Tenant movement

In the 1920s, the struggle against the local oligarchy and imperialism in Brazil took the form of armed uprisings. With the formal functioning of the constitutional regime, the broad masses of the country's population were still excluded from political participation. The country was increasingly feeling dissatisfaction with the dominance of the landowner-bourgeois oligarchy of the states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais , which hindered the development of industry and other raw materials industries, stimulated in Brazil during the First World War ^[1] .

However, the liberal opposition did not dare to openly fight the ruling regime, and the labor movement was in decline during this period. Peasant uprisings took place spontaneously, in the form of scattered riots. In such circumstances, the initiative was taken by representatives of the lower and middle officers - tenists, who embarked on an open armed struggle with the government.

The main demand of the tenentists was the replacement of the oligarchy with a truly democratic constitutional regime. They declared the patriotic and anti-oligarchic character of their movement in the “Revolutionary Manifesto” of 1924, which stated: “Our revolution is not an isolated episode. It is patriotic in nature ... We are fighting for democracy, for the ideals of the people against the current oligarchic dictatorship and we call on the people to support us ” ^[2] .

Tenentist First Rebellion

The uprising in Copacabana was the first major uprising of the tenentists. It began on July 5, 1922 in the garrison of the metropolitan fort of Copacaban . The officers rebelled in order to remove the incumbent President Epitasio Pesoa from power and prevent the election of his successor, Arthur Bernardis ^[3] . Despite the fact that the rebellion was brutally suppressed, the Tenentists continued their struggle, creating a network of secret organizations in the army.

Rebellion in Sao Paulo

Exactly two years after the first riot, on July 5, 1924, the tenists rebelled in the garrison of Sao Paulo and after several days of fighting captured the city. However, the leaders of the uprising did not dare to involve the broad masses of the population in the struggle and took a wait-and-see attitude, which allowed the government to draw large forces, block the rebellious city and return it to its control on July 27 . The rebels managed to break through the ring of encirclement and escape into the interior of the country.

Column of Prestes

But already in October 1924, tenentist uprisings broke out in several garrisons in southern Brazil, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul . The column of rebels, led by Captain Luis Carlos Prestes , moved north from there and in March 1925 united with the rebels from São Paulo.

After that, an armed detachment of tenists, the number of which ranged from 1300 to 4000 people, began its campaign around the country. Moving away from direct clashes with government forces, the Prestes column occupied small towns and kept the government in constant tension. For more than two years, the convoy passed about 25 thousand km and inflicted a number of defeats on government units, for which it received the nickname of “invincible convoy”.

The leaders of the column did not realize the need to put forward specific social slogans in order to involve the broad masses in the struggle, so its raids around the country did not lead to a wide uprising. Moreover, the maneuverable nature of the struggle did not allow the tenists to establish stable close ties with the population. As a result, in February 1927, the convoy left Brazil and was interned in Bolivia , and remained undefeated.

In 1930, the tenentists took an active part in the events of the revolution that led to the rise of Jetulio Vargas . Right-wing tenists moved to bourgeois-reformist positions and entered into an alliance with the Liberal Alliance, later joining the government of Vargas. Left tenentists, along with the Communists, played an important role in the creation of the National Liberation Alliance and in 1935 organized an uprising against the Vargas regime.

In 1964, a number of former tenant supporters took part in a coup d'etat, during which the left-democratic government of Juan Goulart was overthrown and a military dictatorship established.

• Stroganov A.I. Recent History of Latin America. Countries of the region in the middle and second half of the 20s.
• The Latin America Encyclopedic Directory on rubricon.com.