State of emergency in Brazil (1922–1927)

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​The state of emergency's coverage area, with the date of first decree in each state

A state of emergency was in force in Brazil for much of the period from 1922 to 1927, comprising the end of president Epitácio Pessoa's government (1919–1922), most of Artur Bernardes' government (1922–1926), and the beginning of Washington Luís' government (1926–1930). The measure was decreed after the Copacabana Fort revolt, on 5 July 1922, and remained in force in several regions of Brazil's territory until the end of the subsequent tenentist revolts in February 1927, with the exception of the first months of 1924. At its peak in 1925, it was in force in the Federal District and ten states. The state of emergency allowed the political elite of the First Brazilian Republic to defend itself with authoritarian measures at a time of crisis, but the apparent tranquility after its suspension came to an end with the 1930 Revolution.

The first decree covered the Federal District and the state of Rio de Janeiro and was extended until the end of 1923, serving the post-revolt arrests of military personnel, journalists, politicians and trade unionists (even without links to the movement) and federal intervention against opposition politicians allied with Nilo Peçanha, Bernardes' competitor in the 1922 presidential election. In March 1924, the state of emergency in Bahia ended another opposition center. In July the measure was resumed in the Federal District, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, being extended and expanded to other states as the tenentists tried to overthrow the regime at gunpoint. The government feared that the revolts would turn into a revolution with anarchist or communist involvement and authorized extreme measures such as the bombing of São Paulo.

The Bernardes' administration insisted that law-abiding citizens would not be harmed and the violence of dissidents left no alternative but repressive measures. In the capital, they were led by the military authorities and by marshal Carneiro da Fontoura, Chief of Police of the Federal District, who had command over a political police body, the 4th Auxiliary Police Station. The state of São Paulo created its equivalent, the DOPS, in 1924; historian Carlo Romani sees continuity in this bureaucracy until the Estado Novo and the military dictatorship. Surveillance and whistleblowing were enough to prevent the São Paulo Revolt of 1924 from starting in Rio de Janeiro, but numerous other conspiracies were devised there and the government distrusted the Armed Forces. The police spied on suspects, hunted rebels underground and seized weapons and bombs while Brazil's Ministry of Foreign Affairs monitored rebel communities in exile.

Mass arrests without investigation or trial filled prisons, prison ships and islands in Guanabara Bay. For tenentism, this solidified a nucleus of professional rebels, while anarchism experienced the beginning of its decline amid the closure of unions and the arrest of militants. Political prisoners shared cells with common criminals and individuals with no criminal records or political activity. Federal deputies and witnesses reported unsanitary conditions and torture in these establishments. In the most remote of them, the penal colony of Clevelândia, hundreds of prisoners died from diseases, which would only become known to the public after the end of the Bernardes government, as the press was under censorship. In retrospect, Bernardes later stated: "as president of the Republic, I was just a police chief. And as a police chief faced with revolutionary pressure, I only knew how to do one thing: to arrest, persecute, contain by terror".

Background[edit]

The state of emergency in the First Brazilian Republic[edit]

According to Brazil's 1891 Constitution, which was in force in the First Brazilian Republic (1889–1930), a state of emergency could be declared by the National Congress "in the event of aggression by foreign forces or internal commotion". In the absence of Congress, the President of Brazil could make the declaration in cases of "foreign aggression or serious internal commotion", but would have to report to Congress, which could approve or suspend the declaration. Therefore, the authority of the Executive was less than that of the Legislature in the matter.[1] In practice, the initiative almost always came from the Executive.[2][3]

The state of emergency declared by Congress suspended constitutional guarantees at a specific time and place, and that declared by the president was limited to "measures of repression against people", that is, "detention in a place not intended for those accused of common crimes" and "exile to other places in the national territory". Authorities would be responsible for any abuses committed.[4] The constitutional text did not go deeper than this, but there was no ordinary law that regulated the measure.[5] Thus, the suspension of constitutional guarantees was open to interpretations that were more or less restrictive of individual rights.[6]

The predominant conservative interpretation in the Supreme Federal Court (STF) and in Congress from the turn of the century was of the state of emergency as an "intermediate between that of war and full peace", in the definition of president Campos Sales (1898–1902) . According to Sales, the measure, "restricting individual freedom for a moment, with measures of an ephemeral nature, ensures and guarantees the permanent interests of the Nation". It would be a preventative measure and not merely a repressive one, and could be used by any government that felt threatened to be overthrown.[7]

In the period from 1889 to 1930, the state of emergency was applied eleven times in Brazil, for a total of 2,365 days, according to a survey by the Federal Senate. In total, it was more than six years, or around 15% of the period.[8] The measure was typically used in the capital.[9] Brazil's first president, Deodoro da Fonseca, decreed a preventative state of emergency and closed Congress.[8] His successor, Floriano Peixoto, used the measure to arrest and exile dozens of politicians (including members of the Chamber of Deputies and senators) and opposition journalists.[10] After the Vaccine Revolt in 1904, the state of emergency led to the exile of hundreds of prisoners to northern Brazil.[11] From 1910 onwards, the state of emergency and federal intervention became routine instruments of the government.[12]

Dissenters in the 1920s[edit]

In its first decades the Brazilian Republic typically faced dissent in parts of the intelligentsia, the working class (among them anarchists and communists) and the Armed Forces. Their demands could include social reforms, compliance with the Constitution, an end to corruption and clientelism, and the moralization of public administration. Workers' demands focused on living and working conditions.[13]

In the 1920s, dissenters were in open confrontation with the State,[14] especially in the government of president Artur Bernardes (1922–1926).[15][16] The climate was one of widespread popular dissatisfaction. Currency devaluation, a policy to compensate for the drop in coffee exports, had doubled inflation in 1921–1923.[17] The writer Lima Barreto satirized the 1922 state of emergency in the crônica Estado de Sítio: two residents of a suburb of Rio de Janeiro agree "that all revolutions only serve to give prestige to governments" and one of them complains about not having been arrested, because if he were, he could postpone paying his debts and apologize to his creditors. From the author's point of view, daily worsening of living conditions was a more immediate concern for the poor than political violence.[18]

The military and politicians[edit]

Nilo Peçanha (second from right to left) with military supporters in the 1921–1922 electoral campaign

Bernardes was elected in one of the few fierce elections of the period. His competitor's campaign, Nilo Peçanha's Republican Reaction, managed to take advantage of the urban classes, who felt excluded from the political system, although Peçanha's practices were not distinguished from other oligarchies in the countryside. Control of the electoral process by the status quo granted the victory to Bernardes, a representative of the dominant oligarchies of the Republican Party of Minas Gerais and the Republican Party of São Paulo.[19][20] In his inauguration speech, Bernardes made it clear that he would not allow a change in the political regime from the outside in,[21] and was intransigent throughout his term.[15]

Several politicians from the Republican Reaction maintained contact with the tenentist conspirators in the Brazilian Army, believing that the military could still achieve its ideals.[22] The Reaction was already disorganized when Bernardes took office,[23] and the new president managed to establish his support base in the Legislative and Judiciary branches, expand the legal measures at his disposal and impose federal authority in the states of the Republican Reaction (Rio de Janeiro, Pernambuco, Rio Grande do Sul and Bahia).[24][25]

Government Palace of São Paulo under tenentist occupation in July 1924

The tenentists were the most active dissenters: they considered themselves a revolutionary movement to overthrow the regime,[26] they wielded heavy weapons and had sympathies among the civilian elite.[27] An influential line in historiography interpreted them as representatives of the urban middle classes against the political hegemony of the coffee oligarchies.[28] They attempted to prevent the inauguration of Bernardes with the Copacabana Fort revolt, in July 1922,[23] and started a wave of revolts across the country, starting in São Paulo, in July 1924, followed by the war of movement of the Prestes Column throughout the countryside until 1927. In addition to all the conspiracies that materialized as revolts, many others were unsuccessful.[29] The number of deaths, the tenentists' defiance to the sovereignty of the Brazilian government and their claim to represent the entire nation are characteristics of civil war in this period.[30]

Workers and anarchists[edit]

See also: Anarchism in Brazil
12 February 1927 issue of the anarchist newspaper A Plebe, denouncing "the great crimes of the bourgeoisie"

Meanwhile, the labor movement was going through an ideological crisis, a decline in strike activity, and state repression at the beginning of the decade.[31] The policing of workers' organizations and the violent repression of strikes were already frequently reported by the labor and mainstream press throughout the First Republic,[32][33] and the peak of strike activity had already passed in 1917–1919.[34][35] The Bernardes administration was the most repressive towards the labor movement,[33] but it also took some legal measures in favor of the workers, such as the Eloy Chaves Law, which created a pension system for railway workers, the founding of the National Labor Council and the vacation law for commerce and industry workers. These measures were, at least in part, intended to improve the country's image abroad.[36]

The police classified the labor movement as a threat to the social order, more than to politics.[32] However, there was an association between workers' doctrines and anarchism, and between strikes and insurrections.[37] The anarchists were workers and intellectuals[38] and had been the main faction in the workers' struggles at the beginning of the century, although they lost ground in the 1920s to the newly founded Communist Party.[39] Aiming for the definitive abolition of the State, they destabilized the republican government.[40][41] In 1918 some anarchists, union leaders and politicians even attempted an insurrection inspired by the Russian Revolution.[42] The political system of the First Republic did not open up electoral opportunities for worker activists.[43]

The strikes, demonstrations, newspapers[44] and bomb attacks by organized workers could not match the tenentists' firepower.[27] The government and police's recurring fear was that the military revolts would run out of control of the tenentists and become popular insurrections with anarchist or communist involvement. The war effort in São Paulo, a city with a history of labor conflicts, was alarming.[45] Tenentist conspirators even sought the support of anarchist and communist leaders at times,[46] the communists considered that tenentism could pave the way for the intended revolution[47][48] and anarchists provided moral support to the revolt in São Paulo, even without direct participation.[49] However, the tenentist leaders rejected any popular support that interfered with their political project,[50] fearing that it would be subverted by workers participation.[51]

From an anarchist point of view, the republican government, the tenentists and the communists were equal in their common ambition to control the State. Some anarchists even accused the communists of having had friendly relations with the Bernardes government. In response, the communists insisted that their comrades were also being persecuted and arrested.[52] Repression of communists intensified later, in the 1930s.[53] Some communist sources admitted that repression hit the anarchists harder,[54] and Brazilianist John W. F. Dulles considered that lesser persecution during the state of emergency was what allowed the communists to become stronger than the anarchists in Rio de Janeiro.[55] Historian Carlo Romani, who has an ideological affinity with anarchism, attributed the decline of anarchism in Brazilian unions to the Bernardes government.[56]

Authoritarian tendency[edit]

Artur Bernardes, in the center, with his ministers in 1922

For historian Henry H. Keith, no other ruler of Brazil's First Republic, not even the centralizers and militarists (Deodoro da Fonseca and Floriano Peixoto), did as much as Artur Bernardes to strengthen the government against internal disorder.[26] The "revolutionary threat" was used to justify urgent actions beyond the conventional legal procedures, the suppression of civil liberties and the practice of violence and arbitrariness.[57] Later in his career, when he was a state deputy, Bernardes would have made a self-criticism about this period: "as president of the Republic, I was just a police chief. And as a police chief faced with revolutionary pressure, I only knew how to do one thing: to arrest, persecute, contain by terror".[15] His government was marked by a serious social crisis, exception in the legal order, the reorganization of Brazilian law and relations between the State and the individuals.[58]

The state of emergency was his tool to incorporate the image of a strong, centralizing ruler, who imposed top-down modernizations. This demonstrated the influence of authoritarian nationalist thinkers such as Oliveira Viana, Francisco Campos and Azevedo Amaral, who did not form their own political movement, but found favorable ground for their ideas in the interwar period, when democracy seemed demoralized and was contrasted with the example of Mussolini.[59] Even the tenentist opposition was influenced by the same anti-liberal thinkers.[60]

When requesting a review of the Constitution, Bernardes criticized the "enthusiastic and generous idealism" of past legislators, which had produced laws that were "excessively advanced and poorly suited to our country, our race, our nature, our social and political culture". He also criticized the restriction that the Constitution imposed on the death penalty in "civil or internal war", because "while the legal forces remain within the strictly legal orbit, without means that are often indispensable for their cohesion, the seditious ones employ all means, including summary shootings, to maintain their own discipline and instill terror in those who fight them and in defenseless populations". When criticizing the slowness of criminal proceedings, he stated that "the social order needs to be armed with more expeditious devices for repressing the guilty and acquitting the innocent".[61]

Government justifications[edit]

In his presidential messages to Congress, Bernardes succinctly addressed the state of emergency,[62] which, according to him, was decreed "unwillingly, but in defense of high national interests",[63] as he "having forgot that we live in a democracy, a regime of opinion, in which the will of the majority prevails, expressed at the polls, a factious and threatening minority intended to govern, imposing itself through terror and going so far as to conceive and proclaim the intention of seizing power no matter the cost".[64] Against this minority, "the government has exercised a moderate preventative function, although it is willing to employ the most energic measures if necessary".[63]

The state of emergency was treated as a normal instrument of public administration,[63] which would only harm subversives. Law-abiding citizens and a clean press would have the guarantees of the normal regime, "in addition to the tranquility arising from the certainty that the Government can act quickly and safely against any disruptors of public peace".[65] At the same time, the president (governor) of Paraná, Caetano Munhoz da Rocha, declared: "in Paraná no one suffers for being an opponent of the government or having disaffection with the President, or for being a proselyte of any religious belief. Everyone enjoys the same freedom, justice is done to everyone".[66] On 15 November 1926, Jornal do Commercio argued that "the state of emergency has evolved to the point where it is not even felt by the people. Only the cursers and conspirators have noticed it. The orderly nation hardly believes that we are under it".[67]

Consequences on foreign policy[edit]

The government's authoritarian policies and internal disorder had repercussions abroad, eroding Brazil's efforts to gain prestige through a permanent seat on the League of Nations Council. In 1924, diplomat Mello Franco commented to Félix Pacheco: "if by next September order has not yet been reestablished in the capital of the great State of the Union [São Paulo], I do not know how we will be able to plead in the Assembly and in the Council the question of our admission as a permanent member of the latter". The bombing of São Paulo in July 1924 provoked numerous protests by foreign citizens to consulates, many of which received no response.[68] The prolonged state of emergency, added to the imbalance in public finances, created distrust with Brazil on the international stage. According to parliamentary documents, a foreign bank manager said: "Do you want the exchange rate to rise? Suspend the state of emergency!"[69]

Loyalist military victories exiled waves of tenentists to neighboring countries. In exile, they reestablished their military and civil contacts and reorganized themselves for new struggles.[70] In response, Brazilian consulates in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia, collaborating with intelligence agents from the Armed Forces, paid for information, violated telegraphic messages from domestic networks in Argentina and Uruguay, worked with customs to curb arms, ammunition and food smuggling and kept the Brazilian government informed of tenentist activities abroad. The fight against tenentism by Brazil's Ministry of Foreign Affairs began in 1924 and lasted until 1929.[71]

1926 Constitutional reform[edit]

On 3 September 1926[72] the Bernardes government managed to promulgate a revision to the 1891 Constitution, discussed and approved while the state of emergency was in force.[73] Some of its modifications dealt with appeals, prohibiting judicial appeals against the declaration and denying the courts jurisdiction of the acts carried out by the Executive and Legislative branches as a result of the state of emergency.[74] The constitutional reform also indicated the situations in which federal intervention could occur in the states, gave the president partial veto power over bills approved by Congress and restricted the applicability of habeas corpus. The tendency was to strengthen the president to the detriment of other branches and the state sphere.[75]

Until then, habeas corpus had broad application and could be used by citizens against any type of action by the government that violated a fundamental right. The number of habeas corpus requests in the Supreme Court increased during Bernardes' government,[76] precisely as a reaction of those affected by the state of emergency.[77] Habeas corpus was the only legal instrument with which lawyers could be productive. Military prisoners used it to allow the review of desertion lawsuits, refunding bonus discounts or payment discounts in prisons, regularizing future full salaries, ending incommunicado detention, obtaining transfers and other measures.[78] The reform sought to reduce habeas corpus to the strict sense of a guarantee on freedom of movement.[79] These changes prompted the opposition to accuse Bernardes of dictatorial intentions.[58]

Relaxation in the Washington Luís government[edit]

Washington Luís with military and civilian authorities

The 1926 presidential election proceeded without much dispute, confirming the transition of power to the governor of São Paulo, Washington Luís.[19] He took office on 15 November 1926.[80] Luís' new police chief, Coriolano de Góes, took over at the end of the month and released 356 detainees without trial in Colônia de Dois Rios and another 161 from the military prison on Ilha das Cobras. There was a general expectation of improvement in the tense political atmosphere.[81] Censorship ceased.[82] The press expressed some sympathy for the new president's liberal decisions, but mainly irony and accusations against the government.[83]

The last prisoners from Clevelândia disembarked in Rio de Janeiro on 22 February.[84] The truth about what occurred in the penal colony became one of the main topics of debate and opposition.[85] The newspapers printed statements such as "the horrors of Clevelândia", "the extermination of prisoners", "the crimes of the Bernardes government", "the exile of plague and death" and "the hecatomb of Clevelândia".[86] The exhausted Prestes Column went into exile in Bolivia at the beginning of February.[87]

Workers' and trade union organization and activities began their recovery in 1926 and especially in 1927.[88] The tenentists ended the military campaigns that began in 1922 having built an image of heroism and sympathy in the press and disgruntled politicians, which they would take advantage of for a new campaign.[89] The political climate during Washington Luís' term was relatively peaceful, and in 1928 he announced that "there are not, there cannot be, revolutions or revolts in this country. There is no environment or elements for this, everyone is within their duties. We can consider the period of riots and rebellions over". However, at the end of the term, the economy was hit by the Great Depression, the oligarchies did not reach a consensus on the presidential succession and dissidents in the political elite joined forces with the tenentists to carry out the 1930 Revolution, deposing Washington Luís and ending the First Brazilian Republic.[19][90]

References[edit]

Citations[edit]

  1. ^ Gasparetto 2018, p. 83-85.
  2. ^ Pivatto 2006, p. 166.
  3. ^ Lynch & Souza 2012, p. 117.
  4. ^ Article 80.
  5. ^ Lynch & Souza 2012, p. 119.
  6. ^ Pivatto 2006, p. 166-167.
  7. ^ Lynch & Souza 2012, p. 124-127.
  8. ^ a b Mourelle, Thiago (2023-07-27). "O Estado de Sítio e seu uso na Primeira República". Arquivo Nacional. Archived from the original on 25 November 2023.
  9. ^ Vieira 2011, p. 341.
  10. ^ Lynch & Souza 2012, p. 121.
  11. ^ Vieira 2011, p. 343.
  12. ^ Lynch & Souza 2012, p. 120.
  13. ^ Aragão 2011, p. 118-119.
  14. ^ Brito 2008, p. 35.
  15. ^ a b c Assunção 2014, p. 54.
  16. ^ Cunha 2011, p. 113.
  17. ^ Malin 2015, p. 20.
  18. ^ Lima 2017, p. 47-49.
  19. ^ a b c Ferreira & Delgado 2018, cap. 11.
  20. ^ Galvão 2013, p. 35, 41, 43.
  21. ^ Gasparetto 2018, p. 257.
  22. ^ Cunha 2011, p. 124-125.
  23. ^ a b Cunha 2011, p. 117.
  24. ^ Cunha 2011, p. 121-124.
  25. ^ Gasparetto 2018, p. 256-257.
  26. ^ a b Cunha 2011, p. 117-118.
  27. ^ a b Bretas 1997, p. 30.
  28. ^ Ferreira & Delgado 2018, cap. 9.
  29. ^ Aragão 2011, p. 120.
  30. ^ Castro 2022, p. 5.
  31. ^ Batalha 2000, p. 55-58.
  32. ^ a b Bretas 1997, p. 27.
  33. ^ a b Ferreira & Delgado 2018, cap. 5.
  34. ^ Bretas 1997, p. 29.
  35. ^ Cunha 2011, p. 102.
  36. ^ Batalha 2000, p. 59-60.
  37. ^ Cunha 2011, p. 104.
  38. ^ Aragão 2011, p. 204.
  39. ^ Romani 2003, p. 113.
  40. ^ Brito 2008, p. 44.
  41. ^ Romani 2011a, p. 523.
  42. ^ Batalha 2000, p. 53.
  43. ^ Cunha 2011, p. 101.
  44. ^ Cunha 2011, p. 103.
  45. ^ Meirelles 2002, p. 73, 357-358.
  46. ^ Dulles 1973, p. 235-236, 244-245.
  47. ^ Romani 2003, p. 113-114.
  48. ^ Meirelles 2002, p. 358.
  49. ^ Assunção 2014, p. 78.
  50. ^ Antosz 2000, p. 89-90.
  51. ^ Castro 2022, p. 222.
  52. ^ Brito 2008, p. 50-51, 61.
  53. ^ Brito 2008, p. 62.
  54. ^ Dulles 1973, p. 259.
  55. ^ Dulles 1973, p. 13, Prefácio.
  56. ^ Brito 2008, p. 36.
  57. ^ Aragão 2011, p. 125-126.
  58. ^ a b Castro & Santos 2021, p. 137-138.
  59. ^ Gasparetto 2018, p. 257-258.
  60. ^ Castro 2022, p. 92-94.
  61. ^ Cunha 2011, p. 119-120.
  62. ^ Gasparetto 2018, p. 265.
  63. ^ a b c Pivatto 2006, p. 116.
  64. ^ Cunha 2011, p. 118.
  65. ^ Gasparetto 2018, p. 259.
  66. ^ Gasparetto 2018, p. 264.
  67. ^ Gasparetto 2018, p. 266.
  68. ^ Campos 2019, p. 39-40.
  69. ^ Gasparetto 2018, p. 258.
  70. ^ Aragão 2011, p. 261.
  71. ^ Xavier 2016, p. 189-190, 200, 203, 207.
  72. ^ Gasparetto 2018, p. 129.
  73. ^ Castro & Santos 2021, p. 122.
  74. ^ Gasparetto 2018, p. 130.
  75. ^ Gasparetto 2018, p. 129-131.
  76. ^ Castro & Santos 2021, p. 122-123.
  77. ^ Gasparetto 2018, p. 277-278.
  78. ^ Aragão 2011, p. 268.
  79. ^ Castro & Santos 2021, p. 137.
  80. ^ Meirelles 2002, p. 606.
  81. ^ Gasparetto 2018, p. 279-280.
  82. ^ Gasparetto 2018, p. 279.
  83. ^ Aragão 2011, p. 282.
  84. ^ Brito 2008, p. 77.
  85. ^ Brito 2008, p. 52.
  86. ^ Brito 2008, p. 45.
  87. ^ Meirelles 2002, p. 642-643.
  88. ^ Batalha 2000, p. 61.
  89. ^ Aragão 2021, p. 258.
  90. ^ Gasparetto 2018, p. 281.

Bibliography[edit]

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