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State of emergency in Brazil (1922–1927)
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A state of emergency was in force in Brazil for much of the period from 1922 to 1927, comprising the end of president Epitácio Pessoa's government (1919–1922), most of Artur Bernardes' government (1922–1926), and the beginning of Washington Luís' government (1926–1930). The measure was decreed after the Copacabana Fort revolt, on 5 July 1922, and remained in force in several regions of Brazil's territory until the end of the subsequent tenentist revolts in February 1927, with the exception of the first months of 1924. At its peak in 1925, it was in force in the Federal District and ten states. The state of emergency allowed the political elite of the First Brazilian Republic to defend itself with authoritarian measures at a time of crisis, but the apparent tranquility after its suspension came to an end with the 1930 Revolution.
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The first decree covered the Federal District and the state of Rio de Janeiro and was extended until the end of 1923, serving the post-revolt arrests of military personnel, journalists, politicians and trade unionists (even without links to the movement) and federal intervention against opposition politicians allied with Nilo Peçanha, Bernardes' competitor in the 1922 presidential election. In March 1924, the state of emergency in Bahia ended another opposition center. In July the measure was resumed in the Federal District, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, being extended and expanded to other states as the tenentists tried to overthrow the regime at gunpoint. The government feared that the revolts would turn into a revolution with anarchist or communist involvement and authorized extreme measures such as the bombing of São Paulo.
The Bernardes' administration insisted that law-abiding citizens would not be harmed and the violence of dissidents left no alternative but repressive measures. In the capital, they were led by the military authorities and by marshal Carneiro da Fontoura, Chief of Police of the Federal District, who had command over a political police body, the 4th Auxiliary Police Station. The state of São Paulo created its equivalent, the DOPS, in 1924; historian Carlo Romani sees continuity in this bureaucracy until the Estado Novo and the military dictatorship. Surveillance and whistleblowing were enough to prevent the São Paulo Revolt of 1924 from starting in Rio de Janeiro, but numerous other conspiracies were devised there and the government distrusted the Armed Forces. The police spied on suspects, hunted rebels underground and seized weapons and bombs while Brazil's Ministry of Foreign Affairs monitored rebel communities in exile.
Mass arrests without investigation or trial filled prisons, prison ships and islands in Guanabara Bay. For tenentism, this solidified a nucleus of professional rebels, while anarchism experienced the beginning of its decline amid the closure of unions and the arrest of militants. Political prisoners shared cells with common criminals and individuals with no criminal records or political activity. Federal deputies and witnesses reported unsanitary conditions and torture in these establishments. In the most remote of them, the penal colony of Clevelândia, hundreds of prisoners died from diseases, which would only become known to the public after the end of the Bernardes government, as the press was under censorship. In retrospect, Bernardes later stated: "as president of the Republic, I was just a police chief. And as a police chief faced with revolutionary pressure, I only knew how to do one thing: to arrest, persecute, contain by terror".