Estado Novo (Brazil)

On September 30, 1937, while awaiting the presidential elections scheduled for January 1938, which would be disputed by José Américo de Almeida, Armando de Sales Oliveira, both supporters of the 1930 revolution, and Plínio Salgado, the Vargas government denounced the existence of an alleged communist plan to seize power, which became known as the Cohen Plan. Later, Captain Olímpio Mourão Filho, a supporter of integralism, was accused of forging the plot. He was the same man who initiated the 1964 coup d'état in Brazil.[6]

Photo of Getúlio Vargas and Franklin Roosevelt meeting in Rio de Janeiro in 1936.

However, the integralists deny their participation in the establishment of the Estado Novo, blaming General Góis Monteiro, then head of the Army General Staff, for the creation and dissemination of the Cohen Plan. Only eighteen years later, before the Brazilian Army's Council of Justification, requested on December 26, 1956, the then Colonel Olímpio Mourão Filho proved his innocence. On October 1, 1937, the day after the Cohen Plan was announced, the National Congress declared a state of war throughout the country.[6]

On October 19, the governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Flores da Cunha, after losing control of the Military Brigade of Rio Grande do Sul, which, by Getúlio's order, had been subordinated to the Brazilian Army, and after being surrounded militarily by General Góis Monteiro, left office and went into exile in Uruguay. Flores da Cunha, who had bought a large quantity of arms in Europe, represented the last possible military resistance to a coup attempt by Getúlio. Armando de Sales Oliveira, who could also oppose the coup d'état, had already left the government of São Paulo on December 29, 1936, to run for president. His successor José Joaquim Cardoso de Melo Neto promised Getúlio that "the state would not make another revolution". Just as in 1930, São Paulo was once again divided; the Constitutionalist Party (of Armando Sales and heir to the Democratic Party) and the Paulista Republican Party were unable to get along, since the PRP had not agreed to support Armando Sales' candidacy for the presidency of the republic.[6]

On November 10, 1937, through a coup d'état, Vargas instituted the Estado Novo via a Manifesto to the nation made in a radio address, in which he said that the regime intended to "readjust the political organism to the economic needs of the country". On the same day, he ordered the closure of Brazil's National Congress and granted a new constitution, which gave him total control of the executive branch and permission to appoint interventors for the states, to whom he gave broad decision-making autonomy. This statute, drafted by Francisco Campos, became known as "Polaca" because it was inspired by the constitution in force in Poland at the time.[7]

November 15, 1939: commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Proclamation of the Republic.

Getúlio at the inauguration of Avenida do Contorno, with Benedito Valadares, governor of Minas Gerais, and the then mayor of Belo Horizonte, Juscelino Kubitschek, on May 12, 1940.

Getúlio Vargas visiting Porto Velho in 1940.

The 1937 Constitution provided for a new legislature, which was never installed, and for a plebiscite, that was not convened. During the Estado Novo, no elections were held, but the judiciary had its autonomy preserved. In its preamble, the document justifies the establishment of the dictatorship by describing a pre-civil war situation that Brazil was experiencing.[3]

On December 2, 1937, by Decree-Law No. 37, the political parties were abolished, including two that were critical of the political system then in force in Brazil and that preached "direct contact with the masses":[8]

Considering that the electoral system then in force, inadequate to the conditions of national life, based on artificial combinations of a legal and formal nature, encouraged the proliferation of parties, with the sole and exclusive aim of giving candidacies and elective positions the appearance of legitimacy, and:[8] Considering that the new regime, founded in the name of the nation to meet its aspirations and needs, must be in direct contact with the people, overriding partisan struggles of any kind, independent of the consultation of groupings, parties or organizations, ostensibly or disguisedly aimed at conquering public power.[8]

Regarding Getúlio's opinion on political parties, Luís Vergara says, in chapter 41 of his book Eu fui secretário de Getúlio, that Vargas was against their existence in the Estado Novo, even rejecting the one-party thesis:[9]

We must have no illusions. Given our customs and the low level of our political culture, addicted to oligarchic and personalist practices, this single party will soon begin to subdivide into factions and needlessly agitate and disrupt the life of the country.[9]

The inauguration of Goiânia in 1942 was the start of a "march to the west" that culminated in the construction of Brasília many years later.

Getúlio added his government's vision to Luís Vergara: "What is urgent is to speed up the process of our development and strengthen the creative energies of progress and raising the economic level of the population, which, in many regions, remains stationary and in a stage of true pauperism." Luís Vergara then notes that "the issue (of the single party) is closed for good".[9]

The Estado Novo was also against any demonstration of regionalism. On December 4, the flags of the federal states, which were forbidden to have any symbols, were burned in a great civic ceremony on the Russel Esplanade in Rio de Janeiro. Getúlio expressed his opinion on this subject in 1939: "We no longer have regional problems; they are all national, and of interest to the whole of Brazil".[10]

The government implemented press censorship through the Department of Press and Propaganda (DIP), created by Decree-Law No. 1,915 of December 27, 1939. On the creation of the DIP, Getúlio, in a speech to the Federal Senate on December 13, 1946, stated:[11]

In 1940, and not in 1937, I created the Department of Press and Propaganda to control and closely monitor foreign infiltration in Brazil. At the time, the United Press and the Associated Press were operating in our country... Havas, which was French, was controlled by the Germans... Havas was the most widespread agency in Brazil and distributed the services of all the European agencies, including Reuter. Along with Havas, Transocean, directly German, covered the entire territory, blocking the United... Havas and Transocean distributed the national telegraph service. They had exceptional internal power. Several newspapers in German, Italian and Japanese infested the areas populated by these peoples.... British propaganda also intensified. But I shouldn't solve our problems according to the convenience of international propaganda, but on the basis of the convenience of Brazil and America... The excessive diligence of British propaganda repeatedly disrupted my actions. But to a certain extent it was useful, because it led to measures that guaranteed our impeccable neutrality (in the early years of the World War II).[12]

Demonstration in support of Getúlio Vargas in front of the Chamber of Deputies, April 19, 1942. National Archives.

Getúlio's cabinet remained relatively stable during the Estado Novo, with the ministers of Finance, War, the Navy and Education remaining in their posts throughout the period. The only reaction to the establishment of the dictatorship was the Integralist Uprising on May 8, 1938, which attacked the Guanabara Palace with the aim of deposing Getúlio. This episode led Vargas to create a personal guard, which the people called the "Black Guard".[13]

In an interview with Revista do Globo, Getúlio gave his version of the Integralist Uprising: "First of all, it must be made clear that the Integralist coup of 1938 was organized by the German embassy. The Brazilians served only as instruments in a plan to hand the country over to the German government. Naturally, if it hadn't been for the help of German agents, they would never have carried it out, because they didn't have the capacity or the courage to do so."[14]

According to the preamble to the 1937 Constitution, the Estado Novo was installed in order to meet "the legitimate aspirations of the Brazilian people for political and social peace, deeply disturbed by notorious factors of disorder resulting from the growing aggravation of party disputes, that demagogic propaganda seeks to denature as class struggle, and the extremism of ideological conflicts, tending, by their natural development, to resolve themselves in terms of violence, placing the nation under the ominous imminence of civil war". It continues by saying:[3]

Attending to the state of apprehension created in the country by communist infiltration, which is becoming more extensive and deeper every day, requiring radical and permanent remedies;[3]

Given that, under the previous institutions, the State did not have the normal means to preserve and defend the peace, security and well-being of the people;[3]

Resolves to ensure to the Nation its unity, respect for its honor and independence, and to the Brazilian people, under a regime of political and social peace, the conditions necessary for their security, well-being and prosperity, by decreeing the following Constitution, which shall be fulfilled from today throughout the Country.[3]

In 1938, Virgulino Ferreira da Silva, better known as Lampião, was killed, a fact that contributed to the weakening of the banditry that had tormented the Northeast.

Throughout the Estado Novo, there was rigorous repression of communism, backed by the National Security Law, and no revolutionary movements such as the Communist Uprising in 1935 occurred. However, there was no federal police force in Brazil, and the state police forces remained under the command of the federal interventors in the states. In civil life, the Brazilian Civil Code of 1916 remained in force, and a new, more liberal penal code was adopted.[15]

The strongest criticism of this repression concerns the torture that happened at the Rio de Janeiro Police Headquarters during Filinto Müller's administration. This fact spread the accusations by some critics of the Estado Novo, claiming that torture had occurred throughout Brazil, although nothing alleges that Getúlio knew about or ordered the torture.[16]

Regarding the Civil Police of the Federal District, on October 3, 1931, Getúlio reported on the changes he had made to that agency during his first year in office:[2]

Under the revolutionary government, the Civil Police of the Federal District redeemed itself in the eyes of public opinion; it was, in fact, one of the departments that had fallen the lowest in the country's general opinion. This division had long since ceased to be an apparatus of order, but had been transformed into a terrorist organization, whose fame had already spread, with the prestige of sinister things, beyond our borders.[2]

He reported on the measures taken in his first year in office:

The Provisional Government's action in the Civil Police went in two directions: the first was to uncompromisingly replace corrupt elements with others of proven suitability. Once the police mentality had been modified, however, another measure was needed: to remove it from subordinate influences, whether political or not, so that it would not suffer new deformations or deviations as the days went by.[2]

These reforms reported by Getúlio followed the suggestions of the Civil Police Reform Commission of the Federal District under the management of Police Chief João Batista Luzardo.[17]

Admiral Ernâni do Amaral Peixoto, who was federal interventor in the state of Rio de Janeiro during the Estado Novo, in his book Artes da Política - Diálogo com Amaral Peixoto, spoke about Captain Filinto Müller's work as a policeman: "Filinto was an excellent policeman. He was like Ramos de Freitas, whom I had to dismiss for excesses. The police in Filinto's time worked very well. Now it works the way he wants it to.[18]

In order to supervise the Civil Police of the Federal District, Decree-Law No. 5,504 of May 20, 1943, created the Federal District Police Inspectorate. The bad reputation of Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro in the Old Republic had already been celebrated in the first samba recorded in Brazil, Pelo Telefone, by Donga, in 1917, which read: "Over the phone, the Chief of Police tells me that in Carioca there's a roulette wheel to play".[19]

Getúlio Vargas with the future general and president of Brazil, Ernesto Geisel (Recife, 1940).

Several authors in their biographies have reported the imprisonment and torture they suffered, but without claiming the direct involvement of Getúlio Vargas. This is the case of Pagu, Carlos Marighella and Joaquim Câmara Ferreira, who lost his fingernails in prison.[20][21][22]

However, several artists directly accuse Getúlio of restricting individual rights and guarantees during the Estado Novo, a question he exposed in São Paulo on July 23, 1938: "The Estado Novo does not recognize the rights of individuals against the community. Individuals don't have rights, they have duties! Rights belong to the community! The state, overriding the struggle of interests, guarantees the rights of the community and enforces its duties towards it."[2][23]

Getúlio is accused of a variety of crimes and the Estado Novo is described as a regime of terror: "The Vargas regime's relentless persecution of its opponents (real and imagined), whose methods heavily involved the use of torture, violence, deportation and murder, was just one of the facets, perhaps the best known, of this period."[24]

Lawyer Marina Pasquini Toffolli says that "with the advent of the Estado Novo, which began in 1937, Brazil experienced a dictatorship that spread terror and built barbarism throughout its territory, suppressing all individual guarantees, closing the federal, state and municipal parliaments. It also established severe censorship of the press and greatly strengthened the police departments aimed at political and social repression."[25]

The American researcher R.S. Rose was the first civilian to spend months examining the secret police archives in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The material collected was included in the book One of the Forgotten Things: Getúlio Vargas and Brazilian social control - 1930-1954, published in Brazil in 2001 by Companhia das Letras. According to him, who sees the Estado Novo as an unpopular regime that needed to "coerce the people" in order to maintain itself, "during Vargas' rule, the quality and quantity of human rights abuses reached unprecedented levels. Violence, as a means of coercing the people, was evident in all sectors of the security apparatus... The nation's police forces redefined and in some cases reinvented the torture that had already taken place in Brazil since colonial times. The cruelty of their methods was matched only by the fervor with which this example was followed by subsequent generations."[26]

However, regarding Getúlio's popularity during the Estado Novo, the October 1954 special edition of the magazine O Mundo Ilustrado says that it was during the dictatorial period that he enjoyed his greatest popularity, stating that "the popular prestige of President Vargas grew even more after the proclamation of the Estado Novo. Never before has a head of state been so loved by his people in our country. His prestige never waned, and Vargas remained beloved until his tragic death."[27]

In the book Falta Alguém em Nuremberg: Torturas da Polícia de Felinto Strubling Müller, journalist David Nasser lists some of the most common forms of torture. In the 1952 novel Os Subterrâneos da Liberdade, the writer from Bahia Jorge Amado, who went into exile in 1948, relates "details of the repression of the Brazilian Communist Party, censorship, torture and imprisonment" during the Estado Novo; he was arrested twice, in 1936 and 1937, on charges of subversion for his involvement with the Communist Uprising.[28] In 1937, his books were burned in a public square in Salvador.[29] On the other hand, Tancredo Neves, who was Minister of Justice from 1953 to 1954, commented on Getúlio's actions as dictator in his book Tancredo Fala de Getúlio: "He tried hard to project himself in history as a unique dictator, because he was a progressive dictator, a humanitarian dictator. Despite one or two accusations of violence, the people don't accept Getúlio as a violent dictator".[30]

Edda Mussolini, daughter of Benito Mussolini, is greeted by Adhemar de Barros during her visit to São Paulo in 1939. In the beginning, the Estado Novo sympathized with Nazi-fascism,

During World War II, in September 1939, Getúlio Vargas and the military maintained a neutral stance until 1941. Public opinion was divided: there was sympathy for the Axis Powers among many immigrants from those countries and integralists, but on the other hand, the majority of Afro-descendants and communists (especially after the invasion of the USSR in June 1941), who had great mobilization power and influence in the press, sympathized with the Allies. During this period, Getúlio wrote in his diary: "It seems to me that the Americans want to drag us into the war, without it being of any use to us or to them!"[6][31]

In January 1942, during the Pan-American Conference in Rio de Janeiro, the majority of countries on the continent condemned the Japanese attacks on the United States on December 7, 1941, and ended diplomatic relations with the Axis countries (Germany, Italy and Japan) on January 21, 1942. During the war, Nazi espionage in Brazil was active, both in networks and individual actions.[32]

The United States had plans to invade the northeastern region of Brazil, code-named Plan Rubber, if it didn't concede to the use of air bases in the north, which would compromise the country's neutrality. However, the execution of the plan wasn't necessary because, with or without Vargas' knowledge, the Brazilian military had already foreseen a "cautious alignment" with the US in the event of a new world conflict since 1934. In addition, the planned blockade imposed by the British navy on Germany and Italy made any kind of major exchange with these countries impossible.[33][34][35]

Brazilian propaganda announcing the declaration of war on the Axis powers on November 10, 1943.

Coat of arms of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force.

After extensive negotiation, Brazil and the United States signed an agreement in which the US government committed to financing the construction of a large Brazilian steel plant (Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional) in Volta Redonda, Rio de Janeiro, in exchange for permission to set up military bases and airports in the north and northeast of the country and in Fernando de Noronha. Soon after, the German navy was authorized by Berlin to extend submarine warfare to merchant ships flying the Brazilian flag, which was followed by the Italian navy, effectively ending Brazil's neutrality. However, only on August 22, seven months after the attacks, did Getúlio declare war on Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.[6]

The Allies needed natural rubber because, due to the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia, they could no longer depend on a vital supply from that region. As a result, there was a large migration of northeastern Brazilians to the Amazon to extract rubber latex, reviving the area's economy in those years, which had stagnated since the end of the first rubber cycle decades earlier.[36]

On January 28, 1943, Vargas and Franklin D. Roosevelt, president of the United States, attended the Natal Conference, where the first agreements were made leading to the creation of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force (FEB) in August, a year after the declaration of war. The pracinhas, as the members of the FEB became known, numbered 25,000 men in 1945, out of a total initially estimated at 200,000. In July 1944, they were finally sent to fight in Italy, where they served from September of the same year until the end of the conflict in Europe on May 8, 1945. The US and the UK invited Brazil to take part in the occupation of Austria, but the FEB command refused.[37][38]

Among the FEB soldiers were eight law students from the University of São Paulo, who took part in peaceful demonstrations opposing Getúlio, such as the Silent March, in which they paraded with black gags to symbolize the lack of freedom of expression. "We were called up as a punishment - as if it could be a punishment to serve Brazil!" wrote one of these students, Geraldo Vidigal, in the book O Aprendiz de Liberdade - do Centro XI de Agosto à Segunda Guerra Mundial. The role of these students in the war was to disarm landmines before the tanks got through.[6][39]

Getúlio, in his diary on January 27, 1942, was already showing concerns about the future of the Estado Novo, stating that:[31]

I have to confess that I feel sad. A large part of those who applaud this attitude (breaking diplomatic relations with Germany), a few who even slander me, are opponents of the regime I founded (the Estado Novo), and I even doubt that I will be able to consolidate it in order to pass the government on to my replacement.[31]

In 1943, the first organized protest against the Estado Novo occurred in Minas Gerais, called the Manifesto dos Mineiros, written and signed by lawyers from the state, including many influential jurists and important political leaders of the UDN, such as José de Magalhães Pinto.[40]

A staunch opponent of the Estado Novo was the writer Monteiro Lobato, who was imprisoned and accused Getúlio of not letting Brazilians search for oil freely. As the World War II approached its end in 1945, the pressures for redemocratization grew stronger. José Américo de Almeida's interview with Carlos Lacerda on February 22, 1945, published in Rio de Janeiro's Correio da Manhã, symbolized the end of press censorship under the Estado Novo and the weakening and fall of the regime.[41]

Despite some measures taken, such as setting a date for the presidential elections on May 28, 1945 (December 2), amnesty for Luís Carlos Prestes and other political prisoners, freedom of party organization and the commitment to elect a new Constituent Assembly, the pressure for Getúlio to resign remained strong.[6]

Demonstration in favor of Getúlio Vargas at the end of the Estado Novo, on August 21, 1945. National Archives.

Led by businessman Hugo Borghi, a movement in support of Getúlio emerged, which was nicknamed "Queremismo" with the slogans "Queremos Getúlio" (We want Getúlio) and "Constituinte com Getúlio" (Constituent with Getúlio), which wanted Vargas to remain in power until a new constitution was promulgated, but this did not happen.[42]

Getúlio Vargas was deposed on October 29, 1945 by a military movement led by generals who were part of his own ministry, putting an end to the Estado Novo.[1] He formally resigned as president of the republic and was replaced by the president of the Federal Supreme Court, José Linhares, since there was no vice-president in the 1937 Constitution. José stayed in office for three months before handing over power to the president elected on December 2, 1945, Eurico Gaspar Dutra. The trigger for the military action was the appointment of Getúlio's brother, Benjamim Vargas, as chief of police in Rio de Janeiro.[43]

A valuable contribution to Eurico Dutra's electoral victory came from Hugo Borghi, who distributed thousands of pamphlets accusing candidate Eduardo Gomes of saying: "I don't need the votes of the marmiteiros". In fact, what Eduardo said, at the Municipal Theater in Rio de Janeiro, on November 19, was: "I don't need the votes of these unemployed people who support the dictator to elect me president of the Republic".[44][45]

Entrance to the former headquarters of the Ministry of Education and Health, built during the Estado Novo and a landmark of modern architecture in Brazil.

Some of the Estado Novo's characteristics resemble Castilhism, of which Getúlio was a supporter. It had three basic principles valued by the Estado Novo: the choice of rulers based on their moral purity and not on their popular representativeness; in politics, party political disputes should be eliminated, valuing only virtue; the ruler should regenerate society, and the state should lead the transformation and modernization of society.[76]

In line with the national political tradition, Vargas and several members of his government were inspired by European fascism, from which they borrowed the contempt for political parties and the concern to efficiently control the press and education. For this purpose, the Department of Press and Propaganda (DIP) was created, which censored newspapers and produced propaganda pieces on behalf of the government, trying to turn Getúlio Vargas into a myth, as the "father of the poor".[1]

Like the Italian fascists, the Brazilian Estado Novo denied the class struggle, claiming that economic growth was on the side of businessmen and workers. Vargas appeased the workers by creating the CLT and setting up official unions, while he pleased the businessmen by creating infrastructure for the growth of industry. Due to his closeness to the lower classes, meeting their demands for certain rights, Getúlio Vargas was considered a populist.[1][77]

On the other hand, the Estado Novo sought a national identity for the first time in Brazil's history. The concept of "cultural anthropophagy" manifested by the Modern Art Week in São Paulo in 1922 was expanded during the Estado Novo through SPHAN, an institution planned by Mário de Andrade and with intellectual collaborators such as Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Oscar Niemeyer, Lúcio Costa and Cândido Portinari. The idea that there is an authentic Brazilian culture, created by the fusion of indigenous, African and European culture, was consolidated. Not just the three cultures, but the three peoples would live in harmony, creating a united people capable of modernizing the country.[78]

The Estado Novo promulgated the Brazilian Penal Code, the Law of Criminal Contraventions, the Brazilian Code of Criminal Procedure, and the Consolidation of Labor Laws (CLT), all in effect to this day. The Code of Civil Procedure was created, which at the time represented many advances, constituting the first modern procedural legislation in Brazil; it was abolished by the 1973 Code of Civil Procedure, established by Law 5.869, of January 11, 1973.[79] Decree-Law No. 1.985, of January 29, 1940, established the Mines Code, which was in force until 1967, when it was replaced by the Mining Code. Decree-law 7.661 of June 21, 1945 established the Bankruptcy Law, in force until 2005.[80] Decree-Law No. 2.994, soon replaced by Decree-Law No. 3.651, created the Brazilian Traffic Code.[81]

Vargas made the work permit compulsory to consolidate labor rights.

During the Estado Novo, Getúlio Vargas created the Labor Court on May 1, 1939, by Decree-Law 1,237, established the minimum wage and granted workers job stability after ten years of employment.[82] On November 28, 1940, the Inter-American Coffee Agreement was signed in Washington, DC, by Brazil and 13 other coffee-producing countries and the United States, with the aim of regulating coffee prices and international trade.[83]

In 1942, the territory of Fernando de Noronha was created. In 1943, the Federal Territory of Guaporé (now Rondônia), the Federal Territory of Rio Branco (now Roraima) and the Federal Territory of Amapá were established. The federal territories of Iguaçu and Ponta Porã were also founded, but did not prosper.[84][85] The decisive factor for Getúlio to create them was his visit, during the Estado Novo, to the Central-West of Brazil, when, as he says in his diary, he was impressed by the population vacuum in the region. He considered the Central Brazil of old to be "a vast, untapped solitude". In the process, he created indigenous reserves for the Guarani Kaiowá in order to remove them and facilitate this expansion.[86][87]

The north of Paraná, until then unpopulated, was colonized and filled with people through a major colonization project carried out by the private sector, especially by Companhia de Terras do Norte do Paraná (Cianorte). This effort to occupy the interior of Brazil was called by Getúlio the "March to the West"; in 1940, Cassiano Ricardo published a book with this title. Mining entrepreneur Jorge Abdalla Chamma, in his book Por um Brasil Melhor, details the Estado Novo's efforts to set up a steel plant in Corumbá.[88] On September 10, 1950, in his campaign for president of the republic, Getúlio made a speech in Uberaba attributing the development of the Triângulo Mineiro and Central Brazil to zebu cattle breeders:[59]

Fighting against opinions that opposed the introduction of zebu cattle in Brazil, the farmers of the Triângulo Mineiro, supported exclusively by their own work and their own resources, endured all the hardships of the tremendous struggle that was waged, and which, in the end, gave them an undisputed victory. Since then, Central Brazil has become economically significant, transforming it from the vast, untapped loneliness it was then into the large, economically active stronghold it is today.[59]

Decree-Law 5941 of 28 October 1943 established the Dourados National Agricultural Colony, which made it possible to colonize and expand agriculture in the south of what is now Mato Grosso do Sul. The Baixada Fluminense was cleaned up. Decree-Law No. 6882 of February 19, 1941 established the National Agricultural Colony of Goiás.[89][90]

Decree-Law No. 3,855, of February 21, 1941, established the Sugarcane Plantation Statute, which Getúlio described in a speech on January 12, 1947, in Recife: "The first agrarian reform law in Brazil came about for your benefit with the 'Sugarcane Plantation Statute'. I didn't promise it: I did it. I carried out the greatest social reform of the century with this statute, balancing real rights with labor rights."[91]

Carmen Miranda was a symbol of the "Good Neighbor policy" between the United States and Brazil.

In the book A revolução e a América - O Presidente Getúlio Vargas e a Diplomacia (1930-1940), which brings together texts by Oswaldo Aranha and José Roberto de Macedo Soares, it is reported that when Getúlio took office in Brazil in 1930, he recognized and complied with all the commitments made by Brazil abroad, which facilitated diplomatic recognition of the Provisional Government.[92]

The government of Getúlio mediated the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between Peru and Uruguay; in 1931, it received a visit from Italian aviators and British princes; in 1934, it signed the Protocol of Friendship between Peru and Colombia, putting an end to the Leticia Question; it demarcated 4,535 kilometers of borders between 1930 and 1940; promoted conciliation between Bolivia and Paraguay, putting an end to the Chaco War, including forgiving the Paraguayan debt; obtained, through US President Franklin Roosevelt, a loan from the Export and Import Bank, used for public works and purchases for Lloyd Brasileiro and the Estrada de Ferro Central do Brasil; set up the Inter-American Neutrality Commission in Rio de Janeiro in 1940; signed 86 international acts and 122 bilateral agreements; created the Federal Foreign Trade Council in 1934; created the Immigration and Colonization Council in 1938 and the National Economy Defense Council in 1939.[93][94][95][96]

Getúlio Vargas employed ambiguous policies towards the Axis and Allied orbits. Firstly, Brazil seemed to be entering the Axis orbit even before the declaration of the Estado Novo in 1937. Between 1933 and 1938, Nazi Germany became the main market for Brazilian cotton, and its second largest importer of Brazilian coffee and cocoa. The rapid increase in civilian and military trade between Brazil and Nazi Germany gave US officials reason to start questioning Getúlio Vargas' international alignment.[97]

During the Estado Novo, Brazil sheltered many Jews persecuted by the Nazi-fascist regimes in Europe; João Guimarães Rosa, Brazil's consul in Germany, was posthumously honored by the Israeli government in the 1980s. Brazil was the only South American nation to found the League of Nations (1918) and the UN (1945), maintaining its traditional foreign policy of favoring negotiated solutions to conflicts.[98][99]

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