For his early devotion to the Catholic faith, Heráclito Fontoura Sobral Pinto could thank principally his father, Príamo Cavalcanti Sobral Pinto. Príamo’s devoutness, Heráclito wrote later, “was something rare in Brazil in those days.”¹

When Heráclito was born on November 5, 1893, Príamo was a station master, working for the Central do Brasil Railroad in Barbacena, in the interior state of Minas Gerais. The station master found his paychecks barely adequate to support his wife Idalina and himself and their three children, of whom Heráclito was the youngest; but his importance locally, Heráclito explained later, was exceeded only by that...

Thetenentesand the oppositionist politicians, responsible for the success of the 1930 revolution, parted company after the fall of the old regime. Thetenentesfelt that a return to traditional political ways would block radical reforms. They were encouraged by Getúlio Vargas, who was installed as head of Brazil’s “provisional government’’ on November 3, 1930. Vargas, after calling for ‘‘an end of the profession of politics,’’ closed Congress and scrapped the Constitution of 1891.

Men whom Sobral had prosecuted became heroes with great influence. One of them was Juarez Távora, the embodiment oftenentedaring ever since 1922. As...

In the name of the extinct ANL a revolt by discontented civil guards and army sergeants occurred in Natal, in the far north, on November 23, 1935. Quickly it was followed by a rebellion led by Communist army officers in Recife, during which about sixty civilians were killed in street fighting. By November 26, both uprisings had been crushed, but Luiz Carlos Prestes and other Communists in Rio, unaware of these setbacks, ordered insurrections that took place at Rio’s Third Infantry Regiment and at the army Aviation School near Rio and that cost about twenty-five more lives. By noon on...

Following the establishment of the Estado Novo, discontented Paulistas started plotting its overthrow. They were joined by Green Shirts (members of Ação Integralista Brasileira), who were furious because the Estado Novo had outlawed their organization along with all political parties in December 1937.

A plan to have an uprising in Rio on the night of March 10–11, 1938, was hatched by Colonel Euclydes Figueiredo (a leading fighter for the 1932 Paulista revolt), Octavio Mangabeira (Washington Luiz’ foreign minister), and General João Cândido Pereira de Castro Júnior (opponent of the government’s intervention in Rio Grande do Sul in (1937). The...

In May 1940 Sobral accepted the request of Elmano Cardim that he write a weekly column for theJornal do Commercio.Recalling that Ruy Barbosa had describedThe Timesof London as ‘‘a monument to the civilization of Great Britain,’’ Sobral observed that, in the case of Brazil, the same could be said of theJornal do Commercio.¹

Starting on May 25, 1940, the column appeared each Saturday under the heading ‘‘Pelos Domínios do Direito’’ (For the Rule of Law). Sobral received no pay for the work and absorbed incidental costs, such as taxi fares to the newspaper, until early...

The Vargas government, after receiving assurances of considerable economic assistance from the United States, acceded to the wishes of the State Department and broke diplomatic and commercial relations with the Axis nations (Germany, Italy, and Japan). The break, announced by Foreign Minister Oswaldo Aranha on January 28, 1942, was welcomed by Communists, whose support of Germany during the Hitler-Stalin Pact (1939–1941) had abruptly ended when Germany had invaded Russia.

Brazil’s break with the Axis had been foreseen by Sobral, who had speculated on January 24 about the possibility of the transfer of clients from the prison camp on Fernando...

In August 1943 the Instituto dos Advogados Brasileiros (IAB) observed its centennial. Justice Minister Marcondes Filho, presiding over the meetings, turned down the request of some of the lawyers to hold three plenary sessions to discuss theses, critical of the Estado Novo, that had found approval in sessions of the commissions. After the minister’s refusal, many disgruntled lawyers abandoned the meetings; and on September 2 a group of them gave a lunch to honor Pedro Aleixo, who had been among those who had left the meetings.¹

Sobral, delivering the principal speech at the lunch, described Pedro Aleixo as one of...

The case of ‘‘The Brazilian Nazi Boy’’ was made public in theDiário de Notíciason March 12 by Osório Borba, who seized upon the pro-Nazi sentiments of an eight-year-old to condemn the teaching at the Rio boarding school run by the Benedictine monks of Sāo Bento do Alto da Boa Vista. Borba reported that Sra. Branca Fialho, the adoptive mother of the boy, Ubiraci, was submitting a complaint against the monks to the National Department of Instruction because she was so disturbed by his displaying swastikas (sometimes on toy planes), shouting vivas for “the great German Reich,’’ and decrying...

During January and February 1945, Brazilians interested in politics spoke of the possibility of Vargas bending, at least partially, before the winds of democracy that blew in from abroad, and therefore modifying the constitution to allow a popular election for president.

The belief that Vargas would run to succeed himself was strengthened by a newspaper article that made it clear that his candidacy was supported by a group of politicians who met on January 11 in the office of Federal District Mayor Henrique Dodsworth.¹ Sobral, reading in the press about this development, wrote Coriolano de Góes to reproach him for...

On April 18, Vargas signed a decree that granted amnesty to political prisoners, including Luiz Carlos Prestes. The crowd that gathered that day on Frei Caneca Street, hoping to see the Cavalier of Hope emerge from prison, was disappointed because Prestes, escorted by Trifino Corrêa and Orlando Leite Ribeiro, used an exit far from the main gate.¹ He was taken to the Lagoa district house of Leoncio Basbaum, a leader of Communist Youth in the 1920s, and there he resided for months, a polite and serious guest who neither drank nor smoked and who received a stream of visitors.²

During...

On October 10 Vargas dismayed the opposition by issuing Decree-Law 8,063. It favored his stateinterventoresby establishing that elections for state legislatures and governors would take place on December 2 (simultaneously with the national elections) instead of on May 6, 1946, as had been decreed on May 28, 1945. It also made theinterventoreseligible for the gubernatorial elections and instructed them to promulgate state constitutions within twenty days of the new decree.¹

The UDN, the Partido Republicano (headed by Arthur Bernardes), and the Partido Libertador issued a joint manifesto that called Decree–Law 8,063 an “act of insanity”...

It did not take long for Sobral Pinto to use the press and letters to submit recommendations for correcting what he considered to be errors of the new administration. He sent fourteen typewritten pages to President José Linhares on November 1 after he read ‘‘with the most excruciating apprehension’’ a published note from the new administration that suggested that political groups and parties ought to demonstrate the same sort of cohesion as that shown by the armed forces.¹

The purpose of the note, Sobral told Linhares, was to urge political groups ‘‘to congregate behind a single candidate for president and...