The Car Industry in the Context of Brazil’s National Developmentalist Ideologies

Brazilian elites exploited well the economic and diplomatic opportunities opened by World War II and the US's overture with the Good Neighbor policy. The country came out of the war effort poised to take a more assertive place in world affairs and to address for one the country's historical infrastructural shortcomings. Though no single position on how to pursue these goals came to fore, rich debates around the need to promote a more concerted approach to economic development emerged and when the developmentalist decade of the 1950s emerged on the horizon, a deep sense of urgency helped shape the main lines of the political, intellectual, and cultural debates that ensued during the next two decades. Central to these propositions, fast-paced industrial promotion was something most relevant actors could agree on, though the means to accomplish it were not consensual and were indeed behind central debates and divisions of the period. Taken as the quintessential expression of the industrial society, auto-making embodied the goals and challenges on how to successfully transform the so-called 'country of the future'. Critically examining the main debates and decisions surrounding the implementation of what would become Latin America's most important industrial center for car manufacturing, this paper seeks to shed a new light on some of the country's most influential and sophisticated debates pertaining to the nation's self-image, past, and future, which, took place in the transformative years of the middle of the twentieth century.