the government of Artur Bernardes (1922-1926) had as its main characteristics the crisis of the oligarchic political regime and the repression of opposition to the regime. Tenentismo, the Gaucho Revolution, the repression of the labor movement and the Modern Art Week were the main events of his government.
The election of Artur Bernardes itself represented a dissent in national oligarchic politics. After not having achieved a consensus name in the 1918 elections, leading Paraiba's Epitácio Pessoa to president, paulistas and mineiros reached an agreement on the name of Artur Bernardes for the campaign of 1922. However, they were forced to face opposition from the rural elites of Rio Grande do Sul, Bahia, Pernambuco and Rio de Janeiro. These states launched the candidacy of Nilo Peçanha, in the movement called republican reaction.
The campaign was marked by demagoguery, as the opposition oligarchs defended a political morality they did not practice. They started to divulge false letters attributed to Bernardes, mainly with content against the army. On the other hand, forces around Artur Bernardes used fraud to win the elections.
Elections took place in March 1922 and already in July of the same year a military movement against the government took place. the episode of 18 of Copacabana Fort would start the lieutenant movement, which demanded changes in the national political regime, seeking greater democratization of participation. The 18th episode of Fort Copacabana would be the first one related to tenentismo. would come later to 1924 Paulista Revolution and the About Column, from 1925.
In Rio Grande do Sul, the federal government of Bernardes had yet to defeat the Gaucho Revolution, which erupted against the fifth term of Borges de Medeiros at the head of the state government. The solution to the conflict would open a gap for the participation of a new generation of politicians who would be directly linked to the Revolution of 1930.
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All these conflicts that took place in the country led Artur Bernardes to decree the State of Siege several times. Another social group that was targeted by the president's repressive attack were the workers. After some years of intense struggles against terrible working conditions, in the late 1910s, workers in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, in particular, began to suffer heavy persecution, despite attempts to draft legislation labor. Several foreigners were expelled from the country, mainly foreign workers accused of undermining national security. The anarchists, who at the time held the hegemony in the labor movement, also began to count on the presence of the Communist Party of Brazil, created in 1922.
In the artistic field, the 1922 Modern Art Week he intended to create a genuinely Brazilian art, mixing foreign influences with the characters of national culture. In addition to the artistic production, two manifestos were prepared by Oswald de Andrade (Manifesto of Brazilwood Poetry and Anthropophagic Manifest), which synthesized the aesthetic ideal of the movement known as the anthropophagic movement. The objective was to devour and digest foreign aesthetic influences, mainly surrealism, primitivism and futurism, creating an artistic product that would maintain its national roots.
The internal conflicts of the Brazilian ruling class that took place during the government of Artur Bernardes would be felt in the mandate of Washington Luís, his successor. This political crisis, together with the economic and social transformations the country was going through at the time, would lead to the 1930 Revolution and the end of the oligarchic republic.
By Tales Pinto
Graduated in History
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
PINTO, Tales of the Saints. "The repressive government of Artur Bernardes"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/historiab/arthur-bernardes.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.
