Background
Augusto Pestana was born on May 22, 1868 in Rio de Janeiro, then capital of the Empire of Brazil, to Manuel José Pestana, a civil servant of the Brazilian Imperial Household and to Januária de Abreu Pestana, daughter of a customs officer. Both his parents were of Portuguese heritage and belonged to middle-class families established in Rio de Janeiro at the time of the transfer of the Portuguese Court to Brazil in 1808.
In spite of his conservative and devout Catholic upbringing, the young Pestana was an avid reader of the French philosopher Auguste Comte and joined, much to the chagrin of his father, the Brazilian republican and positivist movement, which would contribute to overthrow the monarchy in 1889.
Manuel José Pestana died on August 28, 1883, leaving the fifteen-year-old Augusto Pestana to care for his mother and his four younger sisters. The Brazilian Imperial House wanted to help the family and offered Pestana a scholarship at the Pedro II School and at a university of his choice. He politely refused the offer and explained to Isabel, Princess Imperial of Brazil that, as a Republican, "one could not accept any favors from the Crown". Pestana would instead teach Portuguese, History, Geography and Mathematics to fund his own studies at the Escola Politécnica do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's oldest Engineering school, from which he would earn a degree of civil engineer at age 20, the youngest in his class.
Read more about this topic: Augusto Pestana (politician)
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