The Portuguese ‘New State’ and the Diffusion of Authoritarian Models in Interwar Latin America

In 1941, a New York Times journalist visited 10 Latin American countries and wrote an article expressing his concerns about Catholic sympathies towards corporatism, dictatorships and fascism across the continent. He concluded: ‘Repeatedly one heard from priests and laymen throughout South America the view that the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal was an almost ideal state, and this seemed to be accepted as a fairly general Catholic view’. ¹ More thorough research could have added more references, and not necessarily coming from countries with a dominant Catholic political culture, but the importance of Salazarism and some of its political institutions as a reference to follow by authoritarian leaders, was well captured by this American journalist. ²

When looking at models for new authoritarian political institutions during the ‘era of fascism’, those most often mentioned throughout the late 1930s were the Italian Fascist regime and German National Socialism. ³ Nevertheless, with personalized leaderships, corporatist political representation as an alternative to liberal democratic parliamentarism, and the single-party built from above, as the three main institutional features of the new dictatorships of the fascist era, few of them looked at Nazi Germany when crafting their political institutions. The same cannot be said of Italian Fascism, which was a powerful diffusion model, particularly in respect of the corporatist Carta del Lavoro, which was perhaps the most influential and adapted document for the regulation of labour relations in the dictatorships of the 1930s and early 1940s. ⁴ Nevertheless, there were many variations of the emulation processes, political learning and even regime promotion in various directions during the genuine authoritarian political laboratory of the era of fascism.

When we look at the process of political regime change in the 1930s, it is not difficult to see how some regimes represented a third authoritarian way. As some scholars, particularly Kurt Weyland, note, ‘much of the autocratic wave of the 1920s and 1930s emanated from the double deterrent effect, driven by fear of the communist left as well as the fascist right’. ⁵

It is in this context that some dictatorships, such as those of Miguel Primo de Rivera in Spain, Dollfuss in Austria and Salazar's New State in Portugal, are often associated with and played a leading role in models of this authoritarian third way that appealed to interwar conservative and radical right-wing political elites. These were often referred to in the dynamics of debate over and construction of political institutions during the age of fascism, and when they did not serve directly as models for diffusion, they did so indirectly. Through projects for authoritarian constitutions and the design of political institutions put forward by intellectual politicians, parliamentary commissions or even dictators and candidates for political and interest group leaderships, these regimes offered authoritarian alternatives to liberal democracy. Whether because of its stability and durability, or the nature of its political institutions, the hypothesis behind this article is that Salazarism was one of the main protagonists in the diffusion of this third way during the era of fascism, one that embodies an authoritarian corporatist model. Salazarism was primarily associated with the spread of corporatism as an alternative to liberal democracy in terms of political and social representation and it was in this process that it emerged as a model. ⁶

As an authoritarian ‘gravity centre’ in the interwar period, the Portuguese New State was not the product of active propaganda or power capacity. ⁷ Its force of attraction derived, essentially, from having an international means of diffusion: important segments of the Catholic Church's organizations and intellectual politicians, and particularly from having led an authoritarian corporatist political system model. ⁸ From this perspective, Salazar was an example of how an authoritarian ‘gravity centre’ ‘can unintentionally project and produce diffusion effects or actively strive to export autocratic governance in terms of institutional settings, procedures, norms or practices’. ⁹

How and why did Salazar's New State inspire some of the new political institutions proposed by radical right-wing elites or created by many of these regimes? This article tackles this issue by adopting a transnational and comparative research approach, paying particular attention to the primary mediators of its diffusion and analyzing institutional reform processes in selected processes of political crises and transitions to authoritarianism in Latin America.

Corporatism was promoted vigorously by the Roman Catholic Church from the late-nineteenth through to the mid-twentieth century as a third way of social and economic organization in opposition to socialism and liberal capitalism. Much of the model predated the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891) and was due to the romanticizing of medieval Europe's feudal guilds by nineteenth-century conservatives disenchanted with liberalism and fearful of socialism and democracy. Indeed, corporatist ideas became increasingly in vogue among younger Catholics who were frustrated with ‘parliamentary’ political Catholicism. However, ‘the Church's explicit endorsement surely moved corporatism from seminar rooms to presidential palaces’, especially after the publication of the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (1931). ¹⁰ Pope Pius XI assumed that as a result of the Great Depression, liberal capitalism and its associated political system were in decline and that new forms of economic and social organization were now needed. ¹¹ The powerful intellectual and political presence of corporatism in the political culture of Catholic elites in both Europe and Latin America paved the way for other more secular influences.

Corporatism made an indelible mark on the first decades of the twentieth century – particularly during the interwar period – as a set of institutions created by the forced integration of organized interests (mainly independent unions) into the state and as an organic-statist alternative to liberal democracy. ¹²

During the interwar period, corporatism permeated the main political families of the conservative and authoritarian political right: from some Catholic parties and social Catholicism to radical right-wing royalists and fascists. ¹³ However, there were differences between the Catholic corporatist formulations of the late nineteenth century and the integral corporatist proposals of some fascist and radical right-wing parties. ¹⁴ When we look at fascist party programmes and segments of the radical right, like the Action Française-inspired movements, the picture is even more explicit, with many reinforcing ‘integral corporatism’ vis-à-vis the less ‘statist’ social corporatism of Catholicism.

Variants of corporatist ideology spread to the global world of dictatorships in the 1930s. Some of these dictatorships, such as Mussolini's Italy, made corporatism an alternative to economic liberalism and the symbol of a ‘fascist internationalism’. ¹⁵ Salazarism made an aborted attempt to establish the League of Universal Corporatist Action (Liga de Ação Universal Corporativa), which was much closer to the Catholic third way, as a diplomatic means of exporting the Portuguese corporatist model – the most durable of all corporatist dictatorships, which survived from 1933 to 1974.

Under interwar dictatorships, social corporatism became synonymous with the forced unification of organized interests into single units of employers and employees that were tightly controlled by the state and eliminated their independence: especially the independence of the trade unions. Social corporatism offered autocrats a formalized system of interest representation to manage labour relations: legitimizing the repression of free labour unions through the co-optation of some of their groups in state-controlled unions, often with compulsory membership. Finally, corporatist arrangements also sought to ‘allow the state, labour and business to express their interests and arrive at outcomes that are, first and foremost, satisfactory to the regime’. ¹⁶ During this period, corporatism mainly referred to the comprehensive organization of political society beyond state-social groups relations seeking to replace liberal democracy with ‘an anti-individualist system of representation based on an “organic statist” view of society in which its organic units (families, local powers, professional associations and interest organizations and institutions) replace the individual-centred electoral model of representation and parliamentary legitimacy, and thereby becoming the primary and/or complementary legislative or advisory body of the ruler's executive’. ¹⁷ From this perspective, corporatism was an extremely appealing proposal for crafting and a powerful agent for the institutional building of interwar dictatorships, largely surpassing the ground from which it sprang.

In 1937, in the context of several publications produced by the National Propaganda Secretariat (SPN – Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional), led by the highly effective and cosmopolitan António Ferro, the Portuguese dictator summarized the principles of his regime in Une Revolution dans la Paix and Comment on Relève un État (A Peaceful Revolution and How to Build a State). ¹⁸ The Salazarism consolidated during the 1930s was perceived by conservative elites just as Salazar intended and was defined in these publications as an authoritarian, Catholic and corporatist alternative to liberal democracy and, while sharing their same anti-communism, to National Socialism and Italian Fascism as well. ¹⁹

The main characteristics and institutions of the New State, particularly those that were often highlighted as the model, are easy to describe. Starting with the leader: Salazar's image was that of a ‘Catholic dictator’, who was simultaneously conservative and technocratic. He pursued a university career as a professor of economic law: his only political activity under the Portuguese liberal republic took place within the strict limits of the social-Catholic movement. The image Salazar cultivated was that of a reserved, puritanical dictator. ²⁰

Salazar was an ‘academic’ dictator. He was ideologically and culturally traditional, anti-liberal and Catholic in the context of secularization and accelerated modernization in early twentieth-century Europe. He steadfastly defended his rejection of democracy, favouring an ‘organic’ vision of society based on traditional Catholic foundations. The systematic, Cartesian nature of his speeches provides a good indication of his political thought. He always addressed the elite, rarely succumbing to populist mass appeals. He was a professor of finance and had clear ideas about the management of a state's balance sheet. As a ‘strong’ dictator, he rarely delegated decisions. ²¹ But while the dictator enjoyed some notoriety, it was his political institutions that attracted the most attention.

The 1933 Constitution established the political institutions of the New State and was the product of an early compromise with Portuguese conservative republicans. Its liberal principles were weak and its corporatist and authoritarian elements strong. Rights and liberties were formally maintained but were eliminated by government regulation. De jure freedom of association existed, but parties were eliminated through specific regulation.

Formally, the National Union (UN) never became a single party, although it functioned that way after 1934. ²² The UN was, in fact, a variant of single authoritarian parties, generally representing a ‘coalescence, from the top, of various elements to create a new political entity’, obliging other forces either to integrate or to be excluded. ²³ The determining factor is that these parties were created in an authoritarian situation, where political pluralism was already absent or severely handicapped. The impetus for their formation came from the government, with decisive aid from the state apparatus. In general, their establishment involved varying degrees of compromise by other parties or pressure groups participating in the winning authoritarian coalition.

As president of the UN, António Salazar nominated the party's deputies to parliament. The constitution maintained the classic separation of powers, but the chamber of deputies had few powers; it was dominated by the single party and elected by direct suffrage. The government was thus freed of any domination by parliament. Theoretically, the members of the Corporatist Chamber were designated by the corporations; however, in reality, Salazar nominated many of them. ²⁴ The constitution maintained the presidency of the republic, elected by direct suffrage, Salazar was answerable only to the former. The president of the republic was always a general, given the legacy of the military dictatorship. In short, to use a phrase of the time, the regime was a ‘constitutionalized dictatorship’. Together with the single party, the merely ‘advisory’ chamber of deputies and corporatist chamber constituted the regime's ‘limited pluralism’.

In 1936, having completed the consolidation of the system, Salazar authorized the formation of a militia, the Portuguese Legion (LP – Legião Portuguesa). He also set up the Portuguese Youth (MP – Mocidade Portuguesa), which was compulsory, and women's organizations were dependent on the Ministry of Education. In response to criticism from the Catholic hierarchy, the MP was rapidly ‘Christianised’ and encouraged to interact with other, essentially Catholic, youth organizations. Both groups were more modest in scale and more dependent on the state apparatus than their counterparts in other European authoritarian and fascist regimes.

The lynchpin of the corporatist structure was the 1933 National Labour Statute (ETN – Estatuto do Trabalho Nacional) of 1933, along with the ‘industrial conditioning’ law. ²⁵ Although tempered by the New State's strong Catholic leanings, the ETN owed Italy's Carta del Lavoro a great deal. The statute, approved in September 1933, sought to establish a synthesis of the Italian model and the ideals of social Catholicism. Corporatism was written into the constitution and given a central role in determining institutional structures, ideology, relations with ‘organized interests’, and the state's economic policy. This close association between the Catholic Church and state represented more than just a convergence of interests; it expressed a common ideological and political nucleus that was corporatist, anti-liberal and anti-communist.

With these traits, it is only natural that the Portuguese regime was presented as a model for vast portions of the conservative Catholic world during the 1930s. As one Jesuit priest wrote in 1937, ‘the post-war years have produced in Europe a succession of Catholic statesmen of altogether extraordinary interest’, but of them all, from Dollfuss to Bruning and Gil Robles, only Salazar emerged as the leader of a successful authoritarian regime, ‘inspirer of the attempt to found a corporative society in Portugal’. ²⁶

Often associated with the reactionary ideology of Action Française and its Iberian counterparts, the catholic route was the most structured element of the spread of Salazarism across borders. This association between the Catholic corporatist models and the Portuguese New State was decisive, almost always distinguished from fascist ‘totalitarianism’. In some cases, the New State even served as a precocious model of ‘organic democracy’, further from fascism. Simultaneously, in other contexts, particularly in the collaborationist regimes in Axis-controlled Europe, it is presented as being compatible with it.

Organized and directed by Catholic clergymen, associations such as Catholic Action sought to enhance the involvement of Catholics in social and political structures. During the 1930s, the official Church and its thinkers made corporatism an alternative to communism and liberal democracy, and ‘the task of the era was to forge a modern Catholicism that could make its peace with the new authoritarianism’. ²⁷ A 1936 letter from French cardinals, celebrating ‘corporation, with its cadres, its hierarchy, its regulatory power, its jurisdiction and its right of representation in government’, was without doubt repeated in various forms across Latin America. ²⁸ Corporatism permeated the leading political families and elites of the conservative and authoritarian political right in interwar Latin America. However, the conservative and reactionary Catholic intellectual politicians tended to be those who promoted corporatist alternatives by synthesizing fascist and social-Catholic options, which were often shaped by the interventionist options associated with the 1929 crisis. ²⁹ In this context, Catholic authoritarian intellectual politicians crossed the Atlantic and the borders of Latin America on several occasions, adopting models readily available on the Iberian Peninsula, such as those of Miguel Primo de Rivera in Spain and Salazar in Portugal.

The Catholic press, study groups and movements, gave voice to an impressive process that spread social and political corporatist ideas throughout Latin America, and it is in this context that the Salazar's New State emerged as a model in the 1930s. The Jesuits were influential in the spread of corporatist proposals in Europe and Latin America – so much so that many names could be mentioned: men such as the Spaniards Father Palau and Joaquín Azpiazu, Felix Restrepo in Colombia, and Miguel Bullrich and Luis Chagnon in Argentina. Azpiazu, whose writings constantly appeared in the Catholic press, was probably the most important in the transatlantic transfers. ³⁰ Of course, the Catholic Church was not alone in fanning the flames of corporatism. The influence of new European traditionalist radical right thinking was also significant, which was not in conflict since the Catholic milieu ‘was the main recipient of Maurassianism’ after the First World War, in a strict association with the ‘Catholic revival’. ³¹ Again, ‘the movement of men from both sides of the Atlantic is decisive in the spread of Maurrasianism in Latin America’. ³²

When we examine the corpus of the new authoritarian nationalist constructs in Latin American countries, we see the influence of Action Française, blended with corresponding European elite movements – Spanish Action (AE – Acción Española) in Spain and Lusitanian Integralism (IL – Integralismo Lusitano) in Portugal. Many of the European and Latin American intellectual politicians who collaborated closely with the dictators associated with the institutionalization of corporatism were from this cultural background. ³³

If in some cases the Catholic conservatism of the papal encyclical Quadragesimo Anno was seen as an endorsement of Fascist corporatism by the Italian regime, which was probably ‘intended this way in the hope that both Fascist censors and Catholic anti-Fascists would see what they wanted to see in the text’, in the late 1930s this was affirmed with greater distinction. ³⁴ With the assassination of Englebert Dollfuss in Austria in 1934, one of the most complete expressions of the authoritarian fusion of social and political corporatism under the control of authoritarian political Catholicism, the Portuguese New State was confirmed as the major influence. As the Portuguese historian, Valentim Alexandre, notes: ‘of the regimes in which Catholic integrism is most strongly felt… the New State best conforms to the model the Vatican takes as its reference’. ³⁵

A quick survey of a selection of Catholic movements, parties and intellectuals politicians of the 1930s and early 1940s paints a clearer picture of when and at what critical junctures Salazar's New State emerged as a model to be followed, both in democracies and in hybrid or authoritarian regimes in Latin America. Although conservative Catholicism was the dominant way through which the Salazarist model was spread across Latin America, it was almost always associated with the Hispanic authoritarian political culture. Although retaining some of the characteristics close to its spread in Europe, where in some cases it was a Catholic ‘organic democracy’ alternative to fascism, in others it was closer to the Iberian variants of Action Française.

In Uruguay, the differences from fascism were underlined by catholic politicians. Uruguay experienced one of the most complete democratization processes during the early decades of the twentieth century, to become one of Latin America's few democracies, with a polity based on widespread political participation and enlightened political parties. Although present in the political culture of the radical right and in some parties during the 1930s, the hybrid regime of Gabriel Terra (1932–38) and his successor, Alfredo Baldomir (1938–42), consecrated corporatism in the institutions in a very limited way. Although the regime's authoritarian nature was indisputable, many contemporary observers considered it to be a dictablanda rather than a dictadura.

Gabriel Terra's authoritarian regime knew anti-system parties closer to the radical right and were powerful advocates of corporatism, associated with Italian Fascism and the Spanish Falange. ³⁶ Social Catholicism was disseminated by the Catholic parties, such as the Uruguay Civic Union (UCU – Unión Cívica del Uruguay), during the 1910s. One of its leading ideologues, Tomás G. Brena, was a critic of the corporatist statism promoted by fascism. However, he did not move away from its European and Latin American counterparts, especially Salazar and Dollfuss. ³⁷ He was the most prominent Catholic politician to support the Salazarist model in Uruguay, which he saw as different from and more suitable than fascism, repeating an association we often read about Salazarism: ‘the two corporate regimes that are closer to the pontifical conception and that were inspired by Quadragesimo Anno were the Austrian and the Portuguese’. ³⁸ A more authoritarian Catholic dissent was expressed in the El Democrata newspaper, which in 1933 proposed a constitutional project that would create a ‘legislature composed of a chamber of guild representatives in such a way that all corporations are represented in a proportional and qualified manner’. ³⁹ Brenna, from his part, as many other catholic intellectual-politicians of the 1930s, saw in the Portuguese Constitution of 1933 and its political institutions, a transition from State (fascist) corporatism towards a more ‘associative’ version, close to ‘our conceptions of democracy’, that is, the ‘organic democracy’ of corporatist political representation. ⁴⁰

Argentina opened the interwar authoritarian wave in Latin America with General Uriburu's 1930 coup, which overthrew the constitutional government of Hipólito Yrigoyen, in the first successful military intervention against democracy in Argentina. For some students of Uriburu's dictatorship, his main inspiration was the Primo de Rivera regime in Spain, beginning with the corporatist model he tried to implement.

The role of several intellectual politicians associated with the radical right in Uriburu's authoritarian and corporatist programmes was evident. Although few had formal political roles, some were part of Uriburu's circle since the late 1920s and wrote several political and constitutional reform proposals during his brief dictatorship. Their cultural and political influence was decisive in the fascist and authoritarian alternatives proposed in Argentina during the 1930s.

The Catholic Church was another exponent of the reactionary traditionalism that saw corporatism emerge as the authoritarian solution for Argentina. Authoritarian Catholic intellectuals and activists like Father Gustavo Franceschi articulated a corporatist social Catholicism that closely followed the models of European fascist and authoritarian regimes and of the Hispanist movement of the early twentieth-century that was at the root of a ‘home-grown right-wing ideological stance that equated Argentine national identity with Catholicism’. ⁴¹ It was the Catholic magazine Criterio, the central promoter of a ‘Christian corporatist state’ based on the experiences of Dollfuss, Franco and Salazar's New State. ⁴²

The nationalists were the leading creators of an authoritarian Argentinian national identity: one that was corporatist, Catholic, Hispanic and which placed great stock on such values as hierarchy, anti-liberalism and anti-communism, all with elements of xenophobia and anti-Semitism. Some of these intellectuals, such as Leopoldo Lugones, were much closer to Italian Fascism; however, the majority – including Meinvielle – sought a synthesis between fascism and traditionalist Catholicism, which was also the position of the Irazusta brothers, who were close advisers to Uriburo. Most of their writings cited Maurras's Action Française and AE. The spirit of Uriburismo was maintained by the nationalist throughout the 1930s, and the ‘would-be corporatist revolution’ did not disappear altogether. ⁴³ Several leagues based on the ‘Uriburu myth’ emerged during the ‘infamous decade’, although as Federico Finchelstein noted, they failed in their principal aim, which was to ‘unify nationalism politically and lead it to victory’. ⁴⁴

Although in a different political regime, the agents for the spread of Salazarism in Chile were similar to those in Argentina: a group of radical right-wing movements in the 1930s. Chile was also an example of how Salazarism emerged associated with Catholic, corporatist and Hispanist groups. Authoritarian corporatism was supported by Catholic intellectuals such as Jaime Eyzaguirre, whose magazine Estudios perhaps ‘represented the maximum expression of the authoritarian-corporative project in Chile’ during that decade, expressing a great deal of sympathy for the Dollfuss and Salazar regimes. ⁴⁵ Estudios was perhaps the most outspoken promoter of the Portuguese New State's authoritarian corporatism in 1930s Chile. In it, they saw a ‘hierarchical and corporatist regime’ emerging from the ‘ruins of liberalism’. ⁴⁶ The corporatist project contained in Estudios was partially inspired by European corporatist models, mainly from Spanish Jesuits like Azpiazu, Catholic politicians like José María Gil Robles, head of Acción Popular, and even by José Antonio Primo de Rivera, leader of the fascist Falange. However, the most marked ones were Dollfuss and Salazar, complete with Eyzaguirre's praise of Salazar's Portuguese constitution instituting a National Assembly and a Corporatist Chamber. ⁴⁷ The Estudios group ‘endorsed Salazar's model over Franco's’, and they were not alone. ⁴⁸ For segments of the conservative Catholic youth, the Portuguese New State was the correct model for Chile because of its nationalism, respect for and recognition of ‘natural groups’ such as the family, and Catholic values. ⁴⁹

In Paraguay, following an early corporatist authoritarian experience under Rafael Franco in 1936, it was during General Estigarribia's dictatorship of the 1940s that the Tiempo group of corporatist Catholic intellectual politicians, organized around the newspaper of the same name, became influential. This group looked beyond Mussolini and towards the authoritarian political regimes on the Iberian Peninsula as their reference. One of its leaders claimed the Catholic and corporatist Portuguese New State was the model ‘we looked to’. ⁵⁰ Estigarribia's successor, Higinio Morínigo, resumed the alliance with the Tiempistas, quickly proclaiming the new regime's motto: Order, Discipline and Hierarchy. ⁵¹ This traditionist Catholic group gave Morínigo ideological and political legitimacy.

When Colonel Sánchez Cerro's military coup in August 1930 overthrew Augusto Leguía, there was no real process of regime change in Peru because President Leguía had governed using dictatorial powers. Sánchez Cerro was forced to resign in 1931, only to return in the wake of presidential elections later that same year. He was replaced by the conservative General Óscar Benavides (1933–39) following his assassination two years later.

The early 1930s were years of major economic and political instability in Peru due largely to the 1929 Depression, and Leguía was overthrown following violent demonstrations in Lima. The coup led by Sánchez Cerro, an old conspirator who had been exiled on several occasions, reflected the crisis of oligarchic liberalism and the entry of new social sectors into Peruvian political life. This instability was partially shaped by the formation of new more ideological ‘mass’ parties, such as the Peruvian Communist Party (PCP – Partido Comunista Peruano), the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA – Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana) and Sánchez Cerro's Revolutionary Union (UR – Unión Revolucionaria). During his 16 months in office, through his minister Luis A. Flores, Sánchez Cerro used emergency laws to repress the opposition APRA.

It was in this context that a Catholic party, the Popular Union (UP – Unión Popular), was founded in 1931 to contest that year's elections before rapidly dissolving. ⁵² Both social and political corporatism were part of its political programme, but with a mixture of admiration for and differentiation from Italian Fascism, which was often mentioned in the contemporary Catholic press. Its manifesto was associated with the social-Catholic programme and envisaged a senate with corporatist representation operating alongside a chamber of deputies elected by universal suffrage. The model was very close to that proposed by Víctor Andrés Belaúnde, the most important Catholic politician of the day. ⁵³

Another important intellectual politician supporter of corporatism during the 1930s was José de la Riva-Agüero, a renowned historian and politician who, after a prolonged stay in Europe, abandoned liberalism to become a prominent sympathizer of Action Française in the late 1920s and maintained close ties with AE. He saw Mussolini as Italy's ‘new Richelieu’, filtered by traditionalist Catholicism and elitism. ⁵⁴ Although prime minister to Benavides from 1933 to 1934, the aristocratic Riva-Agüero tried to institutionalize corporatism from above; however, Benavides forced his resignation in May 1934. In 1935, he founded Patriotic Action (AP – Acción Patriótica), the first manifestos of which outlined a clearly radical right-wing version of corporatism that associated state economic interventionism and a corporatist political representation that no longer complemented that of liberal democracy. Although Riva-Agüero was an admirer of Mussolini he recognized that the most feasible model for Latin America was the Portuguese New State ‘because it was more in line with our aims and customs’. ⁵⁵

The New State established in Brazil by Getúlio Vargas (1937–45) is the most important case of the institutionalization of corporatism in an authoritarian setting in Latin America. ⁵⁶ Although corporatist representation was outlined in the 1937 Constitution, social corporatism had a durable legacy and Vargas's dictatorship represented a much more powerful break with political liberalism than was the case with other contemporary regimes in Latin America. On the other hand, in Brazil, the diffusion of corporatism was more developed in conservative and fascist political circles and movements and as a proposed reform of political representation within a liberal framework. ⁵⁷ Throughout the 1930s, corporatism – which was associated with authoritarianism, centralism, and nationalism – was assumed by several different emerging political forces, ranging from fascists to social Catholics. The political discourse in favour of technical governments was also very powerful during this period.

The search for the Salazarist model in the institutional construction of Brazilian Estado Novo is perhaps one of the most difficult cases to analyze. On the one hand, because the political, academic and intellectual inter-elite contacts were very intense in the 1930s. Mutual exiles also, with the leader of Brazilian fascism, Plínio Salgado, the head of the Brazilian Integralist Action (AIB), a Catholic, to go into exile in Portugal, at the same time that the adoption of the name ‘Estado Novo’ by the Vargas dictatorship came directly from Salazarism. Nevertheless, Francisco Campos, Vargas's Minister of Justice and the New State's most articulate ideological creator, not to speak of Vargas himself, were more attuned to authoritarian positivism and less influenced by political Catholicism. ⁵⁸

The dialogue between Brazilian and Portuguese corporatists, especially law professors, was quite intense, and between the respective Catholic Church hierarchies as well. As Melissa Teixeira wrote, ‘One of the most important legal conversations to connect Portuguese and Brazilian jurists during the interwar decades was the rise of corporatist constitutionalism’. ⁵⁹ However, the great creator of the political institutions of the Brazilian Estado Novo, the minister Francisco Campos, a jurist updated on all European models, did not mention Salazarism when he created the 1937 Constitution and designed the institutions of the regime, although most did not has seen the light of day. ⁶⁰ The other great creator of corporatist institutions, Oliveira Viana, knew the Portuguese case extremely well but did not but was far from being all-inclusive sympathizer of Salazarism. ⁶¹ Viana, one of Brazil's leading intellectuals in the first half of the twentieth century, served as legal adviser to the MTIC from 1932 to 1940. No examination of Brazilian authoritarianism or corporatism can avoid Oliveira Viana, as he was the leading figure in the project of instrumental authoritarianism – that is, presenting an authoritarian regime as the means of overcoming the dilemmas of Brazil's modernization. ⁶² But Viana's modernizing approach was less present than other Latin American corporatists: in fact, he ‘perceived himself, and was perceived by others, to be a modern, scientific thinker – not a nostalgic reactionary’. ⁶³ Nevertheless, Salazarism is always cited by Vianna and other Brazilian corporatist law professors and economists, like Eugênio Gudin or the former AIB militant, San Tiago Dantas. Gudin, for example, pointed with ‘enthusiasm’ to the ‘gradualist and moderate’ model of Salazar as the best option for Brazil. ⁶⁴

Plinio Salgado, on the other hand, the head of Brazilian fascism and Catholic admirer of corporatism and the institutions of the Portuguese Estado Novo, has often claimed to be a Salazarist. ⁶⁵ AIB's charismatic leader was influenced more by the Portuguese Integralism of António Sardinha (Integralismo Lusitano) and by Charles Maurras than he was by Italian Fascism. ⁶⁶ Nevertheless, the AIB's leadership was well aware of European versions of corporatism and its theorists, especially as promoted in Italy and Portugal. ⁶⁷

During the 1930s, the Brazilian Catholic Church redoubled its struggle against communism. Ever since the 1930 Revolution, the Church had followed and moved closer to Getúlio Vargas. Catholic corporatism also followed this dynamic, both in the Church's independent activities and through its collaboration with the Ministry of Labour, with which Catholic experts had been involved since 1931 in drawing up corporatist legislation. The press and intellectuals surrounding Catholic Action highlighted European models such as Salazar's New State. ⁶⁸ Under the leadership of Cardinal Sebastião Leme, who was archbishop of Rio de Janeiro from 1930 to 1942, the programme to ‘re-Christianize society’ was developed as the reapproximation of the Church and state continued during the 1930s.

The Constitution of 1937 gave the president extensive powers and legislative authority. Legislative power was formally exercised by a parliament elected by an electoral college largely consisting of members of the council of municipalities and the federal council that replaced the Senate, consisting of representatives of the States and 10 presidential nominees. The National Economy Council (CEN – Conselho da Economía Nacional) collaborated with parliament. CEN was a consultative chamber, consisting of five sections (Industry and Crafts, Agriculture, Commerce, Transport, and Credit) and made up of representatives of several branches of national production, that was designed to promote the corporatist organization of the national economy. As a law professor and supporter of Vargas wrote in 1937, in a clear reference to the Portuguese New State Constitution of 1933, ‘The CEN will be our Corporate Chamber’. ⁶⁹

The Mexico of Lázaro Cárdenas had a very paradigmatic relation with the corporatist wave of the 1930s. Elected President of the country in 1934, Cárdenas established a new relationship between the political system and the state and between labour and organized interests, while reorganizing the dominant party, the Party of the Mexican Revolution (PRM – Partido de la Revolución Mexicana) along with corporatist lines. Cárdenas's presidency (1934–40) was the true consolidator of the post-revolutionary regime in Mexico – a regime based on presidentialism, the corporatist party and nationalism. The major developments associated with Cárdenas’ presidency were agrarian reform, nationalization of the oil industry, the socialist reform of education, the reorganization of trade unions and the reorganization of PRM in a dominant corporatist party. ⁷⁰

The conservative and radical right-wing opposition remained relatively powerless to challenge Cardenism, despite having some mobilizing capacity, and it is in the context that many of its groups and elites look for catholic authoritarian corporatist experiences. Catholic Corporatism in Mexico was eventually radicalized by the anticlerical and secularizing component of the Mexican regime, although with tensions and reconciliations. The secular cleavage was behind the most important conservative and radical right-wing organizations. Right-wing opposition to President Lazaro Cárdenas was also influenced by the political culture of fascism, particularly Italian Fascism and the reactionary Hispanism associated with the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the Francoists during the Spanish civil war. A striking example of this discourse was that of intellectual politicians like Salvador Abascal Infante, leader of successive traditionalist, legal and clandestine Catholic movements. Another example was Manuel Gómez Morín, founder of the National Action Party (PAN – Partido de Acción Nacional) in 1939. ⁷¹ It was in this context that the Salazarist model was sometimes referred to, here clearly separated from fascism.

The most important group of PAN's founders was that of conservative Catholic activists and Hispanists, while some technocrats that had been associated with the banking and industrial elite were also part of the founding matrix, attracted as they were by its organic model, defense of private ownership and rejection of nationalizations. Morín was influenced by and was an admirer of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in Spain, which struck him as the model of modernizing authoritarianism to follow, particularly the idea of the corporatist state represented by a national assembly composed of trade unions, the Church, employers’ associations and the universities. ⁷² It was this more modernizing corporatism of Primo de Rivera that Gómez Morín held up in contrast with the official corporatism of President Cárdenas. ⁷³

PAN's political programme had more in common with the right-wing corporatism found in European and Latin American political culture. It accused Cárdenas of ‘preserving the constitutional liberalism of the Mexican state by making only the party corporatist, while original members of PAN wanted the entire Mexican state to be corporatist’. ⁷⁴ PAN's political programme represented the other pole of a third way between liberalism and socialism. ⁷⁵ PAN's Minimum Political Action Programme distanced itself from the principle of liberal democracy, proposing instead corporatist representation in which the chamber of representatives would be occupied by ‘the intermediate communities and the economic, social and cultural interests of the nation’. ⁷⁶ In 1945, its newspaper, La Nación, called for ‘organic and Catholic democracy’, with Luna referring to the regimes of Franco in Spain and Salazar in Portugal. ⁷⁷

Colombia may have had the most delayed experience of the spread of the corporatist (and Salazarist) model in Latin America, associated with the attempt to institutionalize a corporatist authoritarian regime by a conservative Catholic politician. Laureano Gómez, leader of the Conservative Party (PC – Partido Conservador) from 1933 to 1946, became president of Colombia in 1950 – at a time of political polarization and intense inter-party violence. Gómez had been active in Colombian politics since the early 1930s when he led a fierce opposition to the then governing Liberal Party (PL – Partido Liberal Colombiano). Elected unopposed to the highest political office, he sought to institutionalize an authoritarian and corporatist regime. He was overthrown in 1953, following Colombia's first military coup, led by General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla with the support of leading figures from within the PC and the PL. His ultimately failed attempt to institutionalize an authoritarian regime brought the curtain down on the corporatist wave of the interwar period.

The Catholic Church and its charity and elite education institutions were important for introducing corporatism to Colombia. In the 1930s, the apparent cultural convergence of Laureano Gómez, himself a devoted Catholic, and the Catholic Church cemented the opposition to liberal secularism and social reform. The fascists’ secular or technocratic-modernizing versions were overshadowed by the Catholic hegemony while present within elite political culture. Félix Restrepo and other Jesuits were important for spreading authoritarian social and political corporatism ideas and were close to the CP throughout the 1930s, playing an important role in the failed constitutional reforms of 1950–53. ⁷⁸ Restrepo was perhaps the most important supporter of corporatism, both in his writings and the positions he held at the Javeriana University, in Catholic associations and through his political and intellectual proximity to members of the conservative elite. ⁷⁹

The hegemony of liberal, reformist and secularist governments in Colombia during the 1930s led to the dominance of corporatist ideologies that found a conservative corporatist reaction to both liberalism and secular fascism in the Iberian models. Although the Spanish corporatism of Primo de Rivera and the Spanish civil war's polarization had a profound effect on the political culture within the CP, and on Laureano Gómez in particular, Salazar's Portuguese model and his 1933 Constitution were among those mentioned most positively in the Catholic press. ⁸⁰ In common with other Catholic ideologues, Restrepo legitimized his corporatism in Thomist teachings and the social doctrine of the encyclicals. He was creative in seeking to avoid the accusations of statism levelled at him by his critics, often seeking refuge in his imagined model of the Catholic dictator, Salazar. ⁸¹ In some corporatist proposal of constitutional reform in the early 1950s and following some Catholic authors and jurists that praise Salazar's Portugal as a model, the New State is already presented as a form of ‘democratic corporatism’. ⁸² Despite the strong cultural connections between Laureano Gómez and Franco's Spain, and the references to a ‘defascistized’ Spain of the early 1950s, the constitutional model of Portugal was closest to his project. Had it succeeded, Laureano Gómez's project could have consolidated a confessional and corporatist authoritarian regime that was closer to the Portuguese dictatorship.

The reception of Salazarism in Latin America was mainly developed by intellectual politicians associated with the Catholic Church and the elitist Maurrazian radical right. The words of the historian Carlos Espinosa could be generalized: ‘While Catholic corporatists took an early interest in Salazarist corporatism, during the Spanish Civil War and beyond, Salazarism and Francoism figured as twin political phenomena (…) As the Catholic critique of totalitarianism stiffened in the late 1930s, the fascist edge of Francoism was played down by Catholic corporatists and associationalists. In that context, moreover, Salazarism took on greater significance, as a more convincing non-fascist authoritarian regime’. ⁸³

Following this brief tour of authoritarian institutional projects in Latin America, it seems clear that Salazarism was one of the main protagonists in the diffusion of this authoritarian third way during the era of fascism and that the Salazarist model was primarily associated with the spread of corporatism as an alternative to liberal democracy in terms of political and social representation. It was in this process that Salazarism emerged as a model. The dictatorships that played a leading role in this authoritarian third way, and which had the most significant capacity for dissemination, were undoubtedly the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, the Dollfuss Regime and, more globally, Portuguese Salazarism.

The institutional cement that united these dictatorships was that they codified corporatist and anti-parliamentary constitutions, elitist single or dominant parties and organic legislatures. Some of them adopted other institutions from fascism, but ‘while conservative authoritarians and fascist totalitarians shared ideological orientations – such as anti-communism, anti-liberalism and intense nationalism – and although they often sought to form tactical alliances, they never fused into organic joint movements, but always maintained their identities, interests, goals and strategies’. ⁸⁴ From this perspective, Salazarism was transformed into an authoritarian ‘gravity centre’ during the fascist era, with ‘the kind of leverage to promote autocratic elements or a country that is an attractive model (…), as it provides policy solutions that are perceived as suitable’. ⁸⁵

It is in the context of a wave of authoritarian institutional reform in 1930s Latin America that segments of domestic political elites rely on the ‘heuristics of availability’, ⁸⁶ when looking at models of corporatism for their own countries. Salazar's model emerges in this process as a third authoritarian way in the era of fascism. The most important agents in the spread of Salazarism were transnational by definition: segments of the Catholic Church and its intellectual politicians. The enhancement of the institutional spread of Salazarism was caused essentially by the fact it was promoted globally as the authoritarian and corporatist Catholic model and sometimes presented as an alternative to fascism. Despite the clear Catholic predominance, other collaborative networks in the confluence between political projects of corporatist and anti-parliamentary radical right-wing elites found the references to the Salazarist model. Mainly associated with corporatist legal scholars, radical-right intellectual politicians participating in the institutional crafting of other regimes as formal or informal members of the decision-making elite provided an important space for interaction among politicians and the transnational intellectual arena and were of central importance in the selective appropriation of the institutional innovations of Salazarism.