THE "west march” was a program developed by the government of Getúlio Vargas during the period of new state and aimed to promote population development and economic integration of sparsely populated and developed areas in the Midwest and North regions of Brazil. However, the results of the project were modest.
Estado Novo and the “March to the West”
The “March to the West” was a population and economic development program carried out during the Estado Novo and aimed at serve sparsely populated regions from the North and Midwest regions of Brazil. The Estado Novo was the dictatorship implemented by Getúlio Vargas after the Estado Novo coup in 1937.
This period was marked by the repression of any and all political opposition and by the government's censorship and propaganda carried out by the Press and Advertising Department (DIP). The dissemination and promotion of the “March to the West” was carried out by the DIP.
The North and Midwest regions of Brazil were considered sparsely populated and economically poorly integrated with other regions of the country, such as the South and Southeast. Thinking about it, the idea of the project was to promote the population development of these places to enable the economic development. Another idea of this project was develop the road network of Brazil to promote greater integration of these regions with the coast.
The modernist writer was chosen by the government to promote the project Cassian Ricardo, who already acted as a government censor and accumulated other government positions in the direction of the newspaper Tomorrow and as head of the Political Cultural Department of Rádio Nacional. In the role of project defender, Cassiano Ricardo wrote the book “March to the West: the influence of the flag on the social and political formation of Brazil” in which he defended the program and the Vargas government.
Characteristics of the "West March"
The main objective of Vargas' “march to the west” was to promote the population development of sparsely populated areas in the North and Center-West of Brazil. In order to achieve this, the government encouraged poor Brazilians to migrate to housing colonies developed by the government in the following states: Goiás, Amazons, Bushthick, For and Maranhão.
The government's idea was to prioritize that poor Brazilians, especially from dry areas in the Northeast, migrated to the new housing colonies. The preference for the Brazilian worker was part of the characteristic of the program that exalted the national and considered any foreign influence harmful.
On the economic side, the program aimed at the development of these regions by making more labor available for the implementation of small farms to develop the family farming. For that, it was necessary to carry out an agrarian reform that promoted the dismantling of the latifundiums existing in the interior of the country.
Finally, the government sought to develop the country's road network to promote the integration of the interior with the coastal regions to speed up the flow of economic production from these regions. In this matter, the Goias state it was considered essential to the government due to its centralized geographic position that connected the coast to other regions of the country.
By Daniel Neves
Graduated in History
