Since power ultimately rested on a patronage system, wide-scale defections in the delicate balance of regional interests left the regime of Washington Luís vulnerable.

Despite capital flight, Washington Luís clung to a hard money policy, guaranteeing the convertibility of the Brazilian currency into gold or British sterling.

A populist governor of Brazil's southernmost Rio Grande do Sul state, Vargas was a cattle rancher with a doctorate in law and the 1930 presidential candidate of the Liberal Alliance.

Vargas was a member of the gaucho-landed oligarchy and had risen through the system of patronage and clientelism, but had a fresh vision of how Brazilian politics could be shaped to support national development.

During this time, as the stranglehold of the agricultural elites eased, new urban industrial leaders acquired more influence nationally, and the middle class began to show strength.

Aside from the Great Depression and the emergence of the Brazilian bourgeoisie, Brazil's historic dynamic of interregional politics was a significant factor encouraging the alliance that Getúlio Vargas forged during the Revolution of 1930 between the new urban sectors and the landowners hostile to the government in states other than São Paulo.

After the abolition of slavery in 1888, Brazil saw a mass exodus of emancipated slaves and other peasants from the northeast to the southeast of the country, ensuring a steady supply of cheap labor for the coffee planters.

Given the grievances with ruling regime in the northeast and Rio Grande do Sul, Getúlio Vargas chose João Pessoa of the northeastern state of Paraíba as his vice-presidential candidate in the 1930 presidential election.

For instance, the provisional president quelled a paulista female workers' strike by co-opting much of their platform and requiring their "factory commissions" to use government mediation in the future.

At the expense of the indigent peasantry—85 percent of the workforce—not only did Vargas renege on his promises of land reforms, he denied agricultural workers in general the working class' gains in labor regulations.

Likely to the detriment of that region's long-term economic development, Vargas' static conservatism on rural matters arguably exacerbated the disparities between the impoverished, semi-feudal northeast and the dynamic, urbanized southeast to this day.

The paulista elite loathed Alberto, resenting his centralization efforts and alarmed by his economic reforms, such as 5% wage increase and the minor distribution of some land to participants of the revolution.

Amid threats of revolt, Vargas replaced João Alberto with a civilian from São Paulo, appointed a conservative paulista banker as his minister of finance, and announced a date for the holding of a constituent assembly.

Regardless of the attempted revolution, Vargas was determined to maintain his alliance with the original farmer wing of his coalition and to strengthen his ties with the São Paulo establishment.

Vargas also pardoned half the bank debts of the coffee planters, who still had a significant grip on the state's electoral machinery, alleviating the crisis stemming from the collapse of the valorization program.

Vargas was also increasingly threatened by pro-communist elements in labor critical of the rural latifundios by 1934, who sought an alliance with the country's peasant majority by backing land reform.

Despite the populist rhetoric of the "father of the poor", the gaucho Vargas was ushered into power by planter oligarchies of peripheral regions amid a revolution from above, and was thus in no position to meet communist demands, had he desired to do so.

In 1934, armed with a new constitution drafted with extensive influence from European fascist models, Vargas began reining in even moderate trade unions and turning against the tenentes.

The Brazilian Communist Party was established in 1922 and the postwar period witnessed the rise of the country's first waves of general strikes waged by viable trade unions.

Vargas' backers in both urban and rural Brazil began to view labor, larger and better organized than ut had been directly after the First World War, as an ominous threat.

With the cangaço thoroughly repressed in the northeast, the new bourgeoisie and the landed oligarchs shifted their well-founded fears toward the trade unions and socialist sentiments of the burgeoning urban proletariat.

With center-left tenentes out of the coalition and the left crushed, Vargas turned to the only mobilized base of support on the right, elated by the atrocious, fascist-style crackdown against the ANL.

The party had all the visible elements of European fascism: a green-shirt-uniformed paramilitary organization, street demonstrations, and aggressive rhetoric directly financed in part by the Italian embassy.

The integralists borrowed their propaganda campaigns directly from Nazi materials, including the traditionalist excoriations of Marxism and liberalism, and espousals of fanatical nationalism, Antisemitism and "Christian virtues".

Vargas, and later Juan Perón in neighboring Argentina, emulated Mussolini's strategy of consolidating power by means of mediating class disputes under the banner of nationalism.

These provisions essentially designated corporate representatives according to class and profession, organizing industries into state syndicates, but generally maintained private ownership of Brazilian-owned businesses.

The 1934–37 constitution, and especially the Estado Novo afterwards, heightened efforts to centralize authority in Rio de Janeiro and drastically limit provincial autonomy in the traditionally devolved, sprawling nation.

The state thus emphasized the basic sectors of the economy, facing the difficult task of forging a viable capital base for future growth in the first place, including mining, oil, steel, electric power, and chemicals.

In December 1937, one month after the Estado Novo coup, Vargas signed a Decree disbanding all political parties, including the fascist "Brazilian Integralist Action" (Ação Integralista Brasileira (AIB)).

The liberal revolution of 1930 overthrew the oligarchic coffee plantation owners and brought to power an urban middle class and business interests that promoted industrialization and modernization.