History UsefulNotes / GetulioVargas

* Due to his prominence in 20th century Brazil, he is a very common figure in any [[FanWorks/HeartsOfIron Hearts Of Iron 4 mods]] with Brazilian content.

é

When the time came for his term to end, Vargas seized emergency powers in 1937 to establish a dictatorship known as 'New State', and dissolved Congress. The basis of this coup was Vargas's fear that if his candidate won in 1938, the opposition governors in Rio Grande del Sul and São Paulo would revolt and start a new civil war. The Integralists would come up with the 'Cohen Plan', which was then stolen by the army and published in the media to build support for a dictatorship. Said document was a purported communist plot in the form of a document planning the government's bloody overthrow. It was really a blatant forgery by the Integralists, from the author's name meant to stir up antisemitic feelings,[[note]]initially it was signed "Béla Kun" after [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9la_Kun a real-life Hungarian communist revolutionary]], but it was later changed to "Bela Cohen" as an inside joke to one of the leaders of the Integralists who used to misspronounce the name as "Bela Cohen". In the end, the document was signed only with the name "Cohen" due to a typing error,[[/note]] to the lurid descriptions of church burning to the Jewish surname assigned to the 'author.'

When the time came for his term to end, Vargas seized emergency powers in 1937 to establish a dictatorship known as 'New State', and dissolved Congress. The basis of this coup was Vargas's fear that if his candidate won in 1938, the opposition governors in Rio Grande del Sul and São Paulo would revolt and start a new civil war. The Integralists would come up with the 'Cohen Plan', which was then stolen by the army and published in the media to build support for a dictatorship. Said document was a purported communist plot in the form of a document planning the government's bloody overthrow. It was really a blatant forgery by the Integralists, from the author's name meant to stir up antisemitic feelings, to the lurid descriptions of church burning to the Jewish surname assigned to the 'author.'

After sections of the military [[LetNoCrisisGoToWaste took advantage from an assassination attempt against one of Vargas's political opponents]] (but unrelated to any of his doings) so they could try forcing the President's resignation and install a junta, [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled Vargas committed suicide so the junta could be avoided]]. He [[ThanatosGambit knew full well what he was doing]]: by turning himself into a martyr, the Brazilian people rioted when news of his death became public and effectively destroyed whatever support the conservatives would have from taking power. The following presidents would try to continue working on making Brazil more self-sufficient right up until the 60s when the DayOfTheJackboot took place, overthrowing Vargas's chosen successor Goulart, and the feared BananaRepublic really was established. Effectively, Vargas's death bought Brazil a few more years of democracy, ironic for a man who had begun his career by taking it away.

Unfortunately, this coalition lacked a cohesive vision besides a broad idea of centralizing "modernization" which made his idea of governing difficult. This pushed Vargas to alter his policies to whatever ideology was convenient for him at the time, which is what marked his long career. He alternated between being an economical libertarian, an authoritarian centralist partially modeled after Fascist Italy and Salazar's Portugal, a socialistic populist, a positivist technocrat in Latin American tradition, and so forth. The most significant example of this was his relations with two separate political parties: the Integralists and Communists. The former were a fascist party founded by Plinio Salgado that housed most of the Brazilian far-right be they monarchists, fundamentalist Catholics, Mussolini fanboys, Nazis, or anti-Semites, but bizarrely [[PoliticallyCorrectVillain denounced racism against Afro-Brazilians as it sought to "unite all races and people into one spirit"]], and the latter was headed by Luis Carlos Prestes, [[DirtyCommunists a communist militant that sought to implement a Soviet-style dictatorship in Brazil]]. Despite mutual hatred of each other, both parties were allied with Vargas during the 1930 Revolution, but they became disillusioned with him due to his inconsistent policies to secure their support. Eventually, Vargas would crush them both in turn.

** In ''VideoGame/RedFlood'' the Revolution of 1930 never happens, but the Old Republic was toppled by the communist uprising of 1935, and the new "Brazilian Popular Republic" is extremely unstable that anti-communist oligarchs can launch a counter-revolution and topple the communist government. Vargas can come to power during the elections that follow, if Brazil doesn't fall to anarchy.