Background
Luís Carlos Prestes was born on January 3, 1898 in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He was the son of a federal army officer.
government official military politician
Luís Carlos Prestes was born on January 3, 1898 in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He was the son of a federal army officer.
He graduated from the Realengo Military Academy in 1919 with top honors and was commissioned a second lieutenant.
In 1922 he was transferred to the First Engineering Company involved in railroad construction for the Central Brazilian Railroad, and was promoted to captain, although he had filed reports charging graft and collusion between railroad contractors and government officials. In 1924 he was transferred to another railroad construction battalion in Rio Grande do Sul.
Prestes settled in Buenos Aires, where he refused to join the other tenentes who supported Getulio Vargas and the Liberal Alliance in the March 1930 elections, and subsequently in the October 1930 Revolution.
Prestes went to Moscow to work as a civil engineer in 1931. He was coopted into the Executive Committee of the Communist International, returned clandestinely to Brazil in 1934, and soon assumed leadership of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB). During this period when Moscow favored a Popular Front policy, Prestes helped form and dominated the National Liberation Alliance which attempted an ill-fated military uprising in October 1935 against the Vargas government. After eluding the police, he was arrested in March 1936.
Prestes was released from prison in April 1945, took control of the Communist Party, but instead of condemning Getulio Vargas urged him to remain in office. After Vargas' ouster by the military in October, general elections were held and Prestes was elected senator from the Federal District.
The Communist Party was declared illegal in May 1947, and in October Prestes was forced to give up his seat in the Senate. He lived underground for a decade, until the Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira administration allowed him to be legally cleared of charges against him. Prestes and the Communist party supported General Henrique Lott who lost the 1960 presidential elections. However, when Vice President Joao Belchior Marques Goulart succeeded to the presidency in August 1961, Prestes and his party strongly backed Goulart and gained extensive influence in organized labor.
When the March 1964 revolution overturned Goulart. Prestes left the country, spending most of his exile in Moscow and returning only in November 1979 when amnesty was granted to all political exiles. In 1980 the PCB was in disagreement with Luis Carlos Prestes and asked him to step down as secretary general. Subsequently, he was expelled from the party.
In October 1924 Prestes led an insurrection in solidarity with the revolt of the tenentes in Sao Paulo. Driven from Rio Grande do Sul, Prestes and his troops joined forces with the Sao Paulo rebels near Iguazu Falls. There they began a two and a half year guerrilla campaign of what became known as the Prestes Column through the backlands of Brazil. After marching over 25,000 kilometers and engaging in hundreds of skirmishes with the Brazilian Army, they went into voluntary exile in Bolivia. By this time Luis Carlos Prestes had gained fame as the “Knight of Hope.”
