Attitudes of The Vargas Regime
In the beginning of the 1930s, Brazil went through a strong wave of political radicalism. The government led by President Getúlio Vargas had a degree of support from workers because of the labor laws he introduced, and competed with the Communist Party of Brazil for working class support. In the face of communist advances, Vargas turned towards establishing the integralist Estado Novo, the only mobilized base of support on the right, building upon his intensive crackdown against the Brazilian left. With center-left tendencies out of the Vargas' coalition and the left crushed, Vargas gradually started seeking to co-opt the popular movement to attain a widespread support base.
Integralism, claiming a rapidly growing membership throughout Brazil by 1935, especially among the German-Brazilians and Italian-Brazilians (communities which together amounted to approximately one million people), began filling this ideological void. In 1934, the Integralists targeted the Communist movement led by Luiz Carlos Prestes, mobilizing a conservative mass support base engaging in street brawls. In 1934, following the disintegration of Vargas' delicate alliance with labor, and his new alliance with the AIB, Brazil entered one of the most agitated periods in its political history. Brazil's major cities began to resemble the 1932-33 street battles in Berlin between the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands and the National-Socialist German Workers' Party. By mid-1935, Brazilian politics had been drastically destabilized.
Read more about this topic: Brazilian Integralism
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