative periodization of the debate and practice of development in Brazil. It starts with a brief depiction of Rômulo Almeida’s trajectory. It states that during the second Vargas government, a group of bureaucrats - coined as “State organic intellectuals” - occupy a new social position. As the process of economic development unfolds, new contradictions arise, so as other social positions. In the second part, new categories are constructed in order to describe the different conceptions of development during the period 1945-1964. Then, after presenting the many uses of the concept of “developmentalism” over history, the paper delves into the concept of “Developmentalist Brazil” in order to get into the inner dynamic of the period. The purpose is to integrate ideas and social positions, on the one hand, and structural processes, on the other, by addressing the conflicts over development strategies. The “Post-Developmentalist” period (1964-1980) is characterized as a rupture in its attempt to put in place a new development pattern to solve the rising contradictions faced during the “Developmentalist Brazil” period (1945-1964). At the end, we put forth a research programme that could possibly lead to the understanding of Brazil’s structural changes in the context of the post-1980 new capitalist world-economy.

The Degenerating Sex: Female Sterilisation, Medical Authority and Racial Purity in Catholic Brazil.

This article examines female sterilisation practices in early twentieth-century Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It argues that the medical profession, particularly obstetricians and psychiatrists, used debates over the issue to solidify its moral and political standing during two political moments of Brazilian history: when the Brazilian government separated church and state in the 1890s and when Getúlio Vargas's authoritarian regime of the late 1930s renewed alliances with the Catholic church. Shifting notions of gender, race, and heredity further shaped these debates. In the late nineteenth century, a unified medical profession believed that female sterilisation caused psychiatric degeneration in women. By the 1930s, however, the arrival of eugenics caused a divergence amongst physicians. Psychiatrists began supporting eugenic sterilisation to prevent degeneration - both psychiatric and racial. Obstetricians, while arguing that sterilisation no longer caused mental disturbances in women, rejected it as a eugenic practice in regard to race. For obstetricians, the separation of sex from motherhood was more dangerous than any racial 'impurities', both phenotypical and psychiatric. At the same time, a revitalised Brazilian Catholic church rejected eugenics and sterilisation point blank, and its renewed ties with the Vargas regime blocked the medical implementation of any eugenic sterilisation laws. Brazilian women, nonetheless, continued to access the procedure, regardless of the surrounding legal and medical proscriptions.