103 Facts About Artur Bernardes

Artur da Silva Bernardes was a Brazilian lawyer and politician who served as the 12th president of Brazil from 1922 to 1926.

Artur Bernardes's administration was unpopular in the cities, especially in Rio de Janeiro, and from July 1924 onwards he was attacked by conspiracies and armed uprisings by tenentist rebels.

An austere and reserved man, Artur Bernardes was idolized by his followers, the so-called Bernardists, and hated by his enemies.

Artur da Silva Bernardes was born on 8 August 1875 in the village of Santa Rita do Turvo, currently the municipality of Vicosa, as recognized in history books.

Artur Bernardes's birthplace is disputed by the municipality of Cipotanea, where it is claimed that the future president was born there, at the time part of Alto Rio Doce, and then moved to Vicosa, an already constituted city, at the age of 5.

Artur Bernardes' mother descended from the Vieira de Sousa family, one of the coffee nobility families of the Zona da Mata, while his father, a Portuguese immigrant from Castanheira de Pera, was a colonel of Brazil's National Guard and lawyer in the districts of Alto Rio Doce, Piranga and Vicosa.

The solution came from his brother-in-law Jose da Graca Sousa Pereira, an associate at the firm Pena e Graca, where Artur Bernardes got a job.

Under the influence of his father and the Caraca School, Artur Bernardes later enrolled at the Free Faculty of Law, initially as an attendee student, in 1896, before passing the exams and entering the second year in 1897.

Artur Bernardes was among the admirers of Floriano Peixoto, president of Brazil from 1891 to 1894.

In Sao Paulo, Artur Bernardes worked as editor for the newspaper Correio Paulistano, as member of the Notary's Office of senator Alvaro de Carvalho's father, and as professor of Portuguese and Latin at the Institute of Sciences and Letters of Sao Paulo.

Prestigious among his peers, Artur Bernardes was chosen for the graduation speech.

At the age of 25, still in 1900, Artur Bernardes opened a law firm in Vicosa.

The Vaz de Melo-Artur Bernardes became one of the family groups that dominated, with a certain stability, the zones, regions, electoral districts or municipalities of Minas Gerais.

Artur Bernardes appeared in the 1907 Laemmert Almanac as a farmer in the Vicosa region, and throughout his life he was a coffee planter and director-owner of a sugar factory in Ponte Nova.

Artur Bernardes's speech was compatible with that of state president Joao Pinheiro, whose agenda included encouraging education and polyculture.

In June 1905 Artur Bernardes was appointed colonel of the National Guard, which legitimized his local power and conferred honors and privileges.

At a Congress of Municipalities held in Leopoldina, in October 1907, Artur Bernardes was invited by deputy Ribeiro Junqueira to give a speech on behalf of the heads of the Executive in the region.

Artur Bernardes exchanged letters with Joao Pinheiro, pledging his support and making several requests to Vicosa.

Artur Bernardes's deceased father-in-law's prestige was still enough for Bernardes to be included in the PRM's list of candidates for state deputy and elected for the second district in March 1907.

Under orders from the PRM, the Chamber of Deputies approved the decision and Artur Bernardes was awarded more than a thousand votes above his competitor.

On 7 September 1910, Artur Bernardes resigned his position as federal deputy and returned to Belo Horizonte to take over the state's Finance Secretariat, after being appointed by state president Julio Bueno Brandao.

Artur Bernardes's management focused on increasing revenue, creating tax collection offices, negotiating the taxation of mining products shipped through Sao Paulo and Espirito Santo, and reorganizing the Minas Gerais Receipt Office in Rio de Janeiro.

Artur Bernardes left the secretariat at the end of Bueno Brandao's government, in September 1914, and in the following January he was the candidate for federal deputy with the most votes in the district.

Artur Bernardes confirmed his acceptance in a letter to the president.

Artur Bernardes's secretariat was set up with illustrious figures: Raul Soares and later Afonso Pena Junior in the Interior, Afranio de Melo Franco and later Joao Luis Alves in Finance and Clodomiro de Oliveira in Agriculture, Industry, Land, Transport and Public Works.

In February 1919, Artur Bernardes had the "Tarasca" accept his list of candidates for a quarter of the senators and all the deputies.

Artur Bernardes refused his own candidacy, which would have been of interest to the Minas Gerais elites, and insisted that the three strongest states decided on a new name.

Artur Bernardes began the creation process with a decree on 6 September 1920.

Artur Bernardes's speeches outlined his concern with the "conservation of forests and reforestation of the State, threatened with seeing large portions of its territory transformed into bare and barren zones".

The CSBM was the result of negotiations that began during the visit of king Albert I of Belgium to Brazil in 1920; Artur Bernardes invited him to Minas Gerais to attract Belgian capital, and the state government made an agreement with a Brazilian company, Companhia Siderurgica Mineira, and another Belgian-Luxembourgish company, ARBED.

Debates between legislators and technicians soured the initial positive attitude, and Clodomiro de Oliveira managed to convince Artur Bernardes to postpone the signing of the contract.

Artur Bernardes adopted a nationalist stance, demanding that foreign companies prove the benefits of their contracts.

Since the 1919 election it was clear that Artur Bernardes could become president of Brazil, even if he had to wait for the next election.

Still in 1920, Artur Bernardes sought the support of JJ Seabra, president of Bahia, sending weapons to defend his government against the armed revolt of colonel Horacio de Matos.

Artur Bernardes was already the subject of ridicule for his appearance.

Artur Bernardes refused proposals to withdraw his candidacy so that a conciliatory name could be reached.

Artur Bernardes immediately denied authorship of the letters, and Fonseca agreed that they were fake.

Artur Bernardes continued to the traditional candidate presentation banquet, at which he read his platform: a constitutional review at the initiative of Congress, budget balance, currency appreciation and the protection of coffee and industry.

Artur Bernardes received the popular nicknames "Seu Me", for his sharp profile, similar to a ram, and "rolinha", for his thinness.

Artur Bernardes refused, saying he was elected "in the most disputed and free of presidential elections".

Artur Bernardes handed the ministries to Rafael de Abreu Sampaio Vidal, Joao Luis Alves, Felix Pacheco, Francisco Sa, Miguel Calmon, Setembrino de Carvalho and Alexandrino de Alencar.

Artur Bernardes arrived isolated and embittered in the federal capital, an unknown environment full of threats.

Artur Bernardes's administration was unpopular in Rio de Janeiro and in urban areas in general due to the rise in the cost of living, which doubled between 1921 and 1923, according to some imprecise calculations.

In Rio Grande do Sul, Artur Bernardes did not dare to intervene, despite the ongoing Revolution of 1923, a civil war in which with the opposition waged a rural guerrilla against the government of Borges de Medeiros.

Matos and Artur Bernardes were linked through Francisco Sa Filho, a federal deputy for Minas Gerais and son of the Minister of Transport.

Artur Bernardes pressured Bahia's president using his brother, the Minister of Agriculture, and Matos continued to rule his "state within the state".

The Artur Bernardes administration refused it to those responsible for the revolt of 5 July 1922 and the STF indicted 50 of them in December 1923.

Censorship controlled news about the conflict, but it was "possible to see, between the lines of the newspapers that, despite remaining firmly at the helm, Artur Bernardes is dangerously navigating through the obstacles of a military crisis that could spread all over the country".

Historians of tenentism recognized that there was indeed a political program in the movement, vaguely nationalist in character, demanding freedom of the press, secret voting and overcoming the old political oligarchies, of which Artur Bernardes would be the icon, the "symbol of the perversion of the Republic".

On 2 March 1924, Artur Bernardes was personally pressured by Edwin Samuel Montagu, head of the financial mission.

Artur Bernardes disagreed and, advised by the Minister of Finance, ended up agreeing.

Artur Bernardes defended himself: "it would be absurd to attribute to me an attitude against coffee farming".

Artur Bernardes reversed the idea that the crisis would justify not changing the republican political status.

The biggest change in Brazilian foreign policy during the Artur Bernardes administration was the withdrawal from the League of Nations, on 10 June 1926.

Artur Bernardes overestimated Brazil's importance, as Germany's diplomatic normalization in the Locarno Treaties was a much greater concern for the European powers.

The writings on the subject were based mainly on the president's opponents, concluding that Brazil's withdrawal from the League was a diplomatic fiasco, in which Artur Bernardes, driven by considerations of internal public opinion, imposed his will against the recommendation of diplomats.

Congress reduced the period of ineligibility for former presidents, from six to three months after their term of office, to allow Artur Bernardes to run for senator in the February 1927 elections, filling the vacancy left by Antonio Carlos.

Artur Bernardes was elected with just under 175 thousand votes, without a competitor, but the results were challenged in the Powers Commission.

Shortly before, Artur Bernardes had declared to the Belo Horizonte press that the people of Rio were "carnivalesque" and lacking in civility.

Against Azeredo, who recalled the detention of "citizens of all classes, condemned by hatred and caprice", Artur Bernardes read police records from the time of the state of emergency.

Artur Bernardes ended up accepting Olegario Maciel, the conciliation candidate nominated by the state president.

The party structure set up by Artur Bernardes experienced its first split.

Artur Bernardes was still the most prestigious member of his party and helped drag along undecided party members.

Artur Bernardes proposed organizing a council of former presidents after taking power.

Historian Helena Bomeny believes that Artur Bernardes participated in the revolution to restore the old Minas Gerais-Sao Paulo relationship, which Washington Luis had betrayed.

Artur Bernardes took the risks of conspiring and was the only leader to participate in the revolution until the end.

Olegario Maciel announced the absorption of the PRM by the new party, but Artur Bernardes denied: "this depends on its directors, who have not met for many years".

The party was reduced to a minority faction led by Artur Bernardes, bringing together some figures such as Mario Brant, Djalma Pinheiro Chagas, Ovidio de Andrade, Daniel de Carvalho, Afranio and Virgilio de Melo Franco.

Artur Bernardes tried to revolt the Public Force of Minas Gerais, without success.

Government troops suppressed this militia and Artur Bernardes went on hiding, spending a night on each farm.

Artur Bernardes did not resist arrest, but asked to spend another three days in Vicosa and continue to Belo Horizonte without an escort.

Artur Bernardes was informed that he was not a "higher authority" and was sent on a train to Rio de Janeiro.

However, the boarding of his family members, at other piers, was violent: his wife and daughters were attacked by supporters of the tenentists and Artur Bernardes Filho was injured by a bullet.

Vargas was indirectly re-elected by Congress in an election in which Artur Bernardes received one of the 71 opposition votes.

Artur Bernardes planned with other regional oppositionists a national party.

Artur Bernardes met Valadares twice in Rio, but did not want conciliation.

Artur Bernardes stayed away from politics, apart from private conversations and discreet negotiations, but signed the Manifesto dos Mineiros in 1943, a declaration in favor of redemocratization in Brazil.

Also in 1948, Artur Bernardes opposed the creation of the International Institute of the Amazon Hyleia, which according to him, would result in the internationalization of the Amazon.

Artur Bernardes died at 13:45 of a myocardial infarction, in the company of his family and the Capuchin friar Cassiano de Vila Rosa, on 23 March 1955, less than two months after the start of work as federal deputy.

Artur Bernardes lay in state at the Chamber of Deputies and was later buried in the Sao Joao Batista Cemetery.

Personally, Artur Bernardes has been described as a disciplined, diligent, intelligent and well-informed man, punctual, "well spoken, cultured and with polite gestures".

Apparently shy, Artur Bernardes expressed himself well, although he preferred to listen rather than speak in front of ministers.

When president, Artur Bernardes did not appear in public and only showed himself in closed spaces or to previously selected audiences, which can be explained by the angry mobs that welcomed him at the beginning of the campaign in Rio de Janeiro.

Still according to Afonso Arinos, Artur Bernardes had "broad personal ambition", bringing "probably well-established in his spirit the certainty of his own ascension".

Artur Bernardes placed a lot of trust in himself due to "an almost religious faith in the republican mission that had been assigned to him by God or destiny".

Artur Bernardes already said that "it is essential to have a lot of malice towards politicians in this environment and to always distrust them, no matter how much they deserve it from us".

Artur Bernardes "had a reputation as a hardened political fighter: he remembered his friends and never forgot his enemies", according to Eul-Soo Pang.

Afranio de Carvalho, a biographer of Raul Soares, assessed that Artur Bernardes behaved like "a resentful person who, having defeated his opponents, did not defeat himself".

Artur Bernardes was one of the most controversial rulers of his period.

Artur Bernardes is remembered for having ruled through violent authoritarianism, but a "modernizing authoritarianism".

The Estado Novo, by disqualifying the "Old Republic", of which Artur Bernardes was a representative, cemented the negative memory around him.

Calogeras exempted Artur Bernardes from blame for "his most censored decisions": he was "the victim of exploiters of his known weaknesses".

For Francisco Moacir de Assuncao Filho, Artur Bernardes' role "was not exactly that of a statesman", but "possibly no other president of the so-called Old Republic faced so many adversities during his term in office".

The "iron will" of Pessoa and Artur Bernardes supposedly spared the nation from a fratricidal struggle.

Jurists discussed the decision to bomb Sao Paulo as a possible war crime for which Artur Bernardes would be the highest responsible authority.

The political current aligned with Artur Bernardes' leadership, his style and his time in power are called Bernardism, whose symbol was a red carnation worn in the lapel.

Artur Bernardes even agreed with the tenentists that elections in the Old Republic were a "scam" and the government was full of corrupt people.

Helio Silva defended Artur Bernardes against the accusation of being a dictator, but acknowledged that he was an authoritarian president.

The system's political strength, Artur Bernardes recognized, began in the municipalities.

Artur Bernardes proposed the transfer of Brazil's capital away from the "tumult of a great cosmopolitan city", combining the promise of development in the countryside with the fear of the masses of Rio de Janeiro.

The biographical summary of Bernardes published by the Federal University of Vicosa has a positive tone, and the Artur Bernardes House, located in Silviano Brandao Square, in Vicosa, was listed in 1995 by the State Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage of Minas Gerais.

Artur Bernardes lends his name to a municipality in Minas Gerais, formerly Calambau, and another in Sao Paulo, formerly Guarucaia.

Artur Bernardes lends his name to an oil refinery in Cubatao.