Paper Short Abstract:

In this article, we seek to investigate how the economic discourse around industrialization changed between the late 50s and early 60s to meet the demands for a response to a humanitarian crisis in the Brazilian Northeast.

Paper Abstract:

Developmentalism was an active ideological current in Latin America in the middle of the last century. In Brazil, the promise of overcoming underdevelopment through industrialization and massive intervention by the State was met with serious difficulties such as strong regional inequality. In this article, we seek to investigate how the economic discourse around industrialization changed between the late 50s and early 60s to meet the demands for a response to a humanitarian crisis in the Brazilian Northeast. We argue that the privatizing sector of developmentalism, represented by Confederação Nacional da Indústria (CNI), was a key element in constructing a discourse of regional redemption by the industry. The analysis of the magazine Desenvolvimento & Conjuntura, published by CNI, indicates an industrialization policy guided by private sector representatives.