The Gaucho Revolution in Brazil 1930

Suffering from the worldwide Great Depression and the collapse of the coffee markets, Brazilians were discontented as the presidential elections of 1930 approached. Incumbent president Washington Luiz Pereira de Souza designated fellow paulista (native of São Paulo), Julio Prestes, as the official conservative candidate in the election to succeed him. This, however, represented a break with the tradition under which the chief politicians in the Brazilian provinces of São Paulo and Minas Gerais had alternated in selecting presidential candidates. In the election, the leaders of Minas Gerais supported Getúlio Dorneles Vargas, governor of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, whose residents were referred to as gauchos. When Prestes was declared the winner (March 1930), his opponents in the southern provinces made plans to upset the results.

The opposition to Prestes found significant support for a revolt among lower-ranking military officers. The tenentes (junior army officers, literally lieutenants) joined with disgruntled former officers and anti-paulista politicians who felt that their regional interests were suffering unduly from the São Paulo-centered national state. For the tenentes , joining the Liberation Alliance (Aliança Libertadora) was a compromise of their ideals because they were locking arms with the very politicians against whom they had rebelled earlier -- former presidents Epitácio da Silva Pessôa (1919-22) and Artur da Silva Bernardes (1922-26). This course of action was necessary, however, if the tenentes hoped to finally win. The alliance also included their old civilian allies: the gaucho "liberators," paulista democrats, and Federal District (Distrito Federal) opposition politicians. For its part, the Liberal Alliance, led by Vargas, embraced tenente demands -- such as the secret ballot, better election laws, treatment of social problems, and especially amnesty. In this way, the tenentes became one of the strong arms of the dissident oligarchies of Rio Grande do Sul, Minas Gerais, São Paulo, and Paraíba.

Catalyzing the decision to revolt was the assassination of vice-presidential candidate João Pessoa on July 26, 1930. In October 1930, Vargas called for a revolt. Launched on October 3, the revolt quickly swept aside or drew in its wake the powerful 14,000-man federal force in Rio Grande do Sul. By the end of the first week the rebel column was preparing for a showdown with legalist forces massed in southern São Paulo. Meanwhile, in the northeast, the revolution scored a series of successes, and by October 23 rebel forces were on the verge of breaking through from Minas Gerais into Rio de Janeiro. Senior generals in Rio de Janeiro then forced the resignation of Washington Luis and on October 24 a "pacifying junta" took power. Prestes sought refuge in the British legation. A month after the revolution was launched, Vargas assumed office, promising a program of "national reconstruction," an amalgam of the Liberal Alliance program with a collection of demands of the diverse groups that had supported the revolt. This marked the end of the old, or first republic.

The revolutionaries were successful in 1930 largely because the army leadership lost its will to defend the regime. The command structure in effect imploded, and the rebels quickly gained control of fifteen of the twenty states. Many texts speak incorrectly of the army staging a coup and turning the government over to Vargas. In fact, the generals were looking at defeat and acted to gain some say in the future. Nonetheless, the senior ranks were thinned by a massive purge. By the end of 1930, nine of the eleven major generals and eleven of the twenty-four brigadier generals were retired, and in 1931 twelve of the twenty brigadier generals, many of whom had been promoted recently, also were retired. The revolution of 1930 opened a decade of reform that made the army even more an instrument of the central government and its civilian leaders.

References

Brazil: Culture and Politics, 59; Dictionary of Wars, 69; Brazil - A Country Study.

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