Artur Bernardes' tenure as the 12th president of Brazil lasted from 15 November 1922, after he defeated Nilo Peçanha in the 1922 presidential election, until 15 November 1926, when he transferred power to Washington Luís. A representative of the so-called "milk coffee policy" and the last years of the First Brazilian Republic, Bernardes ruled the country almost continuously under a state of emergency, supported by the political class, rural and urban oligarchies, and high-ranking officers of the Armed Forces against a series of tenentist military revolts.
In the urban centres, especially in Rio de Janeiro, the Bernardes administration was unpopular due to the rise of inflation and currency devaluation caused by coffee valorization policies. The administration cut public spending, transformed the Bank of Brazil into an issuing bank and sought a loan from British bankers. Negotiations for the loan were unsuccessful, but many of the recommendations of the British mission of financial experts, led by Edwin Montagu, were followed. At the end of 1924, the government expelled São Paulo politicians from the direction of the country's economy, abandoned federal support for the protection of coffee and began a contractionary and recessive policy, which achieved its goals of containing inflation and exchange rates at the expense of contracting industrial output.
The federal government supported the overthrow of the dominant parties in the states that had supported Peçanha (federal intervention in Rio de Janeiro and state of emergency in Bahia) and mediated armed conflicts (1923 Revolution in Rio Grande do Sul and expeditions against Horácio de Matos in Bahia). From July 1924 until the end of Bernardes' term, conspirators in lower military ranks tried to overthrow the regime, which they considered corrupt and backward. The longest campaign, the Prestes Column, discredited the government but failed to threaten the federal capital.
Power was maintained with an iron fist: reorganization of the capital's political police (the 4th Auxiliary Police Bureau), the bombing of São Paulo, censorship of the press, closure of unions, mass arrests, torture, and exile to the penal colony of Clevelândia. With a majority in Congress, the government enacted labour laws, introduced income tax, instituted the right of reply in the press and facilitated complaints against journalists for slander and defamation, included moral and civic education in the schools' curricula and revised the 1891 Constitution with a centralizing amendment. In foreign policy, Brazil's maneuvers to obtain a permanent seat on the League of Nations' Deliberative Council culminated in the country's withdrawal from the organization.
Background
The Artur Bernardes administration, between 15 November 1922 and 15 November 1926, took place in the midst of the crisis of Brazil's First or Old Republic. This was a period of cultural effervescence and expansion of the urban middle and working classes. The First Republic's political system began to show signs of exhaustion, which would culminate in its fall in 1930., Introdução e Os fundamentos do sistema político na Primeira República. The previous president's image, Epitácio Pessoa (1919–1922), was eroded among the military, the urban population and the oligarchies of Minas Gerais and São Paulo. The Brazilian economy in 1922 was growing, but suffered from high inflation, a devalued currency, eroded tax revenue and low international coffee prices, Brazil's main export product. Foreign creditors were unwilling to lend money, and the deficit could only be financed by issuing money or selling public debt bonds.
Bernardes, leader of the Republican Party of Minas Gerais, was the candidate of the federal government, Minas Gerais, and São Paulo in the 1922 presidential election, chosen in spite of other states. Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, Pernambuco and Bahia came together in the Republican Reaction and launched the opposition candidacies of Nilo Peçanha, from Rio de Janeiro, for president, and J. J. Seabra, from Bahia, for vice president. The campaign was fierce. The election was one of the few tightly disputed ones in the First Republic and the opposition accused the results of fraud. The Copacabana Fort revolt attempted to prevent Bernardes' inauguration and the government declared a state of emergency in response.
On the date of the inauguration, the state of emergency was still in force, and 118 rebellious military personnel were awaiting trial in prison. The country was divided between winners and losers. The pact between the elites was weakened. The new government began with enemies in the dissident oligarchies, urban sectors and the military. The following years would be unstable and Benardes preferred repression instead of conciliation, deepening the grievances. Historiography normally considers Bernardes to be a revanchist and vengeful ruler.
In a speech at the Senate, in 1929, Bernardes recapitulated the presidential successions of 1922 and 1926:
Government programme
Bernardes' candidacy manifesto focused on economic issues, with three goals: budget balance, currency valorization and the creation of an independent central bank. It promised to reduce the public deficit without spending cuts, just by tightening tax evaders and unauthorized treasury spending. Equilibrium in the trade balance would come from the permanent protection of coffee, the increase in other exports, such as cotton, and import substitution, especially through the development of coal production and the industrialization of iron deposits in Minas Gerais. An additional point was to solve the National Treasury's immense debt with the Bank of Brazil.
Other proposals did not differ much from Peçanha's manifesto. Both candidates vaguely denounced the degeneration of republican ideals and defended the reform of Brazil's Constitution and the expansion of public education and assistance to workers and the underprivileged. Bernardes' ideological foundations were Minas Gerais-style developmentalism along the lines of João Pinheiro's administration (1906–1908), the nationalist and authoritarian criticisms of liberalism, a strong Executive and a voluntarist and dirigiste State, in order to produce a conservative modernization.
1922
Cabinet
State ministers were chosen since the beginning of October and represented almost total support among civilian politicians. São Paulo native Rafael de Abreu Sampaio Vidal took over the Ministry of Finance, ensuring his state's control over the country's economic policy — a typical "milk coffee" agreement. But the Minas Gerais-São Paulo alliance contained a contradiction: on one side, the less orthodox São Paulo plutocrats, and on the other, career politicians from Minas Gerais, who valued fiscal balance. Sampaio Vidal was known for his proposal, when deputy, to issue unbacked bills to finance the defence of coffee. His name displeased orthodox politicians from Minas Gerais: Antônio Carlos Ribeiro de Andrada, leader of the majority in the Chamber of Deputies, Mário Brant and Afonso Pena Júnior.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs went to João Luís Alves from Minas Gerais, Foreign Affairs to Félix Pacheco, from Piauí, Transport and Public Works to Francisco Sá, from Minas Gerais, and Agriculture to Miguel Calmon, from Bahia. In the military ministries of War and Navy, marshal Setembrino de Carvalho and admiral Alexandrino de Alencar. Epitácio Pessoa's experiment, the first head of state of Republican Brazil to place the Armed Forces under civilian ministers, was abandoned. The choice of the Minister of War was particularly difficult, as there were not many officers who were both loyal to the government and respected among their peers. The chosen one had political skills, achieving the feat of using the Brazilian Army as a pillar of support for the government.
Sampaio Vidal was replaced by Aníbal Freire in January 1925. In the following month, João Luís Alves was appointed justice to the Supreme Federal Court, handing his position to Afonso Pena Júnior, keeping the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Minas Gerais' hands. In April 1926, rear admiral Arnaldo de Siqueira Pinto da Luz replaced Alexandrino de Alencar in the navy after the later's death.
Political police
It was said in the barracks that marshal Carneiro da Fontoura's supporters would revolt if he was not chosen as Minister of War. The marshal, who "promised to exterminate the conspiracies", was appointed Chief of Police of the Federal District. Rebels and conspirators could expect tolerance from a law graduate, like all Fontoura's predecessors in office, but not from him, "accustomed to dealing with the worst elements of Rio's criminality".
His appointment was accompanied by a decree reorganizing the police, just five days after taking office. Among other measures, the Investigation and Political Security Inspectorate was transformed into the 4th Auxiliary Police Bureau, which had several sections with political police functions and was the predecessor of the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS) in Rio. Its agents monitored suspects, investigated conspiracies and monitored association hubs, public places, factories, the movement of hotels and the embarkation and disembarkation of passengers, sometimes resorting to wiretapping, undercover agents and whistleblowers. The 4th Police Chief was major Carlos Reis, a "cold-blooded and politically skilled individual". Reis and Fontoura, nicknamed "Major Metralha" and "General Escuridão" by their enemies, were the main repression figures in the Federal District.
The state of emergency, which expired on 31 December 1922, was successively extended until April and then again until 31 December 1923, with only a few votes against in Congress. This measure suspended constitutional guarantees for a specified time period, legitimizing arrests without trial and strengthening the police in relation to the Judiciary. Much of the press was censored. According to the prevailing current in Congress and the Supreme Court, the state of emergency was the middle ground between that of war and full peace and could be used preemptively by any government that felt threatened with overthrow.
After the end of Bernardes' term and the state of emergency, the press published denunciations against his repressive apparatus. The newspaper O Combate, from São Paulo, mentioned the "new rich of Bernardism": the heads of the political police enriched through illicit means., cap. 7. O Globo accused the presidential group of having used censorship in favour of its private interests, such as the ban on reporting sugar prices on the international market, protecting businesses owned by the president's friends.
Income tax On 31 December, the law that budgeted the General Revenue for the following year established income tax in Brazil. This was also the first direct tax levied at the federal level in the country. An income tax already existed in some periods since the Brazilian Empire, but it only applied to salaries paid from the public coffers. The charge on global income, established in December 1922, was promoted by Antônio Carlos Ribeiro de Andrada, president of the Chamber of Deputies' Finance Committee and budget rapporteur. A complex tax, it was criticized for the administrative machinery it needed, and was not collected immediately. The collection system was studied and organized by engineer Francisco Tito de Souza Reis.