List of presidents of Brazil


Below is a list of presidents of Brazil.

The Old Republic (1889–1930)

In 1889 the Empire of Brazil was abolished and replaced with a republic in a coup d'état led by Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca, who deposed Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II, proclaimed Brazil a Republic and formed a Provisional Government. The 15 November 1889 military coup actually began as an attempt to overthrow the Empire's Prime Minister, Afonso Celso, Viscount of Ouro Preto, but the unprecedented coup against a Prime Minister appointed by the Emperor and who enjoyed the confidence of the elected Chamber of Deputies quickly escalated to the abolition of the monarchy. With the proclamation of the Brazilian Republic, the Empire's Constitution ceased to operate, the Imperial Parliament ceased to exist, and not only was the Viscount of Ouro Preto removed from office, but the position of Prime Minister itself ceased to exist. As head of the provisional government, Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca ruled by decree, discharging both the functions of head of state and of head of government. The former provinces of the Empire were reorganized as states and the newly proclaimed republic was declared a federation, formed by the perpetual union of those states.
In 1890, elections for a Constituent Congress were summoned and held, but the decree of the Provisional Government that created the Congress required it to adopt a Constitution that conformed to the recently proclaimed republican system of Government, and that organized the recently declared Federal State. In February 1891, a new Brazilian Constitution was adopted, based on the federal republic of the United States of America. The country itself was named the Republic of the United States of Brazil. In accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, the presidents of the Republic were to be elected by direct popular ballot, but, for the first presidential term, the President and Vice President would be chosen by the Constituent Congress; the Constituent Congress was to elect the first President and Vice President immediately after the promulgation of the Constitution. In accordance with those transitional provisions, Congress elected the then Head of the Provisional Government, Deodoro da Fonseca, as the first President of the Republic. Marshal Floriano Peixoto, was elected by Congress to be the first Vice President. The inauguration of the first President and of the first Vice President was held on 26 February 1891, only two days after the promulgation of the Constitution. Deodoro resigned the presidency ten months later after a coup d'état in which he dissolved Congress was reversed. Then, Floriano Peixoto, Deodoro's Vice President, was inaugurated as President. In 1894, Peixoto was succeeded by Prudente de Morais, the first President of Brazil to be elected by direct popular ballot. De Morais, who was the first president to be elected under the permanent provisions of the Constitution adopted in 1891, was also the first civilian to assume the presidency.
Although it was theoretically a constitutional democracy, the Old Republic was characterized by the power of regional oligarchies and the seldom broken alternation of power in the federal sphere between the states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais. The vote in the countryside was often controlled by the local land owner, and less than 6% of the population had the right to vote due to literacy requirements.
In 1930, when Brazil was suffering the effects of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, a revolution broke out in the country and the old republic ended. President Washington Luís, who was supported by São Paulo oligarchies, broke the expected alternation between São Paulo and Minas and supported a candidate who was also from São Paulo, Júlio Prestes. Prestes won the rigged election, but Washington Luís was deposed three weeks before the end of his term and Prestes was never inaugurated.
;Parties

The Vargas Era (1930–1946)

The Vargas Era consists of two different republics: the Second Republic from 1930 to 1937 and the Third Republic from 1937 to 1946.
;Party
President
PortraitElectedTook officeLeft officePolitical partyVice President Tasso Fragoso
2) Isaías de Noronha
3) Mena Barreto		—24 October 19303 November 1930None General of the Brazilian Army
2) Admiral of the Brazilian Navy
3) Divisional General of the Brazilian Army		1) São Luís, Maranhão
2) Rio de Janeiro
3) Porto Alegre
14Getúlio Vargas
1934Head of the Provisional Government from
3 November 1930
20 July 1934		29 October 1945-Governor of Rio Grande do SulSão Borja, Rio Grande do Sul
15José Linhares
—29 October 194530 January 1946NoneVacantPresident of the Supreme Federal CourtBaturité, Ceará

The Republic of 46 (1946–1964)

In 1945, Vargas was deposed by a military coup led by ex-supporters. Nevertheless, he would be elected president once again and his influence in Brazilian politics would remain until the end of the Fourth republic. In this period, three parties dominated the national politics. Two were pro-Vargas – in the left, PTB and in the center-right, PSD – and another anti-Vargas, the rightist UDN.
This period was very unstable. In 1954, Vargas committed suicide during a crisis that threatened his government and he was followed by a series of short-term presidents. In 1961, UDN won national elections for the first time, supporting Jânio Quadros, who himself was a member of a minor party allied to UDN. Quadros, who, before his election, rose meteorically in politics with an anti-corruption stance, unexpectedly resigned the presidency seven months later. Some historians suggest that Quadros was heavily drunk when he signed his resignation letter, while others suggest that Quadros felt that Congress would not accept his vice-president as president, and would ask for his return. Those historians, therefore, see Quadros' resignation as an attempt to return to office with increased powers and more political support. It is possible that both occurred: Quadros was drunk when he resigned, and in that state, he devised the plan to return to power by Congressional request. The plot failed: Congress simply received Quadros' letter, and amid the shock of politicians and of the Nation, the letter was entered into the records of Congress and the presidency was declared vacant. The president of Congress, Senator Auro de Moura Andrade, took the view that the deed of resignation was the province of the elected president, that it was not subject to a congressional vote, needing no confirmation, and that the president's declaration of resignation was final.
At that time, the President and Vice President of Brazil were voted into office separately. The Vice President was a political enemy of Jânio Quadros, the leftist João Goulart. Goulart was out of the country, and Congress was controlled by right wing politicians. During Goulart's absence, the President of the Chamber of Deputies, Ranieri Mazzilli, took office as Acting President of Brazil. There was then a plot to block the inauguration of the Vice President as President, but Congressional resistance to the inauguration of Goulart led to a reaction by the Governor of Rio Grande do Sul, who led a "legality campaign", and to a split in the military. Amid the political crisis, the solution was the adoption by Congress of a Constitutional Amendment abolishing the presidential executive and replacing it with a parliamentary system of government. Under that negotiated solution, Goulart's inauguration was allowed to proceed, but Goulart would be Head of State only, and a prime minister approved by Congress would lead the government. The new system of government's continued existence was subject to popular approval in a referendum scheduled for 1963. The result of this referendum restored the presidential executive and a military coup deposed Goulart in 1964, starting the military dictatorship.
;Parties

Military Regime (1964–1985)

;Parties abolished, except for two parties:

The New Republic (1985–present)

In the early 1980s the military government started a process of gradual political opening, called abertura, the final goal of which was democracy. When the term of the last military president was to end, however, no direct elections for President of Brazil took place. For the election of the country's first civilian president since the military coup of 1964, the military maintained the rule that prevailed during the dictatorial regime, according to which an Electoral College made up of the entire National Congress and Representatives from State Assemblies was to elect the President. This time, however, the military placed the Electoral College under no coercion, so that its members would be free to select the President of their choice. The Chamber of Deputies and the State Assemblies had been elected, already under the abertura process in the 1982 parliamentary election, but the Senators were chosen indirectly, by the State Assemblies, under rules that had been passed by the Military Regime in 1977 to counter the growing support of the opposition: one third of the Senators was chosen in 1982, and two thirds had been chosen in 1978. After the 1982 elections, the ruling party, PDS, still controlled a majority of the seats in the National Congress.
Tancredo Neves, who had been Prime Minister during the presidency of João Goulart, was chosen to be the candidate of PMDB, the major opposition party, but Tancredo was also supported by a large political spectrum, even including a significant part of former members of ARENA, the party that supported the military presidents. In the last months of the military regime, a large section of ARENA members defected from the Party, and now professed to be men of democratic inclinations. They formed the Liberal Front, and the Liberal Front Party allied itself to PMDB, forming a coalition known as the Democratic Alliance. PMDB needed the Liberal Front's support in order to secure victory in the Electoral College. In the formation of this broad coalition former members of ARENA also switched parties and joined PMDB. So, to seal this arrangement, the spot of vice-president in Tancredo Neves' ticket was given to José Sarney, who represented the former supporters of the regime that had now joined the Democratic Alliance. On the other hand, those who remained loyal to the military regime and its legacy renamed ARENA as the PDS. In the PDS's National Convention, two right-wing supporters of the military administrations fought for the Party's nomination: Colonel Mário Andreazza, then Minister of the Interior in General Figueiredo's administration, was the preferred candidate of the incumbent President and of the military elite, but he was defeated by Paulo Maluf, a civilian and former Governor of São Paulo State during the military regime. Tancredo's coalition defeated Maluf, and his election was hailed as the dawn of a New Republic. Andreazza's defeat and the selection of Maluf as the PDS's presidential candidate greatly contributed to the split in the Party that led to the formation of the Liberal Front. The Liberal Front refused to support Maluf and joined forces with the PMDB in supporting Tancredo Neves, thus forging the Democratic Alliance. Without that split in the PDS, the election of the opposition candidate would not have been possible.
Although elected President of Brazil, Tancredo Neves became gravely ill on the eve of his inauguration and died without ever taking office. Therefore, the first civilian president since 1964 was Tancredo's running mate, José Sarney, himself an ex-member of ARENA. José Sarney's administration fulfilled Tancredo's campaign promise of passing a constitutional amendment to the Constitution inherited from the military regime, so as to summon elections for a National Constituent Assembly with full powers to draft and adopt a new Constitution for the country, to replace the authoritarian legislation that still remained in place. In October 1988, a new democratic Constitution was passed and democracy was consolidated. In 1989, the first elections for President under the new Constitution were held and the young Fernando Collor de Mello was elected for a five-year term, the first President to be elected by direct popular ballot since the military coup. He was inaugurated in 1990 and in 1992 he became the first President in Brazil to be impeached due to corruption. He however resigned before the final verdict.
A referendum held in 1993 allowed the people to decide the form of government of the state for the first time since the proclamation of the Republic in 1889; the republican form of government prevailed. In the same referendum, the Brazilian people was able to choose again, for the first time since 1963, the system of Government and the model of a presidential executive was retained. The revision was a unique opportunity to amend the Constitution with a reduced majority. Had a different form or system of government been chosen in the 1993 referendum, the new institutional structure would have been implemented during the Constitutional Revision. Both the Revision and the referendum on the form and system of government were summoned in the original text of the Constitution. The federal model of the state, retained in the 1988 Constitution, is declared by the Constitution as not subject to abolition, even by Constitutional Amendment. According to those tenets and to the results of the popular vote, only minor changes were made to the institutional framework of the State in the Constitutional Revision, including the adoption of a Constitutional Amendment that reduced the presidential term of office from five to four years.
In 1995, Fernando Henrique Cardoso was inaugurated for a four-year term. In 1997 a Constitutional Amendment was passed allowing presidents of Brazil to be reelected to one consecutive term. In 1998, then President Fernando Henrique Cardoso became first president of Brazil to be reelected for an immediately consecutive term. In 2003 Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was inaugurated. He was reelected in 2006. In 2011 Dilma Rousseff became Brazil's first woman president. In 2015, she took office, but in 2016 the Senate of Brazil convicted her on impeachment charges, and she was removed from office, being succeeded by Michel Temer.
;Parties

Living former presidents

As of, there are six living former presidents and one incumbent president. The most recent death of a former president was that of Itamar Franco, on 2 July 2011.

Timeline


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from: 15/11/1889 till: 23/11/1891 color:none text:"Deodoro da Fonseca"
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from: 23/11/1891 till: 15/11/1894 color:none text:"Floriano Peixoto"
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from: 15/11/1894 till: 15/11/1898 color:prfed text:"Prudente de Morais"
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from: 15/11/1906 till: 14/06/1909 color:prm text:"Afonso Pena"
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from: 24/08/1954 till: 08/11/1955 color:psp text:"Café Filho"
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from: 04/04/1966 till: 15/03/1967 color:arena text:"Humberto Castelo Branco"
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from: 15/03/1967 till: 31/08/1969 color:arena text:"Artur da Costa e Silva"
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from: 30/10/1969 till: 15/03/1974 color:arena text:"Emílio Médici"
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from: 15/03/1974 till: 15/03/1979 color:arena text:"Ernesto Geisel"
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from: 15/03/1990 till: 29/12/1992 color:prn text:"Fernando Collor"
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from: 29/12/1992 till: 01/01/1995 color:mdb text:"Itamar Franco"
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from: 01/01/1995 till: 01/01/2003 color:psdb text:"Fernando Henrique Cardoso"
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from: 01/01/2003 till: 01/01/2011 color:pt text:"Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva"
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from: 01/01/2011 till: 31/08/2016 color:pt text:"Dilma Rousseff"
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from: 31/08/2016 till: 01/01/2019 color:mdb text:"Michel Temer"
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from: 01/01/2019 till: 19/11/2019 color:psl
from: 19/11/2019 till: 31/03/2020 color:none text:"Jair Bolsonaro"