Riachuelo (1883) – Presidential visit to Buenos Aires in 1900
The Empire of Brazil, c. 1889. Cisplatina had been lost since 1828 and two new provinces had been created since then (Amazonas and Paraná)
The Paraguayan War
and the ‘Military Question’
Brazilian participation in the Paraguayan War of 1864–70 had
dire consequences for the country. It is a war that has become notorious for
causing more deaths in proportion to the number of people who fought in it than
any other war in history. It also created a new generation of junior officers
who differed from those who had gone before. They were educated men – very
often having attended universities abroad – who had less regard for the
monarchy than their predecessors.
Uruguay had come into existence in 1828 after three years of
conflict between Argentina, Brazil and the faction seeking independence for the
region. The British, with financial and commercial interests in the River Plate
estuary, were very pleased to see the creation of a country that they hoped
would bring stability to the region. The nineteenth century brought unrest,
however, as Uruguay’s two political parties – the Colorado, linked to business interests
and Europe, and the Blanco, made up of rural landowners who opposed European
influence – vied for power, often violently. Meanwhile, the inhabitants of the
old Spanish province of Paraguay had overthrown their Spanish administration in
1811. In 1842, President Carlos Antonio López (1792–1862) declared himself
dictator and in 1862 his son, Francisco Solano López (1827–70), came to power
following his father’s death. That year he entered into an alliance with the
Blanco Party that ruled Uruguay at the time. Fighting broke out between the
Blancos and Colorados and spilled over into Rio Grande do Sul in southern
Brazil, spurring the Brazilians to invade Uruguay in order to help the
Colorados seize power. The Uruguayans captured a Brazilian ship and then invaded
the Mato Grosso region in western Brazil. In 1865, the Paraguayans planned to
invade Uruguay but this would involve them in crossing Argentinean territory.
Subsequently, on 1 May, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay entered into a Triple
Alliance and declared war on Paraguay. The Paraguayans did not attack Uruguay
as planned and all the fighting actually took place in Paraguay itself.
Brazil was not prepared for war although its navy,
consisting of a few warships, easily defeated the tiny Paraguayan navy. Its
army, consisting of only 18,000 poorly trained fighting men, had long been
neglected. The desperate Brazilian government promised slaves their freedom if
they enlisted. Finally, in 1866, the Brazilian army invaded Paraguay but was
defeated in its first engagement at the Battle of Curupayty. In summer 1867,
however, the Duke of Caxias led the siege and capture of the important fortress
at Humaitá in southern Paraguay. The capital was taken a short while later.
Brazil would occupy Paraguay until 1878.
The war was costly for Brazil. It brought a steep rise in
inflation and the empire’s foreign debt increased. The most telling consequence
was the effect on the army. Its prestige and influence, as well as its size,
were greatly increased by the conflict. The officers, whose number increased
from 1,500 to 10,000, were now politicised but were uncomfortable with what
appeared to be an anti-military stance emanating from the emperor. Indeed, he
had deliberately eschewed the caudilho, military style of leadership that was
popular amongst many Spanish-American rulers and was careful not to appoint
military men to high-ranking political positions. The officer corps’ disquiet
was increased by the enforced resignation of the Liberal Prime Minister,
Zacarias de Góis e Vasconcelos (1815–77), whose direction of the war effort had
been to their liking. Only the fact that the military commander Caxias remained
loyal to Pedro eased their feelings of discontent. His death in 1880,
therefore, was a blow not only to the emperor personally, but had grave
implications for the future of the monarchy.
The junior officers’ irritation at the failure of the
government to improve army pay and conditions developed into a feeling of
political disenchantment and the beginnings of a movement to reform Brazil’s
political system. Officers were barred from political activity but in 1879 a
group of officers publicly criticised a proposal before the General Assembly to
cut the size of the army. No action was taken against them but in the coming years
when officers again engaged in political debate, they would be disciplined.
The ‘military question’, as it was known, became a source of
growing tension between the army and the government. The unrest soon spread to
senior officers who demonstrated support for their younger colleagues. The main
spokesman was Marshal Manuel Deodoro da Fonseca (1827–92) who, in 1887, was
elected first president of Brazil’s Club Militar (Military Club), a society
created to uphold soldiers’ rights. Tension rose when, in June 1889, Emperor
Pedro appointed a Liberal, the Viscount of Ouro Preto (1836–1912), as prime
minister. Ouro Preto wasted no time in antagonising Deodoro by naming an
opponent of his as president of Rio Grande do Sul.
The Military Coup of
1889
For some time, Republican politicians had been cultivating
friendships with the military, realising that as neither elections nor the
General Assembly were likely to bring the empire to an end it would take the
support of the army to do so. In 1887, Marshal Deodoro wrote to the emperor,
warning him about his attitude towards the Brazilian military and indicating to
him that the ongoing support of the army could not be guaranteed. Meanwhile,
his fellow officers were eager to replace the empire with a republic, amongst them
men such as Benjamin Constant (1836–1891), like Deodoro a veteran of the
Paraguayan War. Meanwhile, Pedro II was suffering from diabetes and, although
only 64, was becoming increasingly frail. He seemed to have lost interest in
the business of government and it has been suggested that he had already
accepted that the empire would not survive his death. The fact that he had no
male heir suggested that he had good reason to fear for the empire’s survival.
His daughter, Princess Isabel (1846–1921), who had already courted controversy
with her support for abolitionism, was the legal heir, but it was highly
unlikely that a male-dominated society like Brazil would be prepared to accept
a woman on the throne. As if it was not bad enough that she was a woman, her
husband, Prince Gaston, Count of Eu (1842–1922), was French.
There was a growing feeling in Brazil that too much power
was vested in the emperor, the Senate and the Council of State, none of whom,
after all, had been elected. As republican clamour grew, Ouro Preto introduced
measures to reduce the power of the Council of State, the General Assembly and
the provincial presidents, but they were thrown out by the General Assembly.
The emperor responded to this setback in the customary manner, by dissolving the
General Assembly and calling for new elections to be held in November 1889. It
was obvious that nothing was likely to change. The military responded by
ordering Benjamin Constant, in concert with Republicans such as Quintino
Bocaiúva (1836–1912) and Rui Barbosa (1849–1923), to devise plans for a coup.
Early in the morning of 15 November 1889, troops commanded by Deodoro, who had
agreed to be the coup’s leader, surrounded government buildings in Rio de
Janeiro. It was initially supposed that the action was intended simply to
change the cabinet, but that afternoon Deodoro declared that Pedro II had been
overthrown and that Brazil would henceforth be a republic.
That day, Pedro was at his summer palace at Petrópolis,
outside Rio de Janeiro. After hurrying back to the capital, he was ordered to
leave Brazil within twenty-four hours, taking the rest of the royal family with
him. On 17 November, he sailed into exile in Portugal and France, choosing this
fate rather than subject Brazil to an inevitable civil war. All proceeded
peacefully, although many observers were astonished at the lack of support for
the monarchy. Robert Adams Jr (1849–1906), United States Minister to Brazil at
the time of the coup, wrote that it was ‘the most remarkable ever recorded in
history. Entirely unexpected by the Government or people, the overthrow of the
Empire has been accomplished without bloodshed, without riotous proceedings or
interruptions to the usual avocations of life’.
Estados Unidos do
Brazil (United States of Brazil)
The leaders of the coup of 1889 immediately established
their regime as a ‘provisional’ government, declaring Brazil a federal
republic. They issued proclamations justifying their action, claiming that they
had undertaken the coup on behalf of the Brazilian people. Deodoro was in
charge as ‘chief of the provisional government’ and a number of prominent
politicians quickly rallied to his cause, including Rui Barbosa, Quintino
Bocaiúva and Benjamin Constant, who were each rewarded with a position in the
new government. Rui accepted the position of Finance Minister, Constant was
appointed Minister for War and Quintino took office as Minister of Foreign
Relations. The formal name of the country was changed from the Empire of Brazil
to the Republic of the United States of Brazil and a new national flag was
designed. Work began on a new constitution, the aim being to transform Brazil
into a modern, industrial democracy.
The new constitution advocated a federal political system,
fulfilling the objectives of a Republican manifesto of 1870 that had demanded
the transfer of power from the centre to the regions, a move welcomed by the
influential coffee industry, especially in São Paulo. As in the days of the
Empire, however, there would still be a central executive administration, with
a national legislature based in Rio de Janeiro. The Liberals considered this to
be the best way of maintaining national unity and merchants and businessmen
hoped it would help create a domestic market. It was decided to follow the
political model of the United States, with a president and a federal government
made up of executive, legislative and judicial bodies. The president would be
elected by the people for a four-year term and would be prohibited from serving
consecutive terms. The franchise was limited to literate males over the age of
twenty-one, representing about 17 per cent of the population. A large majority
of the Brazilian people were still unable to participate in the choice of their
ruler. The rest of the world was expanding the franchise, but Brazil, still
afraid of the will of the people, was reluctant to follow the trend.
Legislative power was placed in the hands of a National
Congress which, like its imperial predecessor, the General Assembly, would
consist of a Chamber of Deputies and a Senate. Each state was allocated three
senators, each of whom would serve nine years before standing for re-election.
The deputies would serve terms of three years and would be elected on the basis
of population, the more highly populated states benefiting most from this, of
course. Inevitably, elections were rigged. Voters in rural areas were forced to
vote for the chosen candidates of the local oligarch – an abuse known as
coronelismo. If all else failed, the election results could still be changed by
Congress’s Verification of Powers Commission as the election authorities in the
República Velha (Old Republic), were not independent from the executive and the
legislature and those were, of course, controlled by the ruling elite.
The twenty provinces that had existed under the empire
became twenty-one with the creation of the new Federal District of the city of
Rio de Janeiro. Each was permitted to create its own constitution and be
self-governing, with directly elected governors and their own legislative
assemblies and courts. They were given financial autonomy with the power to
levy taxes on exports, this being particularly welcomed by São Paulo and Minas
Gerais, two states with lucrative export economies. States were permitted to
establish their own militias or police forces and São Paulo even had its own
army which was every bit as well-equipped as the national army.
Church and state were separated, meaning that Brazil no
longer had a state religion. The state assumed many of the responsibilities formerly
held by the church – only civil marriages would be officially recognised and
cemeteries were taken over by municipalities. These measures were a reflection
of the beliefs of the republican leaders but also brought the many Lutheran
immigrants in Brazil into the national fold. To further embrace its immigrant
population, the government passed a measure decreeing that unless they
expressed a wish otherwise, all foreigners who had been in Brazil on 15
November when the Brazilian Republic came into being would automatically be
considered Brazilian citizens.
Generally speaking, the power lay not only with the newly
politicised professional military class but also in the hands of the planter
elite based mainly in the coffee-producing regions of São Paulo and the
commercial and banking interests concentrated in the cities of Rio de Janeiro,
São Paulo and Minas Gerais. For most people little changed but army officers
probably benefited more than most with increased salaries and lucrative
appointments to government positions. The elite, along with the military,
therefore, still controlled the machinery of government and, although a few
liberals, such as Rui Barbosa, tried to persuade the government to introduce
reforms in education and working conditions and pay and to consider the issue
of land reform, nothing would really change until well into the next century.
In effect, of course, what had occurred was a military coup.
The army ruled as a military dictatorship for the first five years following
the coup in what was known as the ‘Republic of the Sword’. Inevitably there
were clashes between politicians and the newly politicised army officers,
especially Deodoro who was authoritarian by nature. Eventually, in January
1891, the cabinet resigned. Meanwhile, the constitution demanded the election
of the first president of the Republic who would serve until 1894. Deodoro was
the obvious choice, but opponents to the military’s involvement in government
put forward a rival candidate, Prudente de Morais (1841–1902), president of the
Constituent Assembly and a former governor of São Paulo. As anticipated,
Deodoro won, by 129 votes to 97, and was sworn in as the first President of the
Republic of Brazil on 26 February 1891. The margin of victory was sufficiently
small to suggest that the new president was not the most popular of choices,
but, as everyone was well aware, if he had lost, the army would almost
certainly have stepped in and declared a dictatorship.
Deodoro took office amidst unrest, much of it caused by the
economic crisis, the Encilhamento, a word borrowed from horse racing and
suggestive of efforts to get rich quick. His handling of this situation was
calamitous and gained him the animosity of Congress as did his lack of control
over his ministries. Congress obstructed him at every opportunity. The
Republicans from the South eventually withdrew their support from him and the
provisional government. When the government was accused of corruption in
November 1891, Deodoro dissolved the new National Congress, declaring a ‘state
of emergency’ and assuming virtual dictatorial power, something for which he
was heavily criticised and which lost him a great deal of support, even within
the army. The vice president, Marshal Floriano Peixoto (1839–1895), conspired
with other officers, leading to the seizure of warships in Guanabara Bay by
Admiral Custódio José de Melo (1840–1902). De Melo threatened to open fire on
Rio de Janeiro unless Deodoro recalled Congress. Deodoro responded by resigning
on 23 November 1891 and Floriano, as Peixoto was popularly known, assumed the
presidency, immediately recalling Congress.
The republic’s second president – known as the ‘Iron
Marshal’ – gained a reputation as an upholder of the constitution, but although
he is said to have had a better understanding of ordinary people than his
predecessor and succeeded in consolidating the republic, he was, in reality,
not that different. He increasingly championed centralisation of power and
nationalism but he faced stiff challenges. Some claimed that his presidency was
unconstitutional because Deodoro had failed to serve the statutory two years in
office and Floriano should, therefore, call a presidential election. His
solution to this problem was simply to retain the title of ‘Vice President’. He
also faced opposition from senior officers of the Brazilian navy who resented
the power and prestige of the army. Civil unrest raged in several states from
the north to the south of the country and in 1893 revolutionaries occupied
Santa Catarina and Paraná in Rio Grande do Sul, capturing the city of Curitiba.
Ultimately, though, they were ill-equipped for outright war. In 1893, Admiral
de Melo also acted against Floriano, once again threatening to bombard the
capital, but the president refused to follow the example of Deodoro by
resigning. By 1895, he had quashed the revolt in Rio Grande do Sul and had also
succeeded in pacifying the naval rebels.
In March 1894, Floriano called a presidential election,
following pressure from the Republicans running São Paulo who were providing
vital financial, military and political support to him. They sought to
safeguard national stability and unity and protect their state from an influx
of foreign investment and immigrants. The paulistas had helped Floriano by
founding the Partido Republicano Federal (Federal Republican Party) or PRF in
1893, but he was, of course, excluded by the constitution from standing for
election for a second term. Now eager to replace military rule with a civilian
leader from their own ranks, this coalition of senators and deputies from
several states put forward Prudente de Morais Barros as their presidential
candidate. This marked the end of political activity by the army for the time
being and Floriano’s subsequent death helped to further distance them from
politics. The rival 1894 presidential candidate from Minas Gerais, Afonso
Augusto Moreira Pena (1847–1909) lost heavily to Prudente – by 277,000 votes to
38,000 on 1 March 1894. It is worth noting, however, that with turmoil in Rio
de Janeiro at the time, civil disorder in three of the country’s southern
states and the severely restricted nature of the franchise, only 2.2 per cent
of the entire Brazilian population voted in this election.
The Rubber Boom
1879–1912
From the middle of the nineteenth century until the collapse
of the market in 1910, rubber was vitally important to the Brazilian economy, bringing
enormous profits to those involved in it. Natural rubber comes from a milky
white fluid called latex drained from the Hevea brasiliensis tree found in
abundance in the Brazilian state of Pará in the Amazon tropical rainforest.
Latex, found in sap extracted from the tree trunk through a small hole bored in
it, had been exploited by the native peoples for centuries, smoked over a fire
and molded into objects. In the late eighteenth century, the colonial
government was ordering boots made of latex from them but, until around 1830,
no one viewed it as having any real commercial potential. Towards the end of
that decade, however, British and North American scientists devised the process
of vulcanisation, in which the raw sap could be stabilised by heating. Soon,
rubber was being used in a variety of products such as tyres for bicycles and
motorcars and electrical insulation devices. Demand went through the roof and
before long entrepreneurs and immigrants were flooding into the Amazon region.
These rubber tappers extracted the sap before forming it into large balls of
rubber that were sold at local trading posts. It was then transported to the
coast before shipping to foreign ports.
As a result of the boom in demand for rubber, a number of
towns and cities grew astonishingly rapidly, populated by ‘rubber barons’ who
had amassed great fortunes. One example was the Amazonian port city of Manaus
which grew from just a few settlers to a bustling city of 100,000 by 1910. Its
famous opera house was constructed in 1881 by a local politician, Antonio Jose
Fernandes Júnior, who envisioned a ‘jewel’ in the heart of the Amazon
rainforest. It was the second Brazilian city, after Campos dos Goytacazes in
the state of Rio de Janeiro, to have electricity. Foreign capital was invested
in the region to create trading houses and companies, amongst which was the one
that built the Madeira-Mamoré railway, completed in 1912, which linked Brazil
and Bolivia. 6,000 workers are said to have lost their lives during its
construction.
By 1910, the Amazon’s pre-eminence in the production of
rubber was coming to an end. Several decades earlier, the Royal Botanical
Gardens in Kew in England had smuggled some rubber seeds out of Brazil and
produced trees in its hothouses in London. Seeds were then sent to the British
colonies of Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka) and Malaya (modern-day Malaysia)
where, unlike the Brazilian variety, they proved resistant to disease. They
also produced a more abundant crop. The American Ford Motor Company tried to replicate
what the British had done by creating rubber plantations at a place they called
Fordlandia near the town of Santarém in Pará but the South American trees’ lack
of immunity to disease led to failure and the British, with their efficient and
cost-effective Asian plantations, were left in control of the world’s rubber
market. The development of a synthetic substitute for natural rubber during
World War One caused further damage to the Brazilian rubber industry. Only when
the Allies were cut off from their Asian supplies during the Second World War
did Amazonian rubber see a brief revival.
The Paulista and
Café-Com-Leite Presidents
It could be said that the Brazilian First Republic was
little more than a search for the best type of government to take the place of
the monarchy, the argument alternating between centralisation and devolution of
power to the states. The instability and factional violence of the 1890s was a
result of the lack of agreement amongst the various elites about the most
appropriate government model. The Constitution of 1891 had given the states
considerable autonomy and, until the 1920s, the federal government was
therefore dominated by a combination of the most powerful states in the
Republic – Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul and, of course, Sâo
Paulo.
Prudente’s first year in office saw the end of the Naval
Revolt and the uprising in Rio Grande do Sul, although he was criticised for
being too lenient to the Rio Grande do Sul rebels. In some quarters there was
still a hankering for the monarchy and defenders of the Republic such as the
ultra-national Jacobins, who had formed militia to defend Rio during the Naval
Revolt, warned of monarchist conspiracies. Their warnings seemed to have been
justified in 1896 as news reached the capital of a charismatic preacher,
Antônio Vicente Mendes Maciel (1830–97), nicknamed Conselheiro who, in 1893,
had assembled a community on an abandoned ranch at Canudos, a settlement 200
miles to the north of Salvador in Bahia. Conselheiro preached the return of the
monarchy, describing the republicans as atheists. In 1896, he was engaged in a
dispute with local officials over the cutting of timber that resulted in a
force of police officers being sent to Canudos. They were sent packing, leading
the Bahia Governor, Luís Viana (1846–1920), to request federal troops. Despite
being armed with artillery and machine guns, they, too, were defeated and their
commander was killed. The local dispute had quickly escalated into what became
known as the Guerra de Canudos (War of Canudos), threatening the fledgling
republic. There was protest and an outbreak of violence in Rio de Janeiro
before an even larger military force was dispatched to the Northeast,
consisting of 10,000 troops personally directed by the Minister of War, Marshal
Carlos Machado Bittencourt (1840–97). During the ensuing siege, Conselheiro
died, probably of dysentery, and Canudos was razed to the ground, more than
half its 30,000 inhabitants being killed in the fighting and its aftermath. This
‘monarchist threat’ had been defeated but at a cost to the reputation and
prestige of the army and of Prudente. The president’s unpopularity was made
clear when a young soldier, Marcelino Bispo (1875–98), tried to assassinate him
on 5 November 1897. Bittencourt, the Minister of War, died after being stabbed
protecting the president. When it emerged that Bispo had been encouraged in his
assassination attempt by the editor of the Jacobin newspaper, O Jacobino,
Prudente used the full force of the powers allocated to the presidency by the
1891 Constitution by coming down hard on Rio de Janeiro, especially the
Military Club, a haunt of the Jacobin army officers, which was shut down.
The next president, Dr Manuel Ferraz de Campos Sales
(1841–1913), governor of Sâo Paulo, was a paulista, like Prudente, emphasising
the stranglehold that the political elite of the major states had on the
country. To combat growing unrest in the states as well as factional fighting,
Campos Sales devised a strategy known as the ‘policy of the governors’ by which
a state’s parliamentary delegates would be connected to the dominant political
grouping in that state. As well as ending the factional fighting, he also hoped
this would enhance the power of the executive branch of the government. He
added to this by making the Chamber of Deputies more submissive to the
executive. Unfortunately for him, it was only partially effective.
The ‘policy of the governors’ also proved useful in dealing
with the Brazilian economy. Foreign debt inherited from the monarchy remained a
huge problem and military expenditure during the 1890s did not help the
situation. Between 1890 and 1897, the national debt increased by 30 per cent,
resulting in even greater indebtedness to foreign banks. It was not helped by a
fall in the price of coffee caused by abundant harvests in 1896 and 1897 that
meant less foreign exchange coming into the country. Campos Sales arranged a
funding loan that placed a great many difficult conditions on Brazil – all of
its customs income from the port of Rio de Janeiro were to go to its creditors
and further loans were prohibited until 1901. A programme of deflation also had
to be undertaken. In an attempt to balance the books, Campos Sales increased
federal taxes and introduced austerity measures, making his government very
unpopular. By such desperate means, Brazil was prevented from going bankrupt,
but the country would be hampered by these decisions for many years to come.
Making all this happen required the support of the legislature and, as
congressmen’s loyalties lay with the political leader of their state and their
parties, the president went directly to the state governors and the ruling
elites. Campos Sales made a promise not to intervene in the states’ internal
affairs and the governors made it all work by using the coronelismo system.
They provided positions and favours to the local coronéis who, in turn,
delivered votes at the municipal and federal elections.
The governors had a vested interest in maintaining this
system but that was dependent on the right man occupying the post of president.
They met before each election, therefore, to select a suitable candidate and
then ensured that he received enough votes. Naturally, the most powerful
states, especially São Paulo and Minas Gerais, being the wealthiest and also
possessing more citizens who satisfied the literacy requirement, were most
influential in this process. Furthermore, their state political parties were
far better organised than those of the other states. This way of manipulating
the political machine came to be known as café-com-leite (coffee with milk)
because of São Paulo’s connection with the coffee industry and Minas Gerais’
with milk. As a result, their candidates often achieved more than 90 per cent
of the vote. This was helped by the fact that the ballot was rarely private and
opposition was summarily dealt with. In this way, Brazil failed to develop a
healthy multi-party political system. But the ‘politics of the governors’
undoubtedly had the desired effect, producing political stability and
guaranteeing that the army would stay out of politics. As a system, however, it
differed little from the corrupt political system that had prevailed during
military rule and the Empire.
During his term of office Campos Sales succeeded in
maintaining peace and order and in improving the nation’s economic situation,
but the austerity measures he had imposed on the Brazilian people led to a rise
in the cost of living and made his government extremely unpopular. Nonetheless,
the ‘politics of the governors’ managed to deliver a third paulista president
in 1901 when Francisco de Paula Rodrigues Alves (1848–1919), governor of São
Paulo, romped home in the presidential election by 592,000 votes to Quintino
Bocaiúva’s 43,000. Rodrigues Alves was chosen because it was expected that he
would continue with the policies of Campos Sales. He had served as Minister of
Finance in the governments of both Floriano and Prudente and had a reputation
for financial expertise. He would also distinguish himself as a town planner,
launching a major undertaking to modernise Rio de Janeiro.
Towards the end of his term of office, Rodrigues Alves
proposed another São Paulo governor, Bernardino de Campos (1841–1915), as his
successor but this time there was resistance from the smaller states. At the
time, Rio Grande do Sul had been increasing in wealth and political status and
one of its senators was the charismatic and powerful José Gomes Pinheiro
Machado (1851–1915). For more than a decade, Pinheiro Machado, vice president
of the senate, dominated Brazilian politics. He led a group of congressmen
known as the Bloco, many of them from the less powerful northern and
northeastern states, who gained a voice through his leadership. Machado became
something of a ‘kingmaker’, as was proved in 1905 when he swung the votes of
his bloc behind Afonso Pena, from Minas Gerais, former vice president to
Rodrigues Alves. Afonso Pena won the election by 288,000 votes to a mere 5,000,
bringing to an end the run of paulista presidents. When it came time to decide
who would succeed him, Pinheiro Machado threw his voting bloc behind Marshal
Hermes Rodrigues da Fonseca (1855–1923) – known as ‘Hermes’ – nephew of the
Republic’s first president, Deodoro. Incumbent President Pena chose as his
nominee his finance minister, Davi Campista, another Minas Gerais politician
whom the paulista elite believed would continue with the policies of Pena’s
government. Campista’s candidacy came to an abrupt halt, however, with the
death of Pena in June 1909. Vice President Nilo Procópio Peçanha (1867–1924)
stepped into his shoes and then endorsed Hermes as presidential nominee for the
1910 election, to the dismay of the paulistas.
The election of 1910 was the first presidential election in
the history of the República Velha that was not decided from the outset. The
reason was the paulistas’ choice of the noted liberal Brazilian statesman, Rui
Barbosa, as a candidate to run against Hermes. After many years languishing in
the political wilderness, the former Finance Minister had risen to national and
international attention with his speeches in support of the rights of the
world’s smaller nations at the 1907 Hague Conference on International Peace
where he had gained the nickname the ‘Eagle of the Hague’. Barbosa railed
against the corrupt oligarchies that had been running Brazil and he was also
deeply concerned at Hermes’ candidacy, seeing it as an attempt by the army to
regain influence in government. He based his campaign on the simple choice
between civilian rule and military rule, claiming that if the marshal won,
Brazil would ‘plunge forever into the servitude of the armed forces’. (Quoted
in Documentary History of Brazil, E Bradford Burns, New York, Alfred A Knopf,
1967) The election was keenly fought, Rui Barbosa travelling widely to spread
his ideas for liberal reform. Hermes’ supporters were confident of victory,
with only São Paulo and Bahia lining up in favour of Barbosa. Army officers,
concerned at Barbosa’s anti-military stance, campaigned vigorously for Hermes
and in the end he won 233,000 votes, while Rui only managed 126,000. The
paulistas had been defeated in an election for the first time since 1894, even
though the winning margin was the narrowest to date.
It seemed that every military president was blighted by a
naval revolt and Hermes’ version occurred in November 1910, just a few days
after he had been sworn in as president. The mutiny on board two Brazilian
battleships was soon quashed but it was evident that the relative peace of the
last decade was at an end, a fact emphasised by a number of civil disturbances
around the country. Being a military man, Hermes was more prepared to send in
the troops than the civilian presidents before him, bringing rioters quickly
under control.
He was determined to avenge himself on the members of the
regional elites who had thrown their support behind Rui Barbosa in the 1910
election by replacing them with his own supporters. The army officers that he
sent in to overthrow these regimes described their work as política da salvacão
(politics of salvation) and there was a degree of irony in the fact that in
rooting out Hermes’ opponents, they were often also dealing with the
reactionary elements Rui had criticised during his election campaign. There was
serious fighting during this process, including the bombardment and invasion of
Salvador.
By this time, Pinheiro Machado’s Partido Republicano
Conservador (Republican Conservative Party) or PRC, created to take the place
of the Bloco in 1910, had begun to fall apart. He had also suffered during the
period of the política da salvacão because many of his people were the very
ones targeted by the army. Meanwhile, the paulista elite was determined to stop
Pinheiro becoming president in 1914. When the oligarchs of Minas Gerais
proposed their former governor Venceslau Brás (1868–1966), currently vice
president, as a candidate, the paulistas immediately gave him their
wholehearted support. Realising all was lost Pinheiro gave Brás his support but
ensured that his preferred candidate, the Maranhão senator Urbano Santos, was
selected as vice-presidential candidate. Brás was elected with an overwhelming
90 per cent of the vote. Pinheiro’s days as kingmaker were over and his
brilliant political career was brought to an abrupt halt by his assassination
in September 1915.
Brás‘s presidency was overshadowed by the outbreak of World
War One. Brazil was initially reluctant to go to war. After all, there were
large numbers of German immigrants in southern Brazil, many of whom were still
loyal to their homeland. The Brazilian foreign minister, Lauro Müller, also had
German antecedents. However, when Germany declared unrestricted submarine
warfare in the Atlantic, Brazil, as an Atlantic trading nation, became
involved. On 5 April 1917, the Brazilian ship Parana was sunk off the coast of
France and three crew members lost their lives. When news of the sinking
arrived in Brazil, riots broke out, an angry mob attacking German businesses in
Rio de Janeiro. Brazil eventually declared war on 26 October, after the
dismissal of Müller, Brazilian ships patrolling the South Atlantic and engaging
in mine-sweeping off the coast of West Africa. An Expeditionary Force was being
readied when the armistice was signed.
The 1918 election followed customary café-com-leite
guidelines and former paulista president, Rodrigues Alves romped home with 99
per cent of the popular vote. However, illness prevented the newly elected
president from taking office and he died the following year. It was decided to
hold a special election but the decision as to who would replace Rodrigues
Alves was a subject of debate between the elites of Minas Gerais and São Paulo.
Eventually, Epitácio Pessôa (1865–1942), a Paraíba senator and Minister of
Justice in the Campos Sales administration was selected. Pessôa was a delegate
at the Versailles Peace Conference that followed the end of the First World
War. In fact, he was still en route back to Brazil from the conference when the
election was held. Once again, Rui Barbosa stood and once again, despite
receiving almost 30 per cent of the vote, he was soundly beaten by the
candidate of the elites, by 286,000 votes to 116,000.
Pessôa made enemies and antagonised the military as soon as
he named his cabinet, appointing civilians to the ministries for war and the
navy. By this time, Hermes, who had been living in Europe, had returned to
Brazil where he was elected president of the Military Club in Rio de Janeiro.
He became a major critic of Pessôa, especially when the new president vetoed the
military budget. Pessôa faced still more criticism when it appeared that he was
giving preferential treatment to his own home region of the Northeast by
allocating 15 per cent of the federal budget to help install irrigation
projects to deal with the drought there.
But Pessôa was no more than an interim president. For the
1922 election, the elites of São Paulo and Minas Gerais chose the Minas Gerais
governor, Artur da Silva Bernardes (1875–1955). Once again, however,
café-com-leite caused anger amongst the other states – Pernambuco, Rio de
Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul – who were never given a chance to nominate one
of their own. They formed a coalition, the Reação Republicana (Republican
Reaction) and threw their support behind Nilo Peçanha who had served briefly as
president of Brazil from 1909 to 1910 following the death of President Afonso
Pena. His campaign was based on claims that, under the café-com-leite system,
the other states of Brazil suffered from neglect. Of course, there was little
chance of defeating the ‘official’ candidate but some letters appeared in the
Correio da Manhã newspaper that were purported to have been sent by Bernardes
to a politician in Minas Gerais. They spoke disparagingly of Peçanha,
describing him as a ‘mulatto’ and calling Hermes da Fonseca an ‘overblown
sergeant’. Corruption amongst army officers was also mentioned. Although the
letters turned out to be forgeries, the army at the time accepted them as
genuine and put all their support behind Bernardes’ opponent Peçanha. In the
closest election in the history of the republic, Bernardes scraped in with 56
per cent of the popular vote. The elite had won again.
The disgruntled military now acted against the wishes of the
presidency. It had been Pessôa’s habit to order the army in where there were
problems with state elections, which Hermes believed was an abuse of power,
using the army for political ends. He sent a telegram to the commander of the
garrison at Recife suggesting that he resist any presidential directive to intervene
in situations involving local politics. When he was informed of this, Pessôa
was furious, immediately placing Hermes under house arrest and shutting down
the Military Club for six months. A couple of days later there was a mutiny at
Fort Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro that its participants said was aimed at
‘rescuing the army’s honour’. Government forces besieged the fort and bombarded
it by sea and by air. The following day, most of the mutineers surrendered but
a group of eighteen had resolved to fight to the death. They made their last
stand on the beach where sixteen of them were killed. Afterwards, a state of
emergency was declared, hundreds of cadets were expelled from the army school
and officers who had participated in the mutiny were posted to remote
garrisons.
The 1922 Revolt was the foundation for a movement involving
junior officers of the Brazilian army that became known as tenentismo as most
of those involved were lieutenants (tenentes). They believed that the Republic
would never achieve its full potential as a nation under civilian government
and demanded radical reform, both economically and socially to alleviate
poverty in Brazil. At the same time, however, the tenentes realised that there
was little hope of bringing down the regional oligarchies and party bosses
without the use of force and without that their movement never really
progressed into a full-blown political entity. Brazilian politics continued as
before.
As Bernardes took office, Brazil was in a parlous state,
embroiled in both economic and political crises. He added to the problems by
intervening in state politics – claiming he was merely trying to maintain law
and order – and often installing his own men where he could. He took his
revenge on the press by introducing censorship and refused to grant an amnesty
to those involved in the 1922 revolt. He courted even greater unpopularity with
a strict, conservative fiscal policy, demonstrated most vividly in his
withdrawal of financial support for the valorisation – manipulation of the
price – of coffee. He also withdrew funding for the irrigation projects that
Pessôa had launched during his term of office. So unpopular did Bernardes
become that he rarely left the presidential palace.
Finally, he faced a major crisis with what is called the
‘second Fifth of July’. On that date, two years to the day after the revolt of
1922, there was a better prepared uprising of young officers in São Paulo with
the aim of bringing down the Bernardes government. The leader was a retired Rio
Grande do Sul officer, General Isidoro Dias Lopes (1865–1949) and amongst other
prominent military figures involved were Eduardo Gomes (1896–1981), Newton
Estillac Leal (1893–1955), João Cabanas (1895–1974) and Miguel Costa
(1885–1959), the latter an important officer in the São Paulo Força Pública
(State Militia). They demanded the restoration of constitutional liberties and
denounced what they described as Bernardes’ excessive use of presidential
authority. They succeeded in taking control of the city for twenty-two days
until they were forced to withdraw. Other rebellions erupted in Sergipe,
Amazonas and Rio Grande do Sul. The São Paulo rebels left the city and headed
west, establishing their base in western Paraná and awaiting another force, led
by Captain Luís Carlos Prestes (1898–1990), that was marching north from Rio
Grande do Sul. The two groups joined up and marched into the interior of the
country, hoping to persuade the peasants to join with them in bringing
Bernardes down. For two years the Coluna Prestes (Prestes Column), as they had
come to be known, marched across the North and Northeast, fighting several
battles en route to Bolivia where they arrived and finally disbanded in 1927.
The ‘Prestes Column’ failed in its principal aim of bringing down the government
but it gained a huge amount of publicity and helped to make people aware of
rural poverty. Prestes became a Marxist in 1929, visited the Soviet Union in
1931 and, in 1943, after a number of years in prison, became leader of the
Brazilian Communist Party. Tenentismo carried on, seeking economic development
as a way to create social and political change in Brazil.
Café-com-leite continued unrelentingly and, in 1926, it was
the turn of the paulistas to come up with a candidate. After all, the last paulista
president, Rodrigues Alves, although elected in 1918, had fallen sick before
taking office which meant the last paulista actually to serve as president had
been the same politician during his first stint from 1902 to 1906. Washington
Luís (1869–1957), governor of São Paulo, was duly nominated by a meeting of
state governors, with Fernando de Melo Viana (1878–1954) of Minas Gerais as his
vice-presidential candidate. With Rui Barbosa now dead, there was little
opposition and it was an election marked by general apathy. Needless to say,
Washington Luís won 98 per cent of the vote.
One of the new president’s cabinet appointments had immense
importance for the future of Brazil – that of Getúlio Dornelles Vargas
(1882–1954) as Minister of Finance. The forty-three-year-old politician from
Rio Grande do Sul would become one of the most significant figures in Brazilian
history.
