Elite's recomposition and state-building in contemporary Brazil (1920-1964)

Abstract

'Brazil today is considered, on the international scene, as an 'emerging nation', doted with an integrated industrial complex, as well as on a modern system of education and research and on means of communication (telephone, radio, television, internet, etc.) which permit the rapid and efficient circulation of information. None of these characteristics would have been valid prior to 1930, when the country presented an economy dominated by the exportation of tropical products, political power was fragmented into more than twenty federal units with no real coordination by the central government installed in Rio de Janeiro, intellectual life was restricted to a few old exportation ports. This paper aims at a better understanding of how Brazil transformed itself during the 20th century, from a structured archipelago around 'islands' of agro-industrial plantations (coffee, sugarcane, etc.) to a 'continent' marked by fast industrialization. Beside these evolutive perceptions of Brazil's space, we must take into account the social and intellectual courses of the key leaders during the 1930's uprising, such as Juarez Távora and José Américo de Almeida from the North, or Getúlio Vargas and Osvaldo Aranha from the South, the most significant figures of the national movement. All these leaders come from the same social background of agrarian elites, but they had established political parties supporting very different ideologies, from nationalism to the acknowledgement of the US hegemony, from the labour party to liberalism. The paths of these elites show fairly well the diverse alternatives which have marked state-building and nation-building in contemporary Brazil.' (author's abstract)|