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Father of the Poor?
Vargas and His Era.
National Period
Father of the Poor? Vargas and His Era. By Robert M. Levine. New Approaches to the Americas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Photographs. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. x, 193 pp. Cloth, $54.95. Paper, $15.95. No figure has dominated twentieth-century Brazilian politics more than Getúlio Vargas. As a major state governor, insurrectionary leader, provisional president, dictator, senator, and, finally, populist president, Vargas shaped modern Brazilian politics in ways that continue to affect the nation. It is somewhat surprising, then, that no single book or collection exists as the standard work on the man and his era. Robert M. Levine attempts to fill that void with an ambitiously modest book geared primarily to undergraduates. Father of the Poor? Vargas and His Era succeeds in providing a useful and highly readable introduction to the Vargas years, but it is not the grand or synthetic work on Brazilian politics that is still needed.
Levine presents a clear chronology of Vargas's life and politics through the book's middle three substantive chapters. He ably describes the many twists and turns of Vargas's politics and provides the reader (presumably students in survey courses) the basics of the Estado Novo and Vargas's subsequent populist turn. Levine focuses on macrolevel [End Page 210] politics. When he does analyze specific policies, Levine stays on the familiar ground of Vargas-era industrial relations. He concludes--rightly, I think-- that Vargas was only partially successful in transforming Brazilian politics. Vargas managed to create a sense of national unity, some central authority for the national government in Rio (in the aftermath of the extreme federalism of the Old Republic), and an industrial relations system that was influential among workers in Rio.
Father of the Poor? is less helpful in analyzing overarching themes in twentieth-century Brazilian history. Levine points out the many contradictions in Vargas's policies and the changes in the Brazilian social structure and economy during Vargas's lifetime. But he does not present an analytic framework or even a series of hypotheses for these changes. Levine also avoids claiming that Vargas initiated or shaped most of these changes. The book therefore reflects its subject: Brazilian history in the first half of the twentieth seems to be as complicated and indecipherable as Vargas himself. Indeed, Levine avoids answering several of the questions he poses in the book's introduction. It may be that a book of only 138 pages of text cannot provide a narrative and analysis of such a long and complicated period in Brazilian history.
Levine seems to recognize this problem and so attempts to show that class differences influenced Brazilians' views of Vargas. Levine also rightly points out that Vargas's legacy is much weaker in Brazil than Juan Perón's in Argentina or Franklin Roosevelt's in the United States. Levine argues that Vargas was more a reformer than a revolutionary, and the nature of some of his most successful policies (e.g., civil service reform, centralized budgeting, etc.) does not always inspire lifelong adulation in a nation's citizens. The book's penultimate chapter, "Different Getúlios," seeks to give a voice to the disparate views of Vargas as a man and as a leader. Levine uses a handful of interviews (conducted by others), memoirs, and songs to illustrate the ways "average" Brazilians looked at and/or remember Vargas. This chapter, though, disappoints the reader, because the issue is too broad and complicated to be addressed in such a brief way. As in the rest of the book, Levine provides more narrative than analysis. Overall, Father of the Poor? succeeds in its most basic goals. It provides a clear and brief introduction to the Vargas years, an excellent chronology, some interesting primary materials in the appendix, and a thorough bibliographic essay.
Joel W. Wolfe
Rice University
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Father of the Poor?: Vargas and His Era (review)
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