History is of little use to those who are not guided by its lessons – 01/29/2023 – Angela Alonso

Election won, inauguration marked, the future president circulated through the capital of the Republic. One enthusiast recognized him and from the crowd shouted his name and cheers. Voice soon drowned out by fanatical blows from the head of government at the end of his term. He was one of those who encouraged him to keep the keys to the Republic in his pocket, with a decree establishing the dictatorship.

That is why, in his inauguration, the elected official affirmed his commitment to all —not just four— lines of the Constitution. He asked: “That all Brazilians, especially those holding public power, contribute with their dedicated and persevering efforts to ensure that the Republic is what it should be —a regime of peace and order, of freedom and progress, under the empire of justice and law”.

It could have been 2023, but it was 1894. Prudente de Moraes took over the nation after Floriano Peixoto, who generated a cult of obsessed people around him. Dissatisfied with the transition, they organized themselves into “patriotic battalions” and would go hand in hand or by bullet with anyone who contradicted the qualities of their myth. Convinced that national salvation depended on him, they demanded his return.

Thus inflated, like Bolsonaro, Floriano did not pass the belt. He refused to transfer negotiations from the government. The marshal, like the former captain, sold himself as the simplicity of customs and the moralizer of the State. They also coincided in sloppiness.

Prudente found the headquarters of the Republic in dirt similar to the one Janja showed on Globo. Instead of Miami, Floriano retreated to his Alagoas. There he waited, his acolytes scattered, the return call.

The coup threat scared. But the summoned did the favor of going straight to death. Assuming that the danger of dictatorship died together, legalists took their sleeves and tongue out and dedicated themselves to beating the president.

Prudente was hammered out in prose and verse, in the press and in Congress. Instead of remaining united in defending the Constitution and republican institutions, the civilized part of society and parties converged in the relentless attack on the government.

The strategy of criticizing and obstructing made the president weak and left him at the mercy of new assaults. Being an orphan did not lead the Florianistas to put their weapons to use. They found the vice-president, Manoel Vitorino, their arsonist for the Republic, ready to command any insubordination.

The coup activism prospered because the opposition parties began to contest the next election, not even after the ballot box had cooled down, neglecting to guarantee their condition of possibility: the constitutional government, which had barely survived the threat of a coup d’état.

The opposition’s rage to bleed the government kept the Republic on the verge of collapse in the following years. He allowed Florianism to prosper without Floriano, to the point that Vitorino risked usurping the presidential seat.

Only the extreme act, the attempt to assassinate the president, elicited vigorous support from loyalists. So Florianistas were effectively excluded from the institutional game. But it was almost the end of term.

Campos Sales was left with the refreshment of governing under the peace that Prudente had asked for when he took office. The bet on criticism above all and on self-interest above all delayed the pacification of the country by three years.

History is of little use if those who have the possibility of influencing its course are not guided by it.

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