Ottoni, Teofilo Benedito (1807–1869)

Teofilo Benedito Ottoni (b. 27 November 1807; d. 17 October 1869), Brazilian statesman and entrepreneur, perhaps the foremost radical Liberal ideologue of his time. As a student at the Naval Academy, Ottoni associated with many of the leaders of the opposition to Pedro I. He began his apprenticeship as a liberal polemicist and a journalist in the 1820s. In the early regency, he separated from his moderado mentors as a radical, calling for constitutional reform; as a Minas Gerais provincial deputy in 1835, and a national deputy for Minas Gerais after 1838, his star in the emergent Liberal Party rose high. Ottoni was a stalwart of the Majority movement (1840) and the Liberal Revolt of 1842, and was seen as the party chieftain in the Chamber of Deputies during the failed Liberal interregnum of the 1840s.

As a merchant and entrepreneur, Ottoni had called for infrastructural development since 1832; by the mid-1840s, he had begun to shift his interest from the disappointments of Liberal politics to steamship and road linkage between northern Minas Gerais and the coast. From 1846 to 1858, he devoted himself to this Mucuri project, which brought him both failure and success. His subsequent return to politics quickly restored him to prominence, again on the party's left. By 1860 he was widely considered the most popular chief of the Liberals, and his campaign writing enjoyed general renown. A senator for Minas Gerais by 1864, he led the party's radical wing in the era of renewed ideological definition, figuring in the rebirth of the Liberal Party in 1868 and influencing the Liberal Manifesto of 1869, which defined the party's program in opposition.

See alsoBrazil, Political Parties: Liberal Party .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Joaquim Nabuco, Um estadista do império, vols. 1 and 2 (1898–1899).

Paulo Pinheiro Chagas, Teofilo Ottoni, ministro do povo, 2d rev. ed. (1956).

Leslie Bethell, ed., Brazil: Empire and Republic (1989), chaps. 2 and 3.

Additional Bibliography

Prado, Maria Emília. O estado como vocação: Idéias e práticas políticas no Brasil oitocentista. Rio de Janeiro: Access Editora, 1999.

Vespucci, Ricardo. Rebeldes brasileiros: Homens e mulheres que desafiaram o poder. São Paulo: Editora Casa Amarela, 2001.

                                        Jeffrey D. Needell