Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2022
One of the central issues in Latin American political history is the role played by oligarchies. In the case of Brazil, students of oligarchy have focused on elite family networks and coronelismo, the often violent manifestation of oligarchic politics at the local level. Drawing on the substantial body of literature on the family in Latin America, this essay proposes an interpretation of oligarchical politics in which changing family structures interacted in new political and economic contexts to produce distinctive types of oligarchy in a sequential rather than synchronic or functional manner. The dominance of traditional elite families on the Brazilian frontier was challenged during periods of social and economic change, resulting in the rise of transitional and new oligarchies with substantially different socioeconomic origins, career paths, and family structures.
Research for this article was funded by a Fulbright-Hays dissertation grant, a University of Illinois Graduate College fellowship, and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Illinois. The author wishes to thank Joseph Love, Nils Jacobsen, Tram-Anh Tran, Daniel O'Neill, and the anonymous LARR referees for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. Any remaining errors are my own.