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Latin American Research Review 38.3 (2003) 250-260



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Top Brass and State Power in Twentieth-Century Brazilian Politics, Economics, and Culture

James N. Green
California State University, Long Beach


The Tribute Of Blood: Army, Honor, Race, And Nation In Brazil, 1864-1945. By Peter M. Beattie. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001. Pp. 390, $18.95 paper.)
Culture Wars In Brazil: The First Vargas Regime, 1930-1945. By Daryle Williams. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001. Pp. 346, $19.95 paper.)
Brazilian Party Politics And The Coup Of 1964. By Ollie A. Johnson III. (Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 2001. Pp. 176, $55.00 cloth.)
Brazil In The 1990s: An Economy In Transition. By Renato Baumann, ed. (New York, N.Y.: Palgrave, 2002. Pp. 314. $75.00 cloth.)
Brazil's Second Chance: En Route Toward The First World. By Lincoln Gordon. (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2001. Pp. 242, $28.95 cloth.)
Como Eles Agiam, Os Subterraneos Da Ditadura Militar: Espionagem E Policia Politica. By Carlos Fico. (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record, 2001. Pp. 269, R$33.00 paper.)

The recent presidential electoral victory of Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva, a former metalworker and labor leader, symbolically marks the end of a long chapter in Brazilian, and arguably Latin American, history and portends the beginning of a new one. Forty-two years ago the unexpected renunciation of Jânio Quadros, when he was only nine months into his term as president, unleashed an institutional crisis, an attempted military coup d'etat, and the ascension to the nation's highest political office of Vice President João Goulart, Getúlio Vargas's heir to the populist Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro. In the subsequent two and a half years, inflation soared, relations with the Kennedy and Johnson administrations soured over issues of Cold War anti-communism, and the Brazilian [End Page 250] military, with a green light from Washington, shoved Goulart aside and took power. On 1 April 1964 the armed forces began twenty-one years of authoritarian rule and became the first in a series of military governments that swept across the Southern Cone: Argentina (1966), Peru (1968), Bolivia (1971), Uruguay (1973), Chile (1973), and Argentina (1976).

In the late 1970s a rejuvenated labor movement, concentrated in the industrial belt surrounding São Paulo, carried out a series of strikes led by Lula that challenged the military's regressive wage policies toward the poor and working classes. With the economy tumbling because of international oil prices and a burgeoning foreign debt, the Brazilian generals negotiated an exit strategy that granted amnesty to torturers and guaranteed a conservative transition to democratic rule. As Timothy J. Power has documented in The Political Right in Postauthoritarian Brazil (2000), the elites that dominated the political system during the military's years in power managed to maintain control in the decade and a half after General João Figueiredo unceremoniously left Brasília's presidential Palácio do Planalto by the back door in 1985. During the 1990s former Marxist sociologist Fernando Henrique Cardoso stabilized the economy while accelerating the denationalization of state-owned industries and intensifying Brazil's insertion in the world economy within the framework of neo-liberal policies that other heads of state also implemented throughout the continent. Whether the election of a working-class leader to the presidency will tip the balance of power toward Brazil's underclasses remains to be seen. Over the years, the majority sector in the leadership of Lula's left-leaning Workers' Party has moderated its political program and made overtures to entrepreneurs, evangelicals, and politicians across the center-left spectrum. Nevertheless, Lula's victory brings to the forefront a series of historical, economic, political, and cultural questions about the relationship of the Brazilian state to the nation's economy, culture, and political system. Most observers do not expect the military to intervene in the political process in the near future, as they have done so many times over the course of the twentieth century. Nevertheless...

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