Afonso Augusto Moreira Pena (30 November 1847 – 14 June 1909) was a Brazilian lawyer, professor, and politician who served as the sixth president of Brazil, from 1906 until his death in 1909. Pena was elected in 1906, the chosen successor of president Rodrigues Alves. Pena was the first politician from Minas Gerais to win the presidency, ending the series of politicians from São Paulo who had held the presidency since 1894. Before his presidency, he served as the 4th vice president of Brazil, under Rodrigues Alves (1903–1906) after the death of Silviano Brandão. Pena was a monarchist. He was the only member of Emperor Pedro II's cabinet to become president of Brazil and the first Brazilian president to die in office.
Pena was born in Santa Bárbara, Minas Gerais, in 1847. His father, Domingos José Teixeira Pena, was a Portuguese immigrant who owned slaves and a gold mine. After graduating with a law degree from the Faculty of Law of São Paulo and becoming a doctor at the same institution, Pena returned to his hometown, where he began to work as an attorney, later moving to Barbacena and becoming known for defending slaves. His political career began in 1874 when he joined the Liberal Party and was elected to the Provincial Assembly of Minas Gerais. In 1878, he was elected general deputy for Minas Gerais. In the succeeding years he reconciled legislative work with some periods occupying ministries—Ministry of War (1882), Agriculture (1883–1884), and Justice (1885).
After the proclamation of the Republic, Pena withdrew from public life; however, he was soon called upon to join the Republican Party of Minas Gerais (PRM) and run for the State Senate in order to help with the creation of the new state constitution. Pena was elected for the position in 1891 and presided over the commission that was tasked with drafting the constitution. After resigning his position in the Senate, Pena was elected president of Minas Gerais by consensus of the several political currents in the state, serving from 1892 to 1894. It was during his administration that Belo Horizonte was established as the future state capital (which at that time was Ouro Preto) and the Faculty of Law of Minas Gerais was founded. After presiding over the Bank of the Republic from 1895 to 1898, Pena became vice president to Rodrigues Alves in 1903. As vice president, he also served as president of the Senate.
Pena became president of Brazil in 1906 after an uncontested single-candidate election. He was the first Brazilian president to intervene in the coffee economy, putting into practice the Taubaté Agreement, after which the federal government began to buy production surplus in order to maintain the high price of coffee in international markets. Pena's government promoted the expansion of railways and immigration, the modernization and reorganization of the Brazilian Army with the introduction of the Sortition Law, and the rearmament of the Brazilian Navy, with the acquisition of new ships. Pena also supported Cândido Rondon's expeditions in the Amazon rainforest, which linked it to Rio de Janeiro by telegraph. In the international sphere, Brazil took part in the Hague Convention of 1907, with a delegation led by Ruy Barbosa, and solved its border issues with neighboring countries. Tensions with Argentina reached a peak due to Brazil's acquisition of the Minas Geraes-class battleships, which provoked the South American dreadnought race, and both countries hovered on the brink of war. In his final years in the presidency, Pena unsuccessfully tried to nominate David Campista as his successor. Pena died from severe pneumonia in 1909, being succeeded by Nilo Peçanha.
Born on 30 November 1847 in Santa Bárbara do Mato Dentro—currently the municipality of Santa Bárbara, Minas Gerais—Afonso Pena was the seventh of twelve children of Domingos José Teixeira Penna and Anna Moreira Teixeira Penna; being his mother's firstborn, as she was his father's second wife. Domingos was a Portuguese immigrant from São Salvador da Ribeira de Pena (also spelled "da Penha") and in the new country he owned land, a gold mine, and a large number of slaves. Domingos' father, Manuel José de Carvalho Penha (b. 1769), was supposedly the first to adopt the name "Pena".
While initially following a military career in the National Guard, Domingos later abandoned it; his earnings were sufficient to provide the family with a standard of living described as "comfortable". Afonso's mother came from an influential family in Santa Bárbara politics. Thus, Afonso's family was part of Minas Gerais' elite. As a child, he was taken care of by the nursemaid Ambrosina, a slave. Pena would often accompany his father to the gold mines in Brumado and São Gonçalo do Rio Abaixo. According to José Anchieta da Silva, Pena was an early abolitionist who fought for better working conditions for his father's slaves; on one occasion, upon seeing a pregnant slave working in a mine, Pena spoke to the overseer, after which it was decided that pregnant slaves would no longer work in the mines from the sixth month of pregnancy onwards, and their only task would be "to cook or wash clothes".
After receiving his first schooling at his mother's house from private tutors, Pena went on to study at the Caraça School in 1857, at the age of ten. The school, isolated from major urban centers, was maintained by the Lazarist priests, and Pena's father was one of its most prominent creditors. At the school, he had theology, ethics, philosophy, mathematics, geometry, history, rhetoric, and foreign language classes. Pena finished his studies in the Caraça School on 16 January 1864 and later moved to the city of São Paulo to study at the Faculty of Law in 1866, which, together with the Faculty of Law of Recife, formed the country's intelligentsia at the time.
During his studies at the Faculty of Law, Pena was a colleague of Ruy Barbosa, Bias Fortes, Joaquim Nabuco, Castro Alves, and Rodrigues Alves. In 1870 Pena became, alongside Rodrigues Alves, an editor in chief of the faculty's journal Imprensa Acadêmica after a close election. There was supposed to be only one editor in chief, but the election unexpectedly ended in a tie. It was then agreed to include both Pena and Alves as chief editors. The journal, focused on debating academic and political issues, was influenced by French authors such as Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, and Émile Zola.
Although not a freemason, in the Faculty of Law he joined the Bucha—a secret student society of a liberal, abolitionist, and republican nature, which was inspired by the German Burschenschaft associations and founded by professor Julius Frank—and became chief of Bucha's "General Communion". This association helped students that could not afford to pay for their studies. Pena maintained contact with other Bucha members, even after finishing his studies at the faculty.
Pena was an adept of natural law and an opponent of positivism, as he was a fervent Catholic and sympathetic to the monarchy in Brazil. His ideas distanced him from the Brazilian positivists, who defended the separation of Church and State and the creation of a military republic in the country. Two other movements divided Brazil during his years at the Faculty of Law: abolitionism and republicanism. Pena supported the former but not the latter, refusing to sign the 1870 Republican Manifesto, as he considered Brazil was not ready for a regime change.
Pena graduated with a Law degree on 23 October 1870. He became a Doctor of Law at the same institution on 29 August 1871 – the only one in his class – after defending his thesis Letra de Câmbio on 19 June of that year. Upon receiving his doctorate, Pena gave a speech in which he expressed his abolitionist thoughts, concluding that "the entire country is agitated to solve, in accordance with the principles of justice, the great question of the centuries – the emancipation of an enslaved race". After turning down an invitation to teach at his alma mater, he returned to Minas Gerais, where he began to work as a lawyer, at first practicing law in his hometown and later in Barbacena.