Father of the Poor? Vargas and His Era.

Parker, David S. ; Colwill, Elizabeth

Father of the Poor? Vargas and His Era, by Robert M. Levine. New York, Cambridge University Press, 1998. 193 pp. $54.95 U.S.

The figure of Getulio Vargas continues to cast a long shadow over the history of twentieth-century Brazil. Vargas was the architect of Brazil's interventionist federal state, of its extensive w albeit flawed -- social insurance system, and of a corporatist model of labour relations that in its fundamentals still operates today, despite substantial modification over past decades. Like Argentina's Juan Peron, Vargas epitomizes Latin American populism, the urban-based, multi-class, nationalistic, and highly personalistic movements that in the early and mid-twentieth century challenged the political monopoly of the region's traditional elites and gave the masses a public voice for the first time.

I have long been looking for a short, readable biography of Vargas or Peron that would help students understand the complexities and contradictions of populism. Populists sought to increase popular political participation, yet often despised and subverted democratic procedures. They sought class conciliation and the mediation of social conflict, yet their policies often exacerbated political polarization. They promised far more than they delivered, yet they were able to win and sustain the deep, emotional loyalty of their followers. Of these three contradictions, Levine analyses the third most extensively. His conclusions are generally on target, but in a mere 138 pages, Levine cannot entirely do justice both to the narrative of events in Brazil and to the broader discussion of implications.

After an excellent introduction, Levine uses two-thirds of the book to present a rather traditionally-structured political biography. Chapter Two follows Vargas's rise from old-style political boss in Rio Grande do Sul to leader of the so-called "Revolution of 1930." Levine succeeds well in explaining the crisis in Brazilian politics that shaped this unexpected trajectory. The chapter ends by chronicling Vargas's turbulent first seven years, a time when social and regional conflicts appeared to tear the nation apart, yet Vargas succeeded brilliantly at consolidating his own position and that of the federal government vis-a-vis the states.

Chapter Three covers the Estado Novo (1937-1945), Vargas's dictatorial regime modelled after Salazar's Portugal and (to a lesser extent) Mussolini's Italy. Although Levine talks about the corporatist theories that inspired the abandonment of democracy, his explanation of the Estado Novo dwells more on the short-term goals of a man who "had always felt impatient with political delay" (p. 54). Dictatorship suited Vargas's style, and if the authoritarian climate of the 1930s made dictatorship palatable for Brazilians, then Vargas would write a constitution that gave himself dictatorial powers, just as he would abandon those powers when more democratic winds began to blow in the W.W. II era. This chapter also looks at major innovations in social policy, the remaking of labour relations, and Vargas's propaganda machine, among other themes. Chapter Four examines Vargas's ouster in 1945 and his subsequent return as elected President from 1950 to 1954, when he committed suicide. It was in this second, more democratic incarnation, that Vargas really took on the classic characteristics of populism, mobilizing his followers through emotional denunciations of foreign imperialists and domestic oligarchs. But Levine also sees Vargas's second regime as doomed from the start; the brilliant machine politician might play the game of electoral mobilization, but it was a dangerous game for which he was ultimately ill-suited.

Chapters Five and Six, "Different Getulios" and "Vargas's Incomplete Revolution," seek to tease out the lessons to be learned from the preceding narrative. Although they hardly provide the interpretive last word, they are by far the most interesting and profitable chapters in the book, presenting a compelling and highly readable answer to the question of why so many poor people idolized a man who in reality did so little for them. Three themes dominate that answer. First, Vargas successfully projected an image of himself as an ordinary man, a backwoods rancher, not an intellectual or a pompous aristocrat. Second, his interventionist policies, modest though they were in the aggregate, often touched the lives of specific individuals in ways that those individuals did not forget. This was particularly the case because those benefits came wrapped in a discourse of clientelism, rather than a discourse of entitlement (p. 114). Third, Vargas was the first major leader in Brazil to treat the poor as if they counted. Although in most cases his policies only reached better-off workers in metropolitan Rio and Sao Paulo, this message reached far beyond.

Had Levine been able to trim the narrative in chapters two through four in order to deepen and expand the interpretive discussion of Getulismo in Chapters Five and Six, this book might have become the perfect classroom tool that I have been looking for. It is easy to understand why he did not do so, but arguably an opportunity was lost. Still, Father of the Poor? receives a high recommendation. Useful and well-done appendices include a chronology, selected primary documents, photographs, and a bibliographic essay (limited to sources in English).

David S. Parker

Queen's University