The short answer
Of a generalized infection, on April 21, 1985, aged 75, at the Heart Institute in São Paulo. Brazil’s president-elect had hidden belly pains since late 1984 and was operated on only twelve hours before his inauguration. In 38 days he had seven operations, and the diagnosis moved from appendicitis to diverticulitis and, finally, to a benign intestinal tumor.
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A secret kept from the doctors
On January 15, 1985, the Electoral College chose Tancredo Neves, a civilian, to succeed the five generals who had ruled Brazil since the 1964 coup. The inauguration was set for March 15. Tancredo had a problem he told almost no one about. Since late 1984 he had been having pains in his belly, and he stayed away from doctors.
His press aide, José Augusto Ribeiro, later explained why. Tancredo feared the SNI, the regime’s intelligence service, would find out. An illness could give the military an excuse to overturn the whole transition and stop the inauguration. On March 11, four days before the ceremony, the doctors wanted to operate. He refused: without him in Congress on the day, he feared, the regime’s generals might contest the vice-president’s right to take office.
Twelve hours before the ceremony
On the night of March 14, it could wait no longer. At ten o’clock, twelve hours before the inauguration, Tancredo was taken to the Hospital de Base in Brasília and operated on. The first diagnosis was appendicitis.
Through the night, Congress argued over a question no one had expected: could the vice-president be sworn in when the president had not been? It decided he could. At ten the next morning José Sarney took the oath as vice-president and took over the presidency. In the official book of oaths, the page the calligraphers had prepared for Tancredo days earlier was marked in red: sem efeito, “of no effect”.
Thirty-eight days
What followed lasted 38 days, and the whole country followed it through medical bulletins. The diagnosis moved from appendicitis to diverticulitis and, at last, to a benign tumor in the intestine. Tancredo was operated on seven times, first in Brasília and then in São Paulo, where he was moved to the Heart Institute, the Instituto do Coração. People kept vigil at its door.
He died on April 21, 1985, aged 75. The government of Minas Gerais, the state he had governed, records the cause in its official biography: after seven operations, a generalized infection. The secrecy of the first weeks and the shifting diagnoses fed rumors at the time, but the recorded cause is that infection.
The same day as Tiradentes
The date struck everyone. April 21 is Tiradentes Day, the national holiday for the dentist-soldier from Minas Gerais hanged in 1792 for plotting independence from Portugal. Now another man from Minas had died on it. The story of that holiday is in Why is April 21 a holiday in Brazil?.
Millions followed the coffin through São Paulo, Brasília, Belo Horizonte and finally São João del-Rei, the town where he was born and where he is buried. A year later, a law placed him in the gallery of presidents as “elected and not sworn in”. Who he was, and how he won, is in Who was Tancredo Neves?.
Sources
- Federal Senate, Arquivo S: Tancredo Neves’s illness and the eve of the inauguration (José Augusto Ribeiro’s account)
- Government of Minas Gerais, “Tancredo de Almeida Neves”, gallery of governors (“Depois de sete cirurgias, faleceu vítima de infecção generalizada”)
- Lei nº 7.465, April 21, 1986
- Boris Fausto, História do Brasil (1994)