Joao Figueiredo
Joao Figueiredo said he would make Brazil a democracy or arrest anyone who objected, and by the end nobody was listening to him. He had run the national intelligence service under Geisel, who chose him to finish the transition. He was a cavalryman, blunt to the point of self-injury, and famous for saying he preferred the smell of horses to the smell of people. He was also the last general to govern Brazil. His first year gave away most of the regime's remaining hold. An amnesty law in August 1979 let the exiles come home and freed political prisoners, and it also covered the officers who had tortured them, which is why nobody in Brazil has been convicted for the crimes of the regime. The two-party system was abolished and real parties formed, among them the Workers Party built out of the metalworkers' strikes in the industrial belt of Sao Paulo. Direct elections for state governors returned in 1982. The hardliners fought it with bombs. Newsstands selling opposition papers were attacked, the lawyers' association was sent a letter bomb that killed a secretary, and in April 1981 a bomb went off early in a car at a concert in Rio, killing the army sergeant who was carrying it. The investigation was buried. Figueiredo, recovering from heart surgery, did not press it. The economy destroyed him. The second oil shock and American interest rates turned the borrowed miracle into a debt crisis, inflation passed a hundred per cent, and Brazil went to the International Monetary Fund in 1982. In 1984 millions marched for direct presidential elections. The amendment failed in Congress by twenty-two votes, and the opposition won the electoral college instead. Figueiredo left the palace by the back door without handing over the sash.
- Lived: 1918 CE – 1999 CE
- Nationality: Brazilian
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
