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July 9, 2018 5 mins

The Constitutionalist Revolution began on this day in 1932.

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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to this stay in history classes. July nine. The
Constitutionalist Revolution of nineteen thirty two began in Brazil on
this day. It's also called the Paulista Rebellion of nineteen
thirty two and the sal Paolo Revolution of nineteen thirty two,
and it all started with a contested election. At this point,
Brazil was essentially a collection of mostly autonomous states, and

(00:26):
a lot of the political strife that came up came
from conflicts among these states. In this particular case, the
major players were the state of sal Paolo on one
side and the Liberal Alliance on the other. The Liberal
Alliance was made up of three different states. There was
Rio Grandi, do Soul Pariba, and Mina Jiris. Sal Paolo

(00:49):
had been the most dominant power in Brazil for a
long time. A lot of the other states were getting
tired of sal Paolo's continual dominance. The content tested election
that sparked all of this was the presidential election that
was conducted on March one of nineteen thirty so a
couple of years before. The candidates were Julio Prestis of

(01:13):
sal Paolo and Giulio Vargas, who was the governor of
Rio Grandi do Soul. Vargas was running as the reform candidate,
and Prestis had the endorsement of the sitting president, who
was also from sal Paolo. Prestis won the election, but
Vargas contended that this result was fraudulent. He also thought

(01:35):
that Brazil had become an oligarchy and this whole period
of time was incredibly contentious beyond just this one election.
In addition to several people being killed an election related violence,
there were also about a hundred people more than that
most likely, who were killed in various acts of political
violence over the three years that were leading up to

(01:55):
this point. So after this contested election, Vargas, his running
mate was assassinated on July twenty and then an uprising
started in October with a coup d eta on October.
About a hundred people were killed in this wave of
violence as well, and after the coup, Vargus was appointed

(02:17):
the interim president. Vargas suspended Brazil's constitution. He started trying
to move Brazil from this federation of autonomous states to
a nation that had more centralized power and a lot
of people in the military, especially people who were not
as young in the military really objected to what he
was doing. They started to hatch a lot of conspiracies

(02:38):
against him, and also the elite in sal Pollo resented
the fact that sal Polo had lost so much power.
Among these elite were actually descendants of Confederates who had
fled the United States after the Civil War and then
relocated to Brazil, and they joined on the side of
this rebellion as well. A military faction of people from

(02:59):
sal Pallo sort of planning to overthrow this provisional government.
These were known as the Palistas. That was a nickname
in general for people from South Palo, and they also
called themselves the Constitutionalists because they wanted to overthrow this
provisional government and establish a new Brazilian constitution. The Palista's
scheduled a revolt for July fourteenth, nineteen thirty two, but

(03:21):
the general who was leading them, General Bertoldo Clinger, was
not particularly secretive about what he was trying to do.
He wound up being relieved of his command on July
the eighth, and at that point the people who were
plotting moved up the date of their rebellion to the
following day. With Clinger still the one in charge. They
had a plan that involved several other states coming and

(03:43):
rising up with them, but those states never did, and
in fact most of them wound up joining the opposite side.
Fighting in this conflict went on for eighty seven days.
Clinger proposed a ceasefire on September twenty nine, and their
revolution ended on October two. It's still unclear today how
many people died in the fighting, but the number is
probably in the thousands. Women were also a huge part

(04:07):
of this uprising. They made hundreds of thousands of uniforms
for the police, as they did extensive work as nurses
and in logistics. They distributed food. In some cases they
also fought alongside the men, and is so often the case,
this revolution could not have continued without their work. Maybe
a little erroneous to call it a revolution since it

(04:29):
wasn't ultimately successful, but it is the name that it's
most often known by. Vargas remained in power for most
of the next two decades. Sometimes he was a dictator,
sometimes he was a duly elected president, either elected by
the Congress or elected by the people. That time, though
continued to be really tumultuous. There were other revolts following
that one in two, and Although Vargas is credited with

(04:53):
a number of reforms, including giving more people in Brazil
the right to vote, including women, he's also sometimes criticize
is basically just being a dictator and doing whatever he
wanted without the backing of any other part of the government.
Thanks to Eve's Jeff Code for her research on this podcast,
an Tatari Harrison for her audio work on all these episodes,
you can subscribe to This Day in History Class on

(05:14):
Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, and wherever else do you get
your podcasts. Tomorrow, you can tune in for the birthday
of one of the Internet's very favorite figures.

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