Café com leite politics

Café com leite politics (Portuguese pronunciation: [kaˈfɛ kõ ˈlejtʃi], "coffee with milk") was a term that referred to the domination of Brazilian politics under the Old Republic (1889–1930) by the landed gentries of São Paulo (dominated by the coffee industry) and Minas Gerais (dominated by dairy interests). São Paulo's coffee interests were by far the stronger of the pair.

The name alludes to the popular coffee beverage café com leite, "coffee with milk", referring to the states' respectively dominant industry.

Under Brazil's Old Republic, the patron-client political machines of the countryside enabled agrarian oligarchs, especially coffee planters in the dominant state of São Paulo, to dominate state structures to their advantage, particularly the weak central state structures that effectively devolved power to local agrarian oligarchies.

Under the Old Republic, the politics of café com leite rested on the domination of the republic's politics by the states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais — the largest in terms of population and wealth. One can illustrate the extent of that domination by noting that the first presidents of the republic were from São Paulo and thereafter succeeded by an alternation between the outgoing governors of the two leading states in the presidency.

The politics of café com leite rested on an oligarchic system known as coronelismo. Known as the "rule of the colonels", this term referred to the classic boss system under which the control of patronage was centralized in the hands of a locally dominant oligarch known as a "colonel", particularly under Brazil's Old Republic, who would dispense favors in return for loyalty.

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