Prestes de Albuquerque, Julio (1882–1946)

Julio Prestes de Albuquerque (b. 15 March 1882; d. 9 February 1946), president-elect of Brazil at the time of the 1930 coup that brought Getúlio Vargas to power. Son of a traditional São Paulo family, Prestes served in both the state legislature and the national Congress before being elected governor of the state of São Paulo in 1927. As majority leader in the Chamber of Deputies at the start of Washington Luís Pereira De Sousa's presidential term (1926), Prestes won the confidence of the president, who selected him to run as his successor in the 1930 election. This decision ignored the "governor's politics," whereby the governor of the state of Minas Gerais should have been the preferred candidate for the presidency in 1930. Disgruntled mineiros joined the Liberal Alliance supporting the candidacy of Getúlio Vargas. In the meantime, the 1929 stock market crash highlighted the president's inability to mitigate his supporters' economic troubles. Although official election results confirmed Prestes as Brazil's new president, the widespread disenchantment with Pereira's final year in office cemented the success of Vargas's challenge. The armies of the Northeast and of the South marched on Rio de Janeiro and deposed Pereira, who went into exile as did Prestes. Upon his return from exile, Prestes retired to his ranch in the interior of the state of São Paulo, no longer interested in politics.

See alsoBrazil, Revolutions: Revolution of 1930; Vargas, Getúlio Dornelles.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

José Maria Bello, A History of Modern Brazil, 1889–1964, translated by James L. Taylor (1966), esp. p. 261.

E. Bradford Burns, A History of Brazil, 2d ed. (1980), esp. pp. 395-397.

Additional Bibliography

Casalecchi, José Enio. O Partido Republicano Paulista: Política e poder (1889–1926). São Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1987.

                                        Joan Meznar