Desenvolvimento industrial e desenvolvimentismo mineiro: FIEMG e BDMG entre a crise e o apogeu da indústria em Minas Gerais (1962-1974)

Abstract

The phase of economic stagnation in the 1960s had negative effects on the Minas Gerais industry, in such a way that the local business community was limited in its potential to invest. Industrialists affiliated with the Federação das Indústrias do Estado de Minas Gerais (FIEMG) sought to work together with a new development institution founded in the state in 1962, the Banco de Desenvolvimento de Minas Gerais (BDMG). The foundation of the bank is part of a long history of projects and institutions created by miners that drive regional development. With the support of specialized literature, we talk about Minas Gerais development, to identify the construction and affirmation of an ideology that places Minas Gerais as a spoiled entity, whichhas its riches drained to its neighbors, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, while remaining in a position of relative backwardness, hampered by issues such as insufficient energy, problems with modes of transport and the technical capacity of the workforce. This perspective is affirmed in the main study developed here and carried out by the BDMG, Diagnosis of the Economy of Minas Gerais (1968). Our contribution comes in the sense of demonstrating that this perspective was shared, discussed and disclosed, also by private agents, represented by FIEMG, in this study. The consensus was not limited only to this view of relative backwardness, but also to its solution, the recognition that the State can contribute to the conditions for regional development based on planning. In addition to the correspondence of this set of ideas, we verified the existence of the polyvalence of the elites, that is, the presence of individuals who worked both in the private sector and in the public sector. The conclusion was that mining development was shared between FIEMG and BDMG, highlighting that the two entitiesreinforced the vision of relative backwardness, the role of the State in planning and inducing the development of Minas Gerais from the sector industrial.