History of Brazil

Pre-Colonial Period

The discovery of Brazil was preceded by a series of treaties between the kings of Spain and Portugal, the last of them is the Treaty of Tordesilhas, signed in 1494, creating the Tordesilhas Meridian, that divided the world between that two kingdoms. Every land discovered or to be discovered at east of that meridian was property of Portugal, and the land discovered or to be discovered at west of that meridian was property of Spain.

Brazil's discovery is officially dated at April 21 of 1500, by Pedro Alvares Cabral, who was trying to discover a new route to India, around Africa. The land receives it's name after a wood very abundant and precious, the Pau-Brasil, today an endangered tree.

The place where Cabral has arrived to Brazil is now known as Porto Seguro ("safe harbour"), and is located in the state of Bahia.

In 1503, a expedition from Goncalo Coelho discovered that the French were making incursions to the land and looting it. In 1530 there was a new expedition from Martin Afonso de Souza to patrol the entire coast, banish the French, and to create the first colonial towns: Sao Vicente and Sao Paulo.

Colonial Period

Brazil, the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas, was claimed for Portugal in 1500 by Pedro Alvares Cabral. It was ruled from Lisbon as a colony until 1808, when the royal family, having fled from Napoleon's army, established the seat of Portuguese Government in Rio de Janeiro. Brazil became a kingdom under Dom Joao VI, who returned to Portugal in 1821. His son declared Brazil's independence on September 7, 1822, and became emperor with the title of Dom Pedro I. His son, Dom Pedro II, ruled from 1831 to 1889, when a federal republic was established in a coup by Deodoro da Fonseca, Marshal of the army. Slavery had been abolished a year earlier by the Regent Princess Isabel while Dom Pedro II was in Europe.

Having stablished some cities, Portugal started the colonization of Brazil. Having no means to administer the new colony, the king of Portugal divided the land in 15 "Capitanias Hereditarias" ("heritage captainships"), that were given to anyone who wanted to administer and explore them. From the 15 original Capitanias, only two, Pernambuco and Sao Vicente, prosper.

In 1789, there was the Inconfidencia Mineira, a rebel movement that failed, and the leader of which, Tiradentes, was hanged.

United Reign Period

In 1808, French troops from Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Portugal, and Dom Joao, governor in place of his mother, Dona Maria I, ordered the transfer of the royal court to Brazil. Brazil was elevated to the condition of a Reino Unido de Portugal e Algarve (1815). There was also the election of Brazilian representants to the Cortes Constituicionais Portuguesas (Portuguese Constitutional Courts).

Independence

Dom Pedro, son of king Dom Joao VI, and heir-apparent, was left in Brazil in the position of regent. On September 7 of 1822, he declared the independence of Brazil from Portugal, and became the first emperor, Dom Pedro I, in October 12, 1822.

The Brazilian Empire

From 1822 to the Declaration of the Republic in 1889, Brazil was an empire. There were three periods: the first was when Dom Pedro I ruled, and lasted until he abdicated in favor of his 5-year old son, and went to Portugal to become king of Portugal, in the year 1831.

In the second period, known as the regency, Brazil was ruled by several regents, because the heir of the throne was a child. In 1840 Dom Pedro II assumed the throne of his father, becoming the second and last emperor of the Brazil.

On September 28 1871, the Brazilian parliament approved and Pricess Isabel, regent of Brazil in the emperor's absence, signed the Lei do Ventre Livre (Law of the Free Womb), declaring that all sons of slaves would be free from that date. On May 13 1888, Princess Isabel signed the Lei Aurea (Golden Law), that was previously approved by the parliament, abolishing all form of slavery in Brazil.

The Old Republic

From 1889 to 1930, the government was a constitutional democracy, with the presidency alternating between the dominant states of Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais. This period ended with a military coup that placed Getulio Vargas, a civilian, in the presidency; Vargas remained as dictator until 1945.

On November 15 1889, the Marechal Deodoro da Fonseca declared the Republic, and deposed the king, Dom Pedro II, assuming the govern of the country. The presidents of this period were:

1889 - Temporary Govern - Mal. Deodoro da Fonseca 1891 - Mal. Deodoro da Fonseca, elected, Mal. Floriano Peixoto, his vice, assumed 1894 - Prudente José de Morais e Barros 1898 - Manuel Ferraz de Campos Sales 1902 - Francisco de Paula Rodrigues Alves 1906 - Afonso Augusto Moreira Pena (died in charge) 1906 - Nilo Pecanha (vice of Afonso Pena, assumed his place) 1910 - Mal. Hermes Rodrigues da Fonseca 1914 - Venceslau Bras Pereira Gomes 1918 - Francisco de Paula Rodrigues Alves (died before assuming) 1918 - Delfim Moreira da Costa Ribeiro (vice of Francisco, assumed in his place) 1919 - Epitácio da Silva Pessoa 1922 - Arthur da Silva Bernardes 1926 - Washington Luis Pereira de Souza (deposed by the revolution of 1930) 1930 - Joint of Government - Gal. Augusto Tasso Fragoso, Gal. Joao de Deus mena Barreto, Alm. Isaias de Noronha

From 1875 until 1960, about 5 million Europeans emigrated to Brazil, settling mainly in the four southern states of Sao Paulo, Parana, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul. Immigrants have come mainly from Italy, Germany, Spain, Japan, Poland, and the Middle East. The largest Japanese community outside Japan is in Sao Paulo. Despite class distinctions, national identity is strong, and racial friction is a relatively new phenomenon. Indigenous full-blooded Indians, located mainly in the northern and western border regions and in the upper Amazon Basin, constitute less than 1% of the population. Their numbers are declining as contact with the outside world and commercial expansion into the interior increase. Brazilian Government programs to establish reservations and to provide other forms of assistance have existed for years but are controversial and often ineffective.

The Revolution of 1930

Between the two World Wars, Brazil was a rapidly industrializing nation popularly regarded as “the sleeping giant of the Americas” and a potential world power. However, the oligarchic and decentralized confederation of the Old Republic, dominated by landed interests, in effect, showed little concern for promoting industrialization, urbanization, and other broad interests of the new middle class.

Bourgeois and military discontent, heightened by the Great Depression’s impact on the Brazilian economy, thus appears to have led to bloodless military junta on 24 October 1930 that ousted President Washington Luís and his elitist heir-apparent Julio Prestes. Anticlimactic as it was, this coup d'état was a watershed in Brazilian history—a liberal , bourgeois revolution that ushered out the political preeminence of the paulista coffee oligarchs. The military, traditionally active in Brazilian politics, installed Getulio Vargas (1883-1954) as ‘provisional president'. A populist governor of Rio Grande do Sul and the former presidential candidate of the Liberal Alliance, whom Prestes ‘defeated’ in a disputed election earlier that year,

Vargas was a wealthy pro-industrial nationalist and anti-communist who favored capitalist development and liberal reforms, but actually posed little serious threat to the elite paulista gentry. Vargas’ Liberal Alliance drew support from wide ranges of Brazil’s burgeoning urban middle class, who had grown frustrated to some extent with Brazil’s monocultural and peripheral status the modern world. Although Vargas ran strictly from within the partisan elite during this unsuccessful 1930 campaign on a populist and protectionist platform , the coup d'état laid the foundations of a modern Brazil that is highly industrialized, but still considered a part of the Third World.

However moderate these aims were, mild opposition arose among the powerful paulista coffee oligarchs who had grown accustomed to their domination of Brazilian politics. His tenuous collation also lacked a coherent program, being committed to a broad vision of modernization, but little else more definitive. Having to balance such conflicting ideological constituencies, regionalism, and economic interests in such a vast, diverse, and socio-economically varied nation would, thus, not only explain the sole constancy that marked Vargas’ long career—abrupt shifts in alliances and ideologies, but also his eventual dictatorship , modeled surprisingly along the lines of European Fascism, considering the liberal roots of his regime. Vargas, in effect, sought to forge a corporatist, centralized state along Fascist lines to mitigate these disparate class interests and to quell disorder during a chaotic interwar era.

Vargas' Interim Presidency

Vargas would develop 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 Nôvo , copied repressive fascist tactics, and conveyed their same rejection of liberal capitalism , but attained power baring few indications of his future quasi-fascist polices. As a candidate in 1930 Vargas utilized populist rhetoric to promote bourgeois concerns, thus opposing the primacy—but not the legitimacy—of the paulista coffee oligarchy and the landed elites, who had little interest in protecting and promoting industry. Vargas during this period sought to bring Brazil out of the Great Depression through orthodox policies.

Like Franklin Roosevelt, his first steps focused on economic stimulus. A state interventionist policy utilizing tax breaks, lowered duties, and import quotas allowed Vargas to expand the domestic industrial base. Vargas linked his pro-industrial policies to nationalism, advocating heavy tariffs to “perfect our manufacturers to the point where it will become unpatriotic to feed or clothe ourselves with imported goods” . In his early years, Vargas also relied on the support of the tenentes, junior military officers, who had long been active against the ruling coffee oligarchy, staging their own failed revolt in 1922. Vargas also quelled a paulista female worker’s strike by co-opting much of their platform and requiring their “factory commissions” to use government mediation in the future. Vargas, reflecting the influence of the tenentes, even advocated a program of social welfare and reform similar to the New Deal.

Constitution of 1934

The parallels between Vargas and the European police states began to appear by 1934, when a new constitution was enacted with direct fascist influence. Vargas would thus take state intervention much further, to the point of mimicking fascist economics—private ownership maintained though state organization of the productive forces. Brazil’s 1934 constitution, passed on 16 July, contained provisions that resembled Italian corporatism, which had the enthusiastic support of the pro-fascist wing of the disparate tenente movement and industrialists, who were attracted to Mussolini’s co-optation of unions through state-run, sham syndicates. Like in Italy, and later Spain and Germany, Fascist-style programs would serve two important aims, stimulating industrial growth (under the guise of nationalism) and suppressing the left. Its stated purpose, however, like in Italy, was uniting all classes in mutual interests. The constitution established a new Chamber of Deputies that placed government authority over the private economy , which established a system of state-guided capitalism aimed at industrialization and reducing foreign dependency.

Corporatism in Brazil

After 1934, the regime designated corporate representatives according to class and profession , but maintained private ownership of Brazilian-owned business. Based on a façade of increased labor rights and social investment, Brazilian corporatism, in Italy, was actually a strategy to increase industrial output utilizing a strong nationalist appeal. Vargas, and later Juan Peron in neighboring Argentina, another quasi-fascist, emulated Mussolini’s strategy of mediating class disputes and co-opting workers’ demands under the banner of nationalism. Under the guise of workers’ rights also, he greatly expanded labor regulations with the consent of industry, pacified by strong industrial growth. While simultaneously expanding the mandated rights of workers, Vargas, like Mussolini, decimated unions independent of his state syndicates. The new constitution, drafted by Vargas allies, dramatically expanded social programs and set a minimum wage but also denied illiterates (largely the underclass) the right to vote and placed stringent limits on union organizing and “unauthorized” strikes.

Beyond corporatism, the 1934 constitution also heightened efforts to reduce provincial autonomy in the traditionally devolved, sprawling nation—a parallel to fascist centralization of the national regime. This trend is emblematic of Vargas’ link between modernization and fascist methodology. Corporatism and centralization allowed Vargas curb the oligarchic power of the landed paulista elites, who obstructed modernization through the regionalism, machine politics, and façade democracy of the Old Republic.

Vargas and the Intergralists

Threatened by pro-Communist elements in labor critical of the rural latifundios, Vargas reigned in his shaky alliance with labor and began formally co-opting the less intimidating fascist movement. As he moved to the right after 1934, his ideological character and association with a global ideological orbit, however, remained ambiguous—reminiscent of the early phases of leftist leaders Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega. To fill this ideological void and promote his new rightist policies, Vargas began moving against the tenentes while encouraging the growth of fascist paramilitaries. Ingegralism, founded and led by Plínio Salgado, who adapted Fascist and Nazi symbolism and salutes and wore a square mustache like Hitler, offered Vargas a new political base in his collation. A green-shirted paramilitary organization directly financed by Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, Ingegralism’s propaganda campaigns were borrowed directly from Nazi materials —excoriations of Marxism, liberalism, and Jews that espoused fanatical nationalism (out of context in the heterogeneous and tolerant nation) and “Christian virtues” . Vargas tolerated this rise in anti-Semitism , and might have acted upon the Intergralists’ popularization of anti-Semitism. One example of his alleged anti-Semitism was the deportation of the pregnant, Jewish wife of Luís Carlos Prestes to Nazi Germany, where she would die in a concentration camp . Vargas’ anti-Communism and increasing conservatism also encouraged an alliance between the government and the Catholic Church, similar to Mussolini’s arrangement following the Lateran Pacts.

As in Europe, fascist authoritarianism coincided with increased repression of the left through violence and state terror. However paternalistic the persona of the venerable “father of the poor”, Vargas was an elite, landed gaucho from Rio Grande do Sul—a politically influential and predominately white region where perceived subordination to paulista oligarchs in the central government has contributed to its persisting reputation for political populism. Vargas and his intricate collation were thus safe as long as the left pursued an overlapping agenda against paulista elitism and for modernization. But the same Great Depression that had ushered him into power in a wave of disillusionment with the laissez-faire orthodoxies of the time also managed to rejuvenate the left and calls for social reforms. Always powerful—but never in power—the Brazilian left has benefited from the nation’s socio-economic contradictions—infamous for perhaps the world’s most appalling disparity in social class correlated in terms of both race and region. Under Vargas, all segments of the bourgeoisie and landed elites feared the trade unionism and Communist sentiments of the burgeoning, often immigrant, urban proletariat of the more industrialized and more European Southeast (São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro) , but not necessarily the class consciousness of the largely African peasantry—too servile and marginalized to even attempt an insurrection.

Vargas, like Mussolini a decade earlier, appealed to constituencies whose statuses were threatened by economic collapse and Communist insurrection. Thus, Vargas forced the Brazilian Congress to respond to the growth of the Aliança Nacional Libertadora (ANL) , a leftist collation led by the Communist Party and Luís Carlos Prestes. A revolutionary forerunner of Che Guevara, Prestes led the legendary but futile ‘Long March’ through the rural Brazilian interior following his participation in the failed 1922 tenente rebellion against the coffee oligarchs. This experience, however, left Prestes and some of his followers skeptical of armed conflict. Still, nonetheless, Congress branded all leftist opposition as “subversive” under a March 1935 National Security Act that allowed the President to ban the ANL , which was forced—reluctantly—to begin another armed insurrection in November. The authoritarian regime, like its fascist counterparts in Europe, responded by imprisoning and torturing Prestes and violently crushing the Communist movement through the state terror of the European police states . The liberal reforms of Vargas’ state capitalism were, in a sense, superficial appeasement of the masses—not true justice or reform. Although he expanded the electorate, granted women’s suffrage, enacted social security reforms, legalized labor unions as a populist, Vargas enacted totalitarian programs demonstrating direct influence from Mussolini meant in actuality to suppress workers and curtail resistance striving to curve the nation’s gross inequality.

The Estado Novo

Like the European Fascists, Vargas utilized fears over Communism to justify personal dictatorship. The fascist “Estado Nôvo” dictatorship, modeled after Salazar's fascist “Estado Nôvo” in Brazil’s mother country, finally materialized in 1937, when Vargas was forced to step down as president by January 1938 because his own 1934 constitution prohibited the president from succeeding himself. On 29 September 1937, Gen. Dutra, his rightist collaborator, presented “the Cohen Plan” (note the Jewish surname) that established a detailed plan for a Communist revolution. The Cohen Plan was a mere forgery concocted by the Intergralists, but Vargas exploited it to have Dutra publicly demand “a state of siege” in a chain of events redolent of the Reichstag fire, which Hitler presented as a Communist conspiracy to justify a dictatorship. On November 10, Vargas, ruling by decree, then made a broadcast in which he stated his plans to assume dictatorial powers under a new constitution derived from European fascist models , thereby curtailing presidential elections (his ultimate objections) and dissolving congress. Note the fact that Vargas, like Hitler in the Weimar Republic and Mussolini in the postwar Kingdom of Italy, became a totalitarian dictator by acting within the established political system, not in a single coup d'état or revolution. Although avowedly totalitarian, the Estado Nôvo was more similar to Italy’s “imperfect totalitarianism”, which never reached the rigidity of Nazi Germany. Vargas, like Mussolini, abolished opposition political parties, imposed rigid censorship, established a centralized police force, and filled prisons with political dissidents, while evoking a sense of nationalism that transcended class and bound the masses to the state.

Although his 1938 ban of paramilitary groups also entailed the suspension of the Fascist Intergralists, who threatened his personal power, his political and economic policies nevertheless bore extensive similarities to those of Mussolini. Vargas banned strikes and striped workers of the right to organize independent of government-run unions. Vargas, like Mussolini, sought broad power by positioning the state as a mediator between the classes, when, for instance, he set wages and hours for industrial workers, while excluding agricultural workers from such protection, just as Mussolini appealed to the urban proletariat, but disregarded the peasantry. His industrialization policy through central planning under private ownership was another similarity, which demonstrated corporatist rejection of laissez-faire to impose a more orderly capitalism.

Under the Estado Nôvo, Vargas further emulated European Fascism’s use of nationalism to attain broad popularity . Vargas consistently rejected neocolonial dependency, distinguishing him from Cold War era Latin American regimes that attempted to preserve conservative rule through fascist-style repression, such as those of Augusto Pinochet, the Somozas, Alfredo Stroessner, Rafael Trujillo, and Fulgencio Batista. Although Vargas was probably correct in his rejection of the neocolonial Old Republic, and in his genuine desires for modernization, Mussolini had also attributed Italy’s backward state to his liberal predecessors. Blaming the weakness of liberalism for the “mutilated victory” in the Great War under premier Vittorio Orlando, the 1890s failure to conquer Abyssinia under the forces of Menelik II, and an inability to live up to Italy’s Roman greatness, Mussolini had earlier evoked the theme of a nation failing to meet its destined potential.

Vargas and the Axis Powers

Although Vargas inevitably joined the Allies in World War II, his initial closeness with Nazi Germany is another disturbing aspect demonstrating the fascist character of his regime. Brazilian generals, such as Pedro Goes Monteiro and Eurico Dutra, Vargas’ close collaborators, admired the German military industrial complex, and were eager to accept German arms deals. The pro-German faction of Vargas’ regime was strongest in the military while his elite contributors were more sympathetic to the Allies, due to Brazil’s established economic ties with the US and Britain.

The resemblance between the Estado Nôvo and the European police states suggested to some interwar observers that Vargas’ regime was simply a variant of the European Fascist model. Brazil appeared to be entering the Axis orbit—even before the 1938 declaration of the overtly fascist Estado Nôvo. Between 1933 and 1938 Germany became the principal market for Brazilian cotton, and its second largest importer of Brazilian coffee and cacao. The German Bank for South America even established three hundred braches in Vargas’ Brazil. In May 1941, after the invasions of Poland and the Soviet Union, and the beginnings of the “Final Solution”, Vargas sent a birthday telegram to Hitler, using it as opportunity to convey Brazilian ambiguity, playing both sides against each other. Vargas dispatched a telegram to Hitler saying, “best wishes for your personal happiness and the prosperity of the German nation”. Such periodic overtures to the Axis Powers, along with rapid increase in civilian and military trade between Brazil and Nazi Germany caused US officials to constantly ask, “What is Vargas like and where does he stand?”.

Vargas eventually sided with the Allies and liberalized his regime. The shrewd, low-key, and reasoned pragmatist merely sided with the antifascist Allies after a period of ambiguity for economic reasons , since the Allies were more viable trading partners, and liberalized his regime because of complications arising from this alliance. Siding with the antifascist Allies created a paradox at home not unnoticed by Brazil’s middle class (of a fascist-like regime joining the antifascist Allies) that Salazar and Franco avoided by maintaining nominal neutrality, allowing them to avoid both antifascist sentiment at home arising from siding with the Allies or annihilation by the Allies. Vargas thus astutely responded to the newly liberal sentiments of a middle class that was no longer fearful of disorder and proletariat discontentment by moving away from fascist repression—promising “a new postwar era of liberty” that included amnesty for political prisoners, presidential elections, and the legalization of opposition parties—including the moderated and irreparably weakened Communist Party . Historian and Dependency Theorist Benjamin Keen believes that such political liberalization contributed to the downfall of the Estado Nôvo, being substantial enough to provoke a neocolonial 1945 military coup d'é