Carlos Lacerda

Carlos Frederico Werneck de Lacerda was born in Rio de Janeiro to a political family. In his youth he was close to the communist movement, but he broke with it in the late 1930s and converted to Catholicism in the 1940s. He founded the newspaper Tribuna da Imprensa in 1949 and became the sharpest critic of Getúlio Vargas. In August 1954 he was wounded in an attack on Rua Tonelero that killed Air Force Major Rubens Vaz, a crisis that ended with Vargas's suicide. Elected the first governor of Guanabara in 1960, he later fell out with the military regime, joined the Frente Ampla and lost his political rights in December 1968.

Lacerda remains one of the most polarizing figures of Brazil's 1946-1964 republic. Admirers see him as a brilliant orator and journalist, a determined anticommunist and an effective administrator whose Guanabara government built hundreds of schools, the Guandu water main and new sewage networks. Critics argue that his repeated appeals to prevent elected leaders from taking office weakened democratic institutions and helped open the way for the 1964 coup, and that favela removals uprooted poor communities. His later alliance with Kubitschek and Goulart against the military regime is seen by some as a democratic turn and by others as a response to his own blocked ambitions.