Getúlio Vargas

Born in 1882 to a powerful family in Rio Grande do Sul, Vargas moved from the army to law school to district attorney, then climbed through state politics and led troops in a 1923 civil war. He served as Minister of Finance before governing his home state, where he pushed an active policy agenda. After losing the 1930 presidential election, he launched an armed revolution and took power as provisional president, later winning election under a new constitution in 1934. Three years later he invoked the threat of communist insurrection to seize dictatorial control, launching the eight-year Estado Novo. He suppressed three major revolts - the 1932 Constitutionalist Revolution, the 1935 Communist uprising, the Integralist putsch - using methods from lenient terms to imprisonment. In 1942, caught between Nazi Germany and the United States, he brought Brazil into World War II on the Allied side. Ousted in 1945 after fifteen years, he won the presidency again in 1950, but a deepening political crisis ended in his suicide in August 1954.