This is the latest in Hélio Silva’s Ciclo de Vargas series, seven volumes of which have appeared since 1964. Like the others, it contains a welter of detail, minutely drawn and organized more or less chronologically. Hélio Silva was the first Brazilian to enter the Oswaldo Aranha archive, and also, as he is quick to point out in the text, the first who gained access to the papers of Getúlio Vargas, through the kind intercession of Vargas’ daughter, Alzira Vargas do Amaral Peixoto. He does not make much use of secondary sources; virtually all of his footnotes cite the Vargas archive or, in the case of the present volume, the proceedings of the 1933-1934 Constituent Assembly. Silva not only prints most of his documents in their entirety, but constructs his narrative around them. This is unfortunate, for despite his broad personal knowledge and extensive legwork, the absence of internal criteria to evaluate his documentation leads to historical indigestion.
Silva’s only concession to utility, aside from a brief index, is a day-by-day timetable of events at the beginning of the narrative which recapitulates the themes of his documents and thereby of the topics in his seventy-eight mini-chapters. His decision to presuppose the reader’s complete familiarity with his subject matter limits the value of his book even further. This assumption probably also explains his style and format, resembling a scrapbook of past events collected lovingly for those who lived through them and made legitimate by authoritative references, in this case to the Vargas papers.
Not only does Silva fail to coordinate the story of the constituinte, but he chops off the beginning. There is virtually no mention of the May 3, 1933 national elections for assembly delegates, Brazil’s first under Vargas’ Electoral Code and its last until the fall of the Estado Nôvo. Neither does Silva dwell on the work of the Itamaratí commission, which set the ground rules and wrote the first constitutional draft. For the most part, he ignores the dynamics of the assembly debate: the bancada alliances, the lofty rhetoric and occasionally impassioned oratory, the give-and-take over the 5,000 draft amendments, the extensive lobbying, and the campaigns in the press.
Incredibly, Silva slights the fundamental issue of the constituinte itself, the struggle over state versus federal power. On one side stood the advocates of state autonomy, led by the São Paulo delegation and delegates from the powerful states (Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul, and, to a lesser degree, Bahia and Pernambuco); on the other, a coalition made up of men from the smaller and weaker states, the tenente deputies, and the forty “class” representatives. These were chosen in accordance with Vargas’ corporatist formula under the careful scrutiny of the Justice Ministry, all of whom advocated strong federal prerogatives, expansion of the provisional government’s social and welfare legislation, and national control of shipping, water and subsoil resources, frontier territories, and export tax revenue.
Silva makes no effort to weigh the leading issues of the seven-month debate: presidentialism versus parliamentarism; the class representation scheme; federal responsibility in the areas of drought relief, public health, agriculture, industry, and commerce; the allocation of revenue; municipal organization; religious instruction in the public schools (adamantly and successfully fought for by the Catholic Electoral League and its allies); or the relocation of the federal capital. Indeed, some of these issues are omitted altogether.
In 573 pages of text, Silva fails either to summarize the salient points of the final 1934 Constitution or to reckon the political balance sheet. He does not explain why Vargas so despised the document that he virtually ignored it, and replaced it summarily three years later. Silva offers his story in bits and pieces. There is a wealth of documentation but no overview; though he informs, he does not enlighten.
