Adolpho Affonso da Silva Gordo

Adolpho Affonso da Silva Gordo belonged to the group of historical Republicans who founded the Republican Partyof São Paulo (PRP). He was awarded a degree from the Faculty of Law of the Largo São Francisco in São Paulo. As a student, he was already devoted to the Republican cause. He practiced law and carried out a career in politics. As a federal congressmanby the PRP Party, he participated in the 1891 Constitutional Convention, which forwarded the country’s first Republican Constitution. In 1913, elected for the Senate, he occupied the chair of the deceased Campos Salles. He remained as a senator until 1929, when he died in a car crash in Rio de Janeiro.

Sugar mills and sugarcane plantations were established in the banks of Piracicaba River. The city of Constituição was a part of the so-called “Sugarcane Quadrilateral” that dominated the São Paulo society from the end of the 18th Century up to the mid-19th Century.

Adolpho Gordo’s father was a Portuguese man from poor origins. Sheltered by Captain Caetano

José Gomes Carneiro in his sugar mill situated in Itu, he made an apprenticeship as an administrator. He worked in the sugarcane plant – the Morro Azul farm – owned by Brigadier Jordão in Piracicaba. He then ascended socially and received acknowledgement from the Piracicaban society.

The family moved into Santos in 1861, where Antonio José became coffee factor and opened the Silva Gordo & Comp., dedicated to the export commodities and import manufactured goods. He also dedicated himself to money lending. Business prospered thanks to coffee and the inauguration of the São Paulo Railway connecting Santos to Jundiaí.

Antonio José died in 1868 and left Adolpho Gordo as an orphan at the age of 10

This Law School was created in 1827 and became a key institution to form the national elite of governmental leaders. Its role was well played: Bachelors of Laws ascended to the highest positions of the Brazilian Empire in its executive, legislative, and judiciary branches.

Adolpho Gordo started his juridical and social sciences studies in 1875. He founded the Academic Republican Club in 1876 as well as the academic magazineThe Republic, the official Club journal, where he acted as a publisher.

Adolpho Gordo moved into Capivari, where he acted as an attorney at law. He married Ana Pereira de Campos Vergueiro, granddaughter of Senator Vergueiro. An alliance was consolidated between elite families of São Paulo. The Silva Gordo’s had already maintained connections with the Moraes de Barros and the Ferraz Salles families.

Adolpho Gordo moved into São Paulo, in 1887, due to having been elected as a member of the PRP Party Permanent Committee. He settled a law office with Antonio Mercado in São Bento Street.

São Paulo became a focal point for politics as the Capital City of the Province. With a population amounting to almost 55 thousand inhabitants (1886), the city experienced an extraordinary process of urbanization.

In 1888, the Abolition of Slavery sealed the fate of monarchy. The Proclamation of the Republic found a weakened Empire whose days w ere numbered.

“A simple military parade was sufficient to lead it to its last breath…” (Prado Jr., 1963, p. 94).

“(…) The Federation is not harmonized with the monarchy because it is correlated with the Republic”, declared Alberto Salles, the PRP Party ideologist and Campos Salles’ brother.

A Republic stood for the defense of political autonomy and economic freedom for the provinces.

As PRP Party representatives, Adolpho Gordo and Francisco Glicério witnessed the Proclamation of the Republic.

The Magna Carta consolidated the principles of a republican democratic civil order: secular state, presidential system, federation and autonomy of the federate units.

The recessionary economic policy the “governors’ politics”, inflamed presidentialism, and the enhancement of Campos Salles’ personal powers led the PRP Party to split up. The dissenters, including Adolpho Gordo and Júlio Mesquita, guided by Prudente de Moraes, founded the Dissident Republican Party (PRD).

Deprived of a mandate from 1903 to 1906, Adolpho Gordo devoted himself to Law and the organization of the PRD Party. In the law office, with his partner Antonio Mercado, among other cases, he took care of his kindred’s businesses.

Adolpho Gordo married Albertina Vieira de Carvalho in 1904. Their union broadened the connections with the São Paulo State elite. Adolpho Gordo became the uncle of Júlio César de Mesquita Filho and obtained a kinship with Cerqueira César and Campos Salles.

Adolpho Gordo was elected and nominated as a Federal Congressman by the PRD Party in the polls of January 1906. That is how a gradual rapprochement with the PRP leaders began.Such harmonization sealed the end of activities of the dissident party and led to his return to PRP.

In retaliation against the strike led by railway workers from the Paulista Railway and the ascending working classes, Adolpho Gordo proposed the banishment of foreigners and leaders of the movement.

New elections were held in August 1913 to recompose the representation of São Paulo State in the Senate. Adolpho Gordo, the favorite PRP candidate, obtained an expressive number of votes.

The free passes available for the politician in railways attested to how great a distance was roamed about the country in order to visit his electorate.

The new legislation was aimed not only at the prevention of urban strikes, but against countryside movements as well. In following years, 1919, 1920 and 1921, the congress preparedlegislation more repressive.

The great repercussion caused by the 1917 Strike led Adolpho Gordo to present a bill of law about labor-related accidents, assisted by the State Labor Department. Upon approval, the bill of law resulted in the Adolpho Gordo Law number 3,724, passed on January 15, 1919.

At the request of PRP, Adolpho Gordo presented a press law project. The criticisms were huge, as shownby a caricature in the journal O Malho. Oppositors went as far as life-threatening. The law was approved and sanctioned by Arthur Bernardes on November 1923.

The reform was driven at Article 6 and was meant to provide the central government with enhanced powers, which was detrimental to the federate states. Opposition to the reform went as far as life-threatening. The reform was approved with immediate reaction.

The Estado de S. Paulo newspaper was contrary to the strengthening of presidential powers as well as to the reduced autonomy of the states.

Adolpho Gordo took part of three international conferences organized by members of parliaments from different countries. In 1927, the conference was held in Rio de Janeiro.

Adolpho Gordo was the one to defend the constitutionality of women’s suffrage in the National Congress. He thus assisted the Brazilian Federation for Women’s Progress, presided by Bertha Lutz, to take the fight to the parliament.

In 1929, AG brought the debate about divorce on to the Senate as he was alarmed about the changes in times and habits, the huge amount of petitions for marital separation, and because he was convinced that only divorce with absolute dissolution of marriage could preserve family.

Adolpho Gordo died as a victim of a fatal car crash in Rio de Janeiro on June 29, 1929.

Adolpho Gordo lived a time of meaningful changes. His life was built on politics, a legacy of laws, projects, debates, ideas that impressed the society of São Paulo State and Brazil during the so-called First Republic.