They chose the retired general Isidoro Dias Lopes as their commander and planned a nationwide revolt, starting with the occupation of São Paulo in a few hours, cutting off one of the arms of the oligarchies that dominated the country in "coffee with milk" politics.

Fearing a social revolution, the elites influenced the leaders of the revolt to distance themselves from militant workers, such as the anarchists, who had offered their support to the rebels; Macedo Soares and others also unsuccessfully tried to broker a ceasefire.

After an unsuccessful invasion of southern Mato Grosso (the Battle of Três Lagoas), they entrenched themselves in western Paraná, where they joined rebels from Rio Grande do Sul to form the Miguel Costa-Prestes Column.

This document does not necessarily represent the rebels' general opinion, but it demonstrates the influence of some authoritarian thinkers of the period, such as Oliveira Viana, for whom a strong State would be necessary to prepare the population for liberalism.

[74] A unit of intense activity was the 4th Regiment of Mounted Artillery (RAM), from Itu, commanded by major Bertoldo Klinger, an officer of great prestige, who even agreed to assume a role in the revolutionary general staff.

[33] On 23 December 1923, his superior, general Abílio de Noronha, commander of the 2nd Military Region, questioned the news of a secret meeting in the unit; in response, he was assured that all officers were dispersed for the Christmas and New Year holidays.

The great asset of the tenentists in São Paulo was the support of major Miguel Costa, inspector of the Public Force's Cavalry Regiment,[78] a prestigious figure within and outside the institution and a friend of several army officers.

[112] The plotters almost lost two units, the 2nd Pack Artillery Group and the 5th Battalion of Caçadores, as the removal of their commanders was requested by Abílio de Noronha to the Ministry of War on 28 June.

General Estanislau Pamplona, artillery commander in the state, ordered the Quitaúna batteries that the exercises outside the barracks should not last more than two hours and should not come closer to São Paulo than the neighborhood of Pinheiros.

[142] The population was unaware of the leaders and objectives of the revolt,[143] and it was difficult to identify which side fighters belonged to; Army and Public Force uniforms were of different colors, but there were rebels and loyalists in both corporations.

Advised by general Estanislau Pamplona to withdraw to a safer location, governor Carlos de Campos went to the Pátio do Colégio complex of government buildings, where police and sailors were concentrated.

[172] Firmiano Pinto was tasked with offering Fernando Prestes de Albuquerque, vice-president of São Paulo, to take the place of the governor expelled from Campos Elíseos.

The rebels then offered the government to José Carlos de Macedo Soares, president of the Commercial Association of São Paulo, in a triumvirate with lieutenant leaders, but he refused.

[189] Finding the Municipal Market surrounded by an angry crowd, he ordered the doors to be broken down and the goods distributed to the poor, taking care only to avoid abuse, which was not entirely possible.

[191] In this sense, there was acquiescence from the rebels with the attacks on commercial buildings,[190] but the leaders distanced themselves from any looting or depredations,[192] promising to arrest the rioters, and at the same time, demanding that merchants not exaggerate in prices.

[244][245] Fleeing the violence, the population, especially in the most bombed regions, moved en masse to neighborhoods farther from the center, such as Casa Verde, Lapa, Perdizes and Santo Amaro, and to the interior of the state.

[253] The bombings, fires and looting caused plenty of losses to São Paulo's economic elite, who acted actively to defend their properties and prevent the collapse of the city.

[276] In organized civil society, the greatest support, even if only moral,[277] came from guilds, unions, and associations dominated by anarchists and libertarian socialists in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

[166][283] For this reason, the Commercial Association and other representatives of the elite demanded that the federal government suspend the bombing, and at the same time, warded off the tenentist leadership from the workers' movements, warning about subversion and civil war.

[279] Monteiro Lobato wrote in August that "the state of mind of the Brazilian people is one of open revolt", and the proof of this would be Carlos de Campos: "a government falls completely, destroyed in all its parts, and no one appears to defend it".

[304][305] In an open letter to the governor, he and other prominent paulistas, including figures from the PRP, warned that "loyalism does not exist in private", and civil servants, merchants, industrialists and academics sympathized with the revolution.

Local political elites belonged to the Republican Party of São Paulo and tended to support the government, to the point of organizing patriotic battalions to fight the revolt.

[326] But the loyalists spread their forces too thinly and acted passively, while Cabanas had an experienced troop, which he kept concentrated and constantly on the move, using psychological warfare to mislead the opponent as to their direction and manpower.

[367] Macedo Soares wrote a letter to general Sócrates, arguing that "the victory of any of the fighting parties, if it is not immediate, will no longer save the State of S. Paulo and, therefore, Brazil, from the most desolate ruin".

[401][402] What has been called the bloodiest battle of the São Paulo revolt took place on 18 August, with the invaders defeated with heavy losses by the 12th Infantry Regiment and the Public Force of Minas Gerais.

[408] João Cabanas described the state of morale after leaving Porto Tibiriçá:[407] I had the intuition that we had reached the beginning of failure, and that we were going to enter the guerrilla regime, the last resort of revolutions that did not win in their first impetus.

[456][457] In the conspiracy centers and at the Luz HQ, the police seized bulletins, maps, confidential reports, command orders, encrypted messages, secret codes and private correspondence incriminating hundreds of military personnel and civilians.

While the 1932 movement is commemorated with a state holiday, honored with monuments and street names, and assimilated as part of São Paulo's identity, the 1924 revolt was left without public references.

[432] During the final years of the Old Republic, São Paulo's Executive and Legislative branches did their best to denigrate the image of the revolt,[509] describing it in terms of "treason", "crime" and "disgrace", an "affront to our culture and our civilization".

In addition to these terms, the São Paulo revolt also acquired characteristics of a civil war: besides the scale of the destruction, the government's sovereignty was defied by a group that also considered itself representative of the nation and sought a legitimate monopoly on violence.