Artur da Costa e Silva

Artur da Costa e Silva
27th President of Brazil
In office March 15, 1967 – August 31, 1969
Vice President	Pedro Aleixo
Preceded by	Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco
Succeeded by	Military Junta
Personal details
Born	October 3, 1899(1899 -10-03) Taquari, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Died	December 17, 1969(1969-12-17) (aged 70) Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Nationality	Brazilian
Political party	ARENA
Spouse(s)	Iolanda Barbosa Costa e Silva

Artur da Costa e Silva (Portuguese: [aʁˈtuʁ dɐ ˈkɔstɐ i ˈsiɫvɐ]; 1899–1969) was a Brazilian Army General, the second President of Brazil during the military regime set up by the 1964 coup d'état; he was born only a month before the coup that overthrow Dom Pedro II. He was married to Iolanda Barbosa Costa e Silva, the daughter of a soldier. Born in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul, he reached the rank of Marshal of the Brazilian Army, and held the post of Minister of War in the government of the previous president, Marshal Castelo Branco.

His government started the most oppressive stage of the military regime against communists, which would be continued and expanded under his successor, General Emílio Garrastazu Médici.

It was during Costa e Silva's term of government that the decree known as the AI-5 (Institutional Act 5) was promulgated. This law gave the president the power to dismiss the National Congress, strip politicians of their offices of power, and institutionalize repressive methods of rule against left-wings parties and individuals.

Biography

Military career

Several sources erroneously suggest that Costa e Silva's parents were Portuguese from Madeira. In fact, both his parents were Brazilians, although one of his great-grandparents was a Portuguese immigrant from Lisbon.^[1] Costa e Silva began his military career by entering the Military College of Porto Alegre, where he finished first of his class and commander of the cadet corps. He entered the Escola Militar de Realengo in Rio de Janeiro in 1918, where he finished third of his class. Made an aspirant on January 18, 1921, he was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in 1922 and was stationed with the 1st Infantry Regiment in Vila Militar until July 5 of that year.

Costa e Silva was promoted to general on August 2, 1952 and reached the final rank of Army General on November 25, 1961. He underwent training, as part of a joint program, in the United States of America from January to June 1944, after having been an assistant instructor of general tactics at the School for Command and the Army General-Staff. He served as a military attaché in Argentina from 1950 to 1952, and was then appointed to command of the 3rd Military Region (Rio Grande do Sul) from 1957 to 1959, and even later command of the 4th Army (Pernambuco) from August 1961 to September 1962. He was then appointed chief of the General Personnel Department and then the chief of the Department of Production and Works.

During the government of João Goulart, Costa e Silva put down student left-wing demonstrations that broke out in the Northeast and was removed from command of the 4th Army. At the end of 1963, He actively participated in the plot that overthrew Goulart's presidency (identified with Communism during the Cold War), who the military accused of planning a coup d'état. Shortly thereafter Costa e Silva was appointed the Minister of War just after of victory of the 1964 Brazilian Revolution on April 1, 1964 and remained in that position after the start of Castelo Branco government that was inaugurated several week later on April 15.

As Minister of War, Costa e Silva defended the interests of the so-called hardliners during the Cold War, the ultraright faction of the Armed Forces. As such he was considered an acceptable candidate to succeed Castelo Branco as president. This also served well to isolate more moderate soldiers – such as future president Ernesto Geisel and his future auxiliary Golbery do Couto e Silva- from posts of responsibility.

While Costa e Silva was campaigning for the Presidency of the Republic, he barely escaped death during a left-wing terrorist attack at Guararapes International Airport in Recife on July 25, 1966. The attack happened while he was waiting alongside around 300 other people at the airport. Several men were left dead or injured in what became known as the Attack of the Guararapes. Since the airplane that was supposed to take him had broken down earlier that day in João Pessoa, Costa e Silva decided to leave Recife by automobile, thereby avoiding the assault.

Presidency

Costa e Silva was elected president in an indirect election by the National Congress on October 3, 1966 due the Revolution of 1964 and was sworn in on March 15, 1967.

The new president suppressed the Broad Front (Frente Ampla), an opposition movement that had brought together politicians from the pre-1964 period. He fought against inflation, revised government salaries and enlarged exterior trade. He also began a reform of the administrative organs, expanded the communication and transportation systems, but failed to resolve the problems in the education system. His period was used as a basis of the "Brazilian Miracle" – a growth rate ranging from 9–10% per year.

In 1968, the death of college sophomore Edson Luís de Lima Souto in a confrontation with a police officer provoked a massive protest (The Hundred Thousand March) in Rio de Janeiro. The political situation worsened in August, when deputy Márcio Moreira Alves recommended in a speech that young women should refuse to dance with military cadets in an act of protest against the military regime. The government asked the National Congress to prosecute the deputy. Although Congress was dominated by the pro-government ARENA, the request was refused. Costa e Silva then called together the Council of National Security and published a law known as AI-5 (Institutional Act 5) which placed Brazil under a tight dictatorship. It indefinitely closed Congress and gave the president the right to rule by decree and summarily dismiss state governors.

Armed resistance against Costa e Silva's government intensified in 1969. The most serious case of terrorism took place on June 26, 1969 when Diógenes José Carvalho de Oliveira, Pedro Lobo de Oliveira and José Ronaldo Tavares de Lira e Silva, members of an eleven-man terrorist cell that was part of the People's Revolutionary Vanguard (VPR), managed to detonate a bomb at the General Headquarters of the 2nd Army in São Paulo. The car-bomb was launched (without a driver) towards the compound's front gate. The guards fired on the vehicle, which hit the external wall of the headquarters. Mário Kozel Filho, a soldier who was completing his compulsory military service and serving as a sentry on that day, left his post and ran towards the direction of the vehicle, trying to see if anyone was trapped inside. At that moment the car, filled with 50 kilograms of dynamite, exploded, damaging everything within a 300 meter radius around it. Kozel's body was ripped to pieces from the force of the explosion, and six other soldiers were seriously wounded. In response to this terrorist attack, the government intensified its repressive and subversive activities.

After suffering a cerebral thrombosis, Costa e Silva was removed from the office of president on August 31, 1969. Although Vice President Pedro Aleixo should have succeeded him, the three armed forces ministers instead took power as a military junta.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, new amendments to the 1967 constitution were added that gave the document an even more authoritarian tone than previously. However, it was overall less repressive than the AI-5. This "Constitutional Correction no. 1", sometimes referred to as the Constitution of 1969, was passed into law by the junta before it gave power over to General Emílio Garrastazu Médici. Costa e Silva died on December 17 of that same year, the victim of a heart attack.

Due to the large amount of censorship practiced against the press at that time, many people did not accept the official version of events about Costa e Silva's illness, instead believing he had been deposed by the more conservative elements of the military regime. Regardless of such theories, it has yet to be proven that Costa e Silva was anything else but seriously ill at the time of his removal.

Costa e Silva was to date the last Brazilian politician to be on the cover of the U.S. edition of TIME Magazine.^[2]

Terrorist attack of Guararapes

On July 25, 1966 occurred in Brazil, the first terrorist act with grave consequences. A bomb exploded in the lobby of the International Airport of Recife killing Edson Regis de Carvalho (Journalist – PE) and Nelson Gomes Fernandes (Admiral – PE). 14 others were injured in the explosion. This act is considered the beginning of armed struggle in Brazil.

That morning of July 25, 1966, Marshall Costa e Silva, a candidate for the presidency, was expected by some 300 people who waited him at the Guararapes International Airport. At 08:30, a few minutes before the arrival of Marshall, the service announced that sound due to crash the plane, he would be moving by land from Joao Pessoa to Recife and go directly to the building of SUDENE, where a rally would occur.

This statement caused the early withdrawal of the public. The policeman Sebastian Tomaz de Aquino, "Paraíba", once popular soccer player in the Santa Cruz, saw a black bag abandoned by the Bookstore "SODILER", located in the airport lobby. Thinking that someone had forgotten it, he took it to the counter of the Department of Civil Aviation (DAC). There was a loud explosion. The sound amplified by the enclosure, the smoke, the damage produced groans of the wounded and caused panic and rush to the public. After the first moments of terror, the terrorist act was a tragic toll of 16 victims.

Killed the journalist and secretary of the government of Pernambuco Edson Regis de Carvalho and retired vice-admiral Nelson Gomes Fernandes. The policeman "Paraíba" wounded in the face and legs, which resulted a few months later, in the amputation of his right leg. The then Lieutenant Colonel of the Army, Sylvio da Silva Ferreira, suffered an open fracture of the left shoulder and traumatic amputation of four fingers of his left hand.

They were also wounded lawyers Collares Haroldo da Cunha Barreto and Antonio Pedro Morais da Cunha, public officials Ivanco Raposo and Fernando Ferreira de Castro, José Oliveira Silvestre students, Amaro Duarte Days and Laertes Lafaiete, Professor Anita Ferreira de Carvalho, the shopkeeper Idalina Maia, policeman Jose Severino Person Baker, Congressman Luiz de Melo Magalhães and Eunice Gomes de Barros and his son, Roberto Gomes de Barros, only six years old.

Chance, transferring the site of arrival of the future president, prevented the tragedy was greater. One of the executors of the attack, revealed by surveys and interviews Gorender Jacob, was the militant political Raimundo Gonçalves Figueiredo, code-named Chico, who would be killed by the Civil Police, in April 1971, cited as part of the VAR-Palmares.

Still, according to Jacob Gorender, militant Revolutionary Brazilian Communist Party (Pcbr), the mastermind of the attack was Father Alipio de Freitas, the Popular Action (AP).

The family of Raymond Goncalves de Figueiredo was compensated and given his name to a street in Belo Horizonte. His wife, Regina Maria Figueiredo Leite Lobo, was murdered a year after his death by agents of repression in the so-called Massacre of Quentin.

One year after the attack on July 25, 1967, a bronze plaque was dedicated at the airport:

Homage City Reef At What topple Dos Guararapes Airport on 25 July 1966, victimized by the Folly of their fellows. – Admiral Nelson Fernandes – Reporter Edson Regis – Glorified By Sacrifice Their names will always be remembered to posterity Recalling The violent and tragic terrorist attacks, Sorrelfa practiced by the enemies of the Fatherland.

Father Alipio de Freitas, still alive, was awarded as political persecution with a monthly pension and the more retro in the approximate amount of R $ 1,900,000.

Bibliography

• KOIFMAN, Fábio (org.) – Presidentes do Brasil, Editora Rio, 2001.
• PORTELLA DE MELLO, Jayme A Revolução e o Governo Costa e Silva, Editora Guavira, 1979.
• SILVA, Hélio, Costa e Silva – 23º Presidente do Brasil, Editora Três, 1983.
• TAVARES, Aurélio de Lyra,O Exército no Governo Costa e Silva, Editora Departamento de Imprensa Nacional, 1968.

References

1. ^ KOIFMAN, Fábio. Presidentes Do Brasil: De Deodoro A Fhc.
2. ^ Cover search results on TIME Magazine’s website

Political offices
Preceded by Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco	President of Brazil 1967–1969	Succeeded by Military Junta of 1969

See also

• List of Presidents of Brazil, History of Brazil (1964-present)
• 1964 Brazilian coup d'état

Persondata
Name	Costa e Silva, Artur Da
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	October 3, 1899
Place of birth	Taquari, Rio Grande do Sul
Date of death	December 17, 1969
Place of death	Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro