Leonel Brizola

Leonel Brizola
55th Governor of Rio de Janeiro
In office March 15, 1991 – April 1, 1994
Vice Governor	Nilo Batista
Preceded by	Moreira Franco
Succeeded by	Nilo Batista
53rd Governor of Rio de Janeiro
In office March 15, 1983 – March 15, 1987
Vice Governor	Darcy Ribeiro
Preceded by	Chagas Freitas
Succeeded by	Moreira Franco
Member of the Chamber of Deputies
In office May 14, 1963 – April 9, 1964
Constituency	Guanabara
23rd Governor of Rio Grande do Sul
In office March 29, 1959 – March 25, 1963
Preceded by	Ildo Meneghetti
Succeeded by	Ildo Meneghetti
23rd Mayor of Porto Alegre
In office January 1, 1956 – December 29, 1958
Preceded by	Martin Aranha
Succeeded by	Tristão Sucupira Viana
Personal details
Born	Leonel de Moura Brizola January 22, 1922 Carazinho, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Died	June 21, 2004(2004-06-21) (aged 82) Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Political party	Democratic Labour Party
Other political affiliations	Brazilian Labour Party
Spouse(s)	Neusa Goulart Brizola
Relations	João Goulart (brother-in-law)
Children	Neusinha, José Vicente, and João Otávio
Profession	Civil engineer

Leonel de Moura Brizola (January 22, 1922 – June 21, 2004) was a Brazilian politician. Launched in politics by Getúlio Vargas, Brizola was the only politician to serve as elected governor of two Brazilian states, before and after the 1964-1985 military dictatorship. In 1958 he was elected governor of Rio Grande do Sul, and in 1982 and 1990 he was elected governor of Rio de Janeiro. He was also vice-president of the Socialist International and served as Honorary President of that organization from October 2003 until his death in June 2004. One of the few Brazilian major political figures able to overcome the dictatorship's twenty-years ban on his political activity, Brizola was a non-Marxist Left nationalist who successfully recycled his political agenda to cope with a post-Cold War setting . His later party, the Democratic Labour Party, practisized a form of social democratic, left-wing politics based off on a form of populism, derived from earlier Varguism, a highly nationalistic social democratic mass movement.

Brizola's father José Brizola was a small-scale farmer who was killed when fighting as a volunteer in 1923 in a local civil war for the rebel leader Assis Brasil against Rio Grande's dictator, Borges de Medeiros. Brizola was named Itagiba, but early in life he adopted the alias Leonel, which he took from the rebel warlord Leonel Rocha who had commanded the cavalry column in which José Brizola served. Brizola left his mother's house at the age of eleven; he worked in Passo Fundo and Carazinho as a newspaper deliverer, shoeshiner and at other occasional jobs. Aided by the family of a Methodist minister, he received a scholarship that allowed him to complete high school in Porto Alegre and enter college. He graduated with a degree in engineering but never worked in that trade. Still as an undergraduate, he entered professional politics in his early twenties, entering the youth organization of the Brazilian Labor Party (Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro (PTB)) in 1945. In 1946 an undergraduate, he was elected to the Rio Grande State Legislature. The Labor Party had been created in order to offer political support for former President/dictator Getúlio Vargas among the working classes, and Brizola, who was busy with creating party organizations across Rio Grande, at the time developed ties to the Vargas family through his personal friendship with Vargas's son Maneco as well as with Vargas's brother Espartaco., such friendships opening his way to make friends with Vargas himself, who was in internal exile after having been toppled from power in late 1945. As a member of the State Legislature, Brizola made from the tribune a speech in which he launched nationwide the candidacy of Vargas to the incoming 1950 presidential elections.

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