Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira (1902-1976) was president of Brazil from 1956 to 1961 and became a symbol for Brazil's economic development. However, his later years were marred by severe persecution at the hands of the military men who seized control of Brazil in April of 1964.

Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira was born on September 12, 1902 in the poor diamond-mining town of Diamantina in Minas Gerais. After his Brazilian father died when he was a young child, Kubitschek adopted the use of his mother's Czech name. After graduating from a local seminary, he trained as a physician at the University of Minas Gerais, where he graduated in 1927. He worked at the surgery clinic of the Santa Casa de Misericordia in Belo Horizonte and then studied for two years in hospitals in Paris, Vienna, and Berlin. He returned to Brazil and established his own practice in Belo Horizonte, the same year he married Sarah...