Chapter LII - Life, mundane life
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Hello and welcome once again, but before we can properly begin there is something I must address first, something which would become synonymous with the very word Brazil, and that my friends is FOOTBALL!!! Because as it seems I forgot to talk about the first World Cup, the first World Cup would be held in the city of
Montereal[1] on the Brazilian state of
Cisplatina, 13 teams of 13 nations participated in the tournament and in the bitter end after scoring a 3-2 on the Argentinian team the Brazilian nation celebrated as they were victorious and not only got their first World Cup victory but also the first victory ever, thus marking the beginning of Brazil’s extraordinary football teams and players, now back to politics.
In 1934, the Brazilians were once again called upon to vote for their nation’s future, on one side the successful coallition between the
PTB and the Progressives, on the other there were fascists, there were also commies as well as the old establishment parties, the elections were held on the 1st of October and it resulted in a huge
PTB-Progressive victory as both parties combined won 53% of the popular vote and thereby managed to keep
Hermenexildo as PM of Brazil.
Now that
Hermenxildo began his major recovery plan Brazil could begin its recovery, however to keep the industrialization pro res going resources were needed, to accomplish this the Brazilian government created the state-owned company of
CMB (Companhia Mineradora do Brazil/Brazilian Mining Company) whose task was basically to find and develop the necessary resources for the growth of Brazilian industry, to do that the company began opening and developing mining complexes in the provinces of
Aurélia,
Bandeira,
Nova Beira,
Maracaju and
Grão-Pará, the main product explored was iron ore tough bauxite, manganese and copper were also massively explored as well. However, to transport all of this infrastructure was also needed but you see there was a problem, the overwhelming majority of Brazil’s 287,056 kilometers of railway were held by private hands and many of them with the recession became bankrupt thus leaving many railroads to rust in disuse, to fix this the Brazilian government in line with their ideology passed on January of 1935 the
Lei do Transporte Nacional which basically nationalized all railway lines of the country with the previous owners being compensated for their loss and, due to uncertainty of times most were more than happy to get rid of such burden.
Brazilian workers in a Public Works Project (1935).
This however, did not meant that the Brazilian government was not willing to work with the “non-vital” private sector to achieve its goals, for example the government negotiated a lot with companies such as
Monte Castelo, one of the few big companies not to go bankrupt, to cooperate on matters of production and labor, this however was not the case for “vital” companies such as
Aço Leminski which after the death of its founder in 1931 began to decline more and more until the Brazilian government decided to nationalize it and transform the company into the
CSN (
Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional/National Steelworks Company), this coupled with the massive public works projects and the fact that markets were now stabilized after the shock of 1929 meant that Brazil by 1935 had already left recession behind with unemployment now at a solid 10%.
However, 1936 would prove to be a highly chaotic year for Brazilian politics, for in that year
Hermenexildo’s bad habits finally caught up to him and he died of a heart attack on the 9th of May, thankfully for the country
Hermenexildo already groomed a successor capable of taking up the mantle, in fact
Vargas (aka the apprentice) was in fact responsible for a lot of decisions that happened during the
Hermenexildo administration, for example it was he who proposed the
Lei do Transporte Nacional and it was he who proposed nationalizing the
Aço Leminski to then create the
CSN. Sadly for Vargas however, many in Brazil did not wish for the
PTB-Progressives to retain power, thus a coalition of basically everyone else tried to pass a motion of no confidence and collapse the government, however thanks to the slight majority the coalition held in parliament the motion was defeated
During Vargas government he quickly moved on to finish some incomplete projects, for this he had parliament ratify the
CLT (Consolidação das Lei Trabalhistas/Consolidation of Labor Laws) in which all the labor laws accumulated over the decades were pilled up in a single unified code, he also began the
Plano Albuerne named after the Asturian-Brazilian architect
Alberto Albuerne which called for a major remodeling of both
São Sebastião and
Tieté in order to increase livability and better health and public transport. All of this cost a fuck ton of money and since we all know money doesn’t fall from the skies they resorted to simply printing more, however the problem of printing more money is that it generates inflation and during the 1930’s there was tons of inflations as prices fluctuated a lot and salaries could quickly erode in value, this was also why the parliament voted on and passed the
Lei do Ajuste Salarial which basically meant that the minimum wage must grow to 75% of inflation allowing for worker’s to continue to feed their families even tough their money was consistently decreasing in value.
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[1] the OTL city of Montevideo (Uruguay)
