O liberalismo entre o espírito e a espada: a UDN e a República de 1946

Abstract

The National Democratic Union (UDN) has an undeniable role throughout the 1946 Republic. Even composed by a heterogeneous cast, the party always claimed liberalism as a role ideology, which justifies its constitution and acts. Nevertheless, most scholars portray UDN s liberalism as a simple appearance, with little importance to understand the party moves. The present dissertation follows a different path and argues that UDN s liberalism is a key idea to better understand 1946 s political scene. Liberalism isn t defined as a logic system, but as a practical knowledge, that influences political acting and, in the same time, is shaped by it. After all, liberal ideology is a point of view, that changes through time but reveals a lot of continuities. UDN didn t have, yet, only one liberal lineage, but housed several liberal styles, whose differences are central to perceive the party s directions The dissertation is organized into four chapters. The first two seek to build the profiles of the main liberal styles inside UDN, distinguishing between a conservative liberalism, a modernizing liberalism - both practiced by a group so called ―bacharéis‖ and ―lacerdismo‖, a special type of liberalism referred to one of the main UDN leaders: Carlos Lacerda. The two last chapters deal with issues and moments where these liberal ideas were key to the fato of the 1946 Brazilian Republic. Thus, the third chapter deals with the national oil dispute and the fourth one describe the rise and fall of the brief Jânio Quadros government and the moments before 1964 s authoritarian movement. Finally, the conclusion analyses some continuities of the 1946 imaginary.