Rebel tenentists, led by Isidoro Dias Lopes, withdrew from São Paulo, went down the Paraná River and settled in the region from Guaíra to Foz do Iguaçu, from where they faced the forces of the Brazilian government, commanded by general Cândido Rondon from October 1924.

They entered Paraguay to escape the government siege and returned to Brazil through southern Mato Grosso, continuing their armed struggle.

[1][2][3] The conflict had a strong impact on the physical and social structures of the region and brought attention to the outside world to the Brazilian national consciousness.

Several of the participating revolutionaries later occupied positions of power in the Estado Novo, which, seeking to integrate the region into the country, promoted the March to the West.

[4] Long before the arrival of the rebels, on 15 July, captain Dilermando de Assis was sent with a 60-man Provisional Regiment to defend Guaíra, which he called an "impregnable Constantinople".

On 31 August, the revolutionaries' vanguard, commanded by general João Francisco Pereira de Souza, took the first position in Paraná's territory, Porto São José.

[10] By the end of October, the rebels were all in a triangle formed by the Paraná, Piquiri and Iguaçu rivers,[11] an area larger than Switzerland, with two sides secured by international borders (with Argentina and Paraguay) and the rest covered through the Serra do Medeiros and other geographic features.

Economic activity was dominated by "obrages", large rural areas for the extraction of wood and yerba mate, with labor subject to debt slavery.

[23] Both the São Paulo officers and general Rondon thought in terms of static warfare, with large units and massive frontal attacks.

[37] General Rondon promised humane treatment to the prisoners, but as soon as they left his jurisdiction, they were treated with brutality,[30] and banished to the penal colony of Clevelândia, in Amapá, from where few would return alive.

On the way, remnants of the October Rio Grande do Sul revolt, led by Luís Carlos Prestes, finally reached the São Paulo rebels in the locality of Benjamim, on 3 April.