Getúlio Vargas ruled Brazil as provisional leader, president and dictator in turn
Few politicians have governed one country under so many labels. Getúlio Vargas seized power after losing an election, won office under a new constitution, cancelled it to rule by decree, was pushed out, and then came back through a democratic vote. Historians rate him the most influential Brazilian politician of the 20th century.
He came from São Borja, a town near the Argentine border with a reputation for smuggling, feuds and armed adventure, in a southern state known for violent politics. His parents embodied its divisions: his mother's relatives had sided with the federalists in a regional civil war, his father's with the republicans, and their marriage joined the rival camps. At military prep school Vargas, only 1.57 metres tall, was mocked as xuxu, a squash, for his short, round build.
His early path was erratic. He enlisted as a private in 1898 against his father's wishes, was expelled from military college with twenty others for protesting a water shortage, and was sent to the Bolivian frontier during a 1903 border crisis that ended before he arrived. He got out of the army with paperwork falsely claiming epilepsy, enrolled in law at Porto Alegre and graduated in 1907 as valedictorian. As a student he told a visiting president that only education could make a people capable of democracy.
He rose through state politics, led troops in the 1923 civil war in Rio Grande do Sul, served as federal finance minister and then governed his home state. Defeated in the 1930 presidential election, he took power anyway after an armed revolution, won a constitutional mandate in 1934, and in 1937 used fears of a communist rising to launch the Estado Novo dictatorship, which lasted eight years. Revolts from constitutionalists, communists and the far-right Integralists were all put down.
In 1942, after manoeuvring between Nazi Germany and the United States, he brought Brazil into the Second World War on the Allied side. Removed in 1945 after fifteen years, he won the 1950 election and returned, but a deepening political crisis ended with his death by suicide in 1954.
Source: Getúlio Vargas
