Vargas's Incomplete Revolution: Part II

Vargas's suicide in 1954 produced outpourings of grief that matched in intensity and scope the heartfelt shock felt by most Americans at the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945. Even though Vargas had not provided very much, and even if the archaic hierarchical structure of the Brazilian oligarchy had remained completely intact, he was the first politician to extend dignity to the Brazilian people. The contrast between the political spirit of the Old Republic, which despised the common people, and the uplifting rhetoric of Vargas's radio broadcasts and speeches and public appearances even to the most remote reaches of the vast country, was striking. Vargas really had become the father of the poor in the minds of the mass of the population. And for nationalists, the stridency of his admonition against imperialism and foreign interests that dominated his suicide letter, confirmed that he was a prophet and seer. In some ways Vargas's alarm paralleled his contemporary Dwight D. Eisenhower's warning to Americans about the "civil-military complex," but whereas Eisenhower was ignored, in Vargas's case his campaign against foreign domination galvanized a certain sector of public opinion, even it yielded to the developmentalism of Kubitschek and of the military regime of the 1960s and 1970s.

Vargas left his mark on Brazil during his entire career, but it was especially the Estado Novo that left a lasting influence. Its inheritance not was of laws and degrees but of individuals. Many of the Vargas-era players remained on the stage for years after his death.(38) Francisco Campos, the author of the 1937 Constitution, would play a major role in the 1964 military coup, and Felinto Müller, the detested chief of police, would sit during the most repressive years of the dictatorship in the Senate as president of ARENA, the hard-line party. Amaral Peixoto, Vargas's son-in-law, would play a major role in Rio de Janeiro politics, and Adhemar de Barros, fired as interventor of São Paulo by Vargas in 1941, surfaced as a Vargas ally during the 1950s famous for his cynical label, "He steals, but he gets things done."

Vargas as well as the populist presidents who followed him, raised public expectations precariously. Vargas oversaw the expansion of the electorate to unprecedented levels of participation, and the 1946 Constitution, in what for some was a fit of idealism (but for others was a cynical manipulation) made voting a required act, a risky business in a country with one of the worst public school systems in the hemisphere. The long periods of authoritarian rule under Vargas and again under the post-1964 military dictatorship ill-equipped new generations of voters to handle open electoral campaigns. By the 1980s, when all Brazilians over sixteen were required to vote, electoral politics became a contest fueled by advertising agencies, sound bites and fifteen second television spots. The raised expectations of the populist years carried forward to the Carnival-like atmosphere of the 1950s campaigns, taken together with the proliferation of personality-based political parties and shifting electoral alliances based on deal-making, culminated in the election of Fernando Collor in 1990, who would be impeached and forced to resign from office for blatant corruption.

It is speculative at best to distinguish between changes attributable specifically to Vargas and his government and those brought about automatically by the evolving and modernizing government structure. All Western governments became increasingly bureaucratized during the twentieth century, providing state administrators at all levels with the power to share and select state policy.(39) In democracies, one of the ways new policies are weighed are in terms of the success or failure of previous policies. In the Brazilian case, however, the sharp and abrupt transitions from one kind of regime to another after 1930, and the wholesale substitution in the cast of administrators and political appointees, made this much less the case. Nor were Estado Novo technocrats particularly interested in the successes of previous governments, since their endorsement of corporatism gave them a ready guide by which to administer. The same was true for Dutra in 1945 and Vargas in 1950 and to a lesser degree to Kubitschek in 1956; each plunged ahead with new initiatives although at the same time tacitly preserving the old hierarchies and power framework, resulting in very little change actually being undertaken. Vargas's social security system lasted for decades - only in the mid-1990s did private pension funds begin to supplement the universal state run system to any real extent(40) - even though the state system was almost always considered inadequate.

In the mid-1950s, nearly four in ten Brazilians still lived below the poverty line, equal in number to Brazil's entire population in 1930. Given large expenditures in the public sector for improving sanitation, health, and water supply in the 1970s, and given the growing diversification of the urban economy after 1950, it is apparent that during Vargas's time the percentage must have been much higher. Poverty in rural areas has always been pervasive, and before 1955 the national population was much more rural than it is today. From 60 to 65% of all northeasterners were living below the poverty line in 1994; the figure may have been double that in earlier decades. Of all areas of life badly affected by public policy deficiencies, researchers identified housing and education, finding housing infrastructure rapidly deteriorating and having "failed altogether to reach the poor."(41) This summarizes Vargas's social legacy as well: his reforms almost never reached those who needed it the most.

Vargas's laws were never intended to close the vast gap between rich and poor. Only laws based on concepts of redistributive justice could have brought real change, but this was alien in concept to Vargas and the upper classes. Vargas's reforms raised the quality of life for millions but distanced the lives of millions even further from the affluent. They modernized Brazil, but they did not do much to enlarge the domestic market, or to deal with underemployment, or to facilitate the acquisition of land, or to provide technical training, or to remove the pariah status of men and women doomed by lack of opportunity to grinding poverty. The period between 1939 and the early 1970s yielded increased real wages for industrial workers (industrial wages rose sixty percent between 1939 and 1975) but a decline in real wages and living conditions for unskilled workers, the vast majority.(42)

Many Brazilians had concrete reasons to revere Vargas. He gave benefits to salaried workers and he instituted the minimum wage. Employees of the new government cartels (in the steel industry, in cement, in petroleum refining, among others) genuinely gained in many ways. But most Brazilians did not work for Petrobrás or Electrobrás(43) or Volta Redonda. The manipulation of Vargas's image, however, extended even to his suicide letter, the published version of which was edited by someone else, probably J. S. Maciel Filho. The letter was too self-serving, too political, to be consistent with Vargas's lifelong ability to distance himself from events. "Once more the forces and interests against the people are newly coordinated and raised against me," the letter claimed. "After years of domination and looting by international economic and financial groups, I made myself chief of an unconquerable revolution. I began the work of liberation and I institute a regime of social liberty. I had to resign, I returned to govern in the arms of the people." Perhaps, but the words were not his, and the self-pity too pointed. Vargas never created a regime of social liberty, and his revolution proved to be less than unconquerable because it was not taken seriously by many of its own makers.

Structural changes introduced by Vargas's provisional government increased the number of government workers significantly, and, as the result of the introduction of civil service methods for hiring bureaucrats later in the decade, public employment became possible for legions of persons lacking traditional patronage connections. Although these jobs often did not always pay very well, government employment, especially as funcionários - the generic term for functionaries - became very desirable. For one thing, while commercial white collar employees had to work twelve hours a day, government workers often only worked five or six hours a day, leaving time for other activities - including second jobs.

Why did Fernando Henrique Cardoso after his election in 1994 announce that his presidential administration would represent "the end of the Vargas Era" in Brazilian history?(44) What Cardoso meant was that he hoped to terminate the interventionist nature of Brazil's government and its corporatist framework. At the same time, Cardoso's efforts were accompanied by a Vargas-like personal political style: meeting in private with a handful of prominent people and cutting back-room deals (although unlike Getúlio, having reports of the negotiations leaked to the press).(45)

Economic development under Vargas created work for engineers, economists, accountants, and managers. Because it was more tied than ever to international factors beyond its control, in the postwar years fluctuating conditions sometimes caused skilled craftsmen and artisans to lose their independence and to sink into the industrial work force. White-collar employees were poorly paid but they enjoyed higher status than industrial workers, many of whom earned more. Starting in 1923, with the creation of a pension and retirement bank for railway workers, and stretching through the 1930s (when the government centralized social welfare administrative units), Vargas's social security system on one hand never achieved universal coverage and was mired in bureaucracy, but on the other hand by the end of the Vargas era it rivalled or excelled the principal Latin American countries in terms of coverage.(46) Whether one sees the Brazilian glass as half-filled—taking into consideration the sheer size of Brazil's needs—or half-empty—dwelling on its failings—depends on what one is looking for.

The rules changed after 1950 when Vargas won the presidency combining support from traditional machine politicians (in Minas, especially, and from the corrupt personalist Adhemar de Barros machine in São Paulo) and labor unions. But it was one thing to govern by decree and by private negotiations with industrialists, hand-picked interventors, and generals. The press, smarting from the years of censorship, celebrated its new freedom by creating a circus-like atmosphere and by refusing to give Vargas as elected president the deference that had been calculatingly demanded under the Estado Novo. Most leading newspaper publishers distrusted his populist bent. Popular support for Vargas ebbed in reaction to a new economic predicament - high inflation - that Vargas inherited for the most part from the Dutra government's fiscal policies in its last years when it abandoned its moderate stance and printed currency in response to deficits. To win $300 million in United States economic aid in late 1952, Vargas raised taxes, a step demanded by the Joint Brazil-United States Economic Development Commission but one that permitted opposition politicians to pillory him. During 1952 and 1953, only half of the promised funds were made available, and, although Vargas prevailed on Washington ultimately to make good on most of its promises, he had been embarrassed publicly. His enemies attempted to impeach him and remove him from office.

"My adversaries, in the heat of their attacks," he told his audience on Labor Day, 1952, "continue to assail me for being, at the same time, 'Father of the Poor' and 'Father of the Rich.'" This was his paradox, and he never was able to overcome it. He wanted to aid the working class, but he knew that employers would not stand for far-reaching reform, and he always pulled back. Ultimately his pragmatism alienated many. His opportunistic about-face in 1951 when he allied himself with rank-and-file workers against the pelego-run sindicatos he had created, rankled his enemies, who called him a man lacking in principles. So did his habit of making up with former enemies. It had been easier to get away with this as authoritarian head of state. Now, the contradictions in his political style caught up with him. Industrial employers bridled at the wage increases and other concessions to workers and happily abandoned him in 1945; leftists called him "Father of profit-making sharks."(47)

Vargas's developmentalist goals were stymied by wartime realities and by the fact that unrestricted imports wiped out Brazil's foreign exchange reserves although Brazil did gain considerable technology transfer, new equipment, and improved infrastructure as a result of its alliance with the United States. After the 1950 election, his government provided direct subsidies for industrialization in an effort to shake off reliance on imports, to enlarge the domestic market, and to provide jobs. This policy was embraced even more aggressively during the late 1950s by Juscelino Kubitschek, who extended subsidies to private investment in favored sectors, especially automobile manufacturing.

Analysis by economists of structural breaks in Brazil's economy during the Vargas period suggests that Vargas had an important (but not pervasive) effect on Brazil's economic development. Brazil moved from being a largely agrarian society with some light industry to a largely urban, industrial society with major heavy industry. The changes accomplished under his long tenure, most of which were implemented between 1950 and 1954, were not substantial enough to lead to significant structural change in the overall index of manufacturing output. Vargas's economic policies stimulated Brazil's recovery from the Depression while they enabled him to diversify the economy by stressing industrialization.(48) The stimulus provided to both public and private steel firms had long term effects, and Volta Redonda remains a showcase model community in terms of its benefits for its employees and their families, despite its high levels of environmental pollution.

The Estado Novo's industrial relations system was based on forced harmony. The struggling organized labor movement was deprived of its independence by the state control that was imposed in exchange for state paternalism.(49) The Labor Ministry could easily find "irregularities" in any part of the union apparatus it desired to repress. Elections could be nullified, union officials fired, and bank accounts seized.(50) In theory, both labor unions and employers' associations became sindicatos, amicably negotiating contracts, wages, and working conditions without recourse to strikes or harassment. True to the corporatist model, decisions would actually be made on a tripartite basis, with the State as the third party. The regime's technocrats believed that this system would boost productivity and avoid conflict. Labor sindicatos were expected to act in a dual fashion: as representatives of their membership but also as representatives of the State. There was a strong nationalist dimension to this model. In 1931, Vargas had issued the Law of the Nationalization of Labor, decreeing that all firms have a work force at least two-thirds Brazilian-born, and under the Estado Novo only Brazilian citizens could apply for sindicato membership or file claims with the Estado Novo's conciliation commissions and labor courts.(51)

What must be kept in mind when evaluating the legacy of the Vargas era is the fact that gains were mostly restricted to Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, the country's two largest cities. All other Brazilian cities were commercial and service emporiums, not industrial centers, so that benefits remained limited to salaried white-collar workers. Conditions varied widely from city to city. In the early 1930s, for example, militant workers in Belo Horizonte, the state capital of Minas Gerais, were constantly defeated when they struck for resolution of their grievances because industrialists and employers worked closely with the police and officials of the state, but in Juiz de Fora, in the same state, the success of industrial workers in allying with service workers and artisans in a common bloc, and their unions' close ties to unions in Rio de Janeiro resulted in important gains.(52)

There were several reasons for the failure of Vargas's unions. Many of them had almost as many bureaucrats as rank-and-file members. During the early 1940s the labor minister paid cash bonuses to bring new members into the fold. Only Brazilian citizens were permitted to join unions, excluding large numbers of foreign-born workers in the southern states, but no steps were taken to change this policy. The way the government unions operated also drove away potential members. The labor ministry hand-picked union leaders; dissidents were thrown out. Anyone who wished to speak at union meetings had to show their identity cards. Strikes were outlawed after 1937. Since unions were financed by the obligatory union tax, labor officials had no incentives to enlarge membership because this would stretch resources. And although all workers paid the union tax, to join a union they had to make a small additional dues payment, a burden for heads of families struggling to live on their incomes, always extremely low. Members enjoyed benefits not offered to others (vacation colonies, sports teams, food cooperatives, medical clinics, subsidized bars inside their headquarters) but these incentives were apparently not attractive enough to recruit new members.

Vargas's civil service reforms attempted to curb patronage but in the end the old system stubbornly survived although in a more limited form. Persons seeking bank jobs, for example, customarily had apadrinhos (godfathers) to help them be hired, promoted, or otherwise benefitted in their careers. These patrons were sometimes members of landholding families or, especially as time passed, important clients of the bank whose economic weight gave them leverage. In the 1930s, banks began to hold competitive examinations when jobs opened, although patronage still mattered when decisions came down to selection among many well-qualified applicants. Still, many Brazilians for the first time were able to aspire to jobs never before open to them. Most did not make it to become lawyers, physicians, or engineers, but the public sector provided white-collar jobs that carried with them the desired status of the non-manual trades.(53)

The weak foundations of Brazilian democracy during Vargas's final term were Vargas's own legacy, but one man cannot be blamed entirely for the changes of the postwar world. Indeed. Vargas's efforts to transform Brazil from a collection of 20 semi-autonomous states to a modern nation could not have succeeded had there not been an accompanying revolution in technology and in the delivery of information - from passenger airplanes to network radio to publishing chains to the integrative influences of professional sports. Even if Vargas's reforms had less of a permanent effect on Brazilian life than the bureaucratic planners of the 1930s and 40s had hoped for, by the decade of his death, the 1950s, many aspects of life had been radically altered. The expanded complexity of government and the economy, accelerated by the enhanced role given to central government agencies but probably inevitable regardless of the regime in power, accompanied a new free-market atmosphere in which traditional status designations had yielded, in most cases, to the idea of acquired status. Outsiders, then, for the first time enjoyed access to positions of importance, in contrast to before, when jobs were filled almost exclusively through personal connections. Still, some 40,000 federal positions were withheld from civil service postings, giving the executive tremendous leverage to broker patronage deals.

Vargas, so long in the public eye, remained an enigmatic figure. He permitted members of his family to take sinecures and sometimes positions of power, such as when he named his despised brother Benjamim ("Beijo") to be Rio's chief of police, but he never used his position for personal gain. The simplicity of his life style surprised those who were permitted to see him behind the trappings of presidential office. Abelardo Jurema, who visited the palace days before Vargas's death, commented later that when he saw the president's bedroom, he was struck by its bareness. The furniture was sparse; there were bottles of patent medicine on the plain bureau, just like his grandfather's in the interior, Jurema noted. Vargas's propagandists for years attempted to portray him as larger than life, but this effort never rang true, and most Brazilians preferred to see him as a short man who liked to rise horses and who loved his country.

All of this contributed to Vargas's popularity. Although he did nothing specifically for non-white Brazilians, black and mixed-race people cherished his name, just as American blacks loved President Roosevelt although he accepted racial segregation. Vargas mastered the art of addressing ordinary people but he never drew a line in the sand between the "people" and the upper classes. Nor did Vargas call for the redefinition of property rights, or for redistribution of wealth, as did Juan Perón in Argentina. Vargas's language, puffed up and moralistic, put people to sleep. His government, despite its trappings of nationalistic theater, like Salazar's Portugal, Franco's Spain and France's first Vichy government, never imposed a strong ideological framework, and it relied on simplistic propaganda that few educated Brazilians took seriously.

Why he ultimately opted to kill himself, of course, can never be known. Given that Vargas hid his emotions even from himself - his diaries reveal this clearly - he may, when his world started to fall in on him, been no longer able to suppress his innermost feelings of disappointment. A guarded and self-involved personality, Vargas was probably more driven by his need to achieve his unrealistic goals than he ever showed. Such persons, if they cannot strike back at their adversaries, are capable of harming themselves when thwarted. All leaders are confronted with the need to rationalize when their policies go awry, and in Vargas's case - unlike the case of Richard Nixon, who imagined that his enemies were out to get him, Vargas's opponents in the military on the verge of physically ousting him for the second time in a decade.(54) His suicide letter implies that deep down he may have been far more consumed by the need to achieve his goals, by then wholly unattainable, that has ever been suspected.

Affluent Brazilians understood that the government's propaganda machine, in the words of Hernane Tavares de Sá, had "inflated outrageously" the concrete accomplishments being claimed; they also knew that their problems had not been solved, nor had their standard of living risen as far as the broadcasts and speeches promised.(55) But Vargas had made them aware of Brazil's vulnerable place in the world, and from the first days of his Liberal Alliance presidential campaign in 1930 he had let them know that he cared about all Brazilians, not just the powerful. To the lower half of the population with barely enough to eat, this mattered little, although many of these men and women nostalgically considered Vargas the "father of the poor" anyway. It was enough that he had spoken in their behalf. If Vargas was Brazil's "father," he treated his children differently, ignoring those with darker skin and who lived in the countryside with benign neglect, favoring those of his "children" who he considered to have the potential to carry out his dreams of national construction. Yet that he did not treat his fellow Brazilians equally did not diminish the adulation that millions held for him. When confronted with these facts, ordinary people would shrug and say: O presidente sempre lembrou da gente ("the President always remembered us").

Robert M. Levine passed away in 2003. When he contributed this except to BrazilMax, he was the Gabelli Senior Scholar in Arts & Sciences and director of the Center for Latin American Studies University of Miami, Coral Gables.