The Vargas era
Getúlio Vargas takes power in a revolution, builds a modern centralised state with labour rights and national industry, rules as a dictator in the Estado Novo, returns as an elected president and shoots himself in office.
- Father of the Poor? Vargas and His Era — Robert M. Levine, Cambridge University Press (1998)
- Brazil: Five Centuries of Change — Thomas E. Skidmore, Oxford University Press (2010)
- A Concise History of Brazil — Boris Fausto and Sergio Fausto, Cambridge University Press (2014)
- Brazil: A Biography — Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling, Allen Lane (2018)
- Carta-testamento — Getúlio Vargas (1954)
In 1930 Getúlio Vargas, a politician from Rio Grande do Sul who had lost a disputed presidential election, took power at the head of an armed movement that ended the Old Republic. In 1937, citing a supposed communist plot, he closed Congress and declared the Estado Novo (“New State”), an authoritarian regime that borrowed from European corporatism.
- Father of the Poor? Vargas and His Era — Robert M. Levine, Cambridge University Press (1998)
- A Concise History of Brazil — Boris Fausto and Sergio Fausto, Cambridge University Press (2014)
Vargas built the modern Brazilian state. He created ministries of labour and education, a minimum wage, and in 1943 the Consolidation of Labour Laws (CLT), which still governs formal employment. He promoted steel and, later, oil, and his government embraced samba, carnival and football as expressions of a mixed national culture.
- Father of the Poor? Vargas and His Era — Robert M. Levine, Cambridge University Press (1998)
- Brazil: Five Centuries of Change — Thomas E. Skidmore, Oxford University Press (2010)
- The Mystery of Samba: Popular Music and National Identity in Brazil — Hermano Vianna, University of North Carolina Press (1999)
Deposed by the army in 1945, Vargas came back by election in 1951 and founded Petrobras in 1953. Under fierce attack from the press and the military after an assassination attempt on his chief critic, he shot himself in the presidential palace on 24 August 1954, leaving a letter that ended: “I leave life to enter history.” Crowds poured into the streets in grief and rage.
- Carta-testamento — Getúlio Vargas (1954)
- Father of the Poor? Vargas and His Era — Robert M. Levine, Cambridge University Press (1998)
- Brazil: A Biography — Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling, Allen Lane (2018)
Vargas brought ordinary workers into national life for the first time, with rights, pensions and dignity, and defended Brazil's resources against foreign interests. His suicide letter cast him as a martyr for the people.
- Father of the Poor? Vargas and His Era — Robert M. Levine, Cambridge University Press (1998)
- Carta-testamento — Getúlio Vargas (1954)
The Estado Novo was a dictatorship that censored the press, tortured communists and handed the German-Jewish communist Olga Benário to the Nazis, who killed her. Its labour system tied unions to the state and left rural workers out entirely.
- Father of the Poor? Vargas and His Era — Robert M. Levine, Cambridge University Press (1998)
- Brazil: Five Centuries of Change — Thomas E. Skidmore, Oxford University Press (2010)
Why it matters today
The labour code, the minimum wage, the formal work card (carteira de trabalho), the state oil company Petrobras and the idea of samba and football as national symbols all date from the Vargas years. He is still argued over: "father of the poor" to some, a dictator who jailed and tortured opponents to others.