page_title: Luís Carlos Prestes
section_title: Later Life and Death
hierarchical_section_title: Luís Carlos Prestes / Later Life and Death
caption_attribution_description: English: Prestes (left) with Leonel Brizola (center), whom Prestes supported in the 1980s after leaving the PCB.
context_page_description: Luís Carlos Prestes was a Brazilian revolutionary and politician who served as the General-Secretary of the Brazilian Communist Party from 1943 to 1980 and a Senator for the Federal District from 1946 to 1948. One of the leading Communists in Brazil, Prestes has been regarded by many as one of Brazil’s most charismatic yet tragic figures for his leadership of the 1924 tenente revolt and his subsequent work with the Brazilian Communist movement. The 1924 expedition earned Prestes the nickname The Knight of Hope.
  Beginning in 1924, as a young army officer, Prestes was a leading figure in an abortive military revolt. After its failure, he led a band of rebel troops, known as the Prestes Column, on a three-year, 14,000-mile trek through the remote Brazilian interior in a futile attempt to stir peasant opposition to the Government. Eventually, the rebels went into exile in Bolivia.Although the effort failed, he became a romantic hero.
  He went on to become the general-secretary of the Brazilian Communist Party, which advocated ending payments on the national debt, nationalization of foreign-owned companies, and land reform.
context_section_description: In 1970, Prestes went to Moscow with his second wife and children, and only returned to Brazil after amnesty for political offenders was granted ten years later. By the mid-1970s, the dictatorship, having effectively eliminated the other armed leftist movements, turned its sights on the PCB, targeting and killing some of its top leaders, but by that point, Prestes had been in exile for a couple of years.
  Ultimately, Prestes returned to Brazil with the military’s general amnesty of 1979 that pardoned political prisoners and exiles (while also pardoning any and all military members and officials tied to torture or the execution of the regime’s opponents). Despite the return of the man many saw as the figurehead and leader of the Brazilian Communist Party, the remnants of the party remained divided over what paths to pursue as Brazil returned to democratization, riven by questions over whether to support the institutional transition or to demand a more radical revolution.  While many could and did acknowledge Prestes’s historical importance to the left in Brazil, they felt that, at over 80 years old, he was no longer the appropriate leader, and he was removed from his position as secretary-general of the PCB.
  He became a supporter of the Brazil's Democratic Labour Party and took part in Leonel Brizola's presidential campaign in 1989.
  In his final days, nearly penniless, Prestes was largely supported by architect Oscar Niemeyer, a long-time Communist sympathizer and designer of many buildings in Brasilia. Prestes died of a heart attack on March 7, 1990, aged 92.
caption: Prestes (left) with Leonel Brizola (center), whom Prestes supported in the 1980s after leaving the PCB.
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