ABSTRACT
The 1950s represented a new phase in the historical path of national development in Brazil. Throughout these transformative years public policies and intellectual debates assumed a developmental tone, and hindrances to rapid economic growth were increasingly judged through new interpretive lenses that associated the very concept of nationalism with the goal of fast-paced, state-led industrial promotion. Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira was elected president of Brazil in October 1955 on the basis of an electoral platform centered on an ambitious agenda of national economic development. During his presidential campaign, he enumerated key areas of the national economy that should receive special treatment from the federal administration so that fast-paced growth could occur. The main objective in doing so is to demonstrate that the developmental drive of the 1950s was becoming so influential among governmental officials that the main elements of the international political behavior the country advanced in those years was also chiefly defined by the goal of fast-paced development promotion.
