Rio de Janeiro in 1932: A European City That Later Declined

Rio de Janeiro in 1932: A European City That Later Declined

Rio de Janeiro in 1932 was not just a postcard of beaches and carnival. Black-and-white images reveal a clean, orderly city with a distinctly European air. Trams, cobblestone streets, men in suits and hats, women in elegant dresses. Writer Stefan Zweig, who visited Brazil in 1938, was so impressed he wrote "Brazil: Land of the Future." At that time, Rio competed in development with any capital in the Old Continent, while Madrid, according to some chronicles from the era, was an impoverished and stifled city.

Data on comparative splendor

In 1930, Brazil barely exceeded 35 million inhabitants. If it had grown at Spain's pace, it would have 75-80 million today, but the reality is it exceeds 200 million. How is this explained? Starting in the 1930s, President Getúlio Vargas stopped subsidizing European immigration. The massive arrival of Italians, Germans, and Spaniards, which had shaped the demographic profile of major cities, slowed down. Simultaneously, rural exodus of the local mixed-race and Afro-descendant population to urban areas surged. Rio went from being a majority-European city to becoming a magnet for the poor from the interior, who settled on hillsides and gave rise to favelas.

The economic comparison is stark: in 1950, Venezuela's GDP per capita tripled Spain's. Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Cuba comfortably doubled Spanish GDP per capita. The Iberian country was at Guatemala's level. This relative South American wealth faded over time: high birth rates and lack of integration of new urban masses generated social fractures that, decades later, translate into homicide and inequality rates that clash with European standards.

What peine to development?

This phenomenon is not exclusive to Brazil. Venezuela went from 3 million inhabitants in 1930 to more than 30 million today, with consequent pressure on its institutions and economy. According to some analyses, mass migration "lumpenized" cities. European elites who had built urban order demographically diluted, and new majorities failed to maintain the human and cultural capital that distinguished those countries in their golden age.

Not everything is demographics. The end of selective immigration policies, economic populism, and political instability did the rest. Today, visitors to Rio see impossible contrasts: next to a world-class neighborhood, a favela where the State barely reaches. In collective memory remains Hitchcock's film "Notorious" (1946), where Rio looked like a European city, with clean streets and citizens dressed in jackets and ties. An image that seems from another planet today.

The disorienting fact: Christ the Redeemer was inaugurated in 1931, just one year before that Brazil fascinated the world. Since then, the country has continued to grow in population, but average quality of life has not kept pace. Something failed in the equation: development and demographic growth do not always go hand in hand.