Augusto Pestana (May 22, 1868 – May 29, 1934) was a Brazilian engineer and politician. Born in Rio de Janeiro, Pestana moved in the late 1880s to Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil's southernmost state, where he would become a specialist in railroad engineering and public administration, as well as one of the main leaders of the Republican Party of Rio Grande do Sul (PRR). 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 27, 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. Early career in Rio Grande do Sul A few months after graduation, Pestana accepted an invitation to move to Rio Grande do Sul in order to work as an engineer of the State commission responsible for the Porto Alegre-Uruguaiana railway connection. The job would acquaint him with the peculiar politics of Rio Grande do Sul within the newly founded Brazilian Republic, uniquely fashioned by the Comte-inspired dictatorship of Governor Júlio de Castilhos. Pestana would also witness the Riograndense civil war of 1893-1895, one of the bloodiest conflicts in Brazilian history. Castilhos appointed him Director for State waterways