Global InformationBrazilian Revolution of 1930 information
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 Getúlio Vargas (center) and his followers pictured by Claro Jansson during their short stay in Itararé, São Paulo en route to Rio de Janeiro after a successful military campaign. | ||||||||
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Revolutionaries:
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Armed Forces
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| ~50,000 | Unknown | Over 2,600 | ||||||
The Revolution of 1930 (Portuguese: Revolução de 1930) was an armed insurrection across Brazil that ended the Old Republic. The revolution replaced incumbent president Washington Luís with defeated presidential candidate and revolutionary leader Getúlio Vargas, concluding the political hegemony of a four-decade-old oligarchy and beginning the Vargas Era.
For most of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Brazilian politics had been controlled by an alliance between the states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais. The presidency had alternated between them every election until 1929, when incumbent President Washington Luís declared his successor would be Júlio Prestes, also from São Paulo. In response to the betrayal of the oligarchy, Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul, and Paraíba formed a Liberal Alliance backing opposition candidate Getúlio Vargas, president of Rio Grande do Sul.
The Alliance denounced the victory of Prestes in the March 1930 presidential election as fraudulent. They went no further though until late July, when Vargas's running mate, João Pessoa, was assassinated. The assassination was largely due to a personal feud, but Pessoa became a martyr for the revolutionary cause. On 3 October, Rio Grande do Sul, under the leadership of Vargas and Góis Monteiro, rebelled. By the next day, the revolution had reached the North and Northeast under Juarez Távora, and Minas Gerais formally declared allegiance to the revolution within a week of its start, despite minor resistance.
Military officers, acting independently of both the government and the revolutionaries, worried about a potential of a protracted civil war, swiftly led a military coup to depose Luís in Rio de Janeiro, on 24 October. Hoping to deter further bloodshed, three higher military officers, Generals Augusto Tasso Fragoso, João de Deus Mena Barreto, and Admiral Isaías de Noronha formed a military junta and briefly ruled the country, for less than two weeks. After negotiations between the revolutionaries and the junta, Vargas arrived in Rio and took power from the junta on 3 November. For the following seven years, Vargas achieved an unprecedented consolidation of power with transitional governments until he proclaimed the Estado Novo in 1937 in a coup d'état. Vargas remained in office until he was forced out of office in 1945.