José Alencar Gomes da Silva (Portuguese pronunciation: [ʒuˈzɛ ɐlẽˈkaʁ ˈɡõmiz dɐ ˈsiwvɐ]; 17 October 1931 – 29 March 2011), also known as José Alencar, the Strong, was a Brazilian businessman and politician, and the Vice President of Brazil from 2003 to 2010. In business since a young age, Alencar was a self-made multimillionaire, as the chief executive of Coteminas, after working as travelling salesman and in failed food wholesale start-ups. He turned his family's small clothes factory and retail store into a leading textile manufacturer in his country, producing goods for traditional brands in its portfolio, such as Artex, Santista and Calfat, and vying for dominance of the global market after a merger with South Carolina-based Springs Industries. In the 1990s, Alencar groomed his son to succeed him at the company, and opted to enter politics in his home state, Minas Gerais.

Alencar had a business-oriented political platform, advocating market liberalization and deregulation of production. His expensive political campaigns received hefty funds from Coteminas. After a failed run in 1994 for governor of Minas Gerais, he won the election for the Senate of Brazil, representing his home state, in 1998. In 2002, Alencar was invited by the left-wing Worker's Party to run for Vice President, on the same ticket as Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The alliance between the leftist union leader and Alencar, an experienced entrepreneur, proved successful. They won the presidential elections in 2002 and were re-elected in 2006. Over the years, Lula da Silva and Alencar developed a close and affectionate friendship. Diagnosed with cancer of the stomach and kidney in 1997, Alencar succumbed to the disease in 2011.

José Eugênio Soares, best known as Jô Soares (born January 16, 1938 in Rio de Janeiro) is a Brazilian comedian, talk show host, author, theatrical producer, director, actor, painter and musician. Soares was born in Rio de Janeiro. After being educated in Switzerland and the United States, Soares returned to Rio and worked at TV Rio in 1958, writing and performing in comedy shows for the station. He acted as an American in Carlos Manga's O homem do Sputnik. In 1970, Soares started working at Rede Globo.

In 1988, Soares moved to SBT, where he hosted a talk-show, Jô Soares Onze e Meia ("Jô Soares Eleven Thirty"), until 1999. In 2000, Soares took his show's format (very similar to David Letterman's) back to Rede Globo, where it was then called Programa do Jô, and presents the program until the present day.

He is known for his knowledge of culture and literature, and for speaking English, Spanish, Italian and French besides his native Portuguese.

His first novel O Xangô de Baker Street was written in 1995 and has already been published in several other countries; it was made into a film in 2000. He has put out various jazz CDs. He has also produced many plays including a recent version of Richard III.

José Martiniano de Alencar (May 1, 1829 — December 12, 1877) was a Brazilian lawyer, politician, orator, novelist and dramatist. He is one of the most famous writers of the first generation of Brazilian Romanticism, writing historical, regionalist and Indianist romances — being the most famous The Guarani. He wrote some works under pen name Erasmo.

He is patron of the 23rd chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.

José Martiniano de Alencar was born in what is today the bairro of Messejana, Fortaleza, Ceará, on May 1, 1829, to priest (and later senator) José Martiniano Pereira de Alencar and his cousin Ana Josefina de Alencar. Moving to São Paulo in 1844, he graduated in Law at the Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de São Paulo in 1850 and starts to follow his lawyer career at Rio de Janeiro. Invited by his friend Francisco Otaviano, he becomes a collaborator for journal Correio Mercantil. He also wrote for the Diário do Rio de Janeiro and the Jornal do Commercio.

It was in the Diário do Rio de Janeiro, during the year of 1856, that Alencar gained notoriety, writing the Cartas sobre A Confederação dos Tamoios, under the pseudonym Ig. In those, he criticized the homonymous poem by Gonçalves de Magalhães. Also in 1856, he wrote and published under feuilleton form his first romance: Cinco Minutos.