Gaspar da Silveira Martins (5 August 1835 – 23 July 1901) was a Brazilian magistrate and politician. He was a provincial and general deputy, provincial president, minister of finance and senator of the

Empire of Brazil The Empire of Brazil was a 19th-century state that broadly comprised the territories which form modern Brazil and Uruguay until the latter achieved independence in 1828. The empire's government was a Representative democracy, representative Par ...

from 1880 to 1889.

Biography

Gaspar da Silveira Martins was a lawyer and politician who began his public life as a municipal judge in

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, or simply Rio, is the capital of the Rio de Janeiro (state), state of Rio de Janeiro. It is the List of cities in Brazil by population, second-most-populous city in Brazil (after São Paulo) and the Largest cities in the America ...

between 1858 and 1859. Later, he was a member of parliament (provincial and general), senator, minister of finance, president of the Province of Rio Grande do Sul and state councillor. He was born in Uruguayan territory five years after the country gained its independence from the

. At this time, the geographical limits between

Uruguay Uruguay, officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast, while bordering the Río de la Plata to the south and the A ...

and southern Brazil remained imprecise and were only defined in 1851. Early in his career, Silveira Martins was an anti-monarchist and liberal who harshly criticized the conservative governments of the 1870s. However, with the political developments of the time and the division of national politics into monarchists and republicans, he joined the

monarchists Monarchism is the advocacy of the system of monarchy or monarchical rule. A monarchist is an individual who supports this form of government independently of any specific monarch, whereas one who supports a particular monarch is a royalist. C ...

and some conservatives who advocated

parliamentarianism A parliamentary system, or parliamentary democracy, is a form of government where the head of government (chief executive) derives their democratic legitimacy from their ability to command the support ("confidence") of a majority of the legisl ...

. In 1862, he was elected provincial deputy for Rio Grande do Sul and in 1865 he founded the newspaper '' A Reforma'' in Porto Alegre, which was later transferred to Rio de Janeiro and became the official media of the federalists from Rio Grande do Sul. In 1872, he was deputy general, but resigned in 1873, a few months after taking over the Ministry of Finance because he didn't support a government bill to declare non-Catholic citizens ineligible. In 1880, he was elected senator and faced tough political competition with

Júlio de Castilhos Júlio Prates de Castilhos (29 June 1860 – 24 October 1903) was a Brazilian journalist and politician, having been elected ''Patriarch of Rio Grande do Sul''. Politics He was elected twice as the governor of Rio Grande do Sul Rio Grande ...

, his historic adversary. In 1889, Marshal Deodoro, a friend of Pedro II, agreed to participate in the campaign to depose Afonso Celso, the Viscount of Ouro Preto. However,

Benjamin Constant Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque (25 October 1767 – 8 December 1830), or simply Benjamin Constant, was a Swiss and French political thinker, activist and writer on political theory and religion. A committed republican from 1795, Constant ...

informed him that Silveira Martins, a dislike of Deodoro, would be chosen to succeed Afonso Celso. This event triggered the proclamation of the Republic, because Marshal Deodoro couldn't accept seeing an enemy, who pejoratively called him a ''sargentão'', as prime minister. As a result, Deodoro agreed to sign the decree establishing the provisional republican government.

After the deposition of Pedro II, Silveira Martins went into exile in Europe. In 1892, Marshal Deodoro granted him amnesty and he returned to Brazil, where he soon became dissatisfied with the conduct of the republican rulers. Upon his arrival, he attended meetings with other Brazilians who wanted to restore the parliamentary monarchy in Brazil. In one of them, he unsuccessfully insisted that Pedro II return to the country after Marshal Deodoro closed the National Congress. Next, he proposed to Princess Isabel that she allow her eldest son,

Pedro Pedro is a masculine given name. Pedro is the Spanish, Portuguese, and Galician name for ''Peter''. Its French equivalent is Pierre while its English and Germanic form is Peter. The counterpart patronymic surname of the name Pedro, meanin ...

, Prince of Grão-Pará, to be acclaimed Pedro III. In response, Princess Isabel stated that "first and foremost, she was a Catholic and, as such, she could not leave the education of her son, whose soul she had to save, to the Brazilians". Outraged, Silveira Martins replied: "Then, madam, you are destined for the convent." At a congress in

Bagé Bagé () is a Brazilian municipality located in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. In 2020, its population was 121,335 in a total area of 4,096 km2. It is the seventeenth largest city in the state according to the 2011 census. The city was f ...

, Silveira Martins proposed a constitutional reform and the implementation of parliamentarianism, in an effort to avoid an armed conflict; however, he was defeated. In 1893, the

Federalist Revolution The Federalist Revolution (Portuguese language, Portuguese: ''Revolução Federalista'') was a civil war that took place in southern Brazil between 1893 and 1895, fought by the federalists, opponents of Rio Grande do Sul state president, Júlio ...

began between those who defended greater powers for the President of the Republic and those who supported the decentralization of power, with more involvement from the states. In 1896, after the victory of Júlio de Castilhos, Silveira Martins organized a new congress of the Federalist Party, which continued to fight for parliamentarianism and a federal unitary state, in opposition to the 1891 Constitution. He gradually withdrew from political life and settled in the

Tacuarembó Department Tacuarembó () is the largest department of Uruguay and it is part of its northern region. Its capital is Tacuarembó. It borders Rivera Department to its north and east, the departments of Salto, Paysandú and Río Negro to its west and has th ...

. He died in

Montevideo Montevideo (, ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Uruguay, largest city of Uruguay. According to the 2023 census, the city proper has a population of 1,302,954 (about 37.2% of the country's total population) in an area of . M ...

, Uruguay, on July 23, 1901 Paulo José Pires Brandão, grandson of Conselheiro Antônio Ferreira Viana, met Silveira Martins at his grandfather's house. In his book ''Vultos do Meu Caminho'', he describes him as follows:

Tall, burly, with big glasses, an open white beard, very red skin. He didn't know how to speak softly, and even when he did, it was in the tone of a speech, and his clear, sonorous and strong voice invaded the room he was in, the corridors, the hall, the whole house, even across the street. He didn't speak into anyone's ear, he didn't tell secrets, nor did he have any, because his voice didn't allow for whispers, he didn't whisper: he tongued.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Silveira Martins, Gaspar da 1835 births 1901 deaths Liberal Party (Brazil) politicians Members of the Chamber of Deputies (Empire of Brazil) Brazilian monarchists

Biography

See also

References