And finally, Tuesday, 31st. As usual he gets to work on the IInd Army HQ early. At 07:00 his Divisional Artillery commander, on vacation in Minas Gerais, phones him to note on abnormal military movement. He realizes the uprising has broken out, and Riograndino confirms it.

São Paulo is rigorously quiet on the 31st. Governor Ademar, on a phone call with Governor Lacerda of Guanabara, denies being part of the rebellion. Some commanders already have their forces in marching order. Cabral Ribeiro, of the 4th Infantry Regiment, has already clearly sided with the rebels. In the IInd Army’s backwater beyond São Paulo, near the Bolivian border, home to the 9th Military Region, 4th Cavalry Division and 2nd Mixed Brigade, the 4th Cavalry and the 16th Caçadores Battalion are also of known alignment. Some industrialists and officers are already handling the logistics of shipping war material for a confrontation against Rio de Janeiro. Given the lack of suitable trucks they had to use the railways, but some officers were against as a single grenade could ruin a whole convoy; after they accepted, some of this material had already reached the Paraíba valley by 22:00. The legalists, however, are nervously still in control.
Everyone else is quiet, too -the federal government and Minas Gerais. The latter formally announces it is in rebellion at 17:00. And Kruel, too, doesn’t say a word. He does, however, call his generals to a conference and move his HQ to the Military Region and Infantry Division HQ, whose generals Bandeira and Aluísio opposed switching sides as they considered Mourão Filho’s movement too early and isolated. This helps to change their mind.

Then early in the night he moves back to his original HQ, where he finds a group of officers willing to lock him in the suburbs and hand the Army to Cabral Ribeiro if he didn’t join their side. At around the same time, on 18:00, he met with Noschese, President of the São Paulo Industries Federation (Fiesp), on a military hospital, and received his million-dollar bribe.
The conference was finally held at 20:00, I think back on the IInd Army HQ. Present were Bandeira, Aluísio, and Buck Júnior (Santos Garrison). Absent were Ferraz, who was minding his vacations and only came days later when all was over, and Zerbini.

The latter had indeed come to São Paulo, but on 18:30-19:00 a major on the Military Region/Infantry Division HQ had interrupted him at the door and told him to meet Aluísio. When he did, his superior asked his position. Both confirmed they were legalists. When asked what he’d do if Kruel defected, Aluísio said he’d arrest him. He gave Zerbini a mission: return to his Divisional Infantry HQ in Caçapava, assume command in the Paraíba valley, where the 5th and 6th Infantry and the 2nd Engineers were, and secure it for the government.
Zerbini’s home was surrounded by the gendarmerie. He got to Caçapava at 21:00. He was a brand-new commander, only arriving in the 9th of January, as a key piece of the government’s apparatus in São Paulo. Cabral Ribeiro once mocked him: “’’You don’t command anything’’”, “’’Why’’?”, “’’Nobody follows your orders’’”. He did, however, know the two regimental commanders in the valley and they briefly obeyed: Colonels Lacerda (5th, Lorena, former student) and Sousa Lobo (6th, Caçapava, fighting companion in 1932).