Since his rise to power with the 1930 Revolution, Getulio Vargas showed a tendency towards a centralized mode of administration. From 1930 to 1937, a period covering two phases of the Vargas era, known as “Provisional Government” (1930-1934) and “constitutional government” (1934-1937), Getúlio intended, in different ways, to establish control over social groups, whether party organizations or military organizations (such as the tenentista movement). THE 1934 Constitution, drawn up by a Constituent Assembly, sought to give an air of legitimacy to the government established in command of the country by revolutionary means. However, in 1937, a new political turnaround resulted in another coup, which instituted the stateNew. This new phase of the Vargas Era needed a new Çconstitution, which was granted that same year.
THE 1937 Constitution, unlike that of 1934, it was not drafted by a Constituent Assembly, that is, it did not go through the discussion and appreciation by deputies and experts in the legal area, but it was prepared by a single person:
Franciscofields, then Minister of Justice of Getúlio. Francisco Campos was a jurist by training and very adjusted to the totalitarian legal line of thought of the 1930s and 1940s. The text that Campos drafted to support Vargas' new dictatorial regime was anchored in models of European fascism, above all Italian and Polish.The Constitutional Charter drafted by Campos contains elements very similar to those of the government's “Carta del Lavoro” (Constitution of Labor) fascist of BenitoMussolini, granted in 1927. One of these elements was the attempt to control workers' organizations such as unions, which were co-opted by both Mussolini and by Vargas with a view to neutralizing any penetration of communist or anarchist ideas that might come to rival the proposal of the fascist model.
Because it was a text written to legitimize an overtly fascist-inspired dictatorial government, Vargas sought to convince many politicians of the need for a coup, trumpeting what had already been plotted. like Cohen Plan: the threat of a communist revolution (like the one attempted in 1935). The main articulator of this "negotiation" with other politicians was the deputy Negrão de Lima, ally of Vargas. While seeking to neutralize the communists, as well as the tenentistas and other imminently revolutionary lines of expression, Vargas proposed to the integralists, led by PlinySalty, that the Estado Novo dictatorship would be largely favorable to the ideas of integralism. Vargas even granted Francisco Campos to show Plínio Salgado part of the text of the Constitution.
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It so happened that, after the Constitution was granted and the Estado Novo instituted, one of the targets immediately attacked by Vargas was the Brazilian Integralist Action (AIB) and Plínio Salgado himself. Vargas wanted, in a way, to strike a small and discreet blow against the Integralists, betraying their trust. This attracted the revolt of the AIB, which culminated in the attempted countercoup in 1938: the intentIntegralist.
The 1937 Constitution was also called “polish”, because, like the Polish Constitution of 1921, the Brazilian Constitution also did not undergo a Constituent Assembly and was granted by the head of the Executive, having also a text that gave this head many devices to completely influence the entire composition of the government. This "Polish" nickname reverberated negatively among the population, mainly because it also alludes to European prostitutes that circulated in the country's capital at the time, as Vargas biographer Lira recounts Grandchild:
[…] there could be no doubt about the authoritarian vocation of the constitutional text drafted by Francisco Campos. The very way in which the document was drawn up contradicted the tradition of entrusting such an important task to a Constituent Assembly. For these and others, the new Magna Carta was nicknamed 'Polish', a reference to the Constitution granted and imposed by Marshal Józef Piludski to Poland in 1921 (the epithet ended with gain an even more pejorative connotation, alluding to European prostitutes who, despite their true nationality, were treated at the time, in Brazil, as Polish – or 'Polish').”[1]
GRADES
[1] GRANDSON, Lira. Getúlio (1930-1945): From the provisional government to the dictatorship of the Estado Novo. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2013. P. 317-18.
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
