“Latte Policy” was the name given to the type of agreement signed between the oligarchies of the states of They arePaul and Minesgeneral during the “Republicoligarchic” (1898-1930). The objective of such agreements was the alternation of political power between one oligarchy and another, which guaranteed that the local elites were above the central power of the Republic.
republican regime and federative system
Oligarchy is a word that comes from the Greek and means “government of a few”, that is, in a government oligarchic, few people, who form an elite, hold both political power and power economic. In order to understand how the "coffee with milk policy" works, it is necessary to remember that the Brazil's regional oligarchies began to stand out on the national political scene after the adoption of the federative system of Republic. But what is this?
During the time courseimperial (1822-1889), Brazil was regionally divided into provinces, which were closely linked to the central power, whose balance was achieved by the PowerModerator, a fourth power (in addition to the Legislative, Executive and Judiciary) which was exercised by the emperor himself, who could intervene in the other powers. With the advent of the Republic, in 1November 5, 1889, and the enactment of Constitution of 1891, these provinces became states of the federation, with guaranteed autonomy in relation to the central power.
This gain of autonomy on the part of the states led to the formation of regional oligarchies. Local elites began to superimpose their interests on the interests of the Nation as a whole, as they alternated at the center of decisions of the Republic: the presidency of the Republic. This type of articulation became known as “politicsFromgovernors”, which was the basis of the “coffee with milk policy”.
The "politics of the governors" and the "coffee with milk policy"
The "governors' policy" began to take effect during the government of fieldsSales, elected president of Brazil in 1898. This policy, also called "politicsFromStates”, consisted in the transformation of all political relations of the Republic into relations of “favor”, “exchange of favors” and agreements aimed at personal interests (the so-called “concoctions”), going from the federal sphere to the municipal sphere (in which the figure of the “colonel”, local political and economic authority on whom the population in rural areas depended). The leaders of regional oligarchies were at the top of the hierarchy in these relationships. The President of the Republic and the entire federal political apparatus were at the behest of these political conspiracies.
In order for everything to work as desired, three procedures were developed, as explained by historians Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. starling in the book Brazil: A Biography:
[…] political stability of the Republic was guaranteed by three main procedures: commitment of state governments to keep political conflict confined to the regional sphere; recognition by the federal government of the full sovereignty of states in the exercise of domestic policy, maintenance of a electoral process in which, despite the political mechanisms that tried to control local disputes, fraud continued frequent. [1]
In this sense, a system to control the electoral process that favored the entire network of agreements was also needed. This system was mounted on the calls Commissionsof verification (there were two, one in the Chamber of Deputies and one in the Senate), which decided which candidate could actually be admitted to the National Congress - if you were someone who was not within the network of agreements and worked for it, your election was canceled.
Why the “Coffee with Milk Policy”?
The presidents of the Republic were usually or from They arePaul (represented by the São Paulo Republican Party - PRP) or of Minesgeneral (Represented by the Republican Party of Minas Gerais - PRM), precisely because these two are the most powerful oligarchies. Due to the fact that coffee was, at the time, the main product of the economy of São Paulo, and milk, of Minas, the alternation between the two in the scheme of the “politics of the governors” became known as “politicsofcoffeewithmilk”.
GRADES
[1] Schawrcz, Lilia M. and Starling, Heloisa M. Brazil: A Biography. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2015. P. 322.
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
