If the critical events of history are changes in class relationships, the hegemony of one class being broken by the rise to power of another, then the work of the historian is relatively simple. He classifies social groups according to their productive functions and determines their access to power in given time periods. The transfer of power is never accomplished peacefully, therefore the periodization is conveniently marked by revolutions. The theoretical model has inevitably been Marxian, and the empirical referents have all been European. This practice has had a baleful influence on Latin American historiography, because the facts seemingly do not fit the framework of European history. The search for the point in Brazilian history, for example, at which the industrial capitalist bourgeoisie overthrew a “feudal” landowning aristocracy has been especially futile. Most often 1930 is hit upon. Many historians have insisted that this is the point at which the industrialists take control, their instrument being the petty bourgeoisie, whose armed force is the tenentes.
This little book, bringing together much recent research and adding new sources and insights, demolishes this interpretation with considerable skill. Fausto, who has already contributed a study of 1930 to the excellent, cooperatively written, Brasil em Perspectiva (1968), shows that the industrialists remained steadfastly the junior partners of the planters. Throughout the campaign of the Liberals, and during the revolution itself, they were hostile to the enemies of the old regime. They suspected the tenentes of Communist sympathies and shunned them. The tenentes in turn distrusted the civilian dissidents. The instincts of the middle class were very different from the junior army officers, who were anti-liberal, centralist, and quite possibly merely posturing for the sake of their own rapid absorption by the elite. The tenentes were surely as elitist as could be imagined: João Alberto mentioned that Prestes’ staff never bothered to tell their men where they were marching or why—instead they prided themselves on the “blind obedience” of the column. The benefits that accrued to the industrialists after the revolution were unimagined by them and fortuitous; the proletariat, by means of a corporative regimentation, were more thoroughly submerged than before.
In Fausto’s view, 1930 was not a turning point, it was merely a temporary embarrassment for an elite more divided regionally than functionally. There was no real distinction between planters and industrialists, and therefore no possibility that industry could destroy the latifundia. Other aspects of the revolution suggest further investigation. One would like to see, for example, a test of the hypothesis, which Fausto seems to discard, that the outcome marked a shift from British to US domination.
Fausto’s interpretation is not intended as a denial of the validity of the class analysis of society or of the reading of history as an inevitable progression toward a socialist destiny. Instead it accords well with recent Marxist historiography. Caio Prado has denied that Brazilian society is in any significant sense pre-capitalist. Andrew Gunder Frank has placed local class relationships in the context of a world-wide capitalism: Latin America has been capitalistic since the conquest; its backwardness is caused not by dualist isolation but by the extensiveness of its connections with the industrialized center. Francisco Weffort has explained the very limited possibilities the Brazilian elite possesses for playing a populist game in order to preserve its power. This book is a worthy addition to these analyses, and it contains materials and observations essential to an understanding of a complex period of Brazilian history.
