Brazilian Integralist Action

Attitudes of the Vargas regime

In the beginning of the 1930s, Brazil went through a strong wave of political radicalism. The government led by President Getúlio Vargas had a degree of support from workers because of the labor laws he introduced, and competed with the Communist Party of Brazil for working-class support. In the face of communist advances, and at the same time building on his intensive crackdown against the Brazilian left, Vargas turned to the integralist movement as a single mobilized base of right-wing support. With center-left factions excluded from the Vargas' coalition and the left crushed, Vargas progressively set out to co-opt the populist movement to attain the widespread support that allowed him eventually (in 1937) to proclaim his Estado Novo—an integralist "New State".

Integralism, claiming a rapidly growing membership throughout Brazil by 1935, especially among the German-Brazilians and Italian-Brazilians (communities which together amounted to approximately one million people), began filling this ideological void. In 1934, the Integralists targeted the Communist movement led by Luiz Carlos Prestes, mobilizing a conservative mass support base engaging in street brawls. In 1934, following the disintegration of Vargas' delicate alliance with labor, and his new alliance with the AIB, Brazil entered one of the most agitated periods in its political history. Brazil's major cities began to resemble 1932-33 Berlin with its street battles between the Communist Party of Germany and the National-Socialist German Workers' Party. By mid-1935, Brazilian politics had been drastically destabilized.

Crackdown and legacy

When Vargas established full dictatorial powers under the Estado Novo in 1937, he turned against the movement. Although AIB favored Vargas' hard right turn, Salgado was overly ambitious, with overt presidential aspirations that threatened Vargas' grip on power. In 1938, the Integralists made a last attempt at achieving power, by attacking the Guanabara Palace during the night, but police and army troops arrived at the last minute, and the ensuing gunfight ended with around twenty casualties. This attempt was called the Integralist "Pajama Putsch".

The AIB disintegrated after that failure in 1938, and in 1945 Salgado founded the Party of Popular Representation (PRP), which maintained the ideology of Integralism, but without the uniforms, salutes, signals, and signs. The various political leaderships raised among Integralistm dispersed into various ideological positions during subsequent political struggles. Those who maintained ties with the political Right included many of the former members of the participants in the 1964 military coup that was to overthrow President João Goulart. Conversely, other former integralists associated later with the Left, as was to be the case of Goulart's foreign minister Santiago Dantas, the Catholic bishop D. Hélder Câmara. The Brazilian populist leader (and Goulart's brother-in-law) Leonel Brizola, in an early stage of his political career, won the gubernatorial elections in the State of Rio Grande do Sul by means of an electoral alliance with the PRP. Today, there are two groups in Brazil which uphold the strict integralist ideology: the "Frente Integralista Brasileira" (FIB) and the "Movimento Integralista e Linearista Brasileiro" (MIL-B).

Integralistas and the military regime (1964-1985)

Integralistas and former Integralistas took a range of positions as regards the military right-wing dictatorship that followed the 1964 coup. Plínio Salgado joined the ARENA, the pro-military party. Augusto Rademaker and Márcio Melo, former Integralistas, served as two of the three member junta that briefly ruled Brazil in 1969, during the transition from the second military government (that of Artur da Costa e Silva) to the third (that of Emílio Médici). Rademaker was also vice-president in the third military government. He was generally considered as one of the most diehard rightists in the contemporary military topbrass. Many former Integralistas in the military occupied government posts in the second and third military administrations, usually thought to be aligned with hardline sectors in the army. On the other hand, D. Hélder Câmara, also a former Integralista, operated at the time as the best-known opponent of the regime.