Ideology and Diplomacy: Italian Fascism and Brazil (1935–38)
B RAZIL was a marginal country in the international crisis of the 1930S. Poorly integrated into the international capitalist economic system, the Brazilian economy had a negligible role in world commercial exchange. At the end of the Old Republic, the country nonetheless found itself on the threshold of a new political era. The Revolution of October 1930, beginning on the periphery, but ending with control of the central power structure, inherited several problems that urgently demanded the attention of the new ruling elite. These problems varied in nature. It was necessary to find markets for exports and, at the same time, to diversify national production in order to avoid the errors of the past, like that created by the policy of revaluation of coffee. The limited demands for Brazil's agricultural exports forced it to rethink its role as a monocultural producer and to lay the groundwork for indispensable industrialization. The Armed Forces, poorly prepared and with obsolete equipment, had become ardent defenders of import substitution. What was the future of democracy? How fast should the popular element be brought into the political arena? What was to be done about international immigration, the rural exodus, and burgeoning cities? Brazil truly found itself at a crossroads: a rural and archaic country in the process of transforming itself into a modern urban nation. The Brazilian intelligentsia, meanwhile, having perceived its national roots, actively participated in debates on the nation's future, at times seemingly unaware that domestic problems had to be attended to in the context of intense international rivalries. Some European countries, weary of what their leaders considered sterile parlimentarism and improvident liberalism turned to new and