"...broached the most uncomfortable question in Brazilian politics on November 27, 1918, when it was asked clearly: who, in the whole of the Imperio, actually enjoyed the confidence of the public while also holding credibility with the powerful landed establishment and military?
Nascimiento Vargas discovered rudely that it was not he, upon the defeat of his emancipation law by the Chamber of Deputies. The vote was excruciatingly narrow, with three votes sufficient to change the outcome and with it likely the course of Brazilian history. But alas, on that day, 52 deputies voted nay, and 49 voted aye, and Vargas announced upon its defeat his resignation from the floor of the House of Deputies as his allies cried out in alarm and despair. Many of those who voted down the bill had done so because it was neither graduated nor compensated; proponents of the bill had denounced the idea of compensating slaveowners for slaves in their mid-forties as being utterly absurd, especially as the practice was on "borrowed time" with the march of aging from the Law of Free Birth continuing on.
The truth of the matter was that for Vargas, the defeat of his Law of Emancipation was simply the last straw. Rio de Janeiro saw almost weekly protests, riots and street fights between rival "veterans advocates" who were usually just unemployed, bored and angry and covered their ennui with violence and aesthetics of politics. Policy was nonexistent, and the General Assembly a vipers' den of rivalry, intrigue and subterfuge; assassinations and attempted assassinations were common, with a gunman even attempting to open fire upon Vargas in the House of Deputies itself just two weeks earlier. The job was thankless and bordering on impossible, and Vargas was unwilling to embarrass himself any longer.
This left Brazil adrift, again. Luis I, advised by a number of prominent aristocratic statesmen and the crucial Dom Leopoldo Augusto, chose not to call fresh elections just a year after the previous edition, fearing yet even further political displacement. In the past several months, a populist outfit led by former Admiral Isaias de Noronha had emerged, supported by street hoodlums referred to as the Verdes and calling themselves the Associacao Nacionalista with a focus on rebuilding Brazilian national pride through an unapologetic "pursuit," as Noronha called it, of the "pessimist tendency." What this meant exactly was left intentionally vague, but the brutal violence deployed by Noronha's legions of underemployed thugs left little to guess. That Noronha was at the head of such a movement was in and of itself partially concerning; if the former "lifeboat admiral" whose flagship had been sunk at Hilton Head could stand atop a rising wave of aggressive populism, then somebody with much more public credibility could do so, too.
Luis was refused by his cousin Dom Leopoldo Augusto, however; Nilo Pecanha and Delfim Moreira were experienced statesmen but both in terrible health, forcing them each to tearfully decline. Lauro Muller was too associated with the wartime government of Pinheiro Machado, a man who would only serve to provoke if appointed to government again. This left Luis with a figure whom he was reluctant to call upon, but could still command a cabinet once more of technocrats; Venceslaus Bras, a conservative but one who had not irritated too many people. Nonetheless, the debacle to close out 1918 proved yet again that the efforts of the establishment to sustain themselves represented nothing more than a rotating cast of the same aristocrats, and the military's grouchiest figures, still smarting from the defenestration of Fonseca, began to see Noronha as a potential alternative and increasingly became a pillar of his support, rather than attempting to block his ascent..."
- For Thine is the Glory: Brazil and Integralism
