Defense of Coffee in Times of War[Defesa do café em tempos de guerra]

The second coffee valorization was atypical among other valorization operations of the First Republic. The context in which it was undertaken, marked by the First World War and its repercussions on international trade and financial markets, forced the support of coffee prices to be financed with internal resources, which were generated by means of paper-money emissions. This circumstance displaced tensions to the internal political field, with its implications for the conflicts and negotiations associated to the program. This article aims at examining the second valorization from this perspective, focusing on the parliamentary clashes and bargains surrounding the "national defense" decree of 1917, which authorized the emissions and thus generated the resources for the defense of coffee. The second valorization was more contentious than usually portrayed by the literature, and was subject to resistance to the use of paper-money for this purpose and, specially, to disputes over the allocation of resources from emission, as well as to regional bargains which would reverberate on the government policy for the steel and coal sectors in the following decade.