Artur Bernardes

Artur da Silva Bernardes (8 August 1875 – 23 March 1955) was a Brazilian lawyer and politician who served as the 12th president of Brazil from 1922 to 1926. Bernades' presidency was marked by the crisis of the First Brazilian Republic and the almost uninterrupted duration of a state of emergency. During his long political career, from 1905 until his death, he was the main leader of the Republican Party of Minas Gerais (PRM) from 1918–1922 until the party's closure in 1937, and founder and leader of the Republican Party (PR).

Before his presidency, Bernardes served as president (governor) of Minas Gerais from 1918 to 1922, during which time he founded the current Federal University of Viçosa and prevented American investor Percival Farquhar from exploiting the iron ore deposits in Itabira, cultivating an image of a nationalist and municipalist leader. A status quo and "milk coffee" candidate in the 1922 presidential election, Bernardes was the target of fake letters to harm his image and an attempted coup d'état to prevent his inauguration, the Copacabana Fort revolt. His administration was unpopular in the cities, especially in Rio de Janeiro, and from July 1924 onwards he was attacked by conspiracies and armed uprisings by tenentist rebels.

Bernardes' attitude towards the opposition was uncompromising and authoritarian. Out of the states that opposed his candidacy, Rio de Janeiro and Bahia had their dominant parties overthrown, and Rio Grande do Sul fell into a civil war, the Revolution of 1923, in which the federal government brokered a peace deal. In the capital, the political police were reorganized into the 4th Auxiliary Police Bureau. Hundreds of rebel military personnel and civilians died in the bombing of São Paulo and the penal colony of Clevelândia. No amnesty was granted to the rebels. The government repressed militant workers, especially anarchists, while simultaneously enacting some labor laws.

The administration also applied an economic policy of austerity and monetary contraction, fighting inflation and currency devaluation, withdrew Brazil from the League of Nations, carried out a centralizing constitutional reform, the only one to the Brazilian Constitution of 1891, and brought the State closer to the Catholic Church. After his presidency, Bernardes took part in the Revolutions of 1930 and 1932, and saw the PRM reduced to a minority faction in Minas Gerais. In his last years he participated in the campaign for state monopoly on oil in Brazil. An austere and reserved man, Bernardes was idolized by his followers, the so-called Bernardists, and hated by his enemies.

Early life and family

thumb|The Bernardes family house in Viçosa|left

Artur da Silva Bernardes was born on 8 August 1875 in the village of Santa Rita do Turvo, currently the municipality of Viçosa, as recognized in history books. His birthplace is disputed by the municipality of Cipotânea, where it is claimed that the future president was born there, at the time part of Alto Rio Doce, and then moved to Viçosa, an already constituted city, at the age of 5. Bernardes was the fourth of nine children born to Antônio da Silva Bernardes and Maria Aniceta Bernardes. One of his brothers, Olegário, would become justice of the Federal Court of Audits, state deputy in Rio de Janeiro, and mayor of Teresópolis.

Bernardes' mother descended from the Vieira de Sousa family, one of the coffee nobility families of the Zona da Mata, while his father, a Portuguese immigrant from Castanheira de Pera, was a colonel of Brazil's National Guard and lawyer in the districts of Alto Rio Doce, Piranga and Viçosa. In the latter he was the first appointed lawyer and then prosecutor. According to some biographies, Antônio Bernardes did not attend more than primary school in Portugal. The family was wealthy enough to pay for their son's education, but did not belong to the local political group.

thumb|Bernardes (indicated by the arrow) among the students at the Caraça School

Bernardes' strict family education was complemented by the traditional Caraça School, where he was enrolled for secondary studies at the end of 1887, at the age of 12. The Caraça School was one of the most prestigious schools in the country. Gilberto Freyre called it a "sad manor in the mountains". The school's schedule control, restriction of visits, surveillance and punishments left their mark on the children of the Minas Gerais elite. The teachers lived in a cloister and penance and "the paddle passed from class to class, from hall to hall, from playground to playground, leveling everyone with its overwhelming dominance".

This experience allowed Bernardes to "value disciplinary power as a shaper of minds and bodies for the nation", in addition to establishing his Catholic religiosity for the rest of his life, while many of his contemporaries flirted with positivism and evolutionism. A favorable biography at the Historic and Geographic Institute of Minas Gerais, of which Bernardes is the patron of a chair, stated that the teachings at Caraça "had a great influence on his moral, religious and public formation: the zeal for the public cause, the scrupulousness in the distribution of government money, the spirit of discipline, order and austerity". The couple had eight children: Clélia, Artur, Maria da Conceição, Dhalia, Rita, Sylvia, Geraldo and Maria de Pompeia. Of these, Artur Bernardes Filho followed his father's career and was a federal deputy, constituent, senator and vice-governor of Minas Gerais, reaching the position of Minister of Industry and Commerce in 1961.

The Vaz de Melo-Bernardes became one of the family groups that dominated, with a certain stability, the zones, regions, electoral districts or municipalities of Minas Gerais. Kinship with at least one other politician can be observed in 51.7% of a sample of 511 Minas Gerais politicians between 1891 and 1930, according to a collective biographical study by Amílcar Vianna Martins Filho. Bernardes was also very typical of the Minas Gerais political class due to his bachelor's degree in Law, shared with 61.6% of the sample. 17.6% had secondary education in Caraça.

The family's rural properties were directly benefited by some of the fiscal, budgetary and tax decisions praised by Cidade de Viçosa, such as the reduction in prices on the Leopoldina Railway. Artur Bernardes appeared in the 1907 Laemmert Almanac as a farmer in the Viçosa region, and throughout his life he was a coffee planter and director-owner of a sugar factory in Ponte Nova. Minas Gerais was an agrarian society, but education and the liberal profession (law) had more direct relationships with the political career.

Political rise

City councillor (1904–1907)

Bernardes' participation in elections was not immediate, and he refused an offer from his father-in-law to support a candidacy for federal deputy. Instead, Vaz de Melo assigned his son-in-law to welcome the State President (governor) Francisco Sales and other politicians. Bernardes gradually made contacts and demonstrated his rhetoric. In 1904 he ran for special councillor for the Viçosa district of Teixeiras. Despite his previous statements about reforming the Constitution, in October Bernardes claimed in Cidade de Viçosa that he did not want elected positions and only appeared on the PRM ticket at the last minute, "yielding to the orders of friends in the District".

On 19 November, the District's 52 voters unanimously elected him. Carlos Vaz de Melo died three days later, and Bernardes succeeded him as director of Cidade de Viçosa in January, which began covering extra-municipal issues and supporting the councillor's political opinions. On the first day of the year Bernardes published yet another defense of the reform of the Constitution, promising that "this newspaper will be a fierce and merciless fight against the idea, promoted by some, of changing nothing in the fundamental law". This ambition would be realized two decades later, when Bernardes assumed the presidency. The program presented in the article was to enhance the municipalities and defend the interests of farming, commerce and industry. Other articles discussed the issues of local coffee farming and production alternatives, representing the interests of producers and traders. His speech was compatible with that of state president João Pinheiro, whose agenda included encouraging education and polyculture.

In June 1905 Bernardes was appointed colonel of the National Guard, which legitimized his local power and conferred honors and privileges. Elected president of the City Council the following month, he preferred to remain vice-president. The following year he was elected again, accepted and was invested as executive agent, a position equivalent to mayor. The executive agent was chosen by the City Council. At a Congress of Municipalities held in Leopoldina, in October 1907, Bernardes was invited by deputy Ribeiro Junqueira to give a speech on behalf of the heads of the Executive in the region.

This rapid rise was not accepted by all veterans; José Teotônio Pacheco, Viçosa's political leader and former ally of Vaz de Melo, broke his ties with Bernardes and led the municipal opposition. The "Bernardistas" and "Pachequistas" vied for power in Viçosa for a decade. In the election of a councillor in 1906 and in the renewal of the entire City Council at the end of the following year, the Bernardists won by a small margin of votes. Cidade de Viçosa accused the Pachequistas and their newspaper A Reação of lacking patriotism and republicanism. Bernardes exchanged letters with João Pinheiro, pledging his support and making several requests to Viçosa.

Deputy and secretary of finance (1907–1918)

thumb|Bernardes, in the center, between two other state deputies in 1907|180px|left

His deceased father-in-law's prestige was still enough for Bernardes to be included in the PRM's list of candidates for state deputy and elected for the second district in March 1907. In the state Chamber, he was elected secretary of the board in 1907 and 1908, gave speeches about agriculture issues and helped approve João Pinheiro's tax reform. This last position facilitated his nomination to run for federal deputy in 1909. The candidates for Minas Gerais' federal deputy positions were colonels or intellectuals, both chosen by the state president and the PRM's Executive Committee, known as "Tarasca", made up mostly of politicians from the southern Minas Gerais. The party prided itself on promoting the careers of young politicians. Its rule was elitist and centralized, controlling political appointments, pressuring the press, co-opting pressure groups and securing their votes through coronelism and fraud. Being chosen as a PRM candidate was equivalent to being elected.

Francisco Bernardino Rodrigues Silva, a lawyer from Juiz de Fora and previous occupant of the seat, ran as an independent candidate against Bernardes, with the support of Viçosa's Pachequistas. In January 1909, Silva obtained more votes than his rival, but a Commission for the Recognition of Powers, whose rapporteur was Altino Arantes, stripped 2,552 votes from Bernardes in Viçosa and 3,339 from Silva in Juiz de Fora. Under orders from the PRM, the Chamber of Deputies approved the decision and Bernardes was awarded more than a thousand votes above his competitor. According to Afonso Arinos de Melo Franco, the PRM confirmed Bernardes because he was "a young and energetic leader", an "experienced commander of officialdom in one of the toughest municipal struggles in Zona da Mata".

thumb|Portrait as Finance Secretary in 1913|180px

In this first period in the Chamber of Deputies, Bernardes did not stand out nor took part in the technical committees. His greatest achievement was in Viçosa, where he secured presidential candidate Hermes da Fonseca the majority of votes in the 1910 presidential election.

On 7 September 1910, Bernardes resigned his position as federal deputy and returned to Belo Horizonte to take over the state's Finance Secretariat, after being appointed by state president Júlio Bueno Brandão. Minas Gerais had one of the largest economies in the country, and therefore the position further boosted Bernardes' career. His management focused on increasing revenue, creating tax collection offices, negotiating the taxation of mining products shipped through São Paulo and Espírito Santo, and reorganizing the Minas Gerais Receipt Office in Rio de Janeiro. These measures still had a regionalist bias, avoiding harming the interests of coffee growing in Zona da Mata.

During this period, the State Employees' Beneficial Bank and the Banco Hipotecário e Agrícola, the future Bank of the State of Minas Gerais, were created. In 1911, new types of long-term loans to municipalities benefited administrations in Zona da Mata and southern Minas Gerais, in a municipalist policy that would yield electoral dividends. Bernardes left the secretariat at the end of Bueno Brandão's government, in September 1914, and in the following January he was the candidate for federal deputy with the most votes in the district. In this second period in the Chamber of Deputies he chaired the Special Committee on the Accounting Code.

President of Minas Gerais (1918–1922)

thumb|Bernardes speaking at the state government candidates' banquet|left

At the beginning of 1917, deputy Gomes Lima met Bernardes in Viçosa to report that Américo Lopes, Secretary of the Interior of state president Delfim Moreira, had been chosen as the PRM candidate for the state government. Bernardes confirmed his acceptance in a letter to the president. Américo Lopes was the candidate of former senator and state president Francisco Sales, president of the PRM's Executive Committee and leader of one of the three factions that existed in the party until 1918. The other two were the followers of Bias Fortes, called "Biistas" and Silviano Brandão's, the "viuvinhas". Zona da Mata politicians were usually supporters of Sales. Américo Lopes' name was contested by Raul Soares, the Secretary of Agriculture, who felt that his Zona da Mata region (he was from Ubá) was discredited. Arguing the moral incapacity of the secretaries' candidacy, especially that of the Interior, Soares convinced president Venceslau Brás, who was from Minas Gerais, to veto the candidacy. The result was a list of candidates, but it omitted Bernardes. Still feeling that Zona da Mata was overlooked, Soares then convinced the president to support Bernardes.

The name was accepted by state president Delfim Moreira and made official by the Executive Committee in June, reuniting the party. Bernardes' vice president was state senator Eduardo Amaral. Although elected deputy again, Bernardes resigned his position to take office as governor at the Palácio da Liberdade, in Belo Horizonte, in September 1918. His secretariat was set up with illustrious figures: Raul Soares and later Afonso Pena Júnior in the Interior, Afrânio de Melo Franco and later João Luís Alves in Finance and Clodomiro de Oliveira in Agriculture, Industry, Land, Transport and Public Works.

Hegemony in the PRM

thumb|Satire in the magazine [[O Malho about the exclusion of the Salistas from the PRM ticket]]

As soon as he took office, Bernardes broke with Sales and his followers, seen by him and Raul Soares as a symbol of the old coronelism practices, and therefore a target to be eradicated. With the State apparatus in control, administration positions were handed over to loyal individuals. In the elections, 72% of the State Chamber and 50% of the State Senate were renewed. Salista deputies and senators were "beheaded", that is, their votes were not recognized by the State Chamber. Francisco Sales, who did much for Bernardes' first steps in his political career, was relegated to ostracism. Their personal feud existed since 7 July 1918 when, at a banquet held for Delfim Moreira, Sales' speech completely ignored Bernardes, who was at the main table as a Minas Gerais leader.

In February 1919, Bernardes had the "Tarasca" accept his list of candidates for a quarter of the senators and all the deputies. As of the 17 September convention, each delegate could represent no more than five local districts. In the Executive Committee, all former state presidents became perpetual members, three new positions were created and the presidency and secretariat would have to change annually.

Within two years, Bernardes imposed his authority over the Tarasca and the colonels. The fight against coronelism obviously did not affect his allies, but these were younger, intellectualized leaders, with some connections to the industrial sector and focused on economic development. A true generational transition took place in the PRM. The first generation, responsible for consolidating the Brazilian Republic in Minas Gerais, was replaced by another that entered public life around the 1910s. Southern Minas Gerais lost its predominance in state politics and the Zona da Mata gained prominence. Members of the government now owed allegiance to the state president and not to the PRM's Executive Committee.

Presidential election of 1919

Two Minas Gerais politicians, Artur Bernardes and Melo Franco, were considered to run for president in the election scheduled for April 1919. For health reasons, the winner of the 1918 election, Rodrigues Alves, never took office, and his vice president Delfim Moreira ruled the country for around eight months until a successor was chosen. Bernardes refused his own candidacy, which would have been of interest to the Minas Gerais elites, and insisted that the three strongest states (Minas Gerais, São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul) decided on a new name. Several reasons are speculated for his refusal, such as fears of a lack of support from São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul or a bad reaction from public opinion, as a Minas Gerais politician already occupied the presidency, and the inconvenience of interrupting a recently installed administration. It would first be necessary to gather prestige in the state government.

Even without running, Bernardes managed to position himself as the arbiter of the presidential succession. On 9 February, the Tarasca invested him with leadership of negotiations in Minas Gerais. João Luís Alves and Raul Soares were his emissaries. On the 25th he presided over the Convention in the Federal Senate building, in Rio de Janeiro, to make Epitácio Pessoa, from Paraíba, official as the status quo candidate. São Paulo politicians resented Bernardes for his refusal to support a candidacy by Altino Arantes, president of São Paulo. Pessoa, a neutral candidate between the three largest states, São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio Grande do Sul, was the result of the latter two's rejection to Arantes. The proposal for Pessoa's name came from Minas Gerais and was accepted by São Paulo. Pessoa's victory in the election came as no surprise.

Reforms and works

thumb|Construction of ESAV in Viçosa|left

The Bernardes state administration privileged the Zona da Mata. Education was a priority in the program and effective advances were made in public secondary and higher education. 13 school groups and 421 isolated schools were built in primary and secondary education. A new regulation for itinerant agricultural education, on 12 July 1920, reinforced the practical education provided by district and rural schools. In higher education, the government created the Institute of Industrial Chemistry and expanded the clinics at the Faculty of Medicine of Belo Horizonte.

A highlight was the creation of the Higher School of Agriculture and Veterinary Science (ESAV), the future Federal University of Viçosa. Bernardes began the creation process with a decree on 6 September 1920.

In agriculture, the Bernardes administration granted favors to Banco de Crédito Real de Minas Gerais and Banco Hipotecário e Agrícola, hoping to alleviate the insolvency of rural cooperatives. The administration lowered export taxes on coffee, livestock and cereals and maintained the coffee price guarantee, which deserved more attention according to the president. At the suggestion of the Executive, on 20 September 1919, legislators approved a reform of the land tax, seeking to curb fraud and evasion in the declaration of land values. Many years ago, this tax was discussed in Minas Gerais as a way of discouraging unproductive large estates, and one of the points of the PRM's economic program was the "remodeling of the tax regime, based on territorial and income taxes, with the gradual suppression of the export tax on the State's budget revenue".

A law on the supply of agricultural machinery by the Secretariat of Agriculture was approved in 1919, but would only be effectively put into practice in the following government. For another point of the program, the "settling of the State's territory", four large mixed colonies of German immigrants and Brazilian farmers were founded: the Álvaro da Silvera, Bueno Brandão, David Campista and Francisco Sá colonies. The expansion of the road network, mentioned in the program, included the construction of 1,498 kilometers of highways, 138 bridges, subsidies for other highways and the government's acquisition of the Paracatu and Goiás Railways. The State's real estate assets and revenue grew and a large part of its debt was paid off.

The iron issue

thumb|King Albert I of Belgium, in the center, with Bernardes to his left

Bernardes' industrial ambition was to transform the Rio Doce Valley into Brazil's "Ruhr Valley", a complex of mines, railways, steel mills and ports from Minas Gerais to Espírito Santo. Minas Gerais had large unused iron ore deposits, and Brazil's steel production was incipient. Bernardes and Raul Soares wanted a steel industry and were against the simple export of iron ore. The model intended by Secretary of Agriculture Clodomiro de Oliveira consisted of small plants powered by electricity, charcoal and mineral coal from Santa Catarina, with technology from the Mining School of Ouro Preto, where Oliveira was a professor. The use of charcoal brought with it the issue of deforestation, of which Bernardes was aware. His speeches outlined his concern with the "conservation of forests and reforestation of the State, threatened with seeing large portions of its territory transformed into bare and barren zones".

In September 1919, the Minas Gerais Congress lowered the iron ore export tax for companies that transformed at least 5% of the exported amount into iron and steel. Otherwise, the tax would be a hundred times higher. Laws of the same content were approved in the following years. Several steel plants were founded during this period under the stimulus of the state government, all with low production. The exception was the Companhia Siderúrgica Belgo-Mineira (CSBM), the first medium-sized integrated steel company in Brazil, whose plant in Sabará began operations in 1925. Although far from making the country self-sufficient, it made Minas Gerais export steel workers to other states. The CSBM was the result of negotiations that began during the visit of king Albert I of Belgium to Brazil in 1920; Bernardes invited him to Minas Gerais to attract Belgian capital, and the state government made an agreement with a Brazilian company, Companhia Siderúrgica Mineira, and another Belgian-Luxembourgish company, ARBED.

thumb|CSBM workers, established with Belgian capital, in 1925|left

The attitude of the Minas Gerais government was different towards the trade union of American investor Percival Farquhar, who had acquired shares in the Itabira Iron Ore Company and received approval from the federal government to export iron ore through private lines to the Vitória-Minas Railway and a private port to be built as far as Santa Cruz, in Espírito Santo. In return, Farquhar would install a steel and rolling mill in Santa Cruz, powered by European and American coal. Brazil's National Congress took from 1920 to 1928 to debate the contract, and in the meantime Farquhar negotiated another contract with the government of Minas Gerais, as stipulated in the federal contract.

In September 1920, the Minas Gerais Congress authorized the Executive to hire Itabira Iron or another company to install one or more steel plants in the state. Debates between legislators and technicians soured the initial positive attitude, and Clodomiro de Oliveira managed to convince Bernardes to postpone the signing of the contract. The Minas Gerais government doubted the promise of a large steel plant and feared that the company would charge exaggerated prices on the domestic market and create a monopoly on ore transportation. Bernardes adopted a nationalist stance, demanding that foreign companies prove the benefits of their contracts. Even so, his messages to the Minas Gerais Congress did not peremptorily reject Farquhar's proposal.

Presidential election of 1922

Pre-candidacy (1919–1921)

thumb|President Epitácio Pessoa and state president Artur Bernardes in Belo Horizonte

Since the 1919 election it was clear that Bernardes could become president of Brazil, even if he had to wait for the next election. Prudente de Morais Filho reportedly told Afrânio de Melo Franco that Bernardes would certainly be president of Brazil "because he is from Minas Gerais, he doesn't compromise, he is tenacious and always wears well-creased pants". If Bernardes' candidacy was obvious, support for it was not, and all the PRM's actions at the national level were directed towards the ambition of the presidency.

The Minas Gerais-São Paulo alliance supported the administration of Epitácio Pessoa in Congress. Minas Gerais took advantage of the relative weakness of Epitácio Pessoa, who was from a small state (Paraíba), and although it only received one ministry (that of the Navy, under Raul Soares), it managed to place PRM deputy Astolfo Dutra in the Presidency of the Chamber of Deputies, despite Rio Grande do Sul and Bahia's opposition. The São Paulo allies were also competitors, as they had their own pre-candidate, state president Washington Luís. On 21 March 1920, Raul Soares wrote to Bernardes to alert him of São Paulo's funding for Minas Gerais opposition newspapers and São Paulo's negotiations with Francisco Sales.

Still in 1920, Bernardes sought the support of J. J. Seabra, president of Bahia, sending weapons to defend his government against the armed revolt of colonel Horácio de Matos. This measure was heavily criticized in the press. Another letter from Raul Soares, in July, expressed the fear of an alliance between São Paulo and the federal government around the candidacy of Nilo Peçanha from Rio de Janeiro. In September, Bernardes reconciled a dispute between São Paulo politicians and the president of Brazil regarding the issuance of currency to support coffee. A newspaper at the time assessed that Bernardes prevented Epitácio Pessoa from isolating São Paulo, as he could not give up the alliance.

[[File:Cartão postal de Artur Bernardes.jpg|thumb|A 1921 postcard presents Bernardes' candidacy: "São Paulo and Minas [Gerais] for the union of Brazil"|left]]

Negotiations for the presidential succession began early, in the first months of 1921, due to the wear and tear of the federal government in multiple sectors: with the military, the urban population and the oligarchies of Minas Gerais and São Paulo. The PRM launched Bernardes' candidacy in April and called state leaders to a national convention. São Paulo accepted it on the condition of meeting its economic demands, support from Epitácio Pessoa's government and future support for a candidacy by Washington Luís. Epitácio Pessoa accepted Bernardes' candidacy practically by imposition. In order to attract the northern states, Minas Gerais promised to continue the public works begun under Pessoa's administration.

Consensus around the official candidacy was usually easy. Until May, most states had approved Bernardes' candidacy, with the notable exception of Rio Grande do Sul. The economic promises made to São Paulo were incompatible with Rio Grande do Sul's goals, and in the assessment of Minas Gerais politicians, Rio Grande do Sul had become the opposition for being excluded from the choice. The choice of the vice presidential candidate, Urbano Santos, added Pernambuco and Bahia to the opposition, both of which had their own pre-candidates. The convention to approve the official candidacy took place in the Senate on 8 June, with the absence of delegates from Rio Grande do Sul, Pernambuco, Bahia and Rio de Janeiro. The loss of Rio de Janeiro was yet another surprise to Minas Gerais, as Nilo Peçanha had previously advised the Republican Party of Rio de Janeiro to support Bernardes' candidacy, but now stated that the commitment "was premature", despite the "confidence inspired by Mr. Bernardes and the tradition of Minas Gerais' politics".

Of the 192 delegates present, 188 approved the candidacy. From the Senate galleries came boos at Bernardes' first statements and even imitations of a sheep's bleating. Bernardes was already the subject of ridicule for his appearance. Days earlier, Bernardist senator Paulo de Frontin had blamed the political instability on "street scoundrels and the ambition of the barracks."

Election campaign

thumb|Bernardes being received by his supporters at the Juparanã train station, in [[Valença, Rio de Janeiro]]

The four dissident states joined together in the so-called Republican Reaction to launch the candidacies of Nilo Peçanha for president of Brazil and J. J. Seabra for vice president. The split between the state oligarchies has several explanations in historiography: the issue of the vice presidency, the association with urban dissent, the economic policy exclusively focused on coffee and the Minas Gerais-São Paulo monopoly on State benefits. A third pre-candidate, marshal Hermes da Fonseca, became unfeasible, but his military support then went to the Republican Reaction . On 26 April, Fonseca visited Bernardes at the Palácio da Liberdade, but without any political results.

It was at this point that Bernardes' political rise stopped being peaceful and he entered the crisis of the First Brazilian Republic, which was going through its last decade. Minas Gerais was running without traditional allies, but the support of the federal government, São Paulo and smaller states gave Bernardes' candidacy a good chance. Bernardes refused proposals to withdraw his candidacy so that a conciliatory name could be reached. The traditional method of securing votes, distributing favors to oligarchs and colonels from the countryside, gave a clear advantage to the side supported by the federal machine. Nilo Peçanha also used this method, but complemented it with the military and the urban masses, who felt marginalized from the political system. The government rejected humanitarian calls to halt the bombing.

thumb|Army [[Renault FT|Renault FT-17 tanks parading in São Paulo|left]]

Writer Monteiro Lobato sent a letter to Bernardes after his birthday, on 9 August. After saying that none of Brazil's presidents was "less understood in their honest intentions", Lobato warned that "the mood of the Brazilian people is one of open revolt". After the rebels left São Paulo, on 27 July, "the legal troops parade through the city and the people do not hail them as liberators (...) Absolute indifference. German army entering Paris..." In his response, Bernardes partly blamed immigrants in the São Paulo working class for the "lack of a more prompt civic reaction".

The president spared no resources in combating tenentism and could not understand the hostility he received. In a letter to a friend, Bernardes wrote that "ambitious politicians and bad citizens have not left me time to work". Years later he declared that tenentism was a movement "without a known program or objectives other than those of a personal nature. They were revolts prepared even before I took over the government and I think they were aimed at me then". According to his "Manifesto to the Nation" of November 1924, the "real, unconfessed causes are the unruly ambition of power and the possession of the Public Treasury". and from the first year onwards made drastic cuts in civil service wages and public works, including cutting investments against the drought in the Northeast made by the previous administration.

The central bank would be the Bank of Brazil, which received gold reserves from the Treasury. The bank's president, Cincinato Braga, and the Minister of Finance, Sampaio Vidal, were both from São Paulo, a perfect example of a "milk coffee" agreement. They used the bank's issuing capacity to defend coffee prices, against the preferences of orthodox Minas Gerais politicians. The 1923 coffee crop was more than twice as big as the previous one, the currency continued to depreciate, and the government sought a loan from London bankers. These had the bargaining power to impose a mission of experts.

The mission's recommendations were a scandal in the opposition press: privatizations, favors to foreign investors, dismissals of public servants and abandonment of the steel plant project and federal subsidies for the valorization of coffee. To guarantee the execution of the agreement, the British wanted the sale of public shares in the Bank of Brazil. On 2 March 1924, Bernardes was personally pressured by Edwin Samuel Montagu, head of the financial mission. He disagreed and, advised by the Minister of Finance, ended up agreeing. Before the proposal regarding the Bank of Brazil reached Congress, the British government restricted external loans, throwing away months of negotiations. Still, the Montagu Mission inspired many of the reforms of the remainder of the quadrennium.

thumb|Coffee stocks in [[Campinas, May 1924]]

Inflation continued to rise and spending on the military revolts exceeded the legal limit for the Bank of Brazil's monetary issues. At the end of 1924, the orthodox advisors convinced Bernardes to carry out a deflationary and recessive adjustment, the only option in the absence of external credit. The Bank of Brazil carried out a drastic monetary contraction and the government further reduced the budget deficit. Cincinato Braga and Sampaio Vidal were dismissed and the responsibility for protecting coffee prices was transferred to São Paulo. This was a sudden reversal of the alliance with the agro-export sectors, wearing down the president with São Paulo. Bernardes defended himself: "it would be absurd to attribute to me an attitude against coffee farming". What he was against was "to artificially and dramatically increase the price of the product at the expense (...) of the Union's finances, the national economy and public tranquility".

The orthodox adjustment contracted industrial production, which stagnated at the 1924 level, already low due to the fighting in São Paulo. Imports of capital goods fell and bankruptcies occurred above average levels. The goals were achieved: appreciation of the exchange rate and inflation control. This was not only due to the government, but also to the positive trends in international trade. The government's fiscal and monetary discipline convinced New York bankers to grant a loan in 1926. The exchange rate of pence per mil-réis, which had fallen to 4.84 in November 1923, peaked at 7.75 in July 1926. The cost of living in Rio de Janeiro, as a percentage of the 1939 value, was 67 in 1922, rose to 114.6 until 1925 and fell to 93.9 in 1926. Brazil's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at an annual average of 3.7% in the quadrennium 1922–1926.

Legislation

thumb|Signing of the vacation law for commercial workers|left

Of the governments at the end of the First Brazilian Republic, that of Bernardes was simultaneously the one that most intervened in labor relations and most repressed the labor movement. Approaching some worker leaders, Bernardes enacted the Eloy Chaves Law, considered the origin of social security in Brazil, and several other labor laws, although modest and often circumvented by employers. In press legislation, Bernardes appreciated Senator Adolfo Gordo's bill, enacted in October 1923, for protecting "the dignity of journalism" against "the professionals of defamation" and "the exploiters of scandal". Among other provisions, the decree established prior restraint and the right of reply, and determined that the "director or main editor will be considered the author of all writings".

In education, the "Rocha Vaz Reform", enacted in January 1925, created the National Department of Education, considered by some authors as a precursor to the current Ministry of Education, although its attributions were limited, and included moral and civic education in the secondary education program. The government agreed with the Catholic Church that political, economic and social issues were, deep down, moral. On 4 May of the previous year, the president attended the golden jubilee of D. Arcoverde, archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, with his entire ministry, making public the rapprochement of the Church with the Brazilian State.

The first and only reform of the Constitution of 1891 was approved in September 1926. The changes to the constitution dealt, among other topics, with the presidential veto on bills, the preparation of budgets, the possibility of restricting international trade, deportation, passports and the exploitation of mineral deposits by foreigners, the appeals system of the federal judiciary, habeas corpus and cases of federal intervention. By the fifth paragraph of article 60, "No judicial recourse is permitted, to Federal or local justice, against intervention in the States [and] the declaration of a state of emergency". The result was a strengthening of the Executive and central power.

The amendments were discussed in the midst of a state of emergency, military revolts and presidential succession. Bernardes reversed the idea that the crisis would justify not changing the republican political status. The initiative came from him, who hosted the review committee meetings at Catete. Historian Hélio Silva sought to refute accusations that the reform was promoted to oppress the opposition: it was only achieved at the end of Bernardes' term, its more specific conditions for federal intervention made it difficult for subsequent governments to apply the measure, and its narrower definition of habeas corpus was normal in other countries. The reform's main changes persisted in the following constitutions.

Foreign policy

thumb|Conferences with the ambassadors of the United Kingdom, Italy and Chile

The biggest change in Brazilian foreign policy during the Bernardes administration was the withdrawal from the League of Nations, on 10 June 1926. This was the culmination and defeat of Brazil's diplomatic efforts to obtain a permanent seat on the institution's Deliberative Council, a claim that can be compared, in the 21st century, to Brazil's ambition at a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. Afrânio de Melo Franco represented Brazil in the League, in Geneva, where Brazilian representation was elevated, at great cost, to the status of embassy. The country's image abroad, however, was harmed by internal repressive measures. In July 1924, the government war effort killed Italian citizens, destroyed British property, and censored American journalists.

To put pressure on the Council, Brazil threatened to veto Germany's entry, O Globo accused the presidential group of having used censorship in favor of its private interests, such as the ban on reporting the fire at the Gávea fabric factory, of which Bernardes was one of the main shareholders.

Congress reduced the period of ineligibility for former presidents, from six to three months after their term of office, to allow Bernardes to run for senator in the February 1927 elections, filling the vacancy left by Antônio Carlos. Bernardes was elected with just under 175 thousand votes, without a competitor, but the results were challenged in the Powers Commission. He finally took office at the Monroe Palace on 25 May, protected by a huge police guard. The strongest security scheme was from Tijuca, where his brother Olegário lived, to the Monroe Palace, to mislead the crowd that intended to boo the delegation. Shortly before, Bernardes had declared to the Belo Horizonte press that the people of Rio were "carnivalesque" and lacking in civility. The former president appeared on the side of Botafogo and entered through the back door. In the Senate, he was covered in confetti and white dahlias, cheered by hundreds of supporters, and spoke in defense of his achievements.

thumb|Bernardes with [[Óscar Carmona, president of Portugal]]

The following morning he embarked under police escort for Europe, where he spent a period of vacation, living in Paris at the house of his friend Lineu de Paula Machado and visiting several countries. In May 1929 he began to participate in the work of the Senate. Only two of his speeches were highlighted: rebutting criticisms from Antônio Azeredo and debating with Irineu Machado. Against Azeredo, who recalled the detention of "citizens of all classes, condemned by hatred and caprice", Bernardes read police records from the time of the state of emergency.

The succession of Antônio Carlos in the government of Minas Gerais divided the PRM: Bernardes, Melo Viana and Venceslau Brás launched themselves as pre-candidates in 1929. Bernardes ended up accepting Olegário Maciel, the conciliation candidate nominated by the state president. Melo Viana refused and campaigned against the Liberal Alliance, the coalition of which the PRM and its equivalents in Rio Grande do Sul and Paraíba were part of for the 1930 presidential election. The party structure set up by Bernardes experienced its first split. His opponent in the federal election was Júlio Prestes, from São Paulo, Washington Luís' candidate. It was not a personal issue; Prestes admired Bernardes.

Revolution of 1930

thumb|"General" Olegário Maciel and "lieutenant" Bernardes (Careta magazine)

With the Liberal Alliance defeated by Júlio Prestes in March–April, PRM leaders were convinced by Minas Gerais deputy Virgílio de Melo Franco and Rio Grande do Sul politician Batista Luzardo to join a future armed movement against the government, the Revolution of 1930. According to deputy Daniel Serapião de Carvalho, Bernardes was the most difficult Minas Gerais politician to win over to the revolutionary cause, but he remained faithful to it until the end. Bernardes was still the most prestigious member of his party and helped drag along undecided party members.

Luís Aranha, brother of Oswaldo Aranha and Secretary of the Interior of Rio Grande do Sul, visited Bernardes in April to inform him of the plans. Aranha reported that the former president left a very strong impression and had no ideological reason to support the revolution, but considered it necessary and inevitable. Bernardes proposed organizing a council of former presidents after taking power. Historian Helena Bomeny believes that Bernardes participated in the revolution to restore the old Minas Gerais-São Paulo relationship, which Washington Luís had betrayed.

Bernardes took the risks of conspiring and was the only leader to participate in the revolution until the end. This made him a temporary ally of the former tenentist rebels. At the beginning of the armed movement, in October, Bernardes was in Belo Horizonte, having been alongside Olegário Maciel when he ordered the assault on the 12th Infantry Regiment and influenced him to accept the transfer of power from the Provisional Governing Junta to Getúlio Vargas.

The new regime dissolved the National Congress, ending Bernardes' term as senator. The revolution momentarily enhanced his image. Upon returning to Viçosa, he was visited by the revolutionary commander João Alberto Lins de Barros, a veteran of the Prestes Column. In the Rio newspapers, the tenentists identified Bernardes with the oligarchic yoke and regionalism that the revolution should get rid of. The disillusionment was quick. The party for Minas Gerais politicians at the Jóquei Clube do Rio de Janeiro, on 29 December, was cold and without speeches.

PRM's decline

thumb|[[Francisco Campos (jurist)|Francisco Campos triumphs over the PRM while Bernardes heads to Europe (Careta magazine)|left]]

The period after 1930 would see the rise of the next generation of Minas Gerais politicians, which Bernardes' followers could not prevent. In November 1930, Olegário Maciel dismissed three Bernardist state secretaries. At 80 years old, Maciel was influenced by the rising figures who needed to reduce Bernardes' power — the "Mountain Bloc" of Francisco Campos (federal Minister of Education), Gustavo Capanema and Amaro Lanari. Francisco Campos had been introduced to politics as a state and then federal deputy by Bernardes himself, who saw Campos as a traitor.

All of his mayoral nominations were ignored. President Vargas invited Bernardes to head the Brazilian embassy in Paris, who refused, realizing his enemies were lurking. In 1931, 80% of the PRM's municipal directorates were incorporated into the October Legion, later Liberal Legion of Minas Gerais. It included Venceslau Brás, Olegário Maciel and Antônio Carlos, but not Bernardes. The Legion's ideology was reminiscent of tenentist criticisms of Bernardism.

Olegário Maciel announced the absorption of the PRM by the new party, but Bernardes denied: "this depends on its directors, who have not met for many years". Therefore, he called on party members to choose a new leadership. The party was reduced to a minority faction led by Bernardes, bringing together some figures such as Mário Brant, Djalma Pinheiro Chagas, Ovídio de Andrade, Daniel de Carvalho, Afrânio and Virgílio de Melo Franco. In Bernardes' opinion, "the defections came to strengthen the party, purging it of the bad elements, of those who do not know how to be loyal".

On 18 August 1931, Bernardes and other PRM members were detained at the party's convention in Belo Horizonte. They were blamed for a "mistake", as the federal government defined it: an attempted coup by the army organized by Oswaldo Aranha, Vargas' Minister of Justice, to install Virgílio de Melo Franco as governor in Olegário Maciel's place. Vargas intended to overthrow Maciel through the PRM and later get rid of the PRM itself. Maciel remained in power thanks to the loyalty of the state's Public Force. In February 1932, the party reached an agreement with the dominant faction, unifying Minas Gerais politics into the Social Nationalist Party (PSN). Dubbed the "nameless party", the agreement did not last two months.

<span class="anchor" id="Arrest"></span> Constitutionalist Revolution

thumb|The Bernardes family going into exile in 1932

It is not surprising, therefore, that Bernardes took part in the plotting of the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932, which began in São Paulo. Its goals were the ousting of Vargas, whose authority he considered illegal, and Olegário Maciel. On 8 August, Bernardes published a manifesto: "As for me, I stay with São Paulo, because the civic soul of Brazil has been transported there today". In this he had to make an effort to improve his image with São Paulo politicians. Constitutionalist Leven Vampré used the bombing of São Paulo as an example of the federal government's disregard for the state in the past, even without glorifying the rebellion itself.

Bernardes tried to revolt the Public Force of Minas Gerais, without success. Mayors and farmers in the Viçosa region accepted his leadership in a war effort, in which they recruited volunteers and purchased weapons, uniforms and food. Government troops suppressed this militia and Bernardes went on hiding, spending a night on each farm. Investigators arrested him in a hut in the woods, with torn clothes and a revolver on his waist. He did not resist arrest, but asked to spend another three days in Viçosa and continue to Belo Horizonte without an escort. He was informed that he was not a "higher authority" and was sent on a train to Rio de Janeiro.

Imprisoned in the capital, Bernardes, together with his sons and other relatives, passed through the islands of Cobras and Rijo, and on the latter he gave a statement assuming full responsibility for his revolt. On 1 November he was transferred to Fort Vigia. Like other leaders of the revolution, he had his political rights revoked for three years and was sent into exile on 3 December. The following day, he took a boat to the Maritime Police pier to board the ship Asturias. A crowd faced the police to cheer his departure, which Hélio Silva cited as proof of his accumulated prestige. However, the boarding of his family members, at other piers, was violent: his wife and daughters were attacked by supporters of the tenentists and Artur Bernardes Filho was injured by a bullet. With Bernardes in Lisbon and other leaders removed, the PRM was left with no leadership.

Constituent Assembly and Estado Novo

thumb|PRM's electoral campaign in 1934|left

Getúlio Vargas convened a National Constituent Assembly in 1933 and decreed a general amnesty on 28 May of the following year, making Bernardes eligible. Vargas was indirectly re-elected by Congress in an election in which Bernardes received one of the 71 opposition votes. The positive demonstrations upon his arrival in Belo Horizonte, on 21 August, were even reported by Estado de Minas, the official newspaper of the Progressive Party (PP), led by federal intervener Benedito Valadares, to which the PRM was in opposition. The party elected 14 of 48 state deputies and 11 federal deputies, with the rest belonging to the PP. Bernardes, honorary president of the PRM and elected on both lists, opted for the Chamber of Deputies, which began its works on 3 May 1935. Bernardes planned with other regional oppositionists (Borges de Medeiros, Cincinato Braga, Sampaio Correia and Otávio Mangabeira) a national party.

As a deputy, Bernardes opposed the National Security Law, was one of the few oppositionists to fully support the declaration of a state of emergency after the Communist Uprising and was radically opposed to the Itabira Iron Ore Company, whose case was still controversial, proposing that the government declare the contract expired, as it was harmful to Brazil's interests. In Minas Gerais politics, the intervener Valadares was accused of police violence against PRM candidates in the 1936 municipal elections. Bernardes met Valadares twice in Rio, but did not want conciliation. Flores da Cunha, the federal intervener of Rio Grande do Sul, advised him that the agreement would only be a maneuver against the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Antônio Carlos. At the end of the year, ten of the fourteen PRM state deputies joined an agreement with Valadares and were therefore accused of "deserters" and "defectors" by Bernardes.

For the 1938 presidential election, Bernardes chaired the executive committee of the Brazilian Democratic Union, created on 10 June to launch the opposition candidate Armando de Sales Oliveira. Such negotiations were interrupted by the 1937 coup d'état, which installed Vargas' as dictator with the Estado Novo and closed the National Congress. Bernardes, without a term, was threatened with exile (which was imposed on Artur Bernardes Filho in 1938) and restricted in his movement: first to just Rio de Janeiro and Viçosa and, finally, at the beginning of 1939, only his farm in Viçosa. In August, after informing the Federal District police chief, Filinto Müller, that he was going to Rio de Janeiro to take care of his health, he was no longer confined. Bernardes stayed away from politics, apart from private conversations and discreet negotiations, but signed the Manifesto dos Mineiros in 1943, a declaration in favor of redemocratization in Brazil. After reading the manifesto's final version, which mentioned "the oppression of states of emergency of dubious legitimacy and long duration", Bernardes tried to withdraw his signature.

Fourth Brazilian Republic

thumb|Portrait as deputy in 1951|180px

After the ousting of Getúio Vargas in 1945, Bernardes participated in the provisional committee of the National Democratic Union (UDN), formed by opponents of the regime, but left to found his own party, the Republican Party (PR), which he presided over until his death in 1955. The PR "was conflated (...) with the figure of its creator", much more Bernardist than the PRM had been. With little national projection, the party was the third political force in Minas Gerais, where it lived in coalitions with the two largest parties, the UDN and the Social Democratic Party (PSD). At the national level, the PR supported Eduardo Gomes, from the UDN, in the 1945 presidential election. Ironically, Eduardo Gomes was one of the former tenentist leaders. In the 1950 presidential election, the PR supported Cristiano Machado, from the PSD.

In the elections for the new Constituent Assembly, Bernardes was elected with 8,548 votes, the least voted of the six PR deputies from Minas Gerais. As a federal deputy, after 1946, he was elected president of the National Security Commission. With just over nine thousand votes in the 1950 election, he was only the party's third substitute, taking over the incumbents' seats several times in the 1951–1955 legislature. Interestingly, he never returned to the Senate, the traditional destination of former presidents and governors. When asked by journalist Paulino de Oliveira, Bernardes replied that he could not afford the election expenses. But Artur Bernardes Filho was a senator for Minas Gerais.

Throughout this final period of his political career, in the 40s and 50s, Bernardes participated in the campaign for Brazil's monopoly on oil, which would result in the founding of Petrobras. In April 1948, he became one of the honorary presidents of the Center for Studies and Defense of Petroleum and the National Economy (CEDPEN). The campaign was persecuted by president Eurico Gaspar Dutra and included military personnel, students, public figures, intellectuals and communists. Also in 1948, Bernardes opposed the creation of the International Institute of the Amazon Hyleia, which according to him, would result in the internationalization of the Amazon. In the 1954 elections, almost at the age of 80, Bernardes was the second most voted of the five federal deputies from the PR, with 21,761 votes.

Death

Bernardes died at 13:45 of a myocardial infarction, in the company of his family and the Capuchin friar Cassiano de Vila Rosa, The Estado Novo, by disqualifying the "Old Republic", of which Bernardes was a representative, cemented the negative memory around him. In historiography he is seen as xenophobic and intransigent. More favorable writers prefer to justify Bernardes' repressive measures as a reaction to the opposition's attitudes. Favorable biographies describe him as statesman whose symbol was a red carnation worn in the lapel. As an admirer of Floriano Peixoto, Bernardes was even cited as a Jacobin, an ideological label that could mean radicalism, nationalism and/or authoritarianism in this historical period. Bernardes' actions in the Minas Gerais and federal governments demonstrate his sympathy for the general lines of the Brazilian Jacobin program: the protection of industry, nationalization of soil, exclusion of foreigners from politics, aid to small properties and tariff reforms. However, he differed greatly in proposing collaboration between Church and State. Political scientist Christian Lynch classified Bernardes as a conservative republican along the lines of Pinheiro Machado, Quintino Bocaiúva, Campos Sales and other eminent politicians of the period.

Bernardes, Raul Soares and Nelson Coelho de Sena were exponents of what Fabíula Sevilha de Souza defined as a Minas Gerais-style developmentalist project initiated during the administration of João Pinheiro (1906–1908). Pinheiro defended protectionism at an early stage in the industry, to boost private initiative, which would start with the raw materials available in the territory and evolve into more complex industries. Education, including popular and technical-agricultural education, would train a disciplined and moral workforce, with a love for work and property, alleviating the social instability of modernization. ESAV can be considered an heir to João Pinheiro's model farms.

Pinheiro and the Bernardes-Soares-Sena trio diverge in liberalism, from which the latter moved away, in a more national-authoritarian intellectual environment. In the figure of Bernardes "the cult, respect, [and] the personalization of authority, completed each other, expanding with authoritarianism, under whose sign the world began to live". Authoritarianism would be the response to the degeneration and deviation from Order and Progress demonstrated by social upheavals. Brazilian laws, said Bernardes, were drawn up under an "enthusiastic and generous idealism, by men who had no experience or practical knowledge of the new form of government", which would have transformed the Brazilian Republic into a "system of exceptional freedoms", "excessively progressive and little suited to our country, our nature, our social and political culture". The 1891 Constitution "disarmed the government to conveniently defend order". Bernardes even agreed with the tenentists that elections in the Old Republic were a "scam" and the government was full of corrupt people.

Christian Lynch saw in him and in Washington Luís an autocratic presidency, different from his predecessors, who were arbiters or sentinels of the system. Hélio Silva defended Bernardes against the accusation of being a dictator, but acknowledged that he was an authoritarian president. For Afonso Arinos, "if Bernardes' government in Minas Gerais was, as they say, dictatorial, there is no doubt that it was a kind of 'enlightened dictatorship'".

thumb|Bernardes, as president, confirms the rapprochement between Church and State with Cardinal Arcoverde|180px|left

Bernardes' ambition for development was elitist and would keep the agrarian elites, now associated with the industrial elites, in power. A conservative modernization would place the lower classes under state guardianship. When declaring a national holiday on 1 May, Worker's Day, Bernardes clarified that the date was not intended for "subversive projects", but for the "glorification of orderly and useful labor".

The Executive would be strong, and the State would be voluntarist and dirigist; in his words to the press, when he founded PR, "the State cannot be a simple spectator", "it must intervene to police, regulate, maintain balance, repress abuses and injustices, as the supreme organ of security and social harmony". On the other hand, in the Constituent Assembly he criticized state interventionism and proposed the extinction of the government entities created during the governments of Getúlio Vargas.

The system's political strength, Bernardes recognized, began in the municipalities. As a municipalist, he defended municipal autonomy and administrative decentralization, although he also sought greater external control over municipal budgets. In his platform as a candidate for state president, he defended state support for factions that better took care of the "impartial and severe collection of taxes" and "honest and scrupulous application of public money", demanding from them "a stamp of greater nobility and elevation in local politics".

His messages to the National Congress argued in favor of compulsory and secret voting, the development of railways and colonization of marginal lands, reformulation of income tax, restriction of firearms to the military and police personnel, tightening of the naturalization criteria for foreigners and applicability of the death penalty during internal revolts. Bernardes also proposed the transfer of Brazil's capital away from the "tumult of a great cosmopolitan city", combining the promise of development in the countryside with the fear of the masses of Rio de Janeiro. In the 1946 Constituent Assembly, he was against the election of the mayor of the Federal District and defended a six-year term for the President of Brazil.

Legacy

thumb|Arthur Bernardes Building, the main building at the Federal University of Viçosa, in 2015

According to historian Carlo Romani, the legacy of the Bernardes government was "the beginning of preventative and systematic social control, on the part of the federal government", whose "repressive apparatus and, more than that, the mentality in the lower echelons of the bureaucracy of surveillance and control over life remained latent" in the dictatorships of 1937–1945 and 1964–1985. The example of the 4th Auxiliary Police Bureau, which arrested Bernardes himself in 1932, was soon followed by the creation of DOPS (Department of Political and Social Order) in the states. Repression during the state of emergency coincides with the beginning of decline of the anarchists and the rise of the Communist Party in the Brazilian labor movement. Both were repressed, but the communists less so, becoming predominant in Rio de Janeiro.

In Viçosa, the ESAV did not prevent the coffee growing crisis in Zona da Mata, but became a national reference nevertheless, cultivating an agricultural intellectual elite in public administration, the private sector and academia. The biographical summary of Bernardes published by the Federal University of Viçosa has a positive tone, and another in São Paulo, formerly Guarucaia. He also lends his name to an oil refinery in Cubatão.

{| style="margin:auto"

| thumb|upright=0.8|Artur Bernardes on a 1967 stamp

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| thumb|upright=2|Artur Bernardes on a 20,000 [[Brazilian real (old)|réis bill (1923)]]

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Honours

Foreign Honours

• alt=|80x80px Grand Officer of the Order of Christ, Portugal (17 May 1958)

Notes

References

Citations

Bibliography

External links

• The Artur Bernardes government on the official website of the Presidency of the Republic of Brazil
• Bernardes' messages to the Minas Gerais Congress (1919, 1920, 1921, 1922)
• Bernardes' messages to the National Congress (1923, 1924, 1925, 1926)
• Artur Bernardes Collection - Federal University of Viçosa