Figueiredo, João Baptista de Oliveira

(1918–1999)

   Army general and president of Brazil from March 1979 to March 1985. He was the last of the five military presidents following the 1964 coup that toppled the left-leaning President João Goulart. Figueiredo was born in Rio de Janeiro. He graduated from a Rio de Janeiro military school and then began his military career, in 1935, as a cadet at the Escola Militar do Realengo, the national military academy in Rio de Janeiro. He finished first in the military academy, the junior officers’ school, and the army command and staff school. He then taught at the Agulhas Negras military academy, the Escola Militar do Realengo, the officers’ graduate school, and the army command and staff school. His subject of expertise was military intelligence.

   After the coup of 1964, which he helped plan, he was appointed the head of the Rio de Janeiro section of the newly created Serviço Nacional de Informações (SNI, National Intelligence Service). He served as the head of the military cabinet during the administration of Emílio Garrastazú Médici (1969–1974), and the head of the SNI under the administration of Ernesto Geisel (1974–1979). On 5 January 1979 Geisel named Figueiredo to succeed him as president. Geisel was the first military president to name his successor, bypassing the military high command. Over the objection of hard-liners, Geisel had begun a process of political liberalization known as distensão (relaxation), and Figueiredo, who took office on 15 March 1979, completed the process, then known as abertura (opening). In August 1979 Figueiredo issued an amnesty to all those imprisoned or exiled for political crimes during the dictatorship-though as a concession to the hard-line, the amnesty covered the torturers, as well. He also returned Brazil to civilian rule: on 15 January 1985 Tancredo Neves, an opposition candidate, was elected president. Figueiredo died on 24 December 1999.