ABSTRACT
Various approaches can be used in the effort to understand the general lines of Brazilian politics, to find an explanation for the Brazilian political process. A personalist approach attempts to explain political events through an analysis of the personalities of the principal leaders. The Brazilian industrial revolution—the radical but peaceful process of economic, social, political, and cultural transformation through which Brazil passed between 1930 and 1961—sets the scene for an understanding of Brazil's social and political processes in the 1960s. Industrialism, nationalism, and interventionism were clearly the political expression of the newly emerging social groups. The growing importance of industrial workers as a socioeconomic group, the spread of mass communications, particularly radio, and various other factors provoked among the population at large a growing interest in the country's political destiny. The industrial entrepreneurs, whose industrialism had never been of an advanced, progressive stamp, began to move to the right, breaking their alliance with the weak left.
