Manuel do Nascimento Vargas

Manuel do Nascimento Vargas (25 November 1844 – 21 October 1943) was a Brazilian military officer and politician who is best known as the father of President Getúlio Vargas. He served as mayor of São Borja from 1907 to 1911.

Biography

Vargas was born on 25 November 1844 in Passo Fundo in the province of Rio Grande do Sul, in the Empire of Brazil. He was one of fourteen children born to Luísa Maria Teresa Vargas, from Rio Pardo, and Evaristo José Vargas, from Encruzilhada. His father fought in the Ragamuffin War as a volunteer soldier of the Riograndense Republic.

He enlisted in the Imperial Army as a corporal during the Paraguayan War. Having served with distinction, by the end of the conflict Vargas had reached the rank of colonel and gained recognition as a war hero. After the war he left the army and settled as a rancher (estancieiro) in São Borja, in the Argentine border, and in 1872 married Cândida Dornelles, member of a powerful local family. They had five children: Viriato, Protásio, Getúlio, Espártaco and Benjamim.

On the proclamation of the Republic in 1889, Vargas became the head of the Rio-grandense Republican Party (Partido Republicano Riograndense) in São Borja. A few years later, in 1893, the Federalist Revolution broke out in Rio Grande do Sul, an attempt by federalist rebels (known as "maragatos") to overthrow the state governor, Júlio de Castilhos. During the war he was promoted to colonel by President Floriano Peixoto, and finally to brigade general by Floriano's successor Prudente de Moraes.

Vargas died on 21 October 1943 at Guanabara Palace, his son Getúlio's official residence as president of Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro. His cause of death was attributed to bronchopneumonia. At the time of his death, little over a month before turning 99, Vargas suffered from blindness but remained lucid. He was buried next to his wife Cândida in São Borja.