Pedro Aurélio De Góis Monteiro

Pedro Aurélio de Góis Monteiro (12 December 1889 – 16 October 1956) was a Brazilian army general and politician, noted as one of the architects of the Cohen Plan and of the subsequent 1937 Brazilian coup d'état.

Biography

Pedro Aurélio de Góis Monteiro was born in São Luís do Quitunde, Alagoas. The son of Pedro Aureliano Monteiro dos Santos and Constança Cavalcanti de Góis Monteiro. Coming from a family with military tradition, he began his career at the Porto Alegre War School and reached the rank of army general. Over the years he adopted a loyalist stance when fighting the Copacabana Fort revolt, ''tenentism'' and the Prestes Column during the 1920s. The outbreak of the Brazilian Revolution of 1930 led him to exercise military command of it, contributing to its success.

From 1 June 1931 to 25 April 1932, he commanded the 2nd Military Region, based in São Paulo.

He also commanded the 1st Military Region, in Rio de Janeiro, between 24 May and 9 July 1932.

He then commanded the federal troops that put down the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932 and, during the fighting, he lost his brother, captain Cícero Augusto de Góis Monteiro, who was a member of the 9th Infantry Regiment of the Brazilian Army.

After this event, he was appointed Minister of War in the Getúlio Vargas government, between 18 January 1934 and 7 May 1935, until Eurico Gaspar Dutra was chosen as his successor, which did not prevent Góis Monteiro from actively participating of the establishment and maintenance of the Estado Novo (1937–1945), an event that helped consolidate his family as the dominant political force in Alagoas, a state governed by two of his brothers between 1941 and 1945.

Demonstrating the fascist stance of Getúlio Vargas' political actors during the Estado Novo, among whom Góis Monteiro was one of the most prominent names, Cláudio de Lacerda Paiva described the Vargas government agents in the following terms: "the one who censored was Lourival Fontes, the one who tortured was Filinto Muller, the one who instituted fascism was Francisco Campos, the one who carried out the coup was Dutra and the one who supported Hitler was Góis Monteiro".ROSE, R. S. ''Uma das coisas esquecidas: Getúlio Vargas e controle social no Brasil (1930-1954)''. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2001, p. 17.

At the time he was Minister of War, he drafted the National Security Doctrine that inspired several laws in this regard both in the Vargas Era and in the 1964 military regime. In September 1937, Góis Monteiro "discovered" the Cohen Plan, which was a false planning, written by the then captain Olímpio Mourão Filho, of a communist revolution in Brazil. This plan was later used by Vargas as justification for the 1937 coup that gave rise to the Estado Novo.

In the 1934 indirect presidential election, he came third, winning 4 votes (1.61%).

Góes Monteiro was Chief of Staff of the Army between 2 July 1937 and 27 December 1943.

He returned to the Ministry of War in the last days of Vargas in power, on 9 August 1945. He remained in the position during the José Linhares government and in the first months of the Presidency of Eurico Gaspar Dutra, Dutra administration, until 14 October 1946.

After leaving power, he was elected senator for the Social Democratic Party in 1947. In 1945, his brother Ismar de Góis Monteiro had been elected to that same position and in 1958 it was Silvestre Péricles' turn to reach the country's senate. However, in 1950 Pedro Aurélio was unable to be re-elected and even rejected an invitation to be vice-president on the Vargas ticket.

He was chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces between 15 February 1951 and 1 December 1952. He was then a justice in the Superior Military Court, from 15 December 1952 until his death on 16 October 1956.

References

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1889 births
1956 deaths
Candidates for President of Brazil
Brazilian generals
Far-right politics in Brazil
Brazilian fascists
Fascism in Brazil
Brazilian anti-communists