Luís Carlos Prestes
| Luís Carlos Prestes | |
|---|---|
Photo taken between 1930–40.
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| Personal details | |
| Born |
Luís Carlos Prestes January 3, 1898 Porto Alegre, Brazil |
| Died | March 7, 1990 (aged 92) Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
| Political party | Brazilian Communist Party (1934–1980) |
| Spouse(s) |
Olga Benário (1934–1942) Maria Prestes (1950–1990) |
| Alma mater | Agulhas Negras Military Academy |
| Profession | Military engineer |
Luís Carlos Prestes (January 3, 1898 – March 7, 1990) was a tenente, later communist militant and Brazilian politician. He was one of the organizers of the 1920s tenente revolts and the Communist opposition to the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas in Brazil. He was also the secretary-general of the Brazilian Communist Party.
Prestes, also known as the "Knight of Hope", helped organize the failed tenente revolts of 1922, an uprising of the largely middle class officer corps and poor conscripted servicemen against the agrarian oligarchies that dominated Brazil's Old Republic (1889–1930). Because Prestes was sick with typhoid fever, he was unable to fight on the day of the revolt. From 1924, Prestes became one of the leaders of the insurrectionist movement, leading the Coluna Prestes (Prestes' Column) on a 25,000 km (15,534 mi) march through the Brazilian countryside. The march did not aim to defeat the enemy forces of the Federal government, but rather to ensure the insurrectionists' survival and their ability to continue threatening the dictatorship.
The tenente revolt heralded the end of the 'coffee and milk' coronelismo politics and the beginning of social reforms. The Revolution of 1930 ended Brazil's Old Republic. Joined by many moderate tenentes, but not Prestes, the Revolution of 1930 installed Getúlio Vargas as Brazil's provisional president. Although the tenentes sympathized with him, Vargas was a far more conservative figure. As the tenentes wanted Prestes to join Vargas, Prestes decided to meet him in Porto Alegre and explained his idea of socialist revolution to Vargas for about two hours. Vargas was highly impressed by Prestes and even donated 800 contos de réis (about 400,000 USD) to the revolution'c causes. However, Prestes viewed Vargas as the leader of a bourgeois revolution and decided to route most of the donated money to the Latin American branch of the Comintern, financing the group for a few years. Another part of the money was routed to tenente member Siqueira Campos, who died in a plane crash while flying from Argentina to Brazil. His body was discovered three days later, but the money was never found.
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