Vargas Era - Toward Dictatorship

Toward Dictatorship

By 1934, Vargas developed in response what Thomas E. Skidmore and Peter H. Smith called "a legal hybrid" between the regimes of Mussolini's Italy and Salazar's Portuguese Estado Novo. Vargas copied repressive fascist tactics, and conveyed their same rejection of liberal capitalism, but attained power baring few indications of his future quasi-fascist policies.

Changing conditions forced Vargas to eventually abandon the arrangements of the "provisional government" (1930–34), that were characterized by a path of social reformism that appeared to favor the generally left wing of his revolutionary coalition, the tenentes.

Opposition from the right, however, marked Vargas' earliest moves away from the social reformism of his early years. A conservative insurgency in 1932 was the key turning point. After the July 1932 Constitutionalist Revolution—a veiled attempt by the paulista coffee oligarchs to retake the central government—Vargas tried to recover support of the landed elites, including the coffee growers, in order to establish a new alliance of power. The revolt reacted to Vargas' appointment of João Alberto, a center-left tenente as "interventor" (provisional governor) in place of the elected governor of São Paulo. Elite paulistas loathed Alberto, resenting his centralization efforts and alarmed by the his economic reforms, such as a mere 5 percent wage increase and some minor distribution of some land to participants in the revolution. Amid threats of revolt, Vargas replaced João Alberto with a civilian from São Paulo, appointed a conservative paulista banker as his minister of finance, and announced a date for the holding of a constituent assembly . The coffee oligarchs were only emboldened, launching the counterrevolutionary revolt in July 1932, which collapsed after 3 months of combat.

Regardless of the attempted counterrevolution, Vargas was determined to maintain his alliance with the original fazendeiro wing of his coalition and to strengthen his ties with the São Paulo establishment. The result was further concessions, again alienating the left wings of his coalition. The essential compromise was reneging on the promises of land reform made during the campaign of 1930. Vargas also pardoned half the bank debts of the coffee planters, who still had a significant grip on the state's electoral machinery, alleviating the crisis stemming from the collapse of the valorization program. To mollify his old paulista adversaries after their failed revolt, he even ordered the Bank of Brazil to take over the war bonds issued by the rebel government.

Yet Vargas was increasingly threatened by pro-Communist elements in labor critical of the rural latifundios by 1934, who sought an alliance with the countries peasant majority by backing land reform. Despite the populist rhetoric of the "father of the poor", the gaúcho Vargas was ushered into power by planter oligarchies of peripheral regions amid a revolution from above, and was thus in no position to truly meet substantive popular demands. By 1934, armed with a new constitution drafted with extensive influence from European fascist models, Vargas began reining in even moderate trade unions and turning against the tenentes. His further concessions to the latifundios pushed him toward an alliance with the Integralists, Brazil's mobilized fascist movement. Following the end of the provisional presidency, the reactionary nature Vargas' regime between 1934 and 1945—characterized by the co-optation of Brazilian unions through state-run, sham syndicates, suppression of opposition (particularly) leftist opposition thus was strongly becoming evident.

As a result of this appeasement of the rural fazendeiros, Vargas was increasingly threatened by pro-Communist elements in labor critical of the latifundios by 1934 who were actually serious in their demands for land reform. Though eventually crushed by fascist-style force, it was quite astute for labor at the time to attempt to forge an alliance between Brazil's relatively small urban proletariat with the peasantry, who accounted for the vast majority of the population.