About 2,000 men, civilians, and soldiers, had refused to surrender to the government when the generals did. They were led by a group of young officers who have all left their marks on modern Brazilian history, but the most important for the moment, since he later bacame leader of the Brazilian Communists, is Luiz Carlos Prestes. They left Rio Grande do Sul, hid out in the forests of the State of Santa Catarina, and reached Mato Grosso. Then, like the 17th-century bandeirantes, the column made its way through the interior of Brazil, most of it as yet not even mapped. Prestes led them through the wild northeast, from Piauí to Bahia. It was not an army of aggression; they only defended themselves when attacked. They respected the people they came in contact with, and requisitioned no more than they needed, food and horses, giving receipts for everything they took, to be paid on “the victory of the Revolution.” In general, the population received them with sympathy, or at least did not oppose them. Prestes became a legendary figure, and the newspapers gave him the sobriquet of “Knight of Hope.” Finally, after almost two years of marching through the hinterlands of Brazil and covering 25,000 kilometres, the column split in two, one part finding political asylum in Bolivia, and the other in Argentina.
All the leaders of the column were to return as victors in 1930. All except Prestes, who during his exile stumbled on Marxism, became a member of the Communist Party, and went to Russia. He appears again as the leader of the pro-Communist movement of 1935, which provided the pretext for setting up the Vargas dictatorship.
In 1930 the president was Washington Luiz, from São Paulo. But instead of keeping to the “coffee and milk” understanding, and letting “milk,” or a president from Minas Gerais, follow him, he succeeded in getting another Paulista elected as his successor. The powerful State of Minas naturally resented this tipping of the scales in favor of the rival state and aligned itself with the ever-present rebellious military elements. They won the support of the governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Getúlio Vargas, — a politician until then almost unknown to the rest of the country — and revolted against President Luiz. The “old Republic” had reached the end of its days, and the saying was, it was “ripe to fall.” One by one, the state governors were put out by the insurrectionists. The exiled officers became the leaders of the movement, and at first it appeared that the governor of Minas would be able to seize power — the plan all along. But they hadn’t counted on the political talents, opportunism, and qualities of leadership of the gaucho Vargas, who very quickly broke with all his early fellow-revolutionaries and became the President of the Provisional Government.
The Vargas dictatorship had arrived. Immediate elections were promised, but Vargas kept putting them off. São Paulo (the richest state in Brazil) was powerless, as well as humiliated by the conquerors, who handed it over to the mercies of the “officers” of the revolution. In 1932, under the awkward slogan of “Constitutionalization,” São Paulo got ready to fight. There was talk of secession. The Paulistas took up arms as one man, but the rest of the country did not follow them, & Vargas, now running the army, crushed the “Constitutionalistas.”
In the meantime he was having trouble maintaining his dictatorship, and in 1934 he had to permit elections for a new Congress. This Congress voted for a new and very liberal constitution, incorporating most of the […] of the revolutionaries of ’22, ’24, and ’30: secret ballot, female suffrage, and the representation of all classes. This same Congress then appointed Vargas president of the “New Republic,” for a term of four years. The liberals & the revolutionary officers had triumphed; everything seemed for the best in the best possible of worlds. But Vargas, the “caudilho” of the frontier, did not care for the restrictions the new constitution placed on him and began to show his hand. The Communists promoted a united front movement of all the leftists, under the name of “Alliance of Liberation,” and led by Prestes, who had returned from Russia, they succeded in stirring up revolution in Rio and in the northeast. Vargas quickly crushed this revolt, too, this time with great severity.
It was the time of fascist power: Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy, Franco in Spain, and Salazar in Portugal. Vargas allied himself with Brazil’s fascist party, the “Integralistas.” Protected by the “state of war” he had decreed in order to combat the leftists, he secretly ordered his advisers to draw up a fascist-style constitution (copied, it was said, from that of Poland); he sent advance emissaries to all the states to guarantee the support of the governors, and he sent to jail, en masse, as political prisoners, all intellectuals and politicians who carried any weight with the public. On the 10th of November, 1937, in a surprise move, he surrounded the two houses of Congress with troops, closed them, and put his secret constitution into effect. (The people quickly called it the “Polish” one.) Under the name of the “New State,” fascism began in Brazil.
The idea of dictatorship was intolerable to the majority of Brazilians; nevertheless, it is true that in spite of the abuses of power, it never took on (at least, not openly) the worst aspects of European fascism. As one commentator said, it was fascism “Brazilian-style,” i.e., “fascism with sugar.” No public executions, no shootings, no concentration camps. After the first few months most of the political prisoners were released; only a few leaders, condemned by the inquisitorial ”Security Tribunal” remained in jail. Other leaders went into exile. The “Integralistas” themselves, who had been ridiculed by Vargas and robbed of all power, revolted; this revolt was also brutally put down.
At the start of World War II Vargas did not conceal his sympathies for the Axis powers, and the first Nazi victories lent support to his attitude. But public opinion, even gagged as it was by the dictatorship, made the most of every opportunity of showing its partiality for the Allies. President Roosevelt, for his part, did all he could to bring Brazil over to the side of the Allies, particularly after Pearl Harbor. Brazil ceded military bases to the Americans; the air-lift was established between Natal and Dakar, by means of which large numbers of American troops and quantities of supplies crossed the ocean. Finally, after the sinking of Brazilian ships by German submarines, campaigns in the newspapers, and demonstrations in the streets, Vargas was forced to declare war against the Axis powers. A contingent of Brazilian soldiers was sent to fight in Italy and suffered losses. At the end of the war in 1945, Brazil, in spite of Vargas and the dictatorship, was proud to be among the victorious Allies.
It was scarcely possible to maintain the “New State,” typically fascist, even if moderate, after the enthusiasm Brazil had shown for the Allies and her own returning soldiers. The United States put discreet pressure on Vargas to permit free elections. The press, with one accord, disobeyed the government censorship, and Vargas was never able to impose it again. Finally, in October 1945, the highest-ranking military officer, realizing that the dictatorship was tottering, ordered Vargas out, and he was sent into exile, not abroad, but to his far-off fazenda, in Rio Grande do Sul.
Elections were held. The opposition candidate was the Brigadier General Eduardo Gomes, the only survivor of the national heroes, the “18 of Copacabana” of 1922. But even if Vargas was out, the political machine of the dictatorship was still functioning, and the same leaders who had supported the “New State” were still in power. They succeeded in electing their candidate, General Eurico Dutra, Vargas’s ex — Minister of War, who had been called the “Constable of the New State.”
Surprisingly enough, once in power Dutra showed respect for the constitution, (a liberal constitution was again in effect) and no tendency to seek personal power or permit military excessess. But he was a friend, an ally, of the deposed dictator. The political rights of Vargas had not been revoked; the necessary electoral reforms did not take place. So that, at the end of Dutra’s five years in office, “Getúlio” ran again. He took advantage of the emotional paternalism the enormous propaganda machine of the “New State” had been preaching to the people for eight years — and that the Dutra government had not unmasked. And in 1951 Vargas, in a landslide victory, was again in power, this time as lawfully elected president.