📍Sao Borja, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
1882 – 1954“I was born Getúlio Dornelles Vargas on the 19th of April 1882 in São Borja, a town on the Uruguay River in the far south of Brazil, in the gaucho country of Rio Grande do Sul. The frontier cattle-ranching culture of São Borja gave me the toughness and the pragmatism that would characterise my political career. I seized power in a coup in 1930 and governed Brazil for most of the following twenty-four years — sometimes as authoritarian dictator, sometimes as elected president. I created Brazil's labour laws, industrialised the country, and built the Estado Novo on the model of European corporatism. When the military demanded my resignation in 1954 I shot myself through the heart, leaving a letter that said I was leaving life to enter history. The São Borja gaucho country was always the ground I stood on.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today
Sources: Levine, R. Father of the Poor? Vargas and His Era (1998), Cambridge University Press; Skidmore, T. Politics in Brazil 1930-1964 (1967), Oxford University Press