brazilian republic

While the 1930 Revolution absolutely deserves to be called such, due to the sheer scale of the change it unleashed, its name is also a bit deceptive in that it implies it was a bloodless event when it was anything but. Fierce battles were fought between the revolutionaries and supporters of the...

While light rail systems here in Brazil are usually seen as a novelty dating from the 2010s onward, the city of Campinas made a brief experiment with this form of urban transit at the beginning of the 1990s. The mayor at the time, Jacó Bittar, wished to build such a system, and obtained the help...

The Encilhamento was economic crisis that engulfed the young Brazilian republic in the last decade of the 19th century, caused by a government policy of unrestricted loans in an attempt to foster industrialization. This led to rampant speculation and inflation, and it wasn't until the presidency...

Despite its name, the Vaccine Revolt had no single reason, but was instead the culmination of years of popular discontent in Rio de Janeiro, then the capital of Brazil, against the Old Republic. The city's low income population, already in a tight spot due to a bad economy and urban reforms that...

Though he is rarely (if ever) remembered nowadays, Roberto Silveira was one of the most promising left-wing Brazilian politicians of his generation, together with people like Leonel Brizola, Waldir Pires and Miguel Arraes. Much like Brizola, Silveira got into politics at a very young age, and...

One of the most respected intellectuals Brazil had in the 20th century, as well as a politician (he was João Goulart's chief of staff before the dictatorship, and became lieutenant governor of Rio de Janeiro in 1982), Darcy Ribeiro tried to succeed Leonel Brizola as governor of Rio de Janeiro in...

One of the Brazilian left's main standard bearers during the second half of the 20th century, Leonel Brizola saw his prestige slowly fade after the end of the 1964-85 dictatorship, thanks to the rise of Lula and the Workers' Party as a political force. While his decline as a national figure was...

Tenório Cavalcanti was one of those historical figures whose life would probably be considered ASB if he was a fictional character. Born in Alagoas in 1906, he moved to the state of Rio de Janeiro (more specifically the future city of Duque de Caxias, then a district of Nova Iguaçu), where he...

As with all elections during the Old Republic, the 1930 presidential race was less a matter of campaigning and more of making alliances with the powerful oligarchic groups that controlled their respective states, thanks to rampant fraud. Júlio Prestes won this dispute easily, thanks in no small...

The most important political leader Brazil had in the 20th century, Getúlio Vargas was president from 1930 to 1945 and from 1951 to 1954. His first administration was marked by a combination of multiple achievements, such as laws establishing workers' rights and the construction of the Companhia...

Hugo Borghi is one of the many obscure historical figures who could've become far more prominent had they been just a little bit luckier. A landowner from the interior of São Paulo who benefited from a very profitable relationship with the Estado Novo dictatorship - which led, following its end...

Following the amnesty law of August 1979, Leonel Brizola returned from exile the following month with the intention of recreating the Brazilian Labour Party (PTB) as it existed before the 1964 coup d'état. However, he got into a judicial dispute with Ivete Vargas (Getúlio Vargas' great-niece)...

Waldir Pires was a lawyer and progressive politician from Bahia whose career started in the 1950s, as a secretary in governor Régis Pacheco's administration. Entering electoral politics as a state assemblyman in 1954, he was elected to a seat in the Chamber of Deputies four years later. After a...

From 1834 until 1975, the city of Rio de Janeiro and the state with the same name were two distinct administrative units - the former having the formal name of Neutral Municipality (during the empire), Federal District and finally state of Guanabara, while the latter's capital was located in...

Luís Carlos Prestes was, by far, the most prominent representative of Brazilian communism, having served as general secretary of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB, not to be confused with PCdoB, which had a Maoist inclination) from 1943 until 1980. The "Knight of Hope", as he was known, became...

The 2002 Brazilian presidential election had four main candidates: Lula (PT), who would finally become president after failing to do so three times in a row, José Serra (PSDB), senator for the state of São Paulo and the incumbent administration's candidate, Anthony Garotinho (PSB), the then...

The 1992 mayoral election, which pitted César Maia (a former ally of Leonel Briola who broke off with him a year prior due to disagrements on policy) and Benedita da Silva (a federal deputy who belonged to the Workers' Party), was one of the closest in the city's history, second only to the ones...

Like it says on the tin. Brazil's existing nuclear power plants, Angra I and II, were built during the last dictatorship, with help and technology from West Germany. Would a Brazil that stays democratic in the 1960s and 70s invest in a project such as this, and if so, would it be ahead or behind...

The 1910 presidential election was the first in Brazil's Old Republic era to look like a competitive race, in spite of all the fraud. It pitted two political heavyweights of the time: Hermes da Fonseca, former minister of war and supported by Minas Gerais and Rio Grande do Sul, and Ruy Barbosa...

For a brief time, from November 25 to December 5 1959, former governor of São Paulo Jânio Quadros (an incredibly erratic character, to put it mildly) gave up on his campaign for the upcoming presidential race, which was scheduled to happen next year, before backtracking on his decision. Backed...