Café Filho, João (1889–1970)
Café Filho, João (1889–1970)
João Café Filho (b. 3 February 1889; d. 20 February 1970), president of Brazil (1954–1955). Lawyer, strike leader, and popular opposition figure in his native state of Rio Grande do Norte, Café Filho helped the 1930 revolution that brought Getúlio Vargas to the Brazilian presidency. Without completing the required course work for a degree, he passed an examination that admitted him to the bar. Elected to Congress in 1934, he opposed repression by Vargas. In 1937–1938 he spent six months in exile in Argentina to avoid arrest. He did not return to politics until 1945, near the end of the Vargas dictatorship, and, together with São Paulo's Ademar de Barros, founded what became the Partido Social Progressista (PRP), which returned him to Congress.
Following Barros's 1950 alliance with Vargas, Café Filho became Vargas's running mate and was narrowly elected vice president despite Catholic objections to his leftist past. When Vargas committed suicide on 24 August 1954, Café Filho assumed the presidency. Members of his cabinet, regarded as conservative and anti-Vargas, opposed the inauguration of Juscelino Kubitschek, elected in 1955, but war minister Henrique Lott favored the inauguration and carried out a coup on 11 November 1955, while Café Filho was hospitalized for a heart ailment. When Café Filho was released from the hospital later in November, Lott's troops prevented him from resuming the presidency. Congress, favoring Kubitschek's inauguration, declared Café Filho unable to govern, a judgment upheld by the Supreme Court. Before his death, Café Filho served (1961–1969) on the accounts tribunal responsible for ruling on the legality of financial steps taken by the Guanabara state government.
See alsoVargas, Getúlio Dornelles .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
João Café Filho, Do sindicato ao Catete (1966).
John W. F. Dulles, Unrest in Brazil: Political-Military Crises, 1955–1964 (1970).
Additional Bibliography
Silva, Hélio and Maria Cecília Ribas Carneiro. Café Filho, A Crisis Institutional, 1954–1955. São Paulo: Grupo de Comunicação Três, 1983.
John W. F. Dulles