Brazil
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When the conspirators decided to act it was due to a combination of three distinct factors – political-administrative, economic and cultural – which to a varying degree affected every social class in the captaincy. In the first place, the rigorous laws imposed by Lisbon showed no understanding of the process of gold production nor any intention of considering alternatives for the exploration of Minas Gerais’s economic potential. The other two factors were somewhat circumstantial: the political disaster of Governor Cunha Meneses’ corrupt administration, coupled with the arrival of highly unpopular royal ‘Instructions’ drafted by Martinho de Melo e Castro, Trade Secretary of the Navy and Overseas Dominions, which had been sent to the new ruler of the captaincy, the Viscount of Barbacena. These so-called instructions instituted a new tax for the mining areas, which required that all inhabitants bring 100 arrobas of gold to the forging houses every year; those who failed to meet the quota were liable for tax on the difference. This was a double blow for Minas Gerais. Precisely when there was a recession due to the decline in gold production, Lisbon was imposing new taxes. Furthermore, all previously existing contracts were annulled and the access of the local elite to the royal inspection posts was restricted.57
There is no clear consensus as to precisely when the conspirators began to seriously outline their plans, but it was probably some time between 1781 – the year that students from the colony at the University of Coimbra swore an oath to the sovereignty of the colony – and 1788, when the idea of autonomy for Minas Gerais was first debated in local meetings. In the second half of the 1780s the idea developed into the concept of a República Florente, as Tiradentes liked to describe it58 – florente meaning both ‘prosperous’ and ‘flourishing’. A republic nourished by the natural wealth of Minas Gerais, allowing the people to be masters of their own destiny without having to share their sovereignty with the Portuguese Crown.
Tiradentes was the most active propagandist of the foundational ideas of the Minas conspiracy, transmitting them to a wide variety of social groups – a task that was greatly facilitated by his itinerant lifestyle. He frequently travelled the routes between Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, where he made contact with people of every social class. He had previously been a muleteer, before being appointed as the commander of the Caminho Novo, the perilous path along the Mantiqueira Mountains that was infested with quilombolas and gangs of highway robbers.
One of the reasons for his journeys was his ‘great ability […] to remove and mend teeth’.59 On his travels Tiradentes also cured illnesses, prescribing remedies based on his knowledge of medicinal plants. A companion on the journey to Rio de Janeiro, Captain José de Souza Coelho – a member of the Municipal Council of the town of Pitangui – said of him:
He is a master of many skills: part surgeon, part dentist, knowledgeable of herbs that heal wounds and fevers; a master of paving, bridges, mills and drainage, who knows every peak and grotto like the palm of his hand and the names and nicknames of all their inhabitants.60
The republican ideas disseminated by Tiradentes spread throughout the captaincy. The three most important transmission centres were the districts of Vila Rica, Rio das Mortes and Serro do Frio. Sedition, economic self-sufficiency and political autonomy became subjects of debate in the lodging houses, inns and farms along the Caminho Novo. They were discussed in the apothecaries, in the barracks and outside churches in the surrounding villages; in the taverns and brothels scattered across Minas Gerais and by clandestine gold panners in the valleys of the Serro do Frio.
The conspiracy was intended to begin with an uprising in Vila Rica, in February, sparked off by the gold quota tax. If the conspirators were successful the whole of the captaincy would join the revolt. Their plan included the announcement of Minas Gerais’s declaration of independence and the instruments by which the new Republic would be implemented. The conspirators carefully observed the progress in North America, where new institutions were being established as a result of the revolution. The Minas conspirators were seeking a structure for their republic that would reflect the principles defended by the North American colonies during their struggle against the British.
There is discernible evidence that the Minas Conspiracy included the constitutional innovation of a Confederate Republic – a community of independent states, each with legislative autonomy. The importance the conspirators gave to the Municipal Councils is further indication they were planning to establish a republic with political autonomy for the legislative bodies scattered around the captaincy. The North Americans’ victory over the British was of fundamental importance for the military planning of the conspiracy: Portugal would be at a great strategic and logistic disadvantage. It would be fighting a war in Minas Gerais that it could not win. Portuguese troops would have to cross the Atlantic and then climb the mountain paths leading to the interior. The conspirators did not expect to win the war and expel Portuguese troops, but rather to wear the empire down, economically and militarily, until the Crown would be forced to negotiate.
But the Minas Gerais conspirators were alone in their endeavour. None of the other captaincies joined the conspiracy. Furthermore, the international context was particularly unfavourable for their plans for autonomy. The meeting between Thomas Jefferson and José Joaquim Maia e Barbalho61 in Nîmes, France, was of little avail: the North American Republic was seeking a trade agreement with Portugal – later signed by Jefferson in 1786 – and had little intention of risking the benefits to be gained by supporting an uncertain, if promising, future for Brazil. Meanwhile France, to which the majority of the conspirators looked for support, was entangled in political problems that left it impotent on the international stage.62
Probably on 18 May 1789, at dusk, a figure – it is not known whether a man or a woman – was seen climbing the steep alleyways of Vila Rica, making its way through the mists enveloping the town at that time of year. He or she was wearing a long black cloak with an enormous hat pulled over the eyes, and was walking swiftly and stealthily observing the surroundings. The ‘hooded figure’, Embuçado, as the character has come to be known, crossed Vila Rica looking for the conspirators to warn them the conspiracy had been uncovered and that they were at risk.63 First the hooded figure went to Cláudio Manuel’s house and warned him at the door. At Gonzaga’s house, a message was left with his slave Antônia. In the rush, urgently wanting to get the message to Lieutenant-Colonel Domingos de Abreu Vieira, a colleague of Tiradentes, the Embuçado got the wrong house, found a door ajar and entered. Upon seeing the neighbour’s wife at the top of the stairs and realizing the mistake, the figure rushed out of the house and disappeared into the mist, never to be seen again.
The Embuçado was right. The Viscount of Barbacena had received six denunciations of a conspiracy under way in Minas Gerais.64 The first, and most important, was made by Joaquim Silvério dos Reis, who was one of the conspirators himself. He was a rich man, and also the conspirator who was most in debt to the Crown. His betrayal of the cause was motivated by the prospect of his debts being pardoned. He related everything in detail several times, and then in writing: the particulars of the conspiracy, the password, the names of the main conspirators, the political plan and the military strategy. After receiving this information, Barbacena still waited for two months. Then he suspended the quota tax, had the conspirators arrested, and opened a judicial inquiry. This last entailed the search for proof, interrogation of the culprits, and the examination of witnesses from which the Crown would build its case.
From the time of Silvério dos Reis’s denunciation to the signing of their final sentences by Dona Maria I,65 the Queen of Portugal, the accused passed three long years of torment and interrogation. The Count of Barbacena sent them to Rio de Janeiro where they were imprisoned in the Cadeia da Relação66 and on the Ilha das Cobras.67 At the end of the trials the punishments handed down to the conspirators found guilty of disloyalty included exile to Africa, life imprisonment in Portugal (for the ecclesiastical members), conf
iscation of property and death by hanging.
From the moment they were arrested in Vila Rica, the conspirators were made all too aware of the strength of royal authority and the horror of its punishments. On the morning of 4 July 1789 the poet Cláudio Manuel da Costa was found dead in a cubicle that had been transformed into a cell on the ground floor of João Rodrigues de Macedo’s house.68 This was the very house that had been the scene of many of the conspirators’ meetings – today the Casa dos Contos69 in Ouro Preto. It had been requisitioned by the governor because the Cadeia Nova70 was under construction; it was being expanded because there was not enough space for so many prisoners. The official version was that Cláudio Manuel’s death was suicide, by hanging. No one in Vila Rica believed it. Cláudio Manuel da Costa was not only a poet, but was also a lawyer of great prestige in the captaincy; it was generally believed he had been murdered on the orders of Barbacena because he knew too much about the involvement in the conspiracy of members of the economic elite and also about groups connected to gold smuggling, which included the governor and his most intimate circle.
To this day Cláudio Manuel’s death is considered suspicious and is debated, not only among historians, but also among authors. Two hundred years after the event, the novelist Silviano Santiago questioned the cause of the poet’s death in his fine novel Em liberdade, which is framed in the tension between history and fiction and underscores the importance of questioning official versions of a political prisoner’s death by suicide: ‘What force is it inside me that cannot accept that Cláudio took his own life in the Casa dos Contos?’71
Tiradentes was arrested in Rio de Janeiro in May 1789 during one of his journeys to convert more people to the cause. Although not the leader of the Minas Conspiracy, he was its foremost propagandist. He was a controversial figure, impetuous, gruff and wide-eyed; but he was gifted with an enormous talent for persuasion. He was well aware of this and worked hard to polish his rhetoric. During interrogation he admitted he had carefully chosen his words to attract new supporters, adapting them according to the characteristics and interests of each individual or group. His fellow conspirators reported that, according to his audience, Tiradentes would intersperse his calls to action with playing the guitar and singing modinhas,72 which contributed to his success as he stopped by gathering places along the Caminho Novo: brothels, such as the Casa das Pilatas, lodging houses such as that of João da Costa Rodrigues, and taverns such as the one in the village of Matosinhos.
These were the reasons why the punishment he received from the Crown was exemplary and public – so the horror of it would be ingrained in the colonists’ memory. Tiradentes was hanged on 21 April 1792, in the Largo da Lampadosa, and his body was drawn, quartered and salted.73 His arms and legs were displayed at the most important points along the Caminho Novo. His head was impaled on a post in front of the governor’s palace in the main square of Vila Rica until it rotted, at the spot where a memorial statue to him stands today. According to legend, after the first day someone removed the head during the night and buried it in the surrounding hills. The Minas Conspiracy had failed, but its legacy was to remain. It gave impetus to the many revolts that were to come.
SALVADOR, 1798
One day in early 1798 the citizens of Salvador awoke to find that the gallows beside the pelourinho in the central square had been burnt to the ground. As we have mentioned, the pelourinho was the symbol par excellence of the power of the Crown: it was here that royal decrees were posted and slaves were publicly whipped. The gesture spoke for itself – it was a challenge to Lisbon’s political authority. The person responsible is not known, but whoever it was left no doubt as to his or her opinions, expressed in abusive satirical pamphlets left at the foot of the charred remains and at the city gates.74 What precisely these pamphlets said is still unknown, nor whether or not they were read and circulated among the inhabitants. The Portuguese authorities could not yet imagine what was coming.
Some months later, on the morning of 12 August, much to their surprise, citizens of Salvador, including the authorities, awoke to find pamphlets scattered all over the town. They had been left in places where they were most likely to be found: along the seafront, outside shops and government buildings, and nailed to posts along the steep, narrow streets linking the Cidade Baixa to the Cidade Alta. Three more had been left in church sacristies in the heart of the city. On 22 August, again taking the authorities by surprise, two more pamphlets were found by the Carmelite priests in the Church of the Carmelite Convent, located on a slope near the Largo do Pelourinho.75
It is very likely that there were even more pamphlets circulating in Salvador in 1798. And their political significance was considerable: distribution in public places allowed for the dissemination of news, ideas and opinions that had previously only been spread through clandestine channels. Those that have survived reveal openly democratic and republican ideas; they thus represented the first example in the colony of an all-inclusive political discussion, and the propagation of the concept of political equality among the poor.76
These Bahia pamphlets were written by members of the most heterogeneous and numerous segments of the social hierarchy: mulatto tradesmen – whose skin colour acted as a further impediment to their social ascension – artisans and soldiers.77 This was something new in Brazil: unlike the defamatory, pornographic or satirical pamphlets that had been in vogue since the end of the sixteenth century,78 these pamphlets represented an important channel for the dissemination of news and radical propaganda. They were a public expression of the intent to break away from the Portuguese Empire.
The target of the pamphlets, with their abrupt, coarse, irascible style, was the ‘people’ of Bahia – in other words, the poor and mixed-race citizens of Salvador.79 Presenting the ‘people’ as the source of the sovereignty of a republic in Portuguese America in this way was inflammatory and audacious. Above all, it was an indication of the influence of French ideas on the conspirators. These principles of freedom, originating with the French Revolution – particularly with the Jacobin government in Paris – were odious to the Portuguese authorities. The vocabulary of the pamphlets, with their warning tone and frequent use of imperatives – ‘Order’, ‘Instruct’, ‘Forbid’, ‘Demand’80 – leaves little doubt as to the writers’ perception of the people as a powerful, ferocious force when provoked and agents of their own destiny.
In 1798 the tension in Salvador increased, as did enthusiasm for so-called ‘French’ ideas. Their popularity was reproduced both verbally and visually. The mulatto João de Deus Nascimento, for example, was a tailor81 and corporal in the militia, up to his ears in the simmering conspiracy. He was well aware of the link between a person’s politics and the way he dressed, so he walked the streets of Salvador dressed as a ‘Frenchman’. He wore ‘close-fitting breeches and long-pointed shoes that barely covered the ankle’. The public prosecutor Francisco Xavier de Almeida, who happened to pass him in the street, asked him the reason for this extraordinary attire, to which João de Deus retorted: ‘Shut up! This is the way the French dress. You’ll see, sir. Very soon everything will be French.’82
João de Deus Nascimento may have been insolent, but his words were meaningful: clothing distinguished a person and revealed quite a bit about his politics. And his behaviour proved to be contagious. The baiano conspirators could be easily recognized by the way they dressed. As José de Freitas Sacoto, a mulatto freeman, explained to the colonial authorities, the conspirators did not conceal their convictions: anyone who was seen in the street ‘wearing an earring, with a beard covering half his cheeks and an Angolan búzio83 on his watch chain, was “French” and belonged to the rebellion party.’84
Adornments and clothing were a part of establishing an identity – the use of cowrie shells, with their connection to practices of divination within the traditional African religions, such as candomblé, suggested ethnicity, religious practices and political ideas. They also attracted others to the cause. The Bahia cons
pirators had no intention of remaining anonymous; on the contrary, they made a point of displaying their ‘colours’, being easily identifiable by their clothing and adornments, reflecting their conception of freedom as something that must be public and visible to all. This idea was expressed on the conspirators’ flag: a red five-pointed star against a white background with a globe between each of the points, under which there was an inscription, also in red: ‘Show yourself. Do not hide.’85
This enthusiasm for ‘French’ principles encompassed a wide range of aspirations and interests and was embraced across many levels of eighteenth-century Bahia society, including slaves, former slaves and impoverished freemen – most of whom were creoles or mulattoes. These principles provided a framework for arguments that challenged the Portuguese Crown. Although there is no mention of an end to slavery in any of the extant pamphlets, one that has not survived, according to Antônio José de Mattos Ferreira e Lucena, a captain in the grenadiers, promised ‘freedom for the slaves’.86
The Bahia Conspiracy radically changed the central discourse of the colony. Now men and women who suffered a double injustice – the daily struggle for survival and marginalization based on race – began to realize they had an equal right to citizenship, to be protected by law, and to conduct business in the captaincy. As Lucas Dantas, one of the leaders of the conspiracy, explained to João de Deus regarding attracting new conspirators: ‘When you talk to them, say this: the people are planning a revolution to make this captaincy a democracy where we’ll be happy. The only governors will be those who have the capacity for the task, whether white, mulatto or black; people of intelligence, which is better than being governed by fools. Say that and you will convince them.’87