Balcanização: What if the Ragamuffin revolt succeeded and Brazil collapsed?

[NotDavidSoslan]

Dom Pedro II was never crowned emperor of Brazil, since the country dissolved de facto on 15 January 1843, almost one year before he turned 18.

Instead, he became emperor of Rio de Janeiro and Espírito Santo, the only two provinces that remained loyal to the House of Braganza. He was a constitutional monarch, with the actual leader being Nicolau de Campos Vergueiro, who faced a naval blockade from Britain and was forced to abolish the slave trade.

The strongest countries that arose out of the dissolved Brazil were São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul and Bahia, the first two ruled by Rafael Tobias de Aguiar and Teófilo Ottoni, respectively, both classical liberals who priorized the interests of planters born in Brazil. Tobias de Aguiar was married to Domitila de Castro, the infamous mistress of Dom Pedro I, who thus became First Lady.

Bento Gonçalves remained the president of Rio Grande do Sul until his death in 1847, creating a national bank, unicameral legislature, national constitution (which set up a presidential authoritarian system, even with the superficial similarity to the US Constitution), and merchant fleet based on the Lagoa dos Patos. He also obtained international recognition for Rio Grande do Sul, and got the backing of Britain and France against Rosas. High tariffs on foreign products were maintained. Gonçalves died on 18 July 1847, and was succeeded by Antônio de Sousa Neto, who ruled until 1866 and built the first railways and telegraph lines in Rio Grande, while continuing the protectionist policies of his predecessor.

After Rio Grande do Sul became independent, it faced a streak of autocratic rule that lasted, with a few breaks, until 1921, when Borges de Medeiros, successor to Júlio de Castilhos, was overthrown in a revolution and fled into exile in São Paulo. That same year, Raul Pilla was elected President for the Liberator Party, which advocated for classical liberalism and congressional over presidential prerrogatives.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Rio Grande do Sul had its independence recognized by the United Kingdom, France and Portugal in October 1842.

The newly independent republic soon sided with the two strongest countries of the time against Rosas, importing muskets and gunpowder from them and building a navy of 38 warships with British assistance.

After Antônio de Sousa Neto became President of Rio Grande do Sul in 1847, he continued the schemes of modernisation and protectionism began by Bento Gonçalves, abolishing slavery without reparations in 1850, remodeling the postal service and customs office, building an arsenal in Pelotas that produced firearms and artillery, and building an opera and a theatre. Those reforms made Rio Grande do Sul significantly stronger, and were feared by Rosas, who felt they could spread to the rest of the Platine region. Rio Grande do Sul's annexation of the Juliana Republic in 1850 helped increase tensions in the region.

The army of Rio Grande do Sul was as large as that of the Argentine Confederacy at the start of the war, and the officers had experience from the Ragamuffin War, but the country lacked enough resources and industry to adequately equip it, and its reserves of gunpowder were smaller. This contributed to the defeat at Caseros, which was the beginning of the Allies' defeat.

After the battle, Rosas's hopes of a decisive victory went unfulfilled, and the war became a stalemate that ended with the Treaty of Cordoba. The nonaggression pact was repeatedly broken by both sides, and Rosas remained heavily unpopular; in 1855, a coalition led by Corrientes and Entre Rios overthrew the longtime dictator, and over time, Argentina became the strongest power in Latin America, due to Brazil being split.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

As Oribe's health weakened, the Blanco faction, which was surrounded from all sides, continuously lost ground, and he eventually surrendered to the Allies in June, substantially damaging Rosas' cause.

During the following two months, the Allies marched through Buenos Aires province, facing weak resistance, causing Rosas to go into exile two weeks after his army was crushed on 30 July.

Paraguay under Carlos Antonio Lopez remained neutral in the conflict, but aligned itself with the Allies, while the rest of Brazil was not involved at all.

Bartolomé Mitre would eventually emerge as the ruler of most of Argentina, defeating Urquiza, while the rapidly developing Paraguay remained under the rule of the Lopez family until Francisco Solano Lopez died in 1883 and another dictator took over.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

López built one of the best-trained but ill-equipped armies in the region, which was successful against the sparsely populated Mato Grosso but not the wealthy and dense São Paulo.

São Paulo politics were dominated by classical liberal planters who made the presidency a mostly ceremonial office, as themselves controlled the government. Statesmen such as Joaquim José de Sousa Breves, the "King of Coffee", and Francisco Peixoto de Lacerda Werneck are more well-known than the presidents of this era.

During peacetime, the Republic of São Paulo relied on the Public Force paramilitary, with the army being small; it was only expanded after López invaded Mato Grosso, defeated it within three months and made it a puppet state after annexing one third of its territory. The Army of São Paulo obtained modern weapons, including Congreve rockets, from Britain and France, who opposed Paraguay's expansionist ambitions.

On 16 September 1867, Paraguay invaded São Paulo in order to obtain acess to the port of Santos, and its army soon captured much of the Comarca do Paraná. The few actual enemy units in the region surrendered, and a Paulista counteroffensive failed, leading to a war of attrition with alternating fortunes until January 1869, when Rio Grande do Sul declared war on Paraguay and inflicted a series of defeats on its forces, leading to Solano López ceding several territories and restoring the independence of Mato Grosso.

After the war, he faced several challenges to his power, from hardliners who saw his use of diplomacy as treason, but violently crushed them, and continued to develop the Paraguayan economy, which was one of the most advanced in Latin America. Relations with neighboring states remained tense, and there were several border clashes with Argentina and Rio Grande do Sul, both of whom continued to distrust López. However, he continued to play off various factions and countries in the region against each other until his death in 1885, whereupon his son Juan Francisco, nicknamed "Panchito" succeeded him.

Juan Francisco proved to be an inept and corrupt ruler who was overthrown in a revolution in 1888. Bernardino Caballero became the dictator of Paraguay until his death in 1912, dismantling the state-controlled economy the country had until then in favor of capitalism and free trade.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Gaúcho politics and society between 1847 and 1890


In 1858, President Sousa Neto of the Riograndense Republic opened the Porto Alegre-São Leopoldo Railway, connecting these two cities and giving the latter a demographic boom.

Sousa Neto, who served as the President of Rio Grande do Sul until his death in 1865, also built a telegraph line in 1855, and estabilished several modern factories producing weapons and basic goods, which were funded by the country's protectionist system, itself geared towards protecting its meat industry. He also established a theater and opera in Porto Alegre, and founded the country's post office, and unsuccessfully attempted to make primary education mandatory, but the elite opposed this.

After the abolition of slavery in 1848, the state began encouraging Italian and German immigration, which, fueled by the wars of unification in these countries, permanently changed the demographics and culture of Rio Grande do Sul; by 1890, when Júlio de Castilhos became dictator and accelerated the country's industrialisation, close to half of its citizens were of foreign birth, and many more had non-Portuguese ancestry. This led to some ethnic tensions, and Sousa Neto and his successors solved them by implementing a mandatory literacy test for immigrants and limiting their political activity.

By 1865, the politics of Rio Grande do Sul, like these of neighboring Uruguay, had been split in two factions, a conservative and authoritarian "Blanco" faction and a classical liberal and parliamentarian "Colorado" grouping. They later evolved into the Riograndense Republican Party led by Júlio de Castilhos and Borges de Medeiros, and the opposing Liberator Party under the leadership of Joca Tavares and Gumercindo Saraiva. Both parties dominated Riograndense politics until authoritarian left-wing nationalist Leonel Brizola rose to power in the 1960s.

Further caudillos ruled Rio Grande do Sul from 1865 to 1882 and from 1882 to 1890; all were Blancos, as was Castilhos, who was the first to formally come from the PRR, and introduced workers' rights and the Second Industrial Revolution into the booming state.

After Rosas was overthrown, there were wars with Paraguay in the late 1860s and Uruguay in 1884, and the latter restored the Blanco Party to power in the country, as Rio Grande do Sul had a modern army and navy in the Prussian model. At the same time, Solano López's ambitions to dominate the region made Rio Grande do Sul come under the Argentine sphere, as they sought to influence neighboring nations and were powerful enough to threaten war and get them to make concessions.

In 1890, Rio Grande do Sul's authoritarian leader transferred power to Júlio de Castilhos, who proved to be one of the most transformative presidents in the country's history.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Since the early-to-mid 19th century, Uruguay had faced political turmoil between the Blanco and Colorado parties, and during the 1880s, there were widespread border raids into Rio Grande do Sul.

The Riograndense public increasingly called for the country's government to take an intervention, and, shortly after taking office after the death of a former dictator, President Venâncio Aires, who was a former journalist instead of a military officer, ordered an invasion, backed by the Riograndense fleet of avisos and gunboats, which blockaded Montevideo and prevented British aid from arriving.

By early August 1885, only Montevideo and its outskirts had not been captured, and when the city came under a full-scale assault, the Colorado administration surrendered, bringing Uruguay into the Riograndense orbit until the 1930s, when it began following an independent course.

In 1890, Aires died and Júlio de Castilhos succeeded him. The Castilhistas, as Castilhos' followers were called, largely dominated Riograndense politics until the 1960s, when Leonel Brizola became a left-wing dictator and the last in the country's history as of 2024.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Politics and society of Rio Grande do Sul between 1890 and 1921


In 1898, Borges de Medeiros became the authoritarian President of Rio Grande do Sul, succeeding Júlio de Castilhos.

In the 1890s, Castilhos began steering the Riograndense economy in a new direction, away from agriculture and dairy exports and towards industry. Unlike in other industrializing countries, Castilhos implemented an eight-hour workday, reparations for injured workers, and restrictions on child labour, which contributed to his popularity. During Castilhos' eight-year presidency, the number of banks and factories in Rio Grande do Sul increased exponentially, and electricity was brought to Porto Alegre.

Riograndense society became increasingly urban and multicultural during this period, due to a massive flux of immigrants from Germany and Italy who permanently altered the country's cultural landscape and introduced new foodstuffs, customs and ideas, including socialism and anarchism, which faced repression from the PRR governments. The government took some measures to assimilate them, such as mandatory literacy tests and the deportation of foreign radicals, but they were mostly welcomed by most the government and the populace. Several Riograndense presidents have been of Italian and German descent.

Medeiros continued his predecessor's policies, and introduced some new ones, such as financial and exchange reforms, including the adoption of the gold standard. His administration also laid hundreds of kilometers of railways – which were state property – and expanded the Riograndense merchant fleet, while maintaining friendly relations with all major powers until the outbreak of World War I; in 1917, Rio Grande do Sul broke relations with Germany, although it remained neutral throughout the war (as did all Latin American countries). Politicians such as Pinheiro Machado played an important role in implementing these reforms, which were implemented elsewhere in Brazil by statesmen such as Presidents Lauro Sodré of São Paulo and Rui Barbosa of Bahia, and Prime Minister Nilo Peçanha of Rio de Janeiro.

By the late 1910s, the authoritarian political system Rio Grande do Sul had followed since independence was declining, as it no longer fit transformations in society, especially the expansion of higher education, which led to many students thinking critically and opposing the PRR regime. There were increasing protests and action from the PL and other opposition groups, as well as gunboat diplomacy from Great Britain over Rio Grande do Sul's protectionist policies, culminating in the 1921 Revolution which led to Medeiros' resignation, the assumption of Getúlio Vargas as interim President, and Raul Pilla's election to the presidency, defeating José Antônio Flores da Cunha.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

With the PRR having been ejected from power a few months earlier, the election was theirs to lose, and Assis Brasil was elected President of Rio Grande do Sul for the completion of Borges de Medeiros' term.

The PL supported free trade, representative democracy, a parliamentary system and laissez-faire economics, contrasting with the protectionism, strong executive power, presidentialism and dirigisme supported by the PRR. The PSR endorsed Assis Brasil, but he rejected their endorsement to avoid being painted as a socialist by the blanco press.

Assis Brasil, who defeated conservative federal deputy and future cabinet minister José Antônio Flores da Cunha, thus became the first PL president of Rio Grande do Sul, and the first of the Third Republic. In 1923, he put into effect a new constitution that created the office of prime minister and guaranteed social, political and economic freedoms for all citizens, including women's suffrage.

Running a classical liberal administration during the 1920s, Assis Brasil was reelected in 1922 and 1926, winning over 55% of the vote both times, as the blancos were in a wilderness after their downfall they would only get out of when Getúlio Vargas was elected President in 1930, returning the country to its paternalistic conservative course.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Riograndense politics and society during the Roaring Twenties


In 1924, Rio Grande do Sul allowed women to vote. That same year, a female PRR deputy was elected, serving until 1937.

Assis Brasil, elected president in the 1921 snap election, scheduled elections to a national constituent assembly immediately after taking office, and they gave the classical liberal PL a majority.

The assembly drafted a constitution that remained in effect until the left-wing authoritarian government of Leonel Brizola in the 1960s; it brought freedom of speech, religion and association (except for unions) to the formerly autocratic country, provided for the separation and independence of the three branches of government and a semi-presidential system, limited executive offices to two terms, and allowed plebiscites and referendums if they had the approval of two-thirds of the Chamber of Deputies.

The PL government slashed tariffs and ended protectionism (except on meat), and mostly replaced dirigisme with a laissez-faire economic policy, helping the Riograndense economy grow faster than any Brazilian successor during the decade, except for rapidly industrializing São Paulo. It also allowed women to vote, which faced little opposition, as they played a key role in the war of independence, including Giuseppe Garibaldi's wife.

In 1922 and 1926, Assis Brasil was reelected to full terms, the latter at age 79, making him one of the oldest world leaders of the decade. The independent country continued to industrialize and urbanize, with cinemas and radio stations appearing in Porto Alegre, and increasingly few people relying on subsistence agriculture. While the majority of the population was still rural and 41% of citizens illiterate, Rio Grande do Sul began to be recognized as something other than a meat producer.

The PL dominated the domestic politics of the decade, especially in the major urban centres, while PRR support was concentrated in rural and border areas. In 1922, a Communist Party was founded, drawing on the Russian Revolution, and the government did not outlaw it, as the São Paulo government had done, but the party remained marginal until the Great Depression.

In 1930, Getúlio Vargas was elected President, defeating Raul Pilla, the government candidate, by running on economic nationalism and workers' rights while remaining a paternalistic conservative, the PRR's ideology until the 1980s when it moved to the right economically. Vargas was reelected in 1934 and succeeded in 1938 by Osvaldo Aranha.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Rio Grande do Sul's economy experienced rapid growth during the 1920s, however, on 26 October 1929, the New York stock market crashed, beginning the Great Depression.

The slump in agricultural prices caused serious damage to Rio Grande do Sul's economy, leading to a growth in strikes and left-wing activities and the formation of fascist movements based among the immigrant population.

The elderly president Assis Brasil was constitutionally ineligible for a third term. The PL nominated Raul Pilla, a 38 year old federal deputy, while the PRR nominee was Senator for Missões State and former provisional president Getúlio Dornelles Vargas.

Vargas focused on economic nationalism, workers' rights and nostalgia for the era of PRR dominance, borrowing some ideas from Italian fascism while supporting liberal democracy. The democratic socialist Riograndense Socialist Party endorsed Vargas, seeing him as the only hope of change for the working class, while the Communist Party ran its own candidate, Hersch Schechter, who won 14,044 (0.73%) votes; during his presidency, Vargas outlawed the PCR, which remained illegal until the 1940s, and had the support of military officers Isidoro Dias Lopes and Luís Carlos Prestes during the election.

In 1927, PRR moderates and the left wing of the PL broke off from these two parties to form the Democratic Party (PD), the first major third party in Riograndense history. It followed a social liberal platform inspired by Argentine President Hipólito Yrigoyen, with its main voterbase being the urban middle class and educated professionals. In the 1928 legislative elections, the PD elected three federal deputies, and became supportive of the PL administration until 1930, when party leader Nereu Ramos was nominated.

Given the poor economy and Castilhos age nostalgia, Vargas was easily elected, taking 60% of the vote. He was reelected in 1934, defeating Pilla and Proletarian Socialist Plínio de Mello.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

In the 1934 presidential election, the Liberator Party formed a coalition with the Democratic Party and nominated its perennial standard-bearer, Raul Pilla.

In 1932, Getúlio Vargas banned the Riograndense Communist Party (PCR), claiming the PCR to be an internationalist organization and thus unconstitutional. This prevented the PCR from fielding candidates by itself, although it occasionally used the Socialist Party lists, as well as several ephemeral front groups.

Two years later, the economy of Rio Grande do Sul had substantially recovered from the Depression, but there was still a lot of work to do. Vargas, a powerful orator, began using populist rethoric and mentioning his government's achievements, while tying himself to Bento Gonçalves and Júlio de Castilhos. This and the public's trust in Vargas allowed him to be reelected.

During his first presidency, Vargas used strongman tactics, and borrowed some elements from Italian fascism, although he had far less power than Júlio de Castilhos and Borges de Medeiros. The Legion of the Southern Cross, a fascist paramilitary group heavily drawing from immigrants, was used to suppress communism, only to be outlawed by Vargas in 1937, and press censorship returned to the country. This fascistic line alarmed the PL opposition, but the return to economic growth allowed Osvaldo Aranha, Vargas' successor, to be elected in 1938 and 1942.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Riograndense politics and society during the 1930s


In 1937, President Getúlio Vargas decreed a Consolidation of Labour Laws (CLT), including mandatory work permits.

The 1930s saw a continued economic recovery and further industrial growth. Heavy industry in Rio Grande do Sul dates from this period, as, in 1935, the Vargas administration bought a steel mill design from Krupp. The government of the country also created a minimum wage, paid vacations, and unemployment insurance, most of which were not directly Vargas' responsibility, but rather that of individual congressmen. In 1937, Vargas decreed the CLT, contributing to his lasting popularity.

During the decade, Rio Grande do Sul experienced a boom in the radio, possibly facilitated by Vargas' use of this medium of communication for political purposes. Cinema grew to a lesser degree, with 37 movies being produced in Rio Grande do Sul during the decade, although it was mostly concentrated in Brazil's wealthiest successor states – São Paulo and Minas Gerais, the latter of whom came under the far-right dictatorship of Francisco Campos by 1934.

Three years earlier, the Legion of the Southern Cross (LCS) was founded in Bagé as a fascist, anti-liberal and anti-communist political party that supported corporatism, Catholic tradition in opposition to Castilhist positivism, and the rights of European immigrants. The large German and Italian communities in Rio Grande do Sul led to the LCS growing rapidly, and by 1937, it had 42,000 members according to modem historians. Vargas, a staunch anti-communist, had used the LCS to crack down on the outlawed communist party, but they later outlived their usefulness and got banned as well.

There was a corresponding growth in left-wing movements. On one hand, there was the Marxist-Leninist, clandestine Riograndense Communist Party, and on the other, the reformist Riograndense Socialist Party and Trotskyist Proletarian Socialist Party of Rio Grande do Sul. Each of these parties opposed the bourgeois PRR and sought to dominate organized labour, which Vargas sought to bring under government control, with little success, as relatively few workers joined the unions that the government created.

In 1938, Osvaldo Aranha was elected as the successor to Vargas, and reelected in 1942, bringing RS into the war on the side of the Allies. In 1946, Raul Pilla was elected on his fifth attempt (Vargas being term limited) due to wartime shortages and inflation continuing.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

After Brazil disintegrated as a political entity in 1842, the dictatorships and instability that afflicted neighboring countries extended to its successor states.

São Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul and Minas Gerais emerged as the most economically and militarily powerful of the successors, while the Kingdom of Rio de Janeiro (a rump state and constitutional monarchy under the House of Bragança) was surrounded by hostile models and had to adopt the Prussian model of military organization to survive.

By 1935, Mato Grosso (Eurico Gaspar Dutra), the Confederacy of the Equator (José Pessoa Cavalcanti) and Minas Gerais (Francisco Campos) were ruled by right-wing authoritarian, and borderline fascist, regimes. Campos, a brilliant jurist and intellectual, was the most powerful of the two, creating a paramilitary wing with strong similarities to European fascist parties, seeking to build heavy industry in the mostly agrarian (and landlocked) country, and violently persecuting communists; he was forced to democratize Minas after WWII, and was succeeded by Benedito Valadares of the Liberal Party, who restored democracy to Minas Gerais.

Cavalcanti and Dutra were typical Latin American military strongmen, who portrayed themselves as "saviors" of their respective countries and had little ideology other than anticommunism. The CDE democratized in 1947, while Dutra remained the military ruler of Mato Grosso until his assassination by a left-wing activist in 1957.

Goiás and Grão-Pará were led by the centre-left, moderate socialist parties, who brought workers' rights, modern industry and actual representative democracy to their countries. Goiás President Pedro Ludovico, who governed between 1931 and 1941, is considered to be the rather of modern Goiás.

Authoritarian ideas had little influence in Rio de Janeiro, due to its parliamentary monarchical system of government and large black population. The liberals and conservatives alternated in power until the Socialist victory in the 1945 general election.

The collapse of Brazil in 1842 led Argentina to become the strongest power in South America, effectively making Bolivia, Paraguay (after 1885) and Rio Grande do Sul its satellite states, and experiencing reform and industrialisation after the 1905 Revolution. The National Autonomist Party governed Argentina throughout the 1930s until a Radical Civic Union candidate won in 1938.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Osvaldo Aranha, the Minister of Foreign Relations of the Vargas government, ran as a third term of the retiring president and used the slogan "vote em Osvaldo Aranha, você pode votar em Raul Pilla quando quiser"

Pilla attacked the authoritarianism and alleged corruption of Vargas, and opposed plans to return to a full presidential system, which would replace the office of prime minister (then held by José Antônio Flores da Cunha). He emphasized support for a laissez-faire economy, opposing PRR dirigisme and the revolutionary socialism of the PSPR, whose nominee, Trotskyist Plínio de Mello, won 99,000 votes, 4.91% of the vote.

The Gaúcho public was satisfied with the PRR administration, and elected Aranha, albeit by a 6% margin. Until 1941, when the two broke over WWII, it was understood Aranha was merely a puppet and Vargas was the actual power behind the throne. But the former president's steadfast support for neutrality and challenging the US led to the de jure leader breaking with his former boss.