Speech and Context: Steel-Making Policy in the First Vargas Government (1930-1937)[Discurso e contexto: política siderúrgica no primeiro governo Vargas (1930-1937)]

In February 1931, Getúlio Vargas delivered a well known speech in Belo Horizonte and made then one of his most important public interventions in the Brazilian steel-making debate. This speech made fortune in the historiography, above all for its incisive statement in favor of a national steel-making industry and, by extension, of industry in general, few months after the Revolution of 1930. We discuss and interpret here this speech, alongside with a comparison between what was defended in the speech and the steel-making policy which effectively followed it along the first Vargas government, but before the Estado Novo. We try to understand the reasons which led Vargas to state what he did about the steel-making problem, at that moment in Belo Horizonte, based on the history of the debate until then, on the position which the state of Minas Gerais occupied in it and on other propositions made by Vargas on the same occasion. Regarding the steel-making policy actually implemented by the government after the speech, we conclude that, if it was not nonexistent, we must at least consider it as disappointing, if compared to the expectations which the vehemence of his 1931 speech could give rise to.