Reformist Visions for Rural Brazil in the 1930s: The Role of Revolutionary Military Leaders and Bureaucrats

This paper explores the political struggles among elites over rural public policies in Brazil during the 1930s, a period of state-building and economic transformation initiated by a coup. While existing scholarship often portrays the elites backing Vargas’s government as united in their approach to protecting landlord interests, this research challenges that narrative by examining competing visions for rural Brazil. Specifically, it analyzes various proposals aimed at land access, rural education, drought management, and agrarian organization through cooperatives. These efforts, driven by revolutionaries, socialists, and bureaucrats, reflect a broader struggle over how to integrate rural populations into the national agenda.

Drawing on text mining of Juarez Távora's Personal Archive, which contains over 16,000 documents, along with additional primary sources such as news articles and legislation, this study delves into how these elites negotiated justice-oriented policies in early 20th century rural Brazil. The private papers of this military and revolutionary hero from the impoverished Northeast, who served as Minister of Agriculture, provides access to an intermediary network that connects dissidents within the elites, small landowners, bureaucrats and socialists with the center of power, spanning the divide between the North and the Central-South regions of Brazil. The analysis reveals not just policy clashes but also the significant role played by state bureaucracy in shaping, stalling, or redirecting reforms.

By focusing on these intra-elite disputes and the role of collective action and institutions, this research sheds light on how rural reforms were shaped, contested, and, ultimately, limited. It highlights the failure of certain reformist efforts aimed at empowering rural populations through a Union Co-op Model and social justice measures, as they were overtaken by opposing political groups better organized within nationalized political parties. These policies were further weakened by specific events, such as São Paulo's push for reconstitutionalization and the repression of communism.