Explosive Americana
Tenente Rebels in Brazil
A Continental Divide
The thing that, more than anything else, would come to define the 1920s in South America would be the divergent developments of its nations, one building on Conservative centralism and stability leading to considerable economic wealth, a second characterised by bitter internal conflicts as a burgeoning class of lower-rank military officers clashed with the elitist and classist societies in which they were present, and a third of Liberal reform governments. Particularly notable of the former group of states would be Colombia, which would exploit the collapsing fruit company empires in Central America to emerge as the predominant source of tropical fruits in America. While Sandinista agitations would emerge near the end of the decade, it would find itself ruthlessly crushed by a combination of government power and Colombian business interests, while large-scale economic growth continued under the powerful Conservative Hegemony which had ruled unopposed since late in the previous century.
Venezuela would also experience significant economic prosperity under the dictatorship of Juan Vincente Gómez as the exploitation of oil began in 1918. Venezuela had inherited its land ownership legislation from Spain which amounted to the understand that land, as deep as a plow or a water well went, could belong to individuals but everything under the soil was state property. Thus, Gómez began to grant huge concessions to family and friends. The Venezuelan concessionaires leased or sold their holdings to the highest foreign bidders while Gómez, who didn’t trust industrial workers or unions, refused to allow the oil companies to build refineries on Venezuelan soil, so these were built on the Dutch islands of Aruba and Curaçao instead. Although the Venezuelan oil boom started around 1918, the year when oil first figured as an export commodity, it took off when an oil well called Barroso blew a 60-meter spout that threw up an average of the equivalent to 100,000 barrels a day a couple years later. By 1927, oil was Venezuela's most valuable export and by 1929 Venezuela exported more oil than any other country in the world.
The Venezuelan government derived considerable profit from these concessions and from taxes of one sort of another, but the original fiscal laws which applied to the oil companies were hammered out between the government and American lawyers to the benefit of the men present. The laws were relatively lenient, but Gómez, who had an acute business sense, believed it necessary to create incentives for investors in the Venezuelan oil fields, some of which were easily accessible but many of which were difficult to reach. Oil income allowed Gómez to expand Venezuela's rudimentary infrastructure and the overall impact of the oil industry on Venezuela was a modernizing trend in the areas where it operated. But in a wider sense, the Venezuelan people, except for those who worked for the oil companies and lived badly but had a steady income, benefited little or not all from the country's oil riches (15).
The second group, consisting foremost of Brazil and Chile, would see immense popular discontent and several leftist lieutenant revolts over the course of the decade, only nearing some form of stability near the end of the decade. The third and final group was dominated by Argentina and Peru which both remained under more-or-less reform-oriented Liberal governments during the decade.
What became known as the tenente movement came to public notice on 5 July 1922 when a group of young Brazilian Army officers began a rebellion against the Old Republic at Fort Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro. Sparked initially by the punishment and brief imprisonment of Marshal Hermes da Fonseca by President Epitácio Pessoa, the tenentes were demanding various forms of social modernisation, calling for agrarian reform, the formation of cooperatives, and the nationalisation of mines. Their early-morning rebellion was taken up by a garrison in São Paulo but not by others; only "scattered units around Rio de Janeiro revolted: the Escola Militar, some elements of the First Infantry Regiment and the Battalion of Engineers, and the garrisons of Forts Copacabana and Vigia. However, the remainder of the First Army Division stayed loyal and, with General Setembrino de Carvalho supervising the operations, easily crushed the revolt. Twenty-four hours later, just 200 rebels remained when the navy dreadnought Minas Geraes shelled the Copacabana barracks, after which two navy aircraft bombed the barracks in the first use of naval aircraft in combat in Latin America. The defenders were driven from their positions. A group known subsequently as the 18 of the Copacabana Fort revolt were led down Avenida Atlântica by Antônio de Siqueira Campos and Eduardo Gomes to confront the army loyalists; the eighteen made a last stand on the beach, where sixteen were killed and two, Gomes and de Siqueira Campos, survived. In the aftermath, the government imposed a state of emergency, 1,000 cadets were expelled from the army school and many officers posted to remote garrisons.
Two years later, on 5 July 1924, another group of army officers mounted a rebellion in São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul. The date was chosen to honor the 1922 rebels; the uprising was better prepared and was intended to bring down the Bernardes government. The formal leader was retired General Isidoro Dias Lopes, with others including Eduardo Gomes, Newton Estillac Leal, João Cabanas and Miguel Costa. The rebellion began well, with control of São Paulo being secured after the governor and forces loyal to him abandoned the city early on 9 July (16). Efforts to cut off the city by government forces collapsed in the face of a speedy attack by the rebels, who were able to splinter the already fractured government forces and link up with rapidly escalating risings in Bela Vista and across much of Mato Grosso while concurrent risings in Aracaju, Sergipe and Manaus fought to join together as well further north. With Bernardes' supporters sent into disarray, the Tenentists struggled to consolidate their hold on the south, even as their successes began provoking widespread popular uprisings in their favor. Across southern Brazil, Coffee plantation workers took up ramshackle arms and turned them on their landlords, provoking panic and flight in particularly Minas Gerais state while Rio de Janeiro erupted in open revolt, forcing Bernardes to flee further northward with his government to Salvador in Bahia. Bloody fighting consumed much of July, August and September, but finally in late September 1924 the fighting became too much for Bernardes and he fled the country. Now all that remained was determining the future of Brazilian government (17).
While the tenentists had thus driven their primary rival from power, they had unleashed a beast in the process. Across much of southern and central Brazil, coffee and sugar plantations went up in flames while landlords were driven out, if they weren't killed outright by their tenants. General Lopes initially fought to restore order by extravagant promises to the peasantry but soon found himself so disillusioned with his inability to bring the riots to a halt peacefully that he decided to turn to violence. Over the course of late 1924 nearly 5,000 riotous peasants were killed while martial law was imposed across much of Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul and Sao Paolo, stretching across a vast swathe of southern Brazil. Communist agitation was constant and soon began to seep into the peasant rebels. Increasingly despondent, Lopes eventually decided to step down from his leadership position. In Lopes' place came the powerful and ambitious General Joao de Deus Mena Barreto, who took up the challenge left by Lopes.
Over the course of 1925, Barreto would proceed to crack down hard on the Coffee Barons, effectively sanctioning the massive land redistribution occurring across much of the countryside as plantations were parcelled out amongst their tenants while their former landlords were driven into exile en masse. Dozens of young men who had demonstrated their loyalty to the new regime found themselves propelled into positions far beyond anything they had ever imagined, including men like Eduardo Gomes, Luís Carlos Prestes and Antônio de Siqueira Campos, including cabinet positions while still in their twenties. The result, foreseeably, was a chaotic socio-economic and political crisis as the Brazilian economy collapsed in response to a withdrawal of investments, the predictable result of widescale land redistribution of plantations, and an economic embargo by British and American financiers. A collapse in coffee supply caused widespread unemployment in many of the coastal cities of southern Brazil, which were so reliant on international trade, and set off bitter strikes, protests and riots across Brazil's coastal regions.
Throughout 1925 and 1926, the bickering over whether to end rule by emergency decree and to call a constitutional convention sabotaged any hope of competent government, with the younger members of the cabinet stridently calling for the convention while general Barreto himself remained skeptical. By 1927 the situation had grown dire and the populace was in near-open revolt, paving the road for the return of Old Republic supporters such as Júlio Prestes and Washington Luís to start martialing support. On the 8th of August 1927, Baretto was gunned down by an Italian communist agitator in an effort to push forward with a Brazilian Revolution, only for the Old Republicans to use the chaos that ensued to attack strong points across much of Rio de Janeiro. Already deeply unpopular, the Tenentist Regime began to crumble before word of Old Republican actions could even reach them. Over the course of the remainder of 1927, Brazil collapsed into ungoverned anarchy as Júlio Prestes and Washington Luís began to restore order along the coast while the more radical tenentist fled into the interior. Over the following years, large sections of the Brazilian interior would remain outside of the effective control of the Republic, but Prestes and Washington would consolidate their hold on the coastal lands and southern plantations where they slowly struggled to set aright the shattered state (18).
Similarly to Brazil, Chile experienced a series of military coups and counter-coups starting around 1924 which would radically shape the state in the years to come. During most of 1924, Chile had been politically paralysed by a conflict between the President and the conservatively controlled congress, who refused to discuss the laws that he sent them. On 3 September, 1924 a group of 56 military officers protested their low salaries, in an incident known as the rattling of the sabres. The next day the same group of young military officers, led by Colonel Marmaduque Grove and Major Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, created a military committee to defend themselves from threatened sanctions by the government in response to their actions.
On 5 September, the military committee demanded President Arturo Alessandri dismiss three of his ministers, including the minister of War; the enactment of a labor code; the passage of an income tax law; and the improvement of the military budget and salaries. Alessandri had no option but to appoint General Luis Altamirano, the Army Inspector General (Chief of the Army), as head of a new cabinet. On 8 September, General Altamirano appeared in front of Congress to demand the passage of eight laws, including Alessandri's labor code. Congress dared not protest, and laws which had been left to languish for years were passed in a matter of hours. These included the 8 hour day, suppression of child labour, regulation of collective bargaining, legislation on occupational safety, legalization of trade unions, a law on cooperatives and the creation of courts of conciliation and labour arbitrage were all passed. At that point, Alessandri felt that he had become just a pawn of the military, and, on September 9, he resigned and requested asylum at the US Embassy. The Congress refused to accept his resignation, and instead granted him a six-months constitutional leave of absence. He left the country immediately for Spain.
General Altamirano assumed power as Vice President and on September 11 a military Junta was established to rule the country in the absence of the titular president, Alessandri. After the initially progressive September Junta had been a few months in power, the military committee, led by Colonel Marmaduque Grove and Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, started to suspect that a Conservative restoration was under way. The fears seemed confirmed when Ladislao Errázuriz, head of the Unión Nacional conservative alliance suddenly presented his candidacy to the upcoming presidential elections. At that point, the September Junta lost the confidence of those that had elevated them to power, chiefly among them the Military Union. Young military officers began to plot with the supporters of Arturo Alessandri's return, in particular the Comité Obrero Nacional, National Workers' Committee (19).
Headed by Colonel Marmaduque Grove, left-wing militaries deposed the September Junta and handed the power to General Pedro Dartnell as interim president, hoping to recall Alessandri from exile. Dartnell, however, decided to form another junta, the January Junta, which ended with Alessandri's return on March 20, 1925. Alessandri had a new Constitution drafted, and approved by plebiscite by 134,421 voters on August 30. The Constitution, which was promulgated on September 18, 1925, reinforced presidential powers over the legislative. Furthermore, Alessandri created a Central Bank, initiating his first major rupture with classical liberalism's laissez faire policies. Alessandri's second government began with the support of left-wing and radical groups. However, this second group began to distance itself from the President. In March 1925, Alessandri's government repressed a demonstration, leading to the Marusia massacre, soon followed by the La Coruña massacre. This caused Alessandri to break with his Minister of Defence, Colonel Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, who had emerged as his primary rival for support from the masses. Alessandri wanted to present only one official candidacy to the presidential election, himself, while Ibáñez gave his support to a manifesto drafted from various political parties which called on him to present himself as a candidate for the presidency (19).
Balanced on a knife's edge, the situation in Chile exploded when Alessandri forced the resignation of del Campo and several of his more overt supporters, provoking widespread public unrest and considerable grumbling in the military ranks, only to see another coup erupt when it was discovered days later that del Campo had been executed in secret soon after his resignation by some of Alessandri's supporters. The October 1925 Coup would lead to the establishment of a November Junta under Marmaduque Grove and the execution of Alessandri, inaugurating a period of intense reform as advisors from the tenentists in Brazil, exiled Obregónistas from Mexico and the European communists in Italy and Russia all found themselves welcomed with open arms by the socialist Marmaduque.
Marmaduque would find his ambitions challenged in 1926 when oligarch-backed conservative forces tried to incite revolt in northern Chile, but he was able to crush the incipient revolt before they could get started primarily through superior aerial power. Marmaduque would use this opportunity to launch a series of major land reforms and confiscations of oligarchical estates even as he made preparations for a constitutional convention which would allow Marmaduque and his civilian allies, such as Eugenio Matte Hurtado, Luis Emilio Recabarren and Carlos Contreras Labarca, to establish their longed-for Socialist Republic. The tumult in Brazil started soon after this and after a few abortive efforts at establishing an alliance, Marmaduque eventually pressed forward with the Constitutional Convention in mid-1927.
The resultant Socialist Republic of Chile in many ways mirrored, when it didn't exceed, the ambitious revolutionary constitution that had emerged in Mexico in 1917, breaking the power of the oligarchical classes and the church while paving the way for a joint military-socialist regime in which officers who had played prominently in the various coups of the preceding years were included in the government alongside civilian socialists. Chile marched into the coming decade having achieved some form of stability under this new socialist regime which, while at times repressed opposition, by and large fought to avoid turning into a tyranny (20).
Footnotes:
(15) This is largely based on the OTL developments of these two countries, with the exception of the even greater growth of tropical fruit plantations than IOTL (still a major trend IOTL but accelerated ITTL), although it is important to note that at least for the time being they are avoiding the immense damage done by the Great Depression - though even here, these two countries made it through easier than many others on the continent.
(16) Everything is OTL up to this point, where the Second Tenenteist Rebellion goes off the rails.
(17) IOTL this revolt fizzled out after 28 days of bloody fighting, primarily because the government forces succeeded in bottling up the tenenteists in Sao Paolo. ITTL they are able to break through and in the process buy time for the subsidiary revolts in the north and south to gather strength. With the Bernardes government on the back foot and the military streaming to support General Lopes, they soon begin to collapse. However, the Tenente movement has now provoked a revolutionary situation far more explosive than anything like what emerged in 1930 IOTL. How they deal with this situation will prove critical for the long-term stability of the region.
(18) Brazil turns into an absolute shit show which allows Old Republican supporters to return to power. That said, the regime which emerges under Prestes and Washington Luís is far from what reigned previously. The coffee barons' power has been shattered and control of the countryside is spotty at best. Prestes and Washington effectively rule as dictators while they struggle to rebuild some semblance of a state, but foreign investment is hard to come by and there are other, more inviting, investments to make.
(19) This is largely based on OTL and describes the situation in Chile up until Alessandri's OTL fall from power.
(20) In contrast to OTL, instead of allowing his government to resign - which would significantly weaken his position and IOTL led to his own forced resignation - Alessandri instead pushes forward and has his greatest rival executed. This allows the socialistic Colonel Marmaduque to come to power and paves the road to a Socialist Chile - a state which Marmaduque attempted to create IOTL in the early 1930s. By 1930 Marmaque has succeeded in building at least some stability into the Chilean state and has turned his attentions towards supporting the Tenentists in the Brazilian interior - providing arms, supplies and advisors when needed, in the process giving the tenentist movement a significantly more socialist character than previously.
Summary:
Mexico comes under the joint rule of Adolfo de la Heurta and Francisco "Pancho" Villa.
Huey Long steps onto the political stage at a national level.
Under Sandinista pressure Central America is turned into a revolutionary cauldron while the great Fruit Companies fall from grace.
South America is wracked by political division and politico-military movements which see the tenentists emerge in Brazil, only to fall into disgrace, and a socialist military regime in Chile.
End Note:
That brings this chapter of the Timeline to a finish. I am sorry about how diffuse the timeline has gotten, it seems like I am jumping around the world constantly with little forward progress, which is one of the reasons I will be putting the timeline into a hiatus for the time being. I need to re-evaluate my approach and figure out how to move forward and I have a number of other things I want to work on as well. The last month or so has been a bit difficult to manage update-wise so I am hoping that a bit of time away can recharge my creativity.
All that said, I really hope that you have enjoyed the timeline so far and, if it is not too presumptuous, I would love it if people would go in and vote for their favorite TLs here. I always enjoy seeing the Turtledove Awards go out but so far I have been unable to bring one home, here's to hoping this year is different.
