ABSTRACT
BRAZIL was a marginal country in the international crisis of the 1930s. Poorly integrated into the international capitalist economic system, the Brazilian economy had a negligible role in world commercial exchange. At the end of the Old Republic, the country nonetheless found itself on the threshold of a new political era. During 1935, the Palazzo Chigi—home of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Relations—received from its embassy in Rio de Janeiro reports on a Brazilian political movement that possessed certain ideological similarities to Fascism. On October 10, 1936, Ciano sent Menzinger a communication requesting information that would give him a better understanding of the integralist movement. In response to Ciano's instruction, the new Italian ambassador in Brazil—Vincenzo Lojacono—countered that the surest way to avert compromising the embassy would be for the Palazzo Chigi to designate an official representative of the Italian Fascist party in Brazil, charged with maintaining close and permanent contact with the Ação Integralista Brasileira (AIB).
