Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco

Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco (20 September 1897 – 18 July 1967) was a Brazilian military officer and politician who served as the 26th president of Brazil, the first leader of the Brazilian military dictatorship following the 1964 coup d'état. He was a member of a more liberal "legalist" faction within the regime, as opposed to his more authoritarian successors.

His administration oversaw the consolidation of the military regime. One of his first acts was the enactment of Institutional Act No. 2, which abolished the multi-party system in the country and granted the President of the Republic the power to revoke the mandates of congressmen and call for indirect elections. In Brazilian foreign policy, he began to seek economic, political, and military support from the United States. He was the son of General Cândido Borges Castelo Branco, the sixth grandson of the eleventh Lord of Pombeiro and his wife, the ninth Lady of Belas, and his wife Antonieta de Alencar Gurgel, a member of the family of the writer José de Alencar.

Castelo Branco was born in a wealthy Northeastern Brazilian family having roots in Coura (Paredes de Coura), Portugal. His father, Cândido Borges Castelo Branco, was a general. His mother, Antonieta Alencar Castelo Branco, came from a family of intellectuals (which included the writer José de Alencar).

He was married to Argentina Vianna, and had two children, Nieta and Paulo.

Castelo Branco joined the Brazilian Army at Rio Pardo Military School in Rio Grande do Sul. In 1918, he joined the Military School of Realengo in Rio de Janeiro, as an infantry cadet, and was declared second lieutenant in 1921, being assigned to the 12th Infantry Regiment in Belo Horizonte. In 1923 he reached the rank of first lieutenant. In 1924, still as lieutenant, he completed the Infantry Advanced Course and, upon returning to the 12th RI, was assigned the task of commanding a detachment from the unit and integrating the legal forces that would come to grips with and overcome internal revolts hatched in São Paulo in 1925. He then returned to the Military School of Realengo as an infantry instructor in 1927. He participated, like many other lieutenants of his time, in the Brazilian Revolution of 1930.

In 1931, he attended the Command and General Staff College (ECEME), in which he was the first placed of his class. Promoted to Major in 1938, he was enrolled in the French War College and upon returning to Brazil, he served as an instructor at the Military School of Realengo.

He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1943 and attended the Command and General Staff College in the United States. Then he was head of the 3rd. Section (Operations) of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force (FEB) during World War II, in Italy, remaining for three hundred days on the battlefields. He sent sixty letters to his wife, Argentina Viana Castelo Branco, and his two sons. At FEB, he planned and implemented military maneuvers in combat in Italy, especially at the Battle of Monte Castello. According to Marshal Cordeiro de Farias, Castello won exceptional prestige at FEB, for being a great strategist and having a privileged head.

Promoted to Colonel in 1945, Castelo Branco returned to Brazil with the firm intention of transmitting his professional experiences to the officers of the Army. In this way, it assumed the position of Director of Studies of the ECEME, and transformed this school into a true center of doctrinal investigations. Castelo Branco systematized, mainly between 1946 and 1947, the reasoning method for the study of decision factors, recommended by the French Military Mission, with a structure of work within the command, better disciplining the activities of the Commander and his Staff Officers.