Abstract:
This essay analyses the process of concentrating production in a small number of firms in the heavy construction sector during the final period of the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship (1964-1985), as will as the process of diversification of the activities of those firms during the same period. Drawing on a Marxian theoretical framework to analyze this process, this double movement is seen as a centralization of capital and also as a search for sectors with the highest profit rates, due to the reduction of profit margins in the construction sector as a result of stabilization and the reduction of government investment in public works. During the transition from the 1970s to the 1980s we see the formation of an oligopoly in that market and the beginnings of a process of expansion in the activities of those business groups, which gives rise to the consolidation of large and diversified business conglomerates.

Keywords: Construction firms. Civil-military dictatorship. Heavy construction.