ABSTRACT
The objective of this chapter is to examine the Brazilian economy between 1929 and 1979, with emphasis on the period 1930–1955, and to discuss the role of immigrant labor in Brazil’s “development effort”. Between the 1929 crisis and the second oil shock (1979), the country went through deep economic, political, and social transformations. This “long exceptional period” of development prompted a split with the agrarian-export accumulation pattern. The industrialization process of the Vargas Era transformed the face of the Brazilian economy. Between 1930 and 1955, the developmentalism characterized by the state’s direct action in the economy gained momentum, especially during the second Vargas administration (1951–1954). In the 1930s, “great waves of workers” (including immigrants) were incorporated into the national development effort. The Vargas restrictive migration policy targeted, and idealized, a particular type of migrant (Koifman 2012). In the Juscelino Kubitschek administration, a new pattern of accumulation marked by the internationalization of the economy became dominant. However, despite all the economic growth during this period, income concentration and authoritarianism were to be key elements in the country’s development between 1929 and 1979. In the 1970s, under the civil-military dictatorship of 1964–1985, Brazil became the eighth largest economy in the world, and income inequality widened even further.
