O Bombardeio de São Paulo 1924 — Quando o Governo Atacou a Cidade e Fez Centenas de Milhares Fugirem

Every resident of São Paulo knows about the 1932 Revolution. Almost no one knows that, eight years earlier, São Paulo experienced something worse—and it was the Brazilian government itself that dropped bombs on the city. In July 1924, a military revolt seized São Paulo in an attempt to overthrow President Arthur Bernardes. The federal government's response was not to surround the rebels. It was to bombard the entire city. For 23 days, artillery rained down grenades on working-class neighborhoods like Brás, Mooca, and Belenzinho—neighborhoods full of people, with no military targets. The strategy was clear: to spread terror among civilians to force the rebels to retreat. On a single day, up to 130 grenades per hour fell on residential areas. The Olympia Theater, in Brás, full of families who had lost their homes, collapsed on top of them. The streets were littered with corpses that no one collected. And a third of the population—about 250,000 people out of a city of 700,000—simply fled on foot to the countryside. There were more than 700 dead. And São Paulo, which insists on remembering 1932, chose to forget 1924. Based on research by Ilka Stern Cohen and newspapers from that time. Subscribe. The Brazil they didn't tell you about continues here.