Canada was hit hard by the Depression too. Two very different prime ministers tried to respond.
How Canada was hit
- Wheat prices on the prairies collapsed.
- Exports to the US and Britain dried up.
- By 1933 about 27% of Canadian workers were unemployed.
- William Lyon Mackenzie King — Liberal PM until 1930; believed the Depression was a temporary world problem that provinces, not Ottawa, should handle; refused emergency federal relief to provinces run by his political opponents
- R.B. Bennett — Conservative PM 1930–1935; raised tariffs to protect Canadian industry (this backfired by shrinking trade further); set up relief camps for unemployed single men doing hard labour for 20 cents a day
- Bennett's New Deal (1935) — a late, panicked copy of FDR's reforms: minimum wage, maximum hours, unemployment insurance; announced just before an election but never properly implemented
- On-to-Ottawa Trek (1935) — relief-camp workers rode boxcars toward the capital to protest conditions; stopped by police at Regina, ending in the violent Regina Riot
Two failures, one cause: Both King and Bennett underestimated how severe and how long-lasting the Depression would be. King did too little; Bennett's tariffs made trade worse before his New Deal came far too late to save his government — he lost the 1935 election to King.
This matters for essays comparing US and Canadian responses: unlike Roosevelt, neither Canadian leader had the political will or federal power (Canada's constitution gave welfare powers to the provinces) to intervene as boldly, so recovery in Canada was slower and more piecemeal.
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Latin American economies depended heavily on exporting a small number of raw materials.
| Country | Main exports |
|---|---|
| Argentina | beef, wheat |
| Brazil | coffee |
| Chile | copper, nitrates |
| Cuba | sugar |
After 1929: When US and European demand collapsed after 1929, export earnings crashed across the region, and this hit economies and governments alike.
Economic and social challenges
- Export collapse — Brazil's coffee exports lost most of their value; Chile's nitrate and copper industries nearly shut down
- Falling government revenue — export taxes had funded budgets, so states could no longer pay debts or public workers
- Rural unemployment and urban migration — landless labourers moved to cities looking for work that mostly did not exist
- Foreign debt crises — several countries defaulted on loans owed to US and European banks, damaging credit and investment
Political instability and challenges to democracy
- Argentina, 1930 — military coup overthrew President Hipólito Yrigoyen, beginning the Infamous Decade of fraud-tainted conservative rule
- Brazil, 1930 — Getúlio Vargas seized power after a disputed election, later ruling as a dictator under the Estado Novo (1937)
- Chile and Cuba — economic collapse fed unrest that toppled elected governments and brought in stronger, more authoritarian rule
- Common pattern — weak democracies with narrow elites lost legitimacy once they could not deliver economic security, so militaries and strongmen stepped in
Cause and effect chain: Export dependence → collapsed export income → government financial crisis → public anger and unrest → coups/authoritarian takeovers. Use this chain to explain WHY Latin American democracies were fragile in the 1930s, not just describe that they fell.
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Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI)
With imports now unaffordable, several governments pushed ISI — building domestic factories to make goods (textiles, basic manufactures) that had previously been imported. Brazil under Vargas and Argentina both expanded local industry this way through the 1930s.
Social and economic policies
Vargas introduced labour laws, minimum wages, and social insurance in Brazil to win working-class support while keeping power centralised
Popular mobilization
Labour unions and populist movements grew as leaders like Vargas and Argentina's later Peronism (just outside this period) courted urban workers
Repression
Same governments jailed opponents, censored the press, and banned rival parties — mobilization from below was matched by control from above
Build factories, buy loyalty, crush dissent — the ISI-era bargain.
Impact on women and minorities
- Women in the US — took on more paid work as families needed extra income, yet faced hostility (some laws barred married women from federal jobs) and were largely excluded from top New Deal relief jobs
- African Americans — suffered the highest unemployment rates and discrimination in relief programmes (unequal pay in the CCC, exclusion from some benefits), though many shifted political loyalty toward the Democrats by 1936
- Indigenous peoples in Latin America — rural Indigenous communities bore the worst of falling commodity prices and land pressure, with little say in new industrial policies aimed at cities
Impact on arts and culture
- US Federal Art, Theatre, and Writers' Projects (New Deal) — paid unemployed artists and writers to create public murals, plays, and guidebooks, spreading culture cheaply nationwide
- Social realism — art, photography (e.g. documenting migrant workers), and literature turned toward showing ordinary people's hardship rather than escapism
- Mexican muralism — Diego Rivera and others painted large public murals celebrating workers and national identity, echoing the era's focus on the common person
- Hollywood and radio — cheap entertainment (musicals, comedies) boomed as an escape from daily hardship across the Americas
Balance description with judgement: Don't just list examples of cultural change — link them back to the Depression's economic pressure (governments funding jobs for artists; ordinary suffering shaping subject matter) to show causation, which is what Paper 3 markers reward.