The Contradictions of Brazilian Capitalism and the Myth of the National Bourgeoisie: from Vargas to Rousseff

CRESPO, EDUARDO ALBERTO; GHIBAUDI, JAVIER WALTER

Rivista Il Político

Universitá di Pavia

Año: 2014 vol. 236 p. 118 - 127

0032-325X

During the 1930s, Brazil began the construction of a Modern State in a territory marked by regional peculiarities, oligarchies associated with the possession of land and a typically peripherical integration on the international market by means of specializing its productive structure in tropical commodities exports. Throughout the Vargas Era, new social actors emerged. In order to consolidate a centralizing policy, national heroes were invented, some major infrastructure projectswere promoted and the great public companies and institutions that dominate the Brazilian economy until the present day were set up. Examples of those companies and institutions are petrobras, Vale do Rio Dolce and the National Development Bank (bndes)1. During this period, the State organized the main labor organizations and different laws and institutions favorable to workers, as the social security, came into force.