Floriano Peixoto

Floriano Vieira Peixoto (; 30 April 1839 – 29 June 1895) was a Brazilian military officer and politician. A veteran of the Paraguayan War and several other conflicts in Brazil, he served as the president of Brazil from 1891 to 1894, and previously as vice president in 1891. Born in Template:Ill (a district in the city of Maceió in the state of Alagoas) and nicknamed the Iron Marshal (Template:Langx), he was the first vice president of Brazil to have succeeded the president mid-term.

Election

File:Monumento ao Marechal Floriano Peixoto - Alto.jpg

Monument to Marshal Floriano Peixoto, by Eduardo de Sá, in Downtown Rio de Janeiro

Floriano Peixoto was an army marshal (he was promoted to this rank in 1874) when elected vice president in February 1891, he gained notoriety throughout his life for his strong abolitionist, anti-racist, and anti-corruption stance. In November 1891, he rose to the presidency after the resignation of generalissimo Deodoro da Fonseca, the first president of Brazil. Floriano Peixoto came to the presidency in a difficult period of the new Brazilian Republic, which was in the midst of a general political and economic crisis made worse by the effects of the bursting of the Encilhamento economic bubble, but his policies successfully put an end to the successive economic crises that had plagued the country since 1889 and in a short period of time the economy stabilized and grew again. As vice president, he had also served as the President of the Senate.

Presidency

His government was marked by several revolutions and immense popular support. Floriano Peixoto defeated a naval officers' rebellion against him in 1893–1894 and the Federalist Revolution in the States of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná, with the use of strength during the same year to maintain territorial integrity.

His government was marked by an increased centralization of power, personalismo, republicanism, patriotism, nationalism, and for the fervent criticism of monarchy, with the "Florianista" ("Florianismo") cult of personality being the first phenomenon of a favorable political expression towards a republican politician in Brazil.

Legacy

A stamp depicting Peixoto

A stamp depicting Peixoto

He is often referred to as "the Consolidator of the Republic" and "the Iron Marshal". He left the presidency on 15 November 1894.

Despite the radically different views on his presidency at the time, later generations of Brazilians would eventually regard his dictatorial rule as necessary and more preferable than a never ending cycle of civil war and unrest.

Nossa Senhora do Desterro, the capital of the state of Santa Catarina, was renamed Florianópolis after the defeat of the federalist rebels in the city by the troops of Marshal Floriano Peixoto at the end of the Federalist Revolution.