The Copacabana Fort revolt (), also known as the 18 of the Fort revolt (), was one of several movements coordinated by rebel factions of the Brazilian Army against the president of Brazil, Epitácio Pessoa, and the winner of the 1922 presidential election, Artur Bernardes. Acting under the figure of marshal Hermes da Fonseca and supporting the defeated faction, the , the rebels tried a wide revolt in Rio de Janeiro on 5 July 1922, but only managed to control Fort Copacabana and the Military School of Realengo, in addition to, outside the city, a focus in Niterói and the 1st Military Circumscription, in Mato Grosso. They were defeated, but the revolt marks the beginning of tenentism and the events that led to the end of the First Brazilian Republic.
In 1921, Nilo Peçanha launched himself as an opposition presidential candidate, aligning the oligarchies of second-tier states against the domination of Brazilian politics by the most powerful states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais. Peçanha garnered the support of dissident military members gathered around Hermes da Fonseca, president of the . In October, fake letters attributed to Artur Bernardes insulting the military stirred up the election and prompted them to actively participate in the campaign. The rigged electoral system ensured Bernardes' victory in March 1922. The opposition contested the results and over the following months a military conspiracy emerged across the country to remove Epitácio Pessoa and prevent Bernardes' inauguration. The conspiracy drew great enthusiasm from tenentes (lieutenants), but few senior officers. The rebels did not have a project for society, with the rebellion being a movement of redress at first, but even so they reflected dissatisfaction with the regime. In early July, the revolt was triggered by the closure of the Military Club and the brief arrest of Hermes da Fonseca for his public opposition to the government's interference, using the army, in the election in Pernambuco.
The conspiracy was poorly organized and on the night of 4 July the loyalists managed to surround Fort Copacabana and arrest the officers who would incite the large number of troops at Vila Militar. The following day, Hermes da Fonseca was arrested and the Military School engaged in combat for a few hours against Vila Militar before giving up. In Niterói, the revolt did little more than capture the Telephone Company. In Mato Grosso, the rebels confronted the loyalists on the border with São Paulo until 13 July, when they laid down their weapons without initiating combat. Only Fort Copacabana remained in revolt, firing at military targets and engaging in an "artillery duel" with the other fortifications in Guanabara Bay, which killed several civilians. Most of the garrison left the fort on the morning of 6 April, with only 28 remaining. It withstood further bombardments by the Brazilian Navy, Naval Aviation and surrounding troops, refusing to surrender. The fort's commander left to negotiate and was arrested, leaving command to Antônio de Siqueira Campos and three other lieutenants. In the afternoon they left for Atlântica Avenue with the remaining soldiers to face the loyalists, being defeated on the beach by much superior forces. Of the lieutenants, only Siqueira Campos and Eduardo Gomes survived in the hospital.
The July 1922 revolts failed, but Artur Bernardes would face a new military phenomenon, tenentism, which launched ever larger and more sophisticated revolts during his term, most of which was spent under a state of emergency. The refusal of amnesty to the rebels of 1922 was one of the reasons for the following revolts. These also failed, but the tenentists took part in the Revolution of 1930, which put an end to the First Republic. The greatest fame of July 1922 was the Fort Copacabana and the suicidal will of the small number of rebels who marched against the government's troops, an episode that acquired a mythical character. The number of 18 men said to have participated in the final combat is famous, but the actual number was probably smaller.
Background
The 1922 presidential election
In 1922, Brazil was undergoing a reassessment of Brazilian nationality on the eve of the country's independence centennial, with the Modern Art Week as a symbolic milestone, while public finances suffered from the fall of international demand for coffee, Brazil's main export product. In the presidential election, scheduled for 1 March, the government candidate to succeed Epitácio Pessoa was Artur Bernardes, president (governor) of Minas Gerais and a representative of the dominant groups of his state and São Paulo. In previous disputes, the government's candidate easily achieved the consensus of the regional oligarchies, but this time the regime showed signs of exhaustion.
In June 1921, the political leaders of Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Rio Grande do Sul and Pernambuco, "second-tier" states, organized themselves in the Republican Reaction bloc and launched an opposition ticket with Nilo Peçanha, from Rio de Janeiro, for president, and José Joaquim Seabra, from Bahia, for vice president. Several explanations have been proposed for this oligarchic split, such as the dispute over the vice presidency, the dissatisfaction with the economic policy favorable to coffee, a first test of populism or a challenge to the domination of the federal system by Minas Gerais and São Paulo. Some studies show the instability of the Minas Gerais-São Paulo alliance, but there was, in any case, dissatisfaction with the political arrangement.
The Republican Reaction's proposals were reformist and peaceful. It did not intend to break with the model of the First Brazilian Republic, but only to achieve equality between the states, and its state leaders had the same profile and practices as the government's ones; in his state, Nilo Peçanha also applied coronelism practices, and the Reaction sought the support of disaffected oligarchs. In the electoral game of the First Republic, based on the coronelist compromise, the Republican Reaction was at a disadvantage, as it could not use the federal public machine to grant privileges and favors. Thus, the Reaction added to traditional methods the campaign among the urban masses, a novelty at the time, as well as the search for military support. Military officers gathered around marshal Hermes da Fonseca joined Nilo Peçanha's ticket after Fonseca failed to get a candidacy. Fonseca was the president of the Military Club, former president of Brazil and the "virtual head of the army", "perceived by the military as the hierarchical superior of all".
Military discontent
In the 1920s, the Brazilian Army was reformed and modernized under the management of Minister of War Pandiá Calógeras and advice from the , fulfilling the ambitions of the years before. The young officers left the Military School of Realengo with a level of technical preparation unprecedented in the history of the Brazilian Army. But there were tensions within the officer corps. Officials were frustrated with the scorn they received from the public. Lieutenants were discouraged by their slow career progression and their failure to join and fight in World War I. Calógeras' management and the French Mission attracted criticism, accusations of corruption and difficulties in adapting to the new models. In April 1921, the dismissal of general , chief of the Brazilian Army General Staff and an enemy of Calógeras, generated a demonstration of solidarity by more than one hundred officers, threatening to split the army, but Ribeiro was not interested in a revolt. The fact that the Ministers of War and Navy, Calógeras and , respectively, were both civilians was used in Nilo Peçanha's criticisms.
Crisis of the fake letters
The rapprochement between the Republican Reaction and the military reached its peak with the disclosure of fake letters attributed to Artur Bernardes, with insulting content to the military, in order to position them against his candidacy. There were two documents published in Correio da Manhã in October 1921 as part of the newspaper's anti-Bernardes campaign. The author of the letters called Hermes a "sergeant without manners", tapping into the resentment of army officers for the disdain they received from the civilian elite. The crisis was similar to the Military Crisis at the final days of the Brazilian Empire. The Military Club examined the letters attributed to Artur Bernardes and assessed them as true. Its creators ended up confessing to the forgery, but tensions in the military environment increased. Bernardes' explanations ended up being accepted by most of the officers, with the exception of a minority of captains and lieutenants. After the Military Club's examination, officers in uniform and armed campaigned for the opposition. "The garrisons and the Military School itself were fermenting with revolt". The atmosphere at the Club was unruly and angry.
Election The election took place in an agitated atmosphere, and government supporters, controlling the official machine, secured Artur Bernardes' victory in March 1922. It was widely known that the ballot boxes were rigged. Unlike previous elections, the opposition contested the results and called for a Court of Honor to arbitrate the process. To maintain the pressure, it radicalized its speech and suggested a way out by force. In April, J.J. Seabra spoke: "If this patriotic and honorable solution by the Court of Arbitration is not accepted, we will have a struggle and bloodshed". Government supporters were not intimidated. In May Raul Soares replied: "If the armed classes think they have the right to make a revolution, we think it is our duty to quell it". This intransigence accelerated radicalization. The opposition press denounced the arrests and transfers of anti-Bernardes lieutenants. On 7 June, Congress confirmed the results of the election. The oppositionists were removed from the Chamber of Deputies committees and from the electoral recognition work. All that remained was to appeal to the military.
Nilo Peçanha engaged in military agitation only as a form of pressure and did not want a revolt, but rather a popular movement before Congress on inauguration day on 15 November. He was listed in the police inquiry following the uprising, but the charges that he was implicated in the uprising were not substantiated. Different from what Peçanha planned, a military movement on a national scale was outlined with the goals of removing Epitácio Pessoa and preventing the inauguration of Artur Bernardes. For years, criticism of electoral fraud had paved the way for the idea of a violent solution.
Profile of the rebels
The mobilization that would culminate in the armed revolt sought to purify the armed forces from the interference of civilian politics and restore the pride of the army. Dissident soldiers considered politics dominated by the "low and private interests" of status quo supporters; for them, civilian politicians had betrayed the Republic, which had been proclaimed by the army. They were dissatisfied with the army's position in society, not accepting obedience without question. Their rebellious inclinations came from esprit de corps, rather than a conscious plan to remake society, which would come in later movements. There was no revolutionary manifesto in the midst of the revolt; rather it was at first an institutional one, defending military honor against the figure of Artur Bernardes. It was, nevertheless, the expression of a revolutionary climate and the wear and tear of the regime that was not very open to new political, economic and social demands. Participants had the identity of a moral elite capable of defeating the oligarchies.