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 Revolution of 1930.
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 Bureau. 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 prison 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 The state of emergency in the First Brazilian Republic 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. In practice, the initiative almost always came from the Executive.
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.Article 80. The constitutional text did not go deeper than this, but there was no ordinary law that regulated the measure. Thus, the suspension of constitutional guarantees was open to interpretations that were more or less restrictive of individual rights.
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.
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. The measure was typically used in the capital. Brazil's first president, Deodoro da Fonseca, decreed a preventative state of emergency and closed Congress. 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. After the Vaccine Revolt in 1904, the state of emergency led to the exile of hundreds of prisoners to northern Brazil. From 1910 onwards, the state of emergency and federal intervention became routine instruments of the government.
Dissenters in the 1920s 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.
In the 1920s, dissenters were in open confrontation with the State, especially in the government of president Artur Bernardes (1922–1926). 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. 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.
The military and politicians
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. In his inauguration speech, Bernardes made it clear that he would not allow a change in the political regime from the outside in, and was intransigent throughout his term.
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. The Reaction was already disorganized when Bernardes took office, 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).
The tenentists were the most active dissenters: they considered themselves a revolutionary movement to overthrow the regime, they wielded heavy weapons and had sympathies among the civilian elite. An influential line in historiography interpreted them as representatives of the urban middle classes against the political hegemony of the coffee oligarchies. They attempted to prevent the inauguration of Bernardes with the Copacabana Fort revolt, in July 1922, 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. 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.
Workers and anarchists
Meanwhile, the labor movement was going through an ideological crisis, a decline in strike activity, and state repression at the beginning of the decade. 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, and the peak of strike activity had already passed in 1917–1919. The Bernardes administration was the most repressive towards the labor movement, 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.
The police classified the labor movement as a threat to the social order, more than to politics. However, there was an association between workers' doctrines and anarchism, and between strikes and insurrections. The anarchists were workers and intellectuals 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. Aiming for the definitive abolition of the State, they destabilized the republican government. In 1918 some anarchists, union leaders and politicians even attempted an insurrection inspired by the Russian Revolution. The political system of the First Republic did not open up electoral opportunities for worker activists.