The newspaper O Fluminense – published only on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays – had to wait until November 17 to announce the declaration of the republic, which had been established two days earlier, on November 15, 1889. There had already been protests for the end of the empire for some time, but it was only through a military coup led by Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca, head of the Brazilian Army at the time, that Emperor Dom Pedro II was removed from power and the republic proclaimed at Campo de Aclamação, known today as the Praça da República, or Square of the Republic.
Neither the military nor the elite were satisfied with a centralized imperial power, which did not allow for provincial autonomy. Wealthy rural landowners also supported the republic, as they felt the empire should have given them compensation for their loss of “property” after the abolition of slavery in May of 1888 (“property”, in the case, meant the enslaved black people). With the end of slavery, there was no longer any reason for these landowners to support the imperial Brazilian model.
The military coup that established the regime took place with little repression and violence, but the newspaper O Fluminense only reported on the most tense moments. When Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca made a prison order for any members of the military who would resist the Republic, the baron of Ladário, minister of the navy at the time, reacted with gunfire. The Baron did not hit anyone, but he was shot by one of the lieutenants who accompanied Deodoro. “During this incident, the Baron of Ladário, ex-minister of the navy, resisted arrest and suffered shots and sword wounds. The Federative Republic of Brazil was then established and the Provisional Government nominated,” the article reads.