Artur Bernardes was a Brazilian public figure and the 12th President of the country.
Background
Artur Bernardes was born on 8 August 1875 in Viçosa,a small town in Minas Gerais, and his father Antonio da Silva Bemardes was a Portuguese immigrant who held various judicial posts under Dom Pedro II. Maria Aniceta Pinto Bemardes, his mother, came from an old and distinguished Minas Gerais family.
Education
Receiving a law degree in 1900 from the Sao Paulo Law School. Bemardes entered politics in 1904.
Career
In 1904 he was elected to the municipal council of Teixeiras. In 1906 he was elected president of the Municipal Council of Vicosa, and in 1907 he won a seat in the Minas Gerais state legislature. His brilliant speeches attracted much attention, and in 1910 he became secretary of finances of the state. In 1918 he was elected governor.
Elected president of Brazil with the support of the state of Sao Paulo, Bemardes was inaugurated in November 1922. Brazil was being governed at the time under a state of siege as a result of unrest caused by young military rebels, the tenantes, who in 1924 seized the city of Sao Paulo. As a result, the state of siege was extended and lasted through Bemardes’ entire mandate.
In the presidential election of 1926, Bemardes supported the Paulista candidate Washington Luis and the Minas Gerais-Sáo Paulo alliance was maintained. Although the Bemardes administration was marked by many positive accomplishments, he was an unpopular president who had to use state of siege powers to remain in office.
Bemardes was largely inactive politically during the 15-year rule of Getúlio Vargas (1930-1945). After Vargas' fall, Bemardes sought to revive the pre— 1930 Republican Party on a national basis, but it never gained much support outside of Minas Gerais, where it remained an important secondary party.