Joao Figueiredo, military ruler who opened Brazil to democracy, dies at 81

                  SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) -- Gen. Joao Figueiredo, who died on Friday at age
                  81, was Brazil's most reluctant president and will go down in history as the man who
                  stewarded the country's return to democracy after 20 years of military dictatorship.

                  Doctors in Rio de Janeiro told Reuters he died at home from heart and respiratory
                  failure early on Friday. President Fernando Henrique Cardoso declared three days of
                  mourning for the country's former leader, Cardoso's press office said.

                  Figueiredo, a moderate but controversial figure, ruled Brazil from 1979 to
                  1985, allowing, at the very end of his term, a civilian government and
                  president to take charge.

                  "He led the process ... toward political openness, allowing the country to
                  become a state of law and to enjoy full democracy," Vice President Marco
                  Maciel said on Friday. "This is the main mark that he left after his lamentable
                  death."

                  Opinions differed, however.

                  "Luckily, he wasn't a man of big ambitions. He simply did not hamper the
                  transition to democracy, which was the best thing he could do," said
                  historian Yuri Ribeiro, son of the Brazilian Communist Party leader Luis
                  Carlos Prestes, who lived in exile with his family during the military regime.

                  In March 1985, the general retired into seclusion, proclaiming that he
                  wanted to be forgotten. In 1987 he re-emerged to express his regret at the
                  path he followed because it led to "economic dictatorship."

                  "The biggest mistake of the (1964) revolution was to make me president,
                  because I'm responsible for this opening which I thought would lead to a
                  full-scale democracy," he said then.

                  "During the military rule, there was talk that Brazil had a dictatorship. Now I
                  ask: which is a bigger dictatorship, mine or the current economic
                  dictatorship?" he said, referring to the government's attempts to stem the
                  country's galloping inflation.

                  Figueiredo said he never wanted to be president but the army pressured him
                  into accepting the nomination as the successor to Gen. Ernesto Geisel. He
                  said he was a bad choice.

                  Though his stewardship of Brazil's return to democracy is probably his
                  greatest achievement, Figueiredo was more proud of some of his showcase
                  economic developments, like the world's largest dam, at Itaipu.

                  From the day he left the government on March 15, 1985, he was virtually
                  forgotten as he isolated himself at his private property outside Rio de
                  Janeiro, content to indulge in his favourite hobby, horse riding.

                  The mantle of power was thrust on him in 1979 by his mentor, President
                  Geisel, who nominated the former cavalry general as his candidate for
                  electoral college elections to choose his successor. Figueiredo won
                  comfortably.

                  Plucked from a comfortable niche as head of the feared military security
                  arm, the euphemistically named National Information Service (SNI),
                  Figueiredo, who played an active part in the 1964 coup as a lieutenant
                  colonel, doffed his uniform and sinister dark glasses to play a benign
                  politician.

                  His off-the-cuff comments delighted reporters. Asked once whether he liked
                  the smell of the crowds that greeted him, he retorted: "I prefer the smell of
                  horses."

                  He had a heart attack during his term and underwent surgery in the United
                  States. When he regained consciousness his first words were reputed to
                  have been: "How are my horses?"

                  But the equestrian passion was a prime cause of the ill health that plagued his
                  presidency. He suffered a compressed disc in a fall and had back trouble
                  ever after.

                  He steadfastly adhered to Geisel's policy of allowing a return to open
                  politics. Figueiredo refused, unlike his four military predecessors, to name a
                  successor. Tancredo Neves, leader of the opposition Democratic
                  Movement Party, won the January 1985 election but died before he could
                  take office. The vice president, Jose Sarney, became president.

                  Figueiredo had pledged to uphold the constitution, in which the architects of
                  the 1964 coup had enshrined the provision that future presidents be elected
                  indirectly by an electoral college. But he often appeared to waver in his
                  resolve.

                  Although he never went as far as allowing direct elections, Figueiredo began
                  the process of returning Brazil to democracy by lifting censorship, releasing
                  political prisoners and allowing those in exile to return. Direct elections were
                  not restored until 1989.

                  In the 10 years before Figueiredo came to power, hundreds of opposition
                  activists and leftist guerrillas were killed or disappeared and hundreds more
                  politicians, professors, musicians, writers and artists were forced to leave
                  Brazil.

                  However, the violence in Brazil was not as severe as that in Chile or
                  Argentina, where the military confessed to throwing scores of prisoners into
                  the ocean from airplanes and carrying out mass executions at stadiums.

                  Figueiredo held free, direct elections in November 1982 for state
                  governorships, assemblies and parliament, despite the concern of some
                  hardline military officers.

                  Born into a military family in his beloved Rio on Jan. 15, 1918, Joao Batista
                  Oliveira de Figueiredo entered military college at the age of 11. Graduating
                  brilliantly, he followed his father, also a general, into the cavalry.

                  Two of his brothers are generals and his father was an outspoken defender
                  of constitutional principles whose career suffered as a consequence during
                  the Getulio Vargas dictatorship in the 1930s.

                  Figueiredo is survived by his wife and two sons, who preferred business to a
                  military career.