Coffee and Transformation in Sao Paulo, Brazil

Coffee and Transformation in São Paulo, Brazil

Coffee and Transformation in São Paulo, Brazil

Mauricio A. Font

Copyright ©Mauricio A.Font 2010Lexington Books First published in 1990 as Coffee, Contention and Change, Basil Blackwell, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Font, Mauricio A. Coffee and Transformation in São Paulo, Brazil / Mauricio A. Font Includes bibliographical references ISBN 1. Coffee trade-Brazil-São Paulo (State)-History. 2. Coffee growers-Brazil-São Paulo (State)-History. 3. Industrialization-Brazil-São Paulo (State)-History. 4. São Paulo (Brazil State) -Poli-tics and government. 5. Elite (Social sciences)-Brazil-São Paulo (State)-History. 6. Immi-grants-Brazil-São Paulo (State)-History. I. Title. II. Series.HD199.B8S217 1990 338.1'7373'098161-dc20 89-35990 CIP

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Contents Tables viiFigures ixAbbreviations and Acronyms xiPreface xiii 1 Introduction 1Part I Export Sector Organization, Contention, and Structural Change

2 Planters and Independent Agriculture 11 3 Elite Mobilization and Policy-Making 35 4 Coffee and Industrialization 89Part II Politics: The Quest for Hegemony

5 A Changing Polity 125 6 From Export Sector Segmentation to Power Struggle 153 7 Coffee and the Revolution of 1930 199 8 From Contention to Revolution 227 9 Demise of an Old Regime 267 10 Conclusion: A Great Transformation in São Paulo 279Appendix A: Notes on Agrarian and Structural Change 295Appendix B: Background Notes on Political Change 311Bibliography and Comment 333Index 361About the Author 377

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Tables2-1. Brazilian and foreign farms in São Paulo, 1905-1934 162-2. Nationality of planters against whom claims were

filed at the Patronato Agrícola, 1922-1930 172-3. Population and economic shifts across regions in

São Paulo’s Santos zone, 1886-1940 244-1. Individually owned factories in São Paulo by

nationality of owner, 1920 924-2. Nationality of commercial capital registered at

the Junta Comercial de São Paulo, 1927, 1928, 1930, 1932 112

A-1. Coffee producers in the Santos zone by size, 1932 300A-2. Selected crops in São Paulo, 1919 303A-3. Coffee trees in 1932, by region, in millions 305

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Figures2-1. The world’s top coffee producers 132-2. The march to the west of the Paulista coffee

economy 153-1. Planters in action, 1920-30 383-2. Claims by big coffee elites, 1920-30 403-3. Paulista planters as contenders, 1920-30 623-4. Exchange rate, deficits, and the debt,

1889-1935 763-5. São Paulo’s public debt, 1889-1937 773-6. Claims on the Coffee Institute, 1925-30 824-1. Industrial production in São Paulo 904-2. Output of Paulista industry, 1928-40 1074-3. Grains and cotton processing plants 1105-1. São Paulo’s budget, 1890-1935 1355-2. São Paulo’s expenditures by sector 1376-1. Political violence in Santos zone,

January 1920-June 1924 1586-2. Local political violence in Santos zone, July 1924 1788-1. Internal migration in Brazil, 1920-40 2358-2. Brazil’s coffee production, 1900-30 2378-3. Brazil’s coffee exports and unsold stocks 245

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Abbreviations and AcronymsACS Associação Comercial de Santos

(Commercial Association of Santos)ACSP Associação Comercial de São Paulo

(Commercial Association of São Paulo)BANESPA Banco do Estado de São Paulo

(Bank of the State of São Paulo)CEBRAP Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento

(Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning)CIESP Centro das Indústrias do Estado de São Paulo

(Center of Industries of the State of São Paulo)CIFTSP Centro das Indústrias de Fiação e Tecelagem de São Paulo

(Center for Spinning and Weaving Manufacturers of São Paulo)

CP Correio Paulistano (newspaper)DN Diario Nacional (newspaper)DOPS Departamento de Ordem Política e Social

(Political and Social Police)FIESP Federação das Indústrias do Estado de São Paulo

(Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo) LAB Liga Agrícola Brasileira (Brazilian Agricultural League)OESP O Estado de São Paulo (newspaper)PD Partido Democrático (Democratic Party)PMA Partido Municipal Ararense (Municipal Party of Araras)PMS Partido Municipal de Santos (Municipal Party of Santos)PRP Partido Republicano Paulista (Paulista Republican Party)SIAP Sociedade Invisível para Ação Política

(Invisible Society for Political Action)

SPA Sociedade Paulista de Agricultura (Paulista Society of Agriculture)

SRB Sociedade Rural Brasileira (Brazilian Rural Society)

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Preface The great expansion of the world economy in the second half of the nine-teenth century decisively shaped the emergence of modern Latin America.As vast spaces of empty lands became dynamic economic frontiers driven bycoffee, grains, beef, sugar, and other leading export commodities, the pro-cess laid the basis for massive structural change—the hegemony of the mar-ket economy, major inflows of immigrants, cultural change, modern classformation, economic development, urbanization, institutional and politicalmodernization. Decades ago, Albert Hirschman, Raúl Prebish, CelsoFurtado, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and others wrote influential accountsof these profound transitions. Their insights continue to inform subsequentresearch, including my own analysis of the state of São Paulo’s dramatictransformation since the latter part of the nineteenth century—an essentialyet not fully understood element in the development of modern Brazil.

Beginning in the 1860s, Paulista landowners opened up very large newfazendas to grow coffee, thereby presiding over Brazil’s early phase of mod-ern economic expansion and political organization. Brazilian industrializa-tion after 1900 also greatly concentrated in São Paulo. It is widely acceptedthat development and industrialization resulted from processes of capitalistexpansion led by large coffee planters. In contrast, this volume highlights therole of independent agriculture and the competitive economy that eventuallyemerged outside the large coffee estates.

Allied with commercial intermediaries known as comissários and with for-eign investors in the construction of railroads, coupled with their ability toattract European and Asian colonos to occupy the unsettled lands, the entre-preneurial coffee landlords did open up the frontier to the west—makingSão Paulo the world’s largest producer of coffee for international markets.However, immigrant colonos did not intend to be substitutes for the slaves asmere farm hands or peons in new latifundia. Rather, a substantial number ofthem found ways to become independent agriculturalists or enact newcareers in the network of towns emerging in this region. In diverse ways,

xiv Preface

those settlers and other emergent actors played major roles in the frontierexpansion in western São Paulo.

These forms of change in the hinterland reinforced and found supportfrom the rapid urban-based industrialization that helped make this state thepremier economic unit in the Brazilian federation. That many of these emer-gent actors were highly represented in the rising class of industrialists showsthat structural segmentation went considerably beyond the rural areas of SãoPaulo state. The virtuous circle between city and countryside is a crucial ele-ment in explaining this region’s distinctive development path.

Transforming São Paulo engulfed the world of Brazilian politics. Clien-telistic forms of authority at the county and state level evolved in response tosocietal differentiation, political centralization and bureaucratization, and theincreasingly salient new cleavages. Traditional landlord political supremacywas increasingly questioned by professional politicians with their own visionof their state’s development path and national role. This study shows thattensions and conflict within São Paulo had a significant impact in theregional realignment processes contributing to political change and the Rev-olution of 1930.

Part I of this book concentrates on the social organization of the coffeeeconomy and its relationship to broader processes of industrialization andsocial change. It considers the extent to which São Paulo’s dynamism owedto the emergence of differentiated producers, merchants, and industrialistsor to the established, traditional large landholders. Chapter 2 discusses theappearance of an alternative agrarian economy of small and medium produc-ers challenging the large estates. It explains how the growth of the coffeeeconomy in São Paulo, characterized by frontier expansion and the inflow ofimmigrants, made possible the emergence of independent producers and asegmented pattern of social organization. Chapter 3 begins a detailed recon-struction of the collective actions via trade associations enacted during thecritical decade of the 1920s, showing how segmentation affected mobiliza-tion and cohesiveness among the Paulista elite. Chapter 4 argues that a virtu-ous circle linked the onset of industrialization in São Paulo to processes ofdifferentiation in the agrarian economy, as well as how the rise of new indus-trial elites may have further challenged the political and economic primacy oftraditional coffee planters.

Part II shifts the analysis to explore how the differentiation of interests inthe export sector may have been reflected in political conflict and mobiliza-tion. The hypothesis that Big Coffee was directly implicated in the move-ment opposing the state and national political dominance of the Partido

Preface xv

Republicano Paulista focuses on the motives and behaviors of planters andrelated economic agents. In various ways, they were implicated in risingpolitical tension during the decade preceding the Revolution of 1930. Cleav-ages and rancor built up within the Paulista elite to such an extent that areactive offensive by Big Coffee can be said to have dominated the dynamicsof the Paulista polity contributing to the demise of the decentralized OldRepublic.

Chapter 5 sketches a sociological reinterpretation of the political system inSão Paulo during the Brazilian Old Republic. Its main focus is on the inter-action between political centralization, collective action, and the rapidlychanging social structure and polity. The creation of opportunities for politi-cal participation, even if often indirect, on the part of immigrant cultivatorsand other emergent actors fueled the transformation of the traditional clien-telistic system known as coronelismo. Chapter 6 concentrates on three majorphenomena: local and statewide violent conflict between 1920 and 1924, aseries of municipal uprisings and conflicts related to the Rebellion of 1924,and the formation of the only major opposition party emerging in the stateprior to 1930, the Partido Democrático. It explores whether and how theseevents show a hegemonic or reactive planter class. Chapters 7, 8, and 9 con-tinue to assess the importance of Big Coffee discontent after 1927 by tracingevidence of its involvement in the major movements leading to the Revolu-tion of 1930. The book concludes with a theoretical discussion on the impli-cations of the Brazilian case.

I am grateful to all who made this work an enormously enriching adven-ture. The Paulistas I studied or consulted, native or from other lands,inspired me to rise to the formidable challenge presented by the study of thedramatic large-scale changes in their region. Critically assessed, their tales ofhard work, imagination, and plain garra helped define the analytical narrativein this volume. The centerpiece of my efforts to organize the material wasthe systematic focus on collective action using methods developed byCharles Tilly—whose unswervingly sound advice also helped me bring theearly phase of this project to completion.

This volume substantially revises the first version of Coffee, Contention andChange (Blackwell Publishers, 1990). The result is a fuller, sharper, andclearer argument informed of recent research. It updates important passagesand restates the main argument with the incorporated material. I thankreviewers for their comments. Above all, I am grateful to several researchassistants at the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies: CarolineFurukawa, Carlos Ruiz, Janaina Saad, and Rachel Glickhouse.

xvi Preface

In its early phase, this study found much inspiration in Fernando HenriqueCardoso’s early studies of Brazilian society, and I would like to thank himand his colleagues at CEBRAP for the warm and generous support andadvice they provided while I carried out my fieldwork and archival researchin São Paulo. At that stage I also owe special thanks to Brasílio Sallum,Juarez Brandão Lopes, Eduardo Kugelmas, Renato Boschi, AspáciaCamargo, Eli Diniz, Plínio Dentzien, José Sebastião Witter, Marfísia Lance-lotti, Cecilia Van Hoje, Victória Harrison, Waldemar Pupo, Alberto PradoGuimarães, Menotti del Picchia, Keith Clarke, Lucila Lacreta, Denise Pes-soa. The late Peter Eisenberg offered very useful comments to an early ver-sion of this study. Elba Barzelatto, my partner and wife, provided effectivecollaboration and assistance at various stages. The Social Science ResearchCouncil, the National Science Foundation, Rutgers University, and the CityUniversity of New York provided various forms of support.

Coffee and Transformation in São Paulo, Brazil is thus a thoroughly revised ver-sion of an earlier book based on my doctoral dissertation at the University ofMichigan. As part of that work, my team and I created a systematic databasewith collective action events from the 1920s, the first one of its kind. Withthe publication of this new volume, that database and related materials willbe posted online (www.mfontbooks.org). São Paulo’s trajectory provides amajor case to assess interpretations and theories of social change and devel-opment. The above material will hopefully aid further research in this fertilefield. In addition, a forthcoming book in progress will extend my analysis ofSão Paulo and Brazil through subsequent decades.

Mauricio FontNew York

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CHAPTER 1 Introduction

Coffee planters in Brazil’s state of São Paulo, home of the world’s largestcoffee export sector, engaged in a surprising flurry of contentious behaviorat the turn of the 1920s. They formed new associations and held two specialcoffee congresses within less than two years. While prompted by a sharp fallin the price of coffee, their grievances and claims covered a wide range ofother issues—manpower, credit and financing, planter organization, taxa-tion, and governmental responsiveness to their plight.1 Tensions ran so highwith respect to the latter, that during the congress held in March 1921, athreat was made that unless planters’ grievances were attended to they wouldresort to “the red flag of revolution, supreme refuge of the oppressed.”2 Thisis anomalous. The scene conflicts with the usual portrayal of Paulista plant-ers in the twentieth century as among the most economically secure, orga-nized, and politically incorporated export elites in Latin America. How thencould they feel so oppressed as to threaten revolution? How shall we explainthis unexpected display of insecurity? What to make of the self-declared eco-nomic difficulties, lack of organization, and decline of political influence?

The significance of these questions goes beyond São Paulo and Brazil. ManyLatin American and other developing societies, the so-called regions of recent

1. Much of the evidence presented in this study comes from a database containing accounts ofcollective action and conflict events by major coffee-related associations enumerated and codedfrom a day-by-day reading of the major newspapers and trade journals in the state of São Paulo dur-ing the period 1920-30. Font and Barzelatto (1988), cited as F&B throughout this volume, containsfull documentation of the sources used in various events and describes the procedures utilized inpreparing this database (adapted from Tilly 1978). Primary newspaper or other periodical sourcesare referenced directly or in terms of the identification number used in F&B to document theseevents. The main sources of events data are O Estado de São Paulo (OESP or OE) and Correio Pau-listano (CP), São Paulo’s main newspapers at the time. Diário Nacional (DN) was also used from itsbirth in 1927. For example, OESP 12/03/20:1,2-3,M refers to O Estado de São Paulo of December 3,1920: page 1, columns 2-3, middle section. With regard to column placement, if “M” stands for mid-dle section of the page, “T” and “B” signify top and bottom sections, respectively.2. The threat came from keynote speaker Alfredo Pujol, who appears to have been expressing the pre-dominant mood (see F&B 920 0909 01 and 921 0302 01).

2 Chapter 1

settlement, as well as parts of Europe are comparable to São Paulo in thatexport sector expansion was as a leading process of change and the firstexpression of direct involvement in modern capitalist development.3 While theexport sector may entail strong ties of dependence to the “external” globaleconomy, it is also the fundamental locus for the emergence of a nationalbourgeoisie aspiring to exercise local hegemony.4 The viability of these elites ascarriers of capitalist expansion and builders of new societies matters a greatdeal. More so than elsewhere in Brazil and Latin America, capitalism took holdin São Paulo’s coffee economy, eventually transforming the state into adynamic pole of development and industrialization. Clarification of the condi-tions affecting the role of export elites and the pursuit of hegemony in SãoPaulo may provide important evidence by which to judge broader argumentsabout the links between export sector expansion and development.

A conventional wisdom holds that Big Coffee capital in São Paulo pre-sided over the state’s main processes of accumulation and expansion at leastin part due to their ability to prevail over the political process and othersocial actors. But the expressions of planter ferment cited above seem toqualify this position. The extent to which and how the Paulista export elitemay have in fact brought about the consolidation of capitalist developmentand bourgeois hegemony in the state is the broad subject of this study. Muchof the evidence presented pertains to Brazil’s Old Republic (1889-1930).Also known as the Republic of Coffee, during that era the limelight was gen-erally dominated by social groups and interests linked to coffee. Indeed,none was as important as the land-based coffee elites, forerunners of thecapitalist class in Brazil, the fazendeiros or large estate owners of the westernplateau of São Paulo. This analysis seeks to assess their ability to vie forpreferential membership in the emergent economy and polity. It does so interms of the social structure of the export sector itself. Nesting this exercisewithin the broader dynamics of development will hopefully illuminate theimpact of export sector social organization in the transition to internally ori-ented industrialization.

EXPORT AGRICULTURE AND CAPITALIST REVOLUTIONS

The extent to which the expansion of export or commercial agriculture mayby itself generate vigorous forms of social change and development is prob-

3. Font (1987) discusses the literature on regions of recent settlement. Senghaas (1985) provides arich comparative discussion of the relationship between export sectors and development which alsoputs Scandinavian countries in the same framework.4. Cardoso and Faletto (1976), Torres-Rivas (1969, 1981). Quijano (1983).

Introduction 3

lematic. The expansion of production for long-distance markets primed orsustained successful developmental transitions in the classical Europeanexperiences as well as in the regions of recent settlement. As a whole, LatinAmerican cases show mixed performance in this regard: side-by-side persis-tent dependency and poverty, significant forms of change and even develop-ment have been linked to export sector expansion.5 That in some instancesexport production is associated with vigorous forms of social change anddevelopment but not in others presents a challenge not only to the “develop-ment of underdevelopment” thesis but to widely used models of the onsetof development based on crude applications of the “staple hypothesis” or onincreasing commercialization.6 According to the latter, otherwise compara-ble regions exposed to similar doses of export sector growth would tendtoward uniformity in their developmental trajectories. These approaches donot account for contrasting lines of development in settings sharing thesame economic factors.

Other strands of scholarship argue that the developmental impact ofexport sector expansion depends on the social structures and class relationsit engenders or reinforces. For example, a major line of analysis based onthe classical European experiences assesses the developmental impact ofexpanded production for trade on whether the attendant patterns of produc-tion and class relations lead to an irreversible process of transition from astable, predominantly agrarian social order to another characterized by deci-sively capitalist development and industrialization.7 A similar concern withclass formation and political processes is shared by Barrington Moore aswell as various participants in the debates on the European transition fromfeudalism to capitalism. In essence, these authors focus on how a previousphase of agricultural growth may create conditions leading to a capitalistbreakthrough or revolution. They concentrate on macro societal factorssuch as the expansion of entrepreneurship and new forms of production,the provision of cheap food, the expansion of the internal market, the build-ing of infrastructure, the release of financial resources and manpower fromagriculture, or the onset of processes of protoindustrialization. The line ofanalysis often leads to a central focus on political realignments based onshifts in the class structure. One of the main concerns is the range of condi-tions shaping the durable generation and transfer of surpluses to industrialand other dynamic sectors.

5. Kenwood and Lougheed (1983), Cardoso and Faletto (1976), Hirschman (1977).6. See Watkins (1963) for the first and also Brenner (1976) on the second.7. Moore (1966), de Vries (1976), Brenner (1976).

4 Chapter 1

Inspired by this earlier focus, the political economic literature on LatinAmerica and regions of recent settlement poses as a major underlying issuethe political processes capable of ensuring policies favoring development-oriented actors and processes—in such critical policy areas of tariffs,exchange rate, taxation, land and labor use, monetary and other fiscal mat-ters. In this context, the dependency approach of Cardoso and relatedapproaches focuses on the extent to which a national class or coalitionemerges to exercise leadership or dominance and thus give coherence tonational policy-making. With the export sector historically representing asubordinate link with the global capitalist economy, the ability of export pro-ducers to lead the way was seen as highly problematic. It was this doubtabout the export sector that led many to view it as an unlikely foundation forsocial change, calling for a process of transition to give way to durable indus-trial development and nation building.8 Pessimism about export elites led totheir relegation to a secondary or even antagonistic part in the drama ofchange, and even as a displacement of the spotlight to new urban, industrial,and techno-bureaucratic groups—a move facilitated by theories of modern-ization and dualism. The onset of industrialization was thus seen as inducingthe demise or neutralization of the export producers’ oligarchic order, theappearance of industrializing or modernizing actors in the political scenario,and the articulation of new dominant alliances. For Latin American societieshosting leading export sectors since the second half of the nineteenth cen-tury, the revolutions taking place around 1930 were viewed as critical eventssignaling the demise of the oligarchic order and the rise of populist or othermodernizing alliances.

If mobilization, coalition formation, and political change should be placedat the core of the analysis of developmental transitions, the role of exportproducers in such transitions needs to be fully clarified. The postulate ofpolitical dominance and hegemony by export producers up to a revolution-ary upheaval against them, such as that of 1930 in several Latin Americansocieties, implies a very high level of mobilization, coherence, and conten-tious capacity on their part. It amounts to an instrumental view of exportelites’ hold on the state. Often, such an instrumental view is linked to analleged economic predominance and uniformity of interests of the exportelite. This helps explain the marked tendency to seek the roots of the demiseof the “oligarchic” order in factors exogenous to the export sector proper,such as the economic crisis of 1930 or independent processes of industrial-ization, or to deny the demise altogether and view export producers and

8. For example, Furtado (1963).

Introduction 5

industrialists as compatible or complementary components of the same uni-tary process of accumulation and class formation.9

Regardless of whether export sector expansion reinforces an “oligarchic”system or the emergence of a national bourgeoisie, it has been noted that it cangenerate serious cleavages and conflicts within elite groups linked to theexport sector and between them and groups associated with the state and ris-ing industry. A central question in this regard pertains to the likelihood ofcohesive action on the part of export producers and the nature of the demandsthey will pursue. Inter-class conflicts inherent in various modalities of agricul-tural enterprise systems have been found to contribute to the onset of revolu-tions from below and a breakdown in capitalist development.10 This suggeststhat the political role of export producers may also be effectively analyzed interms of the very internal social organization of the export sector.

COFFEE, DEVELOPMENT, AND POLITICAL CHANGE IN BRAZIL

The strand of the dependency literature associated with Florestan Fer-nandes, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and the Paulista school of Sociologyemerged from attempts to make sense of processes of social change anddevelopment in São Paulo and southern Brazil. The main challenge theyaddressed was how to explain transformations they saw as resembling abourgeois revolution, in the context of “a situation of dependency.”11 In pos-iting the roots of capitalist development in the very expansion of the exportsector, this approach provided a contrast to dualist forms of analysis, as wellas to the radically pessimistic views of Frank concerning the negative effectsof exports specialization for peripheral countries. While seminal ideas wereadvanced, the authors in question did not aim at a formal theory of transfor-mation or even a detailed inventory of the links between export sectorexpansion and development. Rather, they adopted a historically groundedperspective centered on the study of processes of class formation responsi-ble for a transition from a colonial to an outward phase of national develop-ment, to another centered on industrial production for an internal market.

The role of the colono system based on free immigrant labor, the labor sys-tem which replaced slavery in the coffee economy of the western plateau ofSão Paulo, became an important point of departure for explaining the dyna-mism of the coffee economy. Based on the characterization of the colono

9. Martins (1982), Silva (1976), Cardoso de Mello (1982).10. Paige (1975), Stinchombe (1961), Wolf (1969).11. Fernandes (1959, 1969, 1975, 1977), Morse (1978), Cardoso (1964).

6 Chapter 1

system as representing and stimulating the penetration of modern relationsof production in the agrarian mainstay of the economy, coffee expansionwas posited as leading to the generalization of entrepreneurial behaviors,capitalist accumulation, internal market growth—and henceforth to industri-alization. Early Paulista sociology also put in the agenda the role of immi-grants in the making of the new Paulista society, a topic which would remainsomewhat neglected.

A monistic view of the link between capitalist development and exporteconomy expansion in São Paulo has emphasized not only the coherenceand effectiveness in planters’ actions, but also the integration of coffee andindustrial capital and planter dominance and hegemony over industrialists,incumbents of the state apparatus, and other groups.12 This approachsketches the process of accumulation and structural change as unitary orholistic. In it, the consolidation and transition to industrialization in SãoPaulo resulted from the capacity of the coffee export elites to concentrateprocesses of capitalist accumulation in their hands and exercise hegemonyover the rest of society. This holistic view treats export sector expansion andcoffee capital as the fundamental and dominant moment in the emergenceof the bourgeoisie. As indicated, this interpretation of the regime in power inBrazil in the 1920s, and the nature of the mobilizational and political pro-cesses which brought it to its knees in 1930, does not fit well with the intra-elite difficulties, cleavages, and conflict involving Paulista planters early inthe decade. Should the latter be shown to have been durable, much of thisknowledge would prove to have been in need of major qualification and revi-sion. Again, if the Republic was theirs, why the huffing and puffing? If theirpredominance was only shaken by the crisis of 1929, what to make of thecries of multiple economic difficulties almost ten years earlier? If they exer-cised such direct control over the political processes, why all the new politi-cal mobilization and contention?

A major challenge for any theory of transition with regard to Brazil is toexplain the demise of the Old Republic via the Revolution of 1930.13 Interms of its class origins, the current literature on the Revolution of 1930 asa whole presents observers with the elements of a first-rate “whodunit.”Sixty years later there is wide debate on the question. The association of the

12. For the monistic or ultra-holistic approach to Paulista dynamics see Cardoso de Mello (1982),Silva (1976), Cano (1977). See also Costa (1927). Reis (1979) stresses the political hegemony of largecoffee planters.13. A caveat of the first order: the Revolution of 1930 was a complex phenomenon in whichdiverse and regionally differentiated actors need to be analyzed in their own terms. Largely limited toSão Paulo, this volume cannot be expected to provide yet another theory of the revolution. Its focuson the behavior of Paulista coffee elites in the events leading up to the Revolution may only helpclarify the role they played.

Introduction 7

Revolution with the early stages of industrialization and modernizing politi-cal reforms at the federal levels indicates the main suspect as a rising bour-geoisie bent on bringing about a democratic-bourgeois revolution.14 Othersplace at center stage urban middle sectors and movements, such as tenentismo,calling attention to the democratizing aspects of the Revolution in engender-ing the more open political system known as populism. The “crisis of theoligarchy” apparent at the time reinforced the perception of the socially pro-gressive character of the Revolution. Since it is widely recognized as havingcoincided with the setting in of decay in Paulista dominance over the federalpolitical system, the onset of the Revolution was generally acknowledged tohave neutralized, if not overthrown, the export elite oligarchic order. As aBrazilian journalist recently noted, reflecting this view, the Revolution’s maintask was to “overthrow from control of the state the landowners, the coffeeplanters who dominated the . . . Republic . . . who constituted an obstacle tothe development of the country.”15

Revisionist investigators inspired by critiques to dualistic models of socialchange from such authors as Frank, Prado Júnior, Stavenhagen, and the like,identified inconsistencies in this model. In question were several problems:lack of synchronization between industrialization and political change; thatindustrialists, at least the most advanced wing in São Paulo, did not supportthe Revolution; and that the Vargas government, at least at first, adoptedpolicies favoring agrarian elites rather than industrialists.16 Others have notedthat post-1930 populism entailed a paternalistic encapsulation of the work-ing class and urban groups rather than their genuine mobilization. With theobservation that some of the revolutionaries in the states of Minas Gerais,Rio Grande do Sul, and Paraíba were themselves agrarian elites, the questionhas gone full circle in uncovering motives or findings incriminating theagrarian “oligarchy” itself.

Still, a revisionist alternative was built on the premise of no major con-tradiction between export sector expansion and other processes of devel-opment (of internal market and industry), positing both as expressions ofthe penetration of capitalism. One consequence of the “unitary” premiseabout the major socioeconomic large-scale processes affecting Brazil priorto 1930 has been to actually reduce their causal role in the Revolution. Thedenial of the “structural” significance of the Revolution, explicitly pro-posed in Martins (1982), has shifted its analysis from political-economicand class-based dialectics to exclusively political or exogenous factors.14. Sodré (1976). For a sketch of various debates see Jornal do Brasil 9/21/80, article by Lúcia Lippide Oliveira.15. Folha de São Paulo (“Folhetim”) 10/19/1980:11.16. Martins (1982). See Fausto (1976).

8 Chapter 1

Findings reported in this volume challenge this position and implicate asocial group that has remained impervious to suspicion, hidden by thepresumption that it was the main victim of the Revolution, the Paulistaplanters themselves.