Getulio Vargas

Getulio Dornelles Vargas (April 19, 1882 - August 24, 1954) was Brazil's most consequential twentieth-century political figure, a nationalist strongman who served as president from 1930 to 1945 (ending with a US-backed coup) and again from 1950 to 1954 (ending with his own suicide on the eve of a second US-backed military intervention). His economic nationalist program, particularly his 1940 Amazonian development plan ("A Marcha para o Oeste") proposing state control of Amazon natural resources, directly conflicted with the Rockefeller network's plans for the hemisphere, and his removal on October 29, 1945 by US-encouraged military coup was what Brazilian and American historians have called "Latin America's first Cold War coup."¹

Estado Novo and the Wartime Relationship

Vargas came to power through a revolution that began on October 3, 1930 and ended Brazil's Old Republic, with Vargas installed as interim president on November 3, 1930. On November 10, 1937, he executed a coup to establish the Estado Novo ("New State"), a corporate authoritarian dictatorship modeled loosely on European fascist states but distinctively Brazilian in its nationalist-developmentalist character. He abolished political parties, centralized government, and launched import-substitution industrialization, building state enterprises in steel (Volta Redonda), oil (Petroleo Brasileiro/Petrobras was founded later, in 1953), and mining as the foundation for an autonomous Brazilian industrial economy.

During World War II, Vargas initially pursued a neutralist course, playing Germany and the United States off each other. US economic pressure, German submarine attacks on Brazilian ships, and Nelson Rockefeller's CIAA diplomacy eventually brought Brazil into the Allied camp in 1942, including the deployment of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force to Italy. The CIAA's wartime engagement with Brazil built the US business and military networks in the country that would later be turned against Vargas himself.²

The Amazon Plan and US Opposition

On August 5, 1940, Vargas traveled to Goiania for that city's inauguration festivities and announced the "A Marcha para o Oeste" ("March to the West"), proposing state-directed development of the Amazon basin's resources (rubber, minerals, oil, timber) under Brazilian national control. He called for Amazonia to become Brazil's "new frontier." Between October 6 and 14, 1940, Vargas traveled to the states of Para and Amazonas to deliver what his government promoted as the "Amazonas River Discourse," widely publicized as the new "discovery" of the region. In 1943, federal territories were created in the Amazon basin and the Roncador-Xingu Expedition was initiated to open Central Brazil.³

This plan directly threatened the American corporate interests that Nelson Rockefeller's CIAA had been positioning in the Amazon since 1940. Standard Oil of New Jersey held oil exploration rights in Peru's Amazon; the rubber program had established US logistical infrastructure throughout the basin; and Rockefeller himself was planning the private development vehicles (IBEC, AIA) that would require an open-investment environment. A state-controlled Amazon was incompatible with these plans.⁴

US Ambassador Jefferson Caffery was explicitly opposed to the Amazon development plan and to any Vargas program that restricted American corporate access. Caffery's opposition to Vargas's economic nationalism was one reason Rockefeller arranged for Adolf Berle to replace him after Rockefeller became assistant secretary of state in December 1944.⁵

The 1945 Coup

On October 25, 1945, Vargas made a move that alarmed the military: he removed Joao Alberto from his position as chief of police of the Federal District and replaced him with his brother Benjamin Vargas. The military interpreted this as a potential seizure of power. Four days later, on October 29, 1945, the Brazilian military, led by General Eurico Gaspar Dutra (war minister) and General Pedro Aurelio de Goes Monteiro (army chief of staff), ousted Vargas from power.

Berle, who had arrived as ambassador earlier that year, encouraged the coup by providing the crucial signal to the military that Washington would not object to Vargas's removal. Vargas later publicly accused Berle's "inopportune" meddling as "conclusive proof" of the role of "agents of international finance" in his overthrow. This was the first case in which the United States encouraged the overthrow of a Latin American government on the basis of economic nationalism rather than communist affiliation.⁶

After the coup, Jose Linhares, President of the Supreme Federal Court, was inaugurated as interim president. Free elections were held on December 2, 1945. Dutra won with 3,251,507 votes against 2,039,341 for Eduardo Gomes, taking office as president on January 31, 1946 and governing until January 31, 1951, in alignment with American corporate interests.⁷

Return to Power and the Second Confrontation

Vargas returned to power in 1950, winning the presidential election by a substantial margin on a nationalist platform and taking office on January 31, 1951. His second term was more explicitly anti-imperialist than the first. He proposed to limit profit remittances by foreign corporations to 10 percent of invested capital, a direct attack on Standard Oil and other US corporate interests operating in Brazil.

On October 3, 1953, Vargas signed Law No. 2,004, founding Petrobras (Petroleo Brasileiro S.A.) as a state oil monopoly that excluded foreign companies from Brazil's oil exploration, production, refining, and transportation sectors. The law followed a seven-year popular campaign under the slogan "O petroleo e nosso" ("The oil is ours"). He also cultivated relationships with Joao Goulart (his labor minister) and the Brazilian labor movement in ways that alarmed US policymakers.⁸

A December 4, 1953 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE-86, "Probable Developments in Brazil through 1955") assessed that Vargas was under mounting economic and political pressures. The NIE warned that if denied US developmental loans, Brazil might "pursue an increasingly independent course in economic matters," and that communist influence was growing through "their exploitation of popular issues and their infiltration of the bureaucracy and of organized labor." The estimate placed the number of disciplined communist party members at approximately 60,000.⁹

A July 27, 1953 State Department memorandum of conversation records that when Dr. Milton Eisenhower visited Vargas at the presidential palace, Vargas stated that Brazil would pursue "action to reduce its imports by expanding the production of wheat and developing oil resources," and described oil development as a "political problem" resisting foreign investment. The memorandum noted that Vargas "speaks scarcely above a whisper" and that the Minister of Finance and Vargas's brother-in-law "are essentially responsible for presidential policy in Brazil."¹⁰

An April 16, 1954 State Department memorandum from Assistant Secretary Henry F. Holland advised against establishing a joint US-Brazil economic board, warning it would result in pressure for additional US loans. Holland noted Brazil's outstanding loan commitments of $838 million from the Eximbank and World Bank and recommended informing the Brazilian ambassador that a high-level formal board would "set an undesirable precedent."¹¹

The Rua Tonelero Shooting and Military Crisis

On the night of August 5, 1954, journalist and Vargas opponent Carlos Lacerda was attacked outside his Copacabana residence at Rua Tonelero, 180, in Rio de Janeiro. Brazilian Air Force Major Rubens Florentino Vaz was killed; Lacerda and a municipal guard were wounded. On August 8, Gregorio Fortunato (known as "O Anjo Negro" / "The Black Angel"), commander of Vargas's personal security detail, confessed his participation in organizing the attack. The Air Force high command assumed control of the investigation the same day Fortunato confessed.¹²

The assassination attempt triggered a political crisis. By August 23, 1954, facing mounting military resignation demands, Vargas met with ministers to discuss taking a leave pending the investigation's conclusions. His brother Benjamin arrived with the news that "the military wanted him to resign." The military had presented a formal ultimatum: resign or face a coup.¹³

Death and the Carta Testamento

Vargas shot himself in the heart at the Catete Palace in Rio de Janeiro on August 24, 1954. He was 72 years old. His typed suicide note, the "Carta Testamento" (Testamentary Letter), was found in his quarters and released immediately after his death.

The note opened: "Mais uma vez as forcas e os interesses contra o povo coordenaram-se e novamente se desencadeiam sobre mim" ("Once more the forces and interests against the people have coordinated themselves and again they are unleashed upon me"). He accused a "campanha subterranea dos grupos internacionais" ("subterranean campaign of international groups") allied with national groups opposed to his labor protection regime. He described how "Quis criar liberdade nacional na potencialização das nossas riquezas atraves da Petrobras" ("I wanted to create national freedom through the potentialization of our riches through Petrobras") and noted that "mal começa esta a funcionar, a onda de agitação se avoluma" ("as soon as it began to function, the wave of agitation grew"). He stated that foreign companies extracted profits from Brazil exceeding 500 percent annually while defrauding the country of over $100 million yearly through false import valuations.

The note closed: "Serenamente dou o primeiro passo no caminho da eternidade e saio da vida para entrar na historia" ("Serenely I take the first step on the road to eternity and I leave life to enter history").

A separate handwritten note read: "I leave to the wrath of my enemies the legacy of my death."¹⁴

Popular Reaction and Political Aftermath

Vargas's death produced a massive popular reaction in Brazil. Riots broke out; crowds attacked US embassy buildings and American-owned businesses. Carlos Lacerda, whose credibility collapsed in the aftermath, went into hiding. Joao Cafe Filho, the vice president, succeeded to the presidency.

A September 12, 1954 telegram from new US Ambassador James S. Kemper to the State Department described Brazil's "extremely critical financial situation" under the new government, reporting a September foreign exchange deficit of $65.3 million and projecting continued deficits through 1955. Kemper recommended approval of up to $80 million in US gold loans for the post-Vargas administration.¹⁵

The anti-American sentiment revealed by Vargas's death constrained overt US intervention in Brazilian politics for nearly a decade, until the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and Nelson Rockefeller's network, decided that a more covert approach through AIFLD, Lincoln Gordon, Vernon Walters, and J.C. King could accomplish what blunter pressure had not.¹⁶

The Vargas nationalist tradition was carried forward by Joao Goulart, his protege and labor minister, who became president in 1961 and was overthrown in the US-supported military coup of April 1, 1964.