Manuel Marques de Sousa, Count of Porto Alegre

Manuel Marques de Sousa, Count of Porto Alegre, nicknamed "the Gloved Centaur", was a Brazilian army officer, politician and abolitionist. Born into a wealthy family of military background, Manuel Marques de Sousa joined the Portuguese Army in Brazil in 1817 when he was a child. His military initiation occurred in the conquest of the Banda Oriental, which was annexed and became the southernmost Brazilian province of Cisplatina in 1821. For most of the 1820s, he was embroiled in the Brazilian effort to keep Cisplatina as part of its territory: first during the struggle for Brazilian independence and then in the Cisplatine War. It would ultimately prove a futile attempt, as Cisplatina successfully separated from Brazil to become the independent nation of Uruguay in 1828.