A Política de Boa Vizinhança em tempos de Guerra

Abstracts - "The Second World War, popular classes, and wartime nationalism”

Hernán Camarero (CONICET-UBA)

“The Argentine labor movement and left in debate over World War II and U.S. policies. Neutrality, anti-imperialism or anti-fascism?”

This presentation analyses the way in which the causes of anti-imperialism and anti-fascism were combined in the Argentine workers' movement and the left, and in turn collided around the discussions on neutrality in the Second World War.
From the 1920s to the 1930s, the traditional challenge to British imperialism was joined by the denunciation of continental North American intervention, Pan-Americanism and the pernicious action of British and "Yankee" foreign capital. The Socialist Party, whose leadership had not previously pointed out this axis in its reformist and parliamentary actions, began to incorporate it into its slogans. The Communist Party promoted the Anti-Imperialist League and accepted the characterisations of the Communist International: the revolution would begin as "democratic, agrarian and anti-imperialist". The strategy of "class against class" radicalised the warlike statements of anti-imperialism. Another fundamental motive was anti-fascism. The convergence between socialists and communists on this topic had been affected by the sectarian line of the IC. But with the Popular Front, anti-fascism enabled the common action of both parties, around the fight against Hitler and Mussolini and the reactionary and anti-communist orientation of the local government itself, in the hands of a conservative alliance.
The left wanted anti-fascism and anti-imperialism to permeate the workers' movement, and the main trade union, the CGT. But the dominant sector of this remained in the hands of the "apolitical trade unionists", who wanted to limit themselves to the economic-corporate struggle. The context became more complex with the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. The Argentine government, controlled by Vice President Ramón Castillo, took up the old tradition against the Pan-Americanism of the local elite, and in tune with British interests - opposed to Argentina entering into a world war in which its role as a supplier of meat and cereals destined for London could be affected - promoted neutrality in the great conflagration, a position that it maintained until its overthrow in June 1943.
Neutrality in the war linked up with old and new motives in the workers' movement. The rejection of the previous "inter-imperialist" war had been a cause of the socialist left. At the same time, the CP supported the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, also promoting neutrality, which extended to the German invasion of the USSR in 1941: now, the repudiation had to be of all imperialisms (Nazi, North American and English). Thus, between 1939-1941 the workers' movement experienced: the rejection of the trade unionists who led the CGT to any political definition (in national or international affairs); and the neutrality promoted by the communists, who avoided a unilateral condemnation of the Nazi-fascist axis.
From July 1941, communist support for the USSR and the allied side recovered the anti-fascist democratic topic, subordinating the previous anti-imperialist banners. The PC fought for an agreement with the PS and the "progressive" bourgeois fractions, intending to lead the workers' movement to a great agreement with the Popular Front program.
The regime that emerged in 1943, with Colonel Perón in its midst, reaffirmed neutrality in the war. The communists and socialists labeled this position as inclined to fascism and confronted the workerist military. When the dispute led to an electoral solution at the end of 1945, the Democratic Union, the alliance formed by radicals, socialists and communists, was supported by diplomats from the United States. Perón and his labor coalition, accused of being pro-fascist, were left appropriating a kind of anti-imperialist legitimacy. The causes of anti-fascism and anti-imperialism seemed to be split, throwing the bulk of the working masses into the camp of a Peronist national-populism hostile to American interests and placing the left in an anti-fascist rhetoric far removed from an anti-imperialist program and labor conquests. In this presentation we will address the central aspects of this decade-long saga, which presents a central historical crossroads in Argentine history.

Gillian Mcgillivray (York University)

"Battles over Sugar in Brazil and Cuba, 1930-1947"

Building on documents from the US Department of Agriculture’s Narrative Reports and Brazilian and Cuban sources, this talk explores the different roles sugar played in the Brazilian and Cuban economies from the Great Depression through the Democratic Spring of 1945-47. During that era, Cuba exported most of its sugar to the United States and Brazilians consumed most of the sugar they produced.

Both Fulgencio Batista (1933-44, 1952-59) and Getúlio Vargas (1930-1945, 1951-54) described themselves as architects building new, corporate states to balance the interests of different regions and classes within their nations. In Batista’s case, this involved establishing sugar quotas to protect against overproduction and to guarantee a stake for the (predominantly) Cuban cane planters and workers against the (predominantly) US-owned sugar companies. Cuba’s 1937 Sugar Coordination Act indexed the price that companies garnered for their sugar to the prices of planters’ cane and workers’ wages. Brazil’s Institute for Sugar and Alcohol (IAA, 1933-1990), was more attuned to region over class. For Vargas, achieving “the greatness of the common homeland” involved getting Southern Brazilians to keep buying semi-refined sugar from the North so that sugar producers in the North could remain a viable market for manufactured goods produced in the South. Vargas, like Batista, introduced quotas attentive to cane planter and working-class interests but not until 1944, after industrial sugar factory owners and merchants had already concentrated power through the state’s developmentalism and wartime profits.

The IAA aimed to set a price for sugar that enabled factory owners to “live with decency and dignity,” increasing their patrimony and invigorating the Brazilian economy while avoiding excessive prices that would hurt consumers and trigger over-production.[1] The IAA’s two strategies to stabilize sugar prices, however, caused inequalities. The first strategy involved channeling excess sugarcane into alcohol distilleries. The second entailed dumping cheap “sacrifice sugar” into the global market so that domestic supply could align more closely to demand. These strategies gave industrialists the upper hand over cane planters while simultaneously giving São Paulo producers benefits over the Northeast. When German submarines sunk boats off Brazil’s shores in 1942, Vargas’s son-in-law Amaral Peixoto imposed food rations to curb inflation and speculation, but this triggered giant queues, the expansion of the black market, and riots. By the end of the war, the IAA gave up quotas and allowed Brazil’s three major sugar zones of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and the Northeast to produce as much as their population could consume. In both Brazil and Cuba, post-war prices spiked in the democratic spring of 1945-1947, partly due to speculation that Europe’s beet-sugar would take longer to return to the global market, and partly due to the higher wages organized workers struck for, and won, after the Allied victory.