Brazil

The Republic of Brazil or just Brazil is a Republican, conservative and largest and most powerful South American nation, rivaled only by the large Free Territory of South America.

## **Brazil Before Radicalization**

Brazil before the 1930 elections remained staunchly neutral in world affairs. They maintained relations with the Central and Entente powers through the Great War. Yet after the war concluded Brazililian foreign policy leaned to the West and more Republican pro-American attitudes were adopted. However, due to the hardships of the Cairo War and the beginning of the sluggish American economy after 1917 and British economic downturn also brought Brazil’s economy with it. Their economy throughout the 1920s was grim but not horrible. Unemployment slowly rose as the Brazilian population became consistently fed up with the actions of the republican government. The Brazilian leaders from the 1920s and onward tried time and time again in vain but no reforms were able to lift up the economy, and many had the opposite effects than intended. But unlike so many other nations, as radicalism took hold in Brazil there weren’t leftist elements but instead those radicalists were on conservative populists. Any hope of a Leftist spread in Brazil ended in 1924 with the Argentine Civil War. There, the democratic Argentine government fled into Brazil into exile as Argentina became anarchist. This ended up causing a red scare within Brazil. Due to this any influential leftist Brazilians fled into Argentina, and after the civil war Brazil closed its borders with Argentina, so that no trade would take place with both states.

In 1927 as the New York and London stock exchanges plummeted so did Brazil’s. Life in Brazil was worse off than ever. This event in 1927 exploded popularity of the Brazilian far right. In 1923 due to the economic turmoil of Brazil, a group from several smaller far-right parties merged into what is known as the “Brazilian Liberation Party” in English. This was an autocratic populist party which vowed to cleanse South America of its leftist influence and hoped to bring the continent under Brazilian influence. And so, when the 1930 Brazilian elections were held, the Liberation Party won 53% of the vote, ushering in a new era of conservative, authoritarian corporatism.

## **Rapid Changes To The Country**

After the Liberation Party had been won and Plínio Salgado was sworn into office Brazil went through massive changes. Labor Unions were banned, and any sort of social or political liberalist reforms were reversed. Laws passed in the early 1930s expanded the power of the president, and the Liberation Party heavily intimidated any other sort of political opposition from participating in elections. Due to this terror the remaining anti-populists fled into the Latin American Socialist Bloc where then most fled to neutral countries. Starting at around June of 1931, funds were poured into Brazilian propaganda, painting the socialist bloc as something vile that needed to be snuffed out. Brazilian military industry was reborn and unemployment began to drop only due to mass conscription and slow rearmament for a new war against the socialist bloc.

In 1934, as the Caribbean war broke out, Brazil debated on whether to join in the war. Their primary concern was due to the immense power of the socialist bloc, how effective would their army be against them? Brazil had just restarted rearmament and Chile had begun its own revolution thanks to Argentina and Bolivia. Despite some people wanting to go to immediate war the government knew they didn’t have the adequate resources to go to war. The Brazilian army was very weak and poorly equipped with outdated equipment since the 1920s and 4 years of rearmament and mass conscription was not able to solve those problems. Another problem was the massive border they shared with the socialist bloc which would outstretched their army. As well as the fact that their army was damaged by the large mutinies caused by the land and naval forces alike for the hope of a democratic Brazilian government. These efforts had been quashed and mass arrests ensued in 1932-1933 further damaging the likelihood of Brazil winning the Caribbean War should they enter it. And so as a result, Brazil remained neutral. But the aftermath of the war caused even more paranoia within the country. Chile was now overtaken by Socialists and the bloc grew even stronger, mounting a serious defense against Populist Brazil. Those in the government advised against the war due to the fear that, shall Brazil fail in their efforts almost all of South America shall be under socialist ideology.

As the new year of 1936 comes to the country Plínio Salgado has a lot to fix. He will need to re-equip his army and fully mobilize in order to stand a chance against the Bloc. The Navy and Air Force, still quite underfunded need to undergo massive changes as well if the new conflict with the Socialist border states is not going to be a long and bloody was like the Great War.