Today, Brazilian sugarcane ethanol, or alcohol, is the most efficient biofuel on the market, and the industry is the largest biofuel exporter in the world. However, few remember the military driven state-led development program, Proálcool (the National Alcohol Program), from which it emerged in 1975. Policymakers’ current commitment to ethanol production often obscures the dramatic political, agricultural, and social transformations behind the program’s implementation. This dissertation uncovers the broad impact of the program on what became the largest ethanol-producing region in the country, Ribeirão Preto in the state of São Paulo. Alcohol production began first as a by-product of sugarcane production in the 1930s and later transformed into a national alternative fuel source in the 1970s. Through the lens of the sugar-alcohol producing family, the Biagis, and their central sugar mill, the Usina Santa Elisa, my work reveals the increasingly important connection between alcohol production and the Ribeirão Preto region. The family led sugarcane modernization efforts in the region during the 1950s. Under the military dictatorship (1964-1985), sugar exports became a critical part of the national development agenda. The Biagis were one of many sugar producers that utilized the government’s modernization program to expand both their sugar and alcohol production capacity in the 1970s even before Proálcool took shape.With the famous OPEC-induced oil shocks of 1973, the Brazilian government, like many other countries, sought ways to reduce their dependence on petroleum imports. Key military, government officials, and private entrepreneurs supported the expansion of alcohol production as a solution to this problem. Under these conditions, the National Alcohol Program was born in 1975. The Usina Santa Elisa became one of the first projects approved under the new state-led development program. Government officials debated the feasibility and costs of the program’s expansion behind the launch of the alcohol-fueled car over the next decade. Even as alcohol production brought more wealth to the region, the growth of the sugarcane industry and the dramatic expansion of alcohol production in the 1970s and 1980s underscored the absence of rural workers in these and other development models. The disparate effects of the program and the larger development agenda’s outcomes came to national attention when temporary sugarcane workers went on strike in protest of a new labor policy in Ribeirão Preto with the Guariba Strikes of 1984. Rural workers’ actions reinserted questions about broader social issues related to the program’s development agenda, putting the costs of the idealized agricultural energy development plan into sharp relief.Ethanol’s growth draws important questions about the nature of development in Brazil. My work focuses on the modernization of the sugar industry under government tutelage. State intervention was an essential part of the industry’s growth. The state, international, and domestic influences interweave in ways that differed from traditional industrial development models. Instead, the sector paved a different path for agro-industrial development in the country with different objectives and outcomes.
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