Getúlio Vargas’ actions reinforced the belief that he wanted to remain in power indefinitely and that, to achieve this, he wanted to break the political and economic power of São Paulo. The reaction was swift: the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932 broke out in São Paulo.
The Revolution of the Thirties was for Brazil what the First World War had been for Europe, an historical caesura between two eras. The era of the “Old Republic”16 (1889-1930) came to an end and that of Getúlio Vargas began.
Up to then power had been in the hands of the axis São Paulo-Minas Gerais, that is, the alliance of the two main producing States of Brazil.17 This predominance was expressed by the formula of “coffee and milk” (Minas Gerais was also committed to farming), which provided for the rotation of the presidency of the Republic between the political representatives of São Paulo and of Minas. The system did not vary greatly until 1930, when the outgoing president, Washington Luiz, indicated another Paulista member as his successor,
Julio Prestes de Albuquerque, instead of the Mineiro candidate. The State of Minas then coalesced with the State of Rio Grande do Sul, rallying around the name of Getúlio Vargas, 18 president of the latter State since January 1928.
The climate of political confrontation was worsened by the collapse of the New York stock exchange and by its repercussions on the Brazilian economy. Wall Street’s famous “black Thursday” on 24 October 1929 was the detonator for the world crisis. Its first effect was the collapse of the international prices for Brazil’s coffee: the income in foreign currency fell from £67 million sterling in 1929 to £41 million in 1930.19 The gold reserves, which in September 1929 amounted to £31 million sterling, in August 1930 fell to £14 million and by December of that same year practically no longer existed.20
In this crisis situation, the presidential elections were won on 1 March 1930 by Júlio Prestes. However, there was a climate of popular unrest in the country and in the month of October it exploded with a military revolt which spread from Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte and Recife to the whole country. In less than a month the government was forced to give in. President Washington Luiz was sent into exile and, at the beginning of November, Getúlio Vargas was nominated head of the provisional government.
Vargas’ rise to power was an authentic break with the past. It marked the fundamental change of the role of the State, which from that time became the regulating agent of the economic activity of the country.21 The rural aristocracy, which had guided Brazilian society for centuries, lost control over the nation and was replaced by new industrial and financial interests.22 The establishment of the Republic in 1889 had been a political revolution, but it maintained unchanged the social organization of Brazil. That of 1930 had much deeper consequences.23
Notes:
16. In the”República Velha”, cf. José Maria Bello, História da República: 1889-1954, 4th edn., São Paulo, Companhia Editora Nacional, 1959. An interesting, but usually underestimated, essay is that by Charles Morazé, Les trois âges du Brésil, Paris, A. Colin, 1954. One of the most profound criticisms of the “República Velha” was made by a monarchist, José Maria dos Santos, after the Revolution of the 1930s: A política geral do Brasil, São Paulo, J. Magalhães, 1930. Two other studies of a general nature containing important information are those by Sertório de Castro, A República que a revolução destruiu, Rio de Janeiro, F. Bastos, 1932; and by Dormund Martins, Da república à ditadura, Rio de Janeiro, Typ. São Bento, 1931.
17. From 1916 on, Rio Grande do Sul also became important. Its economy was not characterized by a single product, like in the case of São Paulo and Minas. The other 17 States of the Federation were much weaker. Cf. Joseph Love, Rio Grande do Sul and Brazilian Regionalism 1882-1930, Stanford, University Press, 1971; ID., A locomotiva. São Paulo na Federação brasileira 1889-1937, Rio de Janeiro, Paz e Terra, 1982; John D. Wirth, O fiel da balança. Minas Gerais na Federação brasileira 1889-1937, Rio de Janeiro, Paz e Terra, 1982.
18. Born in 1883 in Rio Grande do Sul, Getúlio Vargas was congressman and federal minister, then president of the State of Rio Grande (1928-30). He came into power in 1930 and exercised it as a dictator until 29 October 1945, when he was removed by a bloodless coup d’état. After the war Vargas continued to be politically active. He was a national senator, in 1946 he founded the Trabalhista Party and in 1950 he was again elected president of the Republic. Having been compromised in scandals in 1954, he committed suicide. His political itinerary which peaked with the creation of the Estado Novo (1937-45), shows many analogies to that of Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina (1946-55). On Vargas, cf. among others Thomas E. Skidmore, Brasil: de Getúlio Vargas a Castelo Branco (1930-1964), Rio de Janeiro, Paz e Terra, 1988; Paulo Brandi, Dora Flaksman, entry Vargas, in DHBB, vol. IV, pp. 3436-505.
19. Trento, Le origini dello Stato populista. Società e politica in Brasile 1920-1945, (Milano, Franco Angeli, 1986), pp. 106-107.
20. Nelson Werneck Sodré, História da burguesia brasileira, (Petrópolis, Vozes, 1983), p. 243.
21. Trento, Le origini dello Stato populista, p. 121.
22. Robert J. Havighurst, J. Roberto Moreira, Society and Education in Brazil, (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1919), p. 42.
23. The revolution of the 1930s was prepared by the so-called “tenentismo”, the movement of the junior officers of the army (the lieutenants) who between the 1920s and 1934 were protagonists of agitation and revolts, culminating in the episode of rebellion of the Prestes column, having received its name from its commander Luís Carlos Prestes. Composed of about a thousand men, by the end of February of 1927 when it retreated to Bolivia, it had travelled over 25,000 km., bringing guerrilla warfare to various states of Brazil.