Braço Forte, Mão Amiga

An Alternate History of Brazil

 

The Paraguayan War

The Paraguayan War profoundly altered the course of Brazilian history. It began with Brazilian armed intervention in the Uruguayan civil disorders provoked by the fighting between two political factions: the ‘Colorados’, supported by Brazil, and the ‘Blancos’, backed by the Paraguayan president, Francisco Solano López. The Paraguayan intervention in behalf of the Blanco faction materialized in a declaration of war against Brazil in March 1865.

The Paraguayans launched two offensives against Brazil. The northern expedition successfully occupied the main population centers of the Mato Grosso: Coimbra, Alburquerque, Corumbá, Miranda and Dorados fell in a matter of weeks.

Paraguayan soldiers killed in the battle of São Borja, 1865.

The main offensive, however, was launched against the Brazilian field army in Rio Grande do Sul. López, informed by Justo José de Urquiza, governor of the Argentinean province of Corrientes, about the Brazilian-Argentinean rapprochement, wisely decided to concentrate his forces against Brazil, and used the longer but safer route through Misiones and the Uruguay River to reach Rio Grande do Sul.

On June 11, the Brazilian Navy succeeded in engaging Paraguayan ships in the Battle of Riachuelo on the Paraná River. The Paraguayan saw themselves trapped between Brazilian troops stationed in Rio Grande and the Paraná River. After an unsuccessful maneuver to link with the second column of the Paraguayan Army, the Paraguayan forces in Rio Grande do Sul, encircled and with supplies quickly diminishing, surrendered to the popular Brazilian marshal -the Duke of Caxias- after six weeks of battle. Paraguay’s best troops yielded for almost nothing.

After their defeat in São Borja, Paraguay adopted a defensive strategy: abandoned Brazilian soil and defended during three years the strategically placed fortress of Humaitá. During these years, which caused enormous losses in men and material for the Imperial Brazilian Army, a number of young Brazilian officers questioned their own loyalty to the Imperial institution and its leaders' widespread corruption, inefficiency and nepotism. The officers felt that they were better prepared to rule the country than was the nobility: the hellish campaign of Humaitá, which extended from November 1865 to September 1868, only served to increase sympathies for republicanism among the officers corp.

Among the ideological currents which influenced these officers was the philosophy of the French positivist Auguste Comte, who believed in an ideal government led by an intellectual elite, not by hereditary nobility; and speculated about the possibility of total secular power and the separation of church and state. Comte's endorsement of universal education also appealed to military officers. His ideas, which stressed order and progress, spread throughout Latin America; in Brazil, through the Escola Militar de Realengo, they gave civil and military elites a rationale for advocating an end to monarchy and the establishment of a strong republican system, which would speed Brazil's development and enlarge its place in the world.

Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, Duke of Caxias.

In September 1, 1866, the Brazilian Field Marshall, Luís Alves de Lima e Silva –the Duke of Caxias- was killed in the course of an attack against the Paraguayan trenches at Curuzú. With Brazilian troops still heavily engaged in the attack against the Paraguayan fortress of Humaitá, the unfortunate death of the popular leader, and his replacement with the inept Baron of Porto Alegre only radicalized the field officers, who launched a campaign to undermine the support for the Empire among the troops.

The defeat of the demoralized Brazilian forces at the hands of the machete-armed Paraguayans on September 22, 1866, near Curupaití was the trigger for a mutiny of the Brazilian troops. Without great fear of reprisal, due to the weak rule of the Emperor Dom Pedro II, several units retired to the Brazilian province of Rio Grande do Sul, where loyal units engaged them in battle. In November 20, 1866, the small rebel force was annihilated near the town of São Borja, but the fratricide fight served to enrage even more the Army’s leaders against the government.

In the home front, several factors combined to create an anti-monarchic atmosphere. The traditional rivalry between the aristocratic Navy, favored by the government, and an Army composed mainly of commoners and even slaves provoked a rift in the Imperial command that separated the Army leadership from the Imperial government, and served as an obstacle for the operations against Paraguay and worsening the already bad logistical situation.

But it was the mobilization crisis of the war what really separated the Army from the government, and almost cost Brazil the war. Popular resistance and bureaucratic intransigence thwarted the limited conscription system: the Army saw itself forced to rely on volunteers. Most of these were free men who signed on to escape hunger, unemployment, homelessness and the penal system. But paltry wages, spartan conditions, brutal treatment, and the terribly obvious fact that the machete-armed Paraguayans were creating a whole generation of amputees meant that the volunteers were few and their numbers were steadily diminishing. By the third year of the war, the government had been forced to ‘liberate’ scores of convicts and manumit hundreds of slaves to fight in the front.

Undoubtedly, the matter of the slaves was one of the most important factors in the Army revolt against the monarchy. The active abolitionist movements operating in Rio and São Paulo stimulated massive slave breakouts. With increasing frequency, fresh troops, badly needed in the front, were used instead to recapture thousands of fugitive slaves: the Army bitterly complained about the use of his men as capitães do mato (forces dedicated to control the plantations’ slaves). By the end of the war, the Army simply ignored Rio’s request for more troops to deal with the fugitives.

The increasing contact with slaves served to convert several Army officers, not only to republicanism, but to abolitionism too: the ‘Ceará Incident’, where Colonel Sena Madureira refused to transport the slaves selected in the province of Ceará to be send to the front, was a clear example of the radicalization of the Army. The fact that several officers, including the popular general Deodoro da Fonseca, supported Colonel Sena Madureira, was a sign of things to come.

Finally, an increasingly nationalist Brazil saw itself became saddled with huge debts, amounting by the end of the war to over 300 million pounds sterling, and with the possibility of having a French, the unpopular Count D’Eu, as probable successor of Dom Pedro II in his condition of husband of the Princess Isabel. 

In May 24, 1866, after the bloody battles of Corrales and Tuyutí, López offered the Brazilian government a pacific resolution of the conflict in a secret meeting with the Baron of Porto Alegre. The offer was rejected, but not before it became public: the already strong opposition to the continuation of the war among the troops and the Brazilian public only grew, leading to a widening of the gulf between the Army officers, the nation, and the Emperor.

Brazilian troops in Asunción, 1869.

The war continued until Asunción, the Paraguayan capitol, was captured in June 2, 1869. The increasing discontent among the Brazilian Army’s ranks forced the Brazilian government to offer terms to the Paraguayans, who rapidly accepted them. The dreary and unpopular four-year ordeal was finally over. A shattered Paraguay was forced to cede the territory between the rivers Branco and Apa and the territory of Misiones Occidentales, and to pay a large indemnity in cattle, mate and other agricultural products.

The last-hour cancellation of the Victory Parade in Rio was an ominous sign of the wide gulf formed between Rio and the military.

 

The Republican Coup d’Etat and the Civil War

But the victory wasn’t enough to quell the rebellious spirit of the Army: the Republican Party, founded in 1867 and until then a minuscule political force, become overnight a force with tens of thousands of supporters, among them large numbers of war veterans and abolitionists. The Army, convinced of the ineptitude of the Imperial government, decided to take control of the country: several army officers, led by Marshall Deodoro da Fonseca, proclaimed Brazil a republic during a semi-clandestine Assembly in the city of Uruguaiana, in the place which is known today as the Praça da República. It was clear then that the tiny representation of civilian republicans meant that the coup was to be lead entirely by the Army.

A good number of veterans joined the conspirators’ already large force, which proceeded to constitute the seasoned Republican Army. The rebel forces advanced towards Petrópolis, location of the Emperor’s summer palace, in a failed attempt to put him under arrest. But the Cabinet, controlled by the Count of Ouro Preto, had managed to create a small force of National Guards, and foolishly used it in a vain attempt to stop the Republican Army. The battle of Sorocaba, where the Republican Army annihilated the forces loyal to the Emperor, was the beginning of the short and nebulous conflict known as the Civil War.

Dom Pedro II

By August 1870 the republicans, counting with the support of most of the military and the economic elite (who felt that they did not need the Empire to protect their interests), captured the city of Bahía, the last bastion of the monarchy. The Emperor, facing defeat, convinced the Council of State to accept the resignation of the cabinet and accept the conformation of a new cabinet constituted by republicans, convinced that a republican cabinet would stop further bloodshed. This was the catalyst of the rift between the “Young Republicans” and the “Old Republicans”: the former wanted a complete revolution along positivist, republican and progressive ideas, while the latter, supported by the powerful landlords, was conformed with the transformation of Brazil into a conservative oligarchic republic.

Young Republicans’ artillery near Rio, 1872.

The crisis generated by the division between the republicans only deepened when an influent group among the Old Republicans were convinced by the Count of Ouro Preto to change sides and supported the pro-monarchical movement, the latter then waging their own conflict against the Young Republicans’ troops. A Navy mutiny lead by the commanders Custódio de Mello and Saldanha da Gama, who occupied the capitol with their forces only worsened the situation. The death in battle of Marshall Deodoro da Fonseca, leader of the Old Republicans, was a moral booster for the Young Republicans, who chose Manoel da Fonseca Lisboa as their commander in chief.

The multisided conflict finalized in 1872, when the Young Republicans recaptured Rio de Janeiro from the Navy’s hands, and forced the Old Republicans and the monarchists to surrender by the end of that year: the Emperor left the country in December 20 1872. In January 1873, the new government announced to the nation that the country was now a federal republic, under the name of Federal Union of Brazil. The first act of the new government was the promulgation of a Carta Republicana (Republican Constitution), which abolished slavery, separated church and state, transformed the former provinces into federal states, expropriated the Imperial patrimonies and the Church’s properties and divided them among the former slaves and dispossessed peasants. Other radical reforms were swiftly decreed.

 

The Velha República

From 1872 to 1898 the Velha República (Old Republic) was completely dominated by the armed forces. Marshal Manoel da Fonseca Lisboa headed the provisional government in 1872 and became the first president of Brazil in 1873. The first decade of military rule was marked by political turbulence, including revolts and uprisings, generally led by conservative elements opposed to the radical measures already taken by the Army, specially the abolition of slavery. Instituted without compensation for the slave owners, emancipation alienated the powerful landed interests from the government, and large sections of the Roman Catholic clergy were hostile to the government for the expropriations suffered by the Church. Many leading people longed for the return of the monarchy.

Italian immigrants arriving to São Paulo, 1898.

But those same measures allowed the population and economy to expand at unprecedented rates. National production increased by more than 900 percent. A network of railroads was constructed and thousands of European migrated to Brazil in these years. In the realm of foreign affairs the military government was actively following the British lead, while at the same time it was hostile to neighboring regimes which tried to encroach territory claimed by Brazil.

The revolts were frequent these years. From veterans who couldn’t readapt to civilian life, to angry conservatives, to Indian uprisings, the military found plenty to do besides ruling the country. The bloody rebellion of the warlike M’Bayá tribe; and principally, the Quebra-Quilos revolt discredited the Army. The Quebra-Quilos (Kilo-Breaking) revolt started in the sleepy town of Iguaraçu, Pernambuco, where once prosperous smallholders were now squeezed by the fall in cotton prices after the U.S. Civil War: the frustrated smallholders commenced a jacquerie that swept the interior of Paraiba and Pernambuco. Even when the property destroyed was not much (the rioters broke newly adapted standard metric scales in markets in rural towns, thus the name of the revolt), the cruel repression of the rioters, justified as “an exemplary punishment” badly discredited the Army.

A religious dispute between the government and the Vatican, and the controversial Recruitment Law of 1874, instituting the draft, only worsened the situation.

In November 1898 a revolt under the leadership of the influent Catholic priest João Carvalho forced the military to call elections, signaling the end of the Velha República.

 

The Nova República

The Nova República (New Republic) was characterized for its political turbulence, due essentially to the lack of national democratic traditions and experience.

The first years of the New Republic were marked by the stagnation, and even retrogression of the political conditions in Brazil. The new Constitution guaranteed the exclusion of the majority of the Brazilian people. The adoption of the precept that the illiterate has no right to vote marginalized most of the population, specially the slaves recently liberated, amounting to one and a half million in a total population of ten millions. The new government stimulated electoral fraud due to the fact that the vote wasn’t secret and the government itself counted the votes. In a few years, elections and farce became synonymous: a card game where the outcome was knew beforehand.

Rapidly the real power was exerted by the interior landlords, who controlled their electoral districts with an iron hand. Peasant revolts become frequent, and the country saw itself in the abysm’s edge. Meanwhile, the appalling conditions of the growing urban proletariat facilitated the apparition of socialist and Marxist movements among it. Some historian argue that fear to Communism was the reason which impulse the Army to precipitate a war with Bolivia.

 

War with Bolivia

During the Old Republic, the government also conducted a military reorganization. The Army's poor performance in the Paraguayan War led officers and politicians to legislate reforms. Their principal concerns included the lack of adequate training and the need for a more modern reserve system to facilitate rapid mobilization.

General Hermes Rodrigues da Fonseca, Commander in Chief of the Army after the death of Marshal da Fonseca Lisboa, and noted Germanophile, made sure that the Army training and troop readiness were improved and its weaponry modernized along German lines. The focus on training and field exercises began to make a perceptible difference in army discipline and performance. Army desertion and crime rates began to decline slightly. Improving conditions and shorter service contracts attracted more volunteers.

If Brazil hoped –the Army strategist reasoned- to mobilize an army capable of warding off potential European aggressors (or its increasingly powerful regional rival Argentina), it had to have a modern army, with a manpool as large as possible. Since most poor Brazilians did not attend public schools, the draft became a way of socializing a larger proportion of the lower classes and providing them with a primary education. In this way is how the Army became a ladder for social advancement.

Besides, the consensus among the military that conscription would help resolve a variety of threats to national strength and unity: the Army promoted itself as a masculine eugenic motor for improving the health, hygiene, intelligence, discipline, and sense of national identity among a broader cross-section of Brazil's racially and ethnically diverse population.

Brazil and Bolivia had maintained a border dispute since the days of the recognition of Bolivian independence in 1831. Brazil claimed the eastern half of the Acre territory; while Bolivia and Paraguay were still disputing the sovereignty over the territory of El Chaco. These disputes’ intensity ranged from civilized discussions in diplomatic meetings to bloody border battles.

By 1908, the Acre territory had become an important source of rubber production in addition to its riches in wood and mate. Despite the fact beyond a doubt that Acre belonged to Bolivia, it already had a numerous Brazilian population. The Army incited the Brazilians living in Acre to declare independence. A heavy-handed Bolivian attempt to control the region administratively failed when the Brazilian Army declared its duty to defend the Brazilians living there. While Rio and La Paz were initiating a negotiation process that envisaged the option to purchase Acre, the Brazilian Army occupied the disputed territory, expelling first the Bolivian troops and later the few Bolivian citizens living there. With no option but to face the Brazilian Army, Bolivia declared war on Brazil in November 1908.

The war was mercifully brief: nine moths of terrible battles in the jungles and the Chaco arid terrain. The Amazonian riverine fleet, created in 1898, rapidly transported the Brazilian troops to Acre, from where the Brazilian moved southwards after securing the territory, and proclaiming the annexation of Acre to Brazil. The terrible crossing of the Mato Grosso eventually allowed Brazil to occupy the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, where they waited the forces coming from the south: Paraguay had chosen this moment to declare war on Bolivia, and advanced trough El Chaco towards Santa Cruz. All the Bolivian offensives aimed to avoid the union of the two invading armies were unsuccessful.

Bolivian prisoners of war, 1909.

With the eastern half of its territory occupied and with the combined forces of Brazil and Paraguay preparing an offensive against Sucre, aimed to divide the country in two, Bolivia contacted the Brazilian government through its embassy in Buenos Aires, asking for an armistice. Britain, who was seeing with preoccupation the Brazilian advances into Bolivia, and having heavy investment in the Bolivian mines, pressured Brazil and Paraguay to moderate their original demands, which included the Bolivian cession of the eastern half of the country. Negotiations between La Paz and Rio de Janeiro were resumed and finally, in November of 1910, the Treaty of Petrópolis was signed: Bolivia ceded the disputed territories of Acre (north of the Madre de Dios river) and El Chaco to Brazil and Paraguay respectively; Bolivia was guaranteed an indemnification of two million pounds sterling as a compensation for these territories; and Brazil and Paraguay renounced to make any other claim over Bolivian territory.

The war had several effects on South America and Brazil: a system of alliances appeared, with Argentina and Uruguay formed a defensive coalition aimed against Brazil, which exerted a sort of informal protectorate over Paraguay. Chile and Brazil enjoyed close relations due to their common hostility against Argentina, while fears of Brazilian hegemony provoked a rapprochement between Perú and Argentina. Brazilian belligerence had isolated the country, and forced the post war government to look after better relation with its neighbors, and such policy conducted to closer relations with Venezuela and Ecuador, and support to these countries in their border disputes with Perú and Colombia, respectively.

The successful, short war also created the political conditions adequate for an Army takeover in Rio: this time, however, the Army decided to act behind the umbrella of the Partido Nacional Brasileiro (Brazilian National Party, lead by the retired General Ferdinando Moreira Umanzor), in order to exert its power through a more legitimate way. Finally, the war increased the interest of Washington in South American events, and eventually Washington’s stand towards Brazil, in the commercial and political fields, became tougher. From then on, the debate on the pros and cons of aligned relations with the United States would swell in the Brazilian diplomatic and political milieu.

 

The Great War

During the years 1909 and 1910, the arbitrary policies and methods of the Conservative Party’s president São-Tiago Ferrando aroused strong congressional opposition, especially from the Partido Nacional Brasileiro and the incipient but rapidly growing Partido Socialista Brasileiro. In November Ferrando dissolved the Congress and assumed dictatorial powers. An immediate military revolt forced him to resign in favor of Vice President Prudente José de Moraes Barros.

Order was gradually restored in the country during the administration of Moraes, and the ascent to the Presidency of Moraes Barros in 1914 marked the nation's ascent to international recognition: after the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, rising demand in foreign markets for Brazilian coffee, rubber, and sugar considerably relieved the economic difficulties of the country.

When in July 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, starting the Great War, all Brazilian political and military factions prepared to sit out the war, because nobody at the time could be sure who would win. Preoccupied for its necessity to pull ever more ships to Europe, the British admiralty tried to convince the Foreign Office to ask Brazil for help. But the opposition of the United States, added to the pressure imposed over the Brazilian government by the Army, which bitterly opposed intervention in the European war, convinced Rio and London that the Brazilian domestic situation was not the best for Brazil to participate directly in the war.

Brazilian troops arriving to the port of Santos, 1917.

In 1917 Britain, preoccupied by the menace of the U-boats and the moral crisis developing among the ranks of the French Army, asked Brazil to participate directly in the war in Europe. This time, the Navy and the civilian government wanted -for different reasons- to intervene in the war: the government wanted to strengthen its domestic position, shaky as a consequence of German attacks on Brazilian shipping (the ships Paraná, Lapa, Tijuca, Macau and Acarí), while the Navy wanted to learn more from operational combat against modern foes, and from working together with the British.

Brazil severed diplomatic relations with Germany in June 1917, and in August Brazil entered the war on the side of the Allies. With Austria-Hungary, as she had only minimal interests in South America, Brazil sought to maintain peaceful relations as long as possible. The same can be said about the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria.

The Brazilian Army, 1914:   Standing force of 250.000 men: 19 infantry divisions, 4 cavalry brigades, 3 field artillery brigades, 6 heavy artillery regiments and a signals brigade   Fully mobilized: 1.5 million men     The Brazilian Navy, 1914:   2 dreadnought battleships, 2 fast battle cruisers, 14 pre-dreadnought battleships 13 cruisers , 13 light cruisers, 7 old cruisers, 9 gunboats, 50 destroyers, 31 torpedo boats, 13 submarines.    460,000 tons.

The Brazilian Navy organized a squadron and send it to reinforce the Russian Fleet in the Baltic, and also sent to the Mediterranean one old light cruiser and 8 new destroyers with which acquired practice in modern anti-submarine warfare. Brazil deployed two armored cruisers and 12 new destroyers to Malta in September, 1917.

However, the Allies, specially France, were not enthusiastic at all about an eventual participation of its Brazilian ally in the land battles of the Western Front. The French held the Brazilian army in the utmost contempt –despite its good performance in the Bolivian War- and considered the American power an absolutely worthless ally. But the carnage on the Western Front convinced the Allied command that the Brazilians could be of some use in the Turkish front. After the declaration of war again the rest of the Central Empires in October 9, 1917, the Brazilian government pledged to send an army to fight against the Ottoman Empire, numbering 45.000 infantrymen under an autonomous command named the Brazilian Expeditionary Corp (BEC). Despite the difficulties found in the field, where the Brazilian soldiers complained about the British rations and suffered from the hot and dry weather (in what is today southern Lebanon) to which they weren't used at all, the BEC performance was good.

Even when Brazil joined the Allies in 1917, actually its indirect participation began early in the war, when most of the European industries were committed to the war. Since 1914 the Allies were willing to purchase nearly anything Brazilian agriculture and industry could produce. In addition, they had difficulty filling Brazilian orders for capital goods. In both cases, Brazilian industries found themselves faced with inexhaustible demand abroad and at home. Until then the most successful industries had been labor-intensive, low-technology and low-capital ones like agro-industry, specially coffee.

Brazilian officers in Europe, 1918.

The situation had deteriorated since 1917 when Germany began an offensive that obstructed the transportation of coffee in Europe. At the same time, the war provoked a decrease in the imports, into Brazil, of European manufactured goods. Besides stimulating industrial activities, the global conflict offered an opportunity to diversify Brazilian exports. Sales of cereals, frozen meat and animal fat grew. Sales of rubber also gained relevance, absorbed in huge amounts by the North American market due to the growth of the automobile industry. The war orders allowed Brazil to earn valuable foreign exchange which was needed to pay for capital goods which Brazil could not produce, and the government's new policies during the war were designed to force the growth of high-technology industries which would demand more capital and technology and a work force with better skills.

In this context, the Brazilian trade balance was profitable throughout the entire war period. This was due to the reduction of imports and to the diversification of Brazilian exports. In 1920, 49,6% of the industrial facilities had been created between 1915-1919, confirming the positive impact of the Great War on domestic manufacturing activity.

 

The Moreira Period

The election of Ferdinando Moreira Umanzor as new president in 1918 coincided with the end of the war in Europe. The German offensives in the first months of 1918 forced the Allies to accept a truce with a Germany barely able to continue the war.

 

The two Peace Conferences in the Hague resolved, if not all, at least the major issues in the effort to achieve an honorable peace. In the final peace settlement, signed in New York in January 1919, Brazil was authorized to keep German ships captured during the war as compensation for its sunken ships, and recovered bank deposits, retained since 1914 in Germany, relative to coffee and other products sales.

The end of the war boom was met with energetic measures to boost the national economy and numerous reforms were adopted: national finances were strengthened, coffee and rubber production was displaced by industrial goods production as the main economic activity, protecting the nation’s finances in a time when falling coffee prices on the world market menaced to severely disrupt the national economy; and the stimulation of internal consumption with the colonization of the Brazilian interior.

It was in this period when a deeply indebted France sold its Guyanese colony to a Brazil desirous of securing the mouth of the Amazon river, and who saw the French presence there as a menace, now that the peace treaty placed France in a precarious position vis-à-vis Germany.

However, in spite of these measures, the country was badly affected by the drop of the price of Brazilian rubber began to drop toward the close of Moreira’s first period. Industrial retrenchment and sharp curtailment of governmental expenditures were necessitated by the onset of an economic crisis in 1922. In July 1924 a period of unrest culminated in a large-scale revolt, especially serious in São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul. Most of the army remained loyal to President Moreira, who had retaken office earlier that year, and, after more than three months of fighting, the rebels were defeated. Moreira ruled by martial law for the remainder of his second term.

Paperboys, 1928.

In 1928, accusations of fraud against the Conservative candidate João de Souza Andrade served as an excuse for the army to brought Moreira again to power. In an attempt to ease the economic distress of the country, Moreira reduced coffee production and purchased and destroyed surplus stocks of the commodity. Large numbers of peasants from the drough-striken northeastern states were relocated in the vast wetlands of northern Amapá and Inini (former French Guyana), and the government commenced to send large penal colonies on Brazil's extreme frontiers.

In 1932 the Moreira regime allayed much of the political unrest in Brazil by convening a Constituent Assembly: among the features of the new constitution adopted were sections curtailing states' rights and providing for woman suffrage, greater social security for plantation and industrial workers and the election of future presidents by the congress.

However, these measures weren’t enough to diminish the considerable opposition from the radical wing of the Brazilian labor movement. Abortive Communist-led revolts occurred in Pernambuco and Rio de Janeiro in November 1934, and a formidable rebellion in São Paulo was only quelled after nearly three months of large-scale warfare against the well organized rioters, who counted with the support of left-leaning junior Army officers. Martial law was declared, and Moreira was authorized by the congress to rule by decree. Mass arrests of radicals and other opponents of the government followed. Strikes were outlawed by the government in April 1935, and stringent measures against communism were adopted.

In spite of the atmosphere of political turmoil, it was in these years when Brazil abandoned the French aesthetic standards, until then supreme in the Brazilian arts. A new national culture appeared abruptly in A Semana da Arte Moderna (the Modern Art’s Week) in February 1935. This event marked the Brazilian cultural an aesthetic independence, and the Brazilian topics gained from this moment on a dominant preference.

 

The Mascaranhas Governments

The improvement of the economic situation by 1937 allowed the apparition of manifestations of dissatisfaction with the Moreira regimen. Defiant action in February 1938 by a group of influential publishers forced the government to relax censorship of the press. On February 28 it was announced that congressional and presidential elections would be held later in the year. Gradually, all major restrictions against political activity were removed. Amnesty for all political prisoners, including Communists, was decreed in April.

João Mascaranhas de Moraes was elected as new president in August 1938. Mascaranhas, former chief justice of the supreme court, asked the newly elected congress to draft a new constitution, which was adopted the following September: the new constitution and subsequent laws sought to balance the national budget and develop a program to reduce living costs, increase wages, and extend social reforms. A wave of nationalizations began, culminating with the nationalization of petroleum resources in September 1939.

Mascaranhas also conducted a military reform. In the early 1930s, the army began to undergo a generational change. The generals of the 1930s had been junior officers in the Great War and had witnessed the military-backed Moreira regimen. Their worldview was shaped and influenced by the conservatism and anticommunism of that time. These generals were being replaced by colonels who had entered the army in the early 1920s and whose view of the world had been shaped less by ideology and more by pragmatism and nationalism. These officers were the responsible for the lack of Army support to Moreira and his bloodless ousting. Mascaranhas established the Comando-Maior do Exército (the Army High Command, CME) in a significant political development: before that time, a clique of generals residing in Rio de Janeiro controlled major decisions of the army. The new CME replaced this clique with the seven regional commanders, the chief of staff, and the new post of minister of army, until then a position enjoyed exclusively by the president.

Brazil’s relations with its neighbors was regularized with the Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (1941) drafted by the South American Conference for Security: the provisions of the treaty stipulated united defense by the signatories –Brazil, Paraguay, Venezuela and Ecuador- against armed aggression directed at any member nation of the Treaty.

Despite the scandal provoked by the murder of an army officer in the attempted assassination of an anti-Mascaranhas newspaper editor, Mascaranhas was reelected in 1942. With the support of the army and the leftist parties, Mascaranhas announced an ambitious five-year economic development plan known as SALTE: supported by a U.S. loan totaling more than $250 millions, the plan, despite some minor setbacks, managed to produce a fast pace of industrial development; and its success allowed Mascaranhas to press strongly for legislative approval of a program of basic reforms, including low-rent controls, nationalizing petroleum refineries, expropriating unused lands, and limiting export of profits.

 

War with Argentina

In the final days of the Empire, Brazil reached equilibrium with its neighbors in La Plata Basin. The difficult relations inherited from the colonial period had, apparently, been overcome. Nevertheless, the imperial government left the Republic a legacy of delicate delimitation negotiations with its South American neighbors –undecided ever since the treaties concluded by the Portuguese and Spanish crowns. The political climate created by the war with Bolivia first and later with the advent of the apparently weak Mascaranhas government would favor an Argentinean manu militari attempt to decide these issues.

Little by little Brazil-Argentina relations began to be affected by issues and episodes that would re-ignite the old rivalries to the point of war. For example, the tariff restrictions applied in Argentina to Brazilian exports of sugar, mate, coffee, tobacco, fruits and some industrial products generated as many problems as the restrictions imposed by Brazil to the Argentinean sales of wheat, corn, alfalfa and wine. Moreover, the competition to attract European immigrants would motivate reciprocal jealousy. Also worthy of mention were the sanitary controls in the port of Buenos Aires that imposed quarantine on ships sailing in from Brazilian ports; and the seldom concerted perceptions and opinions on international politics of both powers, specially in the Brazilian policy of alliances with Paraguay, Venezuela and Ecuador. Finally, inevitable tensions were generated by policies of military equipment acquisition, as when Brazil proceeded to modernize its Navy in 1940.

The trigger of the crisis that ended in war was the issues concerning the San Carlos region, which involved Argentinean territory, and the Mirim Lagoon and Jaguarão River, with Uruguay. To Argentina, the new Brazilian regime was most welcome as it’s apparently weakness renewed expectations as to the progress of the delimitation negotiations. Initially, the Brazilian government took part in these negotiations motivated by the desire to maintain a good relationship with that neighboring country, and left aside positions it previously defended.

These positions were based on the delimitation agreement signed by both countries in 1857 and did not contemplate any territorial concession by Brazil. This agreement, however, was in the end not ratified by the Argentinean Congress due to internal political turbulence. The Argentinean president, Juan José Núñez Amador, informed Mascaranhas of his decision to repude previous agreements and proposed a new treaty. As per this treaty, the San Carlos district (bordering, on the south, the Argentinean province of Corrientes, on the north, the Brazilian state of Missões), would be divided in equal parts between Brazil and Argentina, a proposal unsatisfactory to the Brazilian side.

The problem only worsened Brazil-Argentina relations: the litigation coincided with the turbulence caused in Argentina by a navy revolt and by a Communist-inspired series of strikes. Both conflicts had caused apprehension in Argentina with regard to the supposed Brazilian government’s connivance with the rebel forces.

The Mascaranhas admininstration revealed special interest in building up friendship and confidence among both countries: in September 1943 the Brazilian foreign minister launched the proposal of a Cordial Political Understanding and Arbitration Treaty between Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, which eventually failed.

The crisis reached its climax in January 1944 in the context of the VII Pan-American Conference. At that time, diplomatic efforts to reach a common position on the disarmament issue were frustrated with the entry of Argentinean troops into Uruguayan territory, under the pretext of joint maneuvers. The Brazilian minister in Montevideo, Luiz Palmar Sarratea, protested the entry of these troops in Uruguay as “harmful to Brazilian interests". This provoked a violent reaction on the part of Argentina. President Núñez sent notes that were more than impolite to José Soares de Souza, Brazilian minister in Buenos Aires. The exchange of notes between Núñez and Palmar, in violent terms, resulted in the Brazilian representative expulsed as persona non grata.

Relations between Brazil and Argentina, from this moment on, took an irreparable turn for the worse. In the midst of increasing tensions, with Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Paraguay mobilizing their respective armies, in Rio de Janeiro the Argentinean minister Guido Blanco made an enormous effort to arrive at an understanding with Brazil, but it was clear that it was mere skullduggery when Argentina launched a violent attack against Rio Grande do Sul in April 2 1945.

Brazilian cavalry in Rio Grande do Sul, 1945.

The Argentinean strategy was based in the fact that the Brazilian Third Army, based in Rio Grande, was the strongest of the Brazilian army with close to two-thirds of the Brazilian armed forces, while somewhat fewer than one-third were in the First Army garrisoning Rio de Janeiro. If the Argentinean Second and Third Armies were successful in destroying the Brazilian Third Army before the mobilization of Brazilian reserves, Argentina would be able to dictate terms to a vanquished Brazil.

In the eve of the war, Argentina fielded the largest and most powerful armed forces in South America: an efficient conscription system and a large reserve system allowed the country an armed force numbering 147,467 personnel.

Meanwhile, their Brazilian counterparts numbered 132.486 men. Even when the Brazilian Army was outnumbered by Argentina’s, it counted with more modern equipment, much of it German leftovers from the 1935 war with Russia. The Brazilian Navy was superior to Argentina’s, and this advantage was decisive for the outcome of the war.

On January 22, 1980, Argentinean attacked Brazil's air bases at Santana and Uruguayana, as well as Tacuarembó, Bagé, Pelotas, Melo, Posadas, and Cachoeira. Their aim was to destroy the Brazilian air force on the ground -a lesson learned from the German-Russian War. They succeeded in destroying runways and fuel and ammunition depots, but much of Brazil's aircraft inventory was left intact. Brazilian defenses were caught by surprise, but the Argentinean raids failed because Brazilian craft were adequately dispersed and because the bombs used to destroy runways did not totally incapacitate Brazil's very large airfields. Within hours, Brazilian aircraft took off from the same bases, successfully attacked strategically important targets close to major Uruguayan and Argentinean cities, and returned home with very few losses.

Brazilian artillery  near Passo Fundo, 1945.

Simultaneously, six Argentinean army divisions entered Brazil on three fronts in an initially successful surprise attack, where they drove as far as eight kilometers inland and occupied 1,000 square kilometers of Brazilian territory. As a diversionary move on the Paraguayan front, an Argentinean infantry division overwhelmed the Paraguayan garrison at Formosa, a town near the border with Argentina, and occupied territory thirty kilometers eastward to the Paraguayan fortress at Humaitá. This area was strategically significant because the main Asunción-Buenos Aires railway traversed it.

On the eastern section of the front, Argentinean forces captured Santana de Livramento, on the eastern plain of Rio Grande do Sul, and pushed eastward to Uruguayana. Santana occupied an important position on the major east-west road, close to the border on the Brazilian side.

Brazilian Armed Forces, 1945:   Brazilian Army: Ten divisions of regular infantry, Three regiment of jungle infantry, Seven cavalry brigades, Several independent and service detachments, including artillery. One air corp.     Brazilian Navy: Two outdated battleships, Two outdated cruisers, Eight large destroyers, Nine submarines, Eight coastal defense ships, A surveying ship, A submarine depot ship, Twenty river gunboats, Five seagoing gunboat, Eighteen coastguard patrol vessels, Two oil tankers, Miscellaneous training and auxiliary vessels. A brigade of Naval Infantry.   Total: 132,486 men under arms.

The main thrust of the attack was in the west, where five divisions with heavy artillery support pushed towards the city of Porto Alegre on two axes, one crossing over the Mirim Lagoon, which led to the siege and eventual occupation of the city of Rio Grande, and the second heading for Cachoeira, which had the major military base in Rio Grande do Sul, as its objective. Argentinean units easily occupied several other towns in the main routes to the state of Santa Catarina to prevent reinforcement from the First and Second Armies in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. By mid-February, a full Argentinean division -supported by heavy artillery fire- advanced through central Rio Grande do Sul headed for Santa Maria and Porto Alegre and its strategic port facilities. Other division headed toward Cruz Alta, site of an air base.

But with the increased use of the Brazilian air force, and the defeat of the Argentinean Navy outside Montevideo and subsequent blockade of this port, the Argentinean progress was somewhat curtailed. The last major Argentinean territorial gain took place in early November 1945. On November 3, Argentinean forces reached Porto Alegre but were repulsed by a Naval Infantry unit. Even though they surrounded Porto Alegre on three sides and occupied a portion of the city, the Argentineans could not overcome the stiff resistance; sections of the city still under Brazilian control were resupplied by boat at night. On November 10, Argentina captured Pelotas after a bloody house-to-house fight. The price of this victory was high for both sides, approximately 6,000 casualties for Argentina and even more for Brazil.

Argentina's successful assaults against scattered and demoralized Brazilian forces led many observers to think that Buenos Aires would win the war within a matter of weeks. Indeed, Argentinean troops did capture the southern half of Rio Grande do Sul; but Brazil prevented a quick Argentinean victory by a rapid mobilization of volunteers and quick deployment of the First and Second Armies’ forces to the front. Besides, in the first weeks the Army was able to recruit at least 150,000 volunteers, while 500.000 more had to wait to be trained and sent to the front. Approximately 200,000 soldiers were sent to the front by the end of November 1945. They were well trained troops that fought bravely despite inadequate artillery support. For example, on November 7 Naval Infantry units played a significant role in an assault on Argentinean oil import terminal at Mar del Plata. Brazil hoped to diminish Argentina's mobility by reducing its oil import.

Men drafted in the northern Argentinean city of San Miguel de Tucumán, 1946.

Brazil's resistance at the outset of the Argentinean invasion was unexpectedly strong, but it was neither well organized nor equally successful on all fronts. Argentina easily advanced in the eastern and western sections and crushed the Third Army's scattered resistance there. Argentinean troops, however, faced untiring resistance in Paraguay. President Núñez may have thought that the impoverished Paraguay would not offer a strong resistance. Instead, more and more Argentineans troops had to be sent to the Paraguayan front to avoid a Paraguayan breakthrough into Corrientes.

Soon after capturing Santa Maria, the Argentinean troops lost their initiative and began to dig in along their line of advance. Rio de Janeiro rejected a settlement offer and held the line against the militarily superior Argentinean force. It refused to accept defeat, and slowly began a series of counteroffensives in January 1946. Brazil's first major counterattack failed, however, for political and military reasons. President Mascaranhas was engaged in a power struggle with key military figures and eager to diminish the political influence of the armed forces: the subsequent confusion cost Brazil many of its preciously few armored vehicles, which were destroyed or had to be abandoned. Fortunately for Brazil, however, the Argentinean forces failed to follow up with another attack.

Brazil gained its first major victory, when, as a result of Congress Chairman Hernando Rucavado's initiative, the Presidency and the Army suppressed their rivalry and cooperated to force Buenos Aires to lift its long siege of Porto Alegre in September 1946. The Argentinean armed forces were hampered by their unwillingness to sustain a high casualty rate and therefore refused to initiate a new offensive.

The blockade of Argentina and the hasty acquisition of German, British and Italian military materiel allowed Brazil to amass considerable air and armored forces: the Brazilian new armored brigades were decisive in the lifting of Porto Alegre’s siege marked a major turning point, as Brazil penetrated Argentina's "impenetrable" lines, split Argentina’s forces, and forced the Argentineans to retreat. Within a week, they succeeded in destroying a large part of three Argentinean divisions. This operation was a turning point in the war because the strategic initiative shifted from Argentina to Brazil.

In May 1946, Brazilian units finally regained Santa Maria, but with high casualties. In April, the Cachoeira sector witnessed fierce fighting, as repeated Argentinean attacks were stopped by Brazilian mechanized and infantry divisions. Casualties were very high, and by the end of June 1946, an estimated 25,000 Argentineans and 22,000 Brazilians had been killed. Despite these losses, in June Brazil held a distinct advantage in the attempt to wage and eventually to win the war of attrition.

In July Brazilian and Paraguayan forces launched an offensive on Argentinean territory, successfully occupying the city of Corrientes. After this victory, the Brazilians maintained the pressure on the remaining Argentinean forces, and President Núñez stated –in September 1946- his willingness to negotiate a settlement of the war and to withdraw its forces from Brazil.

Brazilian armored vehicle in the outskirts of Pelotas, 1946.

But Brazil did not accept this withdrawal as the end of the conflict, and continued the war into Argentina and Uruguay, mostly due to domestic pressure to “punish” Argentina for their unprovoked attack against Brazil. Six major battles were fought from September to December 1946, in which the Brazilians routed or defeated the Argentineans, and recaptured most of the territory until then occupied by Argentina and Uruguay. For the first time, Brazilian armored and mechanized forces penetrated deep into Uruguay, defeating the defenders’ forces and capturing huge amounts of artillery and light weapons. The Brazilian government chose this moment to present Buenos Aires and Montevideo with a peace proposal in January 1947, which both eagerly accepted.

The war lasted exactly two years, from January of 1945 until January of 1947. Casualty figures are highly uncertain, though estimates suggest more than half a million war and war-related casualties, many more were wounded, and tens of thousands –mostly Brazilians- were made refugees.

 

The end of the Mascaranhas period

The peace treaty, signed in June 1948 in Lima, was redacted with the Brazilian aim to secure its southern territory. For this purpose, Argentina was to be weakened as to make her revival as a menace to Brazil’s security impossible for all time. Despite the Brazilian military’s demands for Argentinean cession of the provinces of Corrientes and Entre Ríos, and the annexation of Uruguay, Mascaranhas successfully pressed to change all territorial concessions (excepting the San Carlos district, ceded to Brazil) for a war indemnity, to be paid in installments, high enough to prevent Argentina from spending any considerable sums on armaments in the next 15-20 years.

Furthermore, a commercial treaty was imposed on Uruguay which made it economically dependent on Brazil, secured the Uruguayan market for Brazilian exports and made possible to exclude Argentinean commerce from Uruguay. The treaty also forced Uruguay to cede a frontier strip along the Mirim Lagoon and the Jaguarão River, and to allow the occupation of Montevideo and to place its coast at Brazil’s disposal in military respects. These conditions turned Uruguay into a de facto Brazilian territory, with all the advantages of annexation without its inescapable domestic and international political disadvantages.

Finally, the treaty saw the formation of a South American economic association through common customs treaties, including Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay, under Brazilian leadership.

After the signing of the peace treaty, Mascaranhas decided to retire his candidacy, and in the 1948 elections, Emilio da Costa Figueiredo was elected new president. The new regimen adopted moderate versions of many reforms commenced by Mascaranhas and fought the inflation provoked by the war with wage controls, tightened tax collections, and other measures.

As the government encouraged economic growth and development of the vast interior regions, the economy was plagued by high energy costs, runaway inflation, the cost of demobilization, and a large balance-of-payments deficit. The measures to deal with these problems included the imposition of an austerity program, the introduction of a new unit of currency and the creation of favorable conditions for foreign investors. The successful end of the war and the Army recognition of civilian primacy over political matters vastly reduced the fear of renewed militarism and proved that the country's political and governmental structures were stable.

By 1950 two domestic policy issues were keeping the Brazilian public entertained: the construction of the new national capitol, Brasilia, in the eastern bank of the Tocantins river; and the announcement of the governmental plans for the development of nuclear weapons in the near future.

 

South America, 1950

 

 

União Federativa do Brasil

Population:	65,149,655 (1950 census)
Urban:	40%
Constitutive States and Federal Dependencies:	Federal District (Río), Acre, Alagoas, Amapá, Amazonas, Bahía, Ceará, Espíritu Santo, Goiás, Inini, Maranhão, Mato Grosso, Minas Gerais, Missões, Pará, Paraíba, Paraná, Pernambuco, Piauí, Río de Janeiro, Río Grande do Norte, Río Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, Santa Cruz, São Paulo, Sergipe, Rondônia, Tocantins.
Languages:	Portuguese, (Official), Spanish, Guaraní.
Religions:	Catholicism, Protestantism, Autoctonous Religions.
Capital:	Brasilia (under construction)
Main Cities:	Saõ Paulo (3,758,396), Río de Janeiro (2,887,455), Belo Horizonte (1,457,213), Fortaleza (778,312), Salvador (678,793), Recife (584,773), Porto Alegre (479,774), Vitoria (354,266), Florianópolis (342,836), Caienna (199,457)
Government:	Federal Presidencialist Republic
Main political parties:	National Party Conservative Party Progress Party Communist Party Unionist Party
Monetary unit:	Cruzeiro
Literacy:	65%