Instituições e elite política de Santa Cruz do Sul no contexto de internacionalização da economia fumageira : décadas de 1960 e 1970.

Abstract

This study aims at analyzing the posture of the political elite of Santa Cruz do Sul as part of associations like the Commercial and Industrial Association of Santa Cruz do Sul (ACI), The Union Tade of the tobacco processing companies (Sindifumo), the tobacco growers’ association (Afubra), the National Tobacco Festival (Fenaf) and Gazeta do Sul Paper. The study is limited to the influence of these entities regarding the context of an accelerated internationalization of this sector from 1966 onward. These organizations were selected due to their strategic importance in the prominence of the political elite of Santa Cruz do Sul, and also for their presence in all debates about local and regional development. The study focuses on the decade 1960/1970, in which remarkable deregulation process of the local industry and increasing intervention of international capital, mainly in the tobacco sector, took place. The historical conditions that gave rise to that internationalizing process in the tobacco-based economy, along with the posture of that political elite, leads to the comprehension of how the tobaccobased economy became the key subject of all debates regarding development in Santa Cruz do Sul. For a clear comprehension, this dissertation is divided into three chapters. The first aims at defining political elite, regarding the building of the state/nation and civil associations as well as the way this political elite was build up during this process, and their attitude regarding regional context, since the regional communities withstood the national project of homogeneous State/Nation. The second chapter focuses on the building of the political elite of Santa Cruz do Sul in the early 1900, when the tobaccobased economy, with regional and national capital, becomes the central strategy for the local political elite. Also, there is a focus on the relation between the political elite developmental discourse claiming the success of the tobacco-based economy and, at the same time, reinforcing the German ethnical/cultural identity of the local people, along with the problems of an imposed nationalism in the so-called New State during the Getúlio Vargas’s regime (1930-1945). The third chapter focuses on the commitment of the initially mentioned associations with the internationalization of the tobacco-based economy and the role that each of these associations played in the internationalizing process, as well as the pressure of the national and international state of economy on the deregulation of the tobacco-based economy, and the posture of the political elite of Santa Cruz do Sul regarding this process. Finally, the study points out the breakdown of the traditional processes that stopped from updating the tobacco-based economy, which was essential to its acceptance by the international capital, viewing it from the point of an ethical German cultural capital entrepreneurship, with strong communitarian characteristic.