While the rumours were running wild at home, the emperor’s journey went smoothly. On 19 July the royal party arrived in Portugal, and by 22 July they had reached Paris. But Dom Pedro II was a changed man. His ‘Romantic era’, with his interest in Victor Hugo and Wagner, was something of the past. Even so, he did what he could to keep his image as patron of the arts alive. He visited intellectuals such as Louis Pasteur and Ernest Renan and translated texts and wrote poetry, which he sent to friends and relatives. He managed to rest for six months; but this was hardly enough to prepare him for the turbulence that was to greet him when he arrived home.
MEANWHILE … ABOLITION
On 10 June 1887 the Countess of Barral wrote to Princess Isabel: ‘I cannot congratulate you on the regency that you now have to exercise, but trusting in your good judgement and the advice of your husband, I pray to God that everything will go well during his majesty’s absence.’50 In her letter the countess, who was the princess’s mentor and an intimate friend of Dom Pedro II, seems to have had a premonition that all might not go well with her protégée’s government. Perhaps it was her knowledge of France; be that as it may, the political situation in Brazil was truly fragile. The Republican Party was gaining ground and the army’s dissatisfaction was on the rise. Nonetheless, the most urgent issue, by far, was the question of abolition. By the 1880s the abolitionist movement was divided between the moderates, who looked to Joaquim Nabuco for guidance, and the radicals, among whose leaders were Silva Jardim,51 Luís Gama,52 José do Patrocínio53 and Antônio Bento.54 Abolition was the most discussed subject in the streets and the favourite topic of newspapers,55 pamphlets and satirical magazines.
At this time it was common for the population of Rio de Janeiro to participate in processions, rituals and ceremonies of the court, and to see Romantic plays put on at the Royal theatres. Public protests against slavery were also common, and yet had become increasingly ineffective.56 No matter how hard the government tried to show its ‘reforming zeal’, by passing legislation such as the sexagenarian law, the measures seemed to backfire. Attacks came from every quarter, not to mention the slave uprisings all over the country. An atmosphere of fear and uncertainty pervaded: on the one hand, freemen feared they would be re-enslaved, and on the other, people were terrified of the ever present violence. Not only were there slave uprisings, the entire system became more violent as it came to an end. Slave-owners, faced with the inevitable – and disproportionately invested in slaves – began to demand more exacting labour and longer working hours. This resulted in constant escapes, murders and attacks on farmers and overseers. There were widespread protests from emancipated slaves and from the population at large about the increasing cruelty of the punishments. Aware that slavery was losing its legitimacy and the support of the country, groups of slaves became better organized and more daring, planning uprisings, escaping, committing crimes, and demanding autonomy and better living conditions. In areas where the concentration of slaves was high, the rebellions took on alarming proportions. In an attempt to control the panic the government took the side of the slave-owners, arresting slaves, ignoring denunciations of cruelty, and repressing the activities of the abolitionists. But the disobedience of the slaves spread from plantation to plantation and their crimes became increasingly violent, thus reversing one of the basic rules of a slave-based society, where the slave-owners have a monopoly on corporal punishment and violence.57 The almost impossible task of keeping the repression strictly within the law began to raise the question of governability. Slaves revolted and fled during the night, abandoning the coffee plantations in groups that were often led by sympathetic abolitionists. It was not unusual to see bands of slaves on the roads at night, invading the towns.
In the late nineteenth century, with the support of abolitionists, several refuges for escaped slaves were developed on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro: the Camorim quilombo in the rural area of Jacarepaguá; the Raimundo quilombo in Engenho Novo; the Miguel Dias quilombo in Catumbi; the Padre Ricardo quilombo in Penha; and the Clapp quilombo on São Domingos beach, not far from the centre of the city of Niterói. Another popular escape route was through the valley of the Paraíba river in São Paulo, which ended in the famous Jabaquara complex of quilombos on the outskirts of the port of Santos. At the end of the nineteenth century there were three independently run quilombos in the complex: that of Pai Filipe, Garrafão and the Jabaquara quilombo itself.58 At the Jabaquara complex, escaped slaves from São Paulo plantations received help from the legendary Caiafases group. Under the leadership of the lawyer Antônio Bento de Sousa e Castro, who had become the leader of the Paulista abolitionists after the death of the poet Luís Gama, the Caiafases provoked the fury of the slave-owners. From 1884 onwards the group transferred as many slaves as possible to Ceará, a province that was of little interest to the central government, and where, along with the province of Amazonas, slavery had been abolished four years before the rest of the country was to follow suit.59
The quilombo of Leblon, although smaller than the Jabaquara complex, was another important settlement in Brazilian history. The refuge was established in the garden of a Rio de Janeiro estate that belonged to José de Seixas Magalhães, a capable Portuguese businessman with money in his pocket and advanced ideas. He manufactured and sold leather goods, both in Brazil and abroad, using steam-driven equipment. The Seixas e Cia store was located in a large warehouse in Rua Gonçalves Dias in the heart of the city and was a meeting place for leading abolitionists: the poet Olavo Bilac,60 journalist José do Patrocínio, jurist Rui Barbosa, writer Coelho Neto,61 and other renowned intellectuals including André Rebouças,62 Paula Nei63 and Joaquim Nabuco, almost all of whom were in favour of immediate abolition without compensation.64
Seixas Magalhães was an active member of the Abolitionist Confederation, which had been founded in Rio de Janeiro. The confederation was an amalgamation of thirty anti-slavery clubs and associations, located in virtually every province of the empire. Their work was to encourage slaves to escape, to provide fugitives with shelter, to write pamphlets and organize conferences. The confederation supported the fugitives in Leblon, organizing and maintaining the slave refuge that José de Seixas Magalhães had established on his estate.
The quilombo in Leblon became famous because the slaves who had taken refuge there grew flowers commercially, above all white camellias. The abolitionist movement adopted the flower as its symbol. At the time camellias were extremely rare in Brazil and the abolitionists saw in the flower’s fragility a symbol of the slaves’ aspiration to freedom. The camellia needed special care to thrive and had to be cultivated by the hands of free workers and not by slave labour, which was now seen as obsolete, criminal and condemned to extinction. From then on, those who wore a camellia in their buttonhole or grew them in their gardens were making an open statement of their engagement with the abolitionist cause. The fashion caught on: in São Paulo, the Caiafases sent escaped slaves to Rio de Janeiro by train, with the assurance that they would be met at the station by a man with a white camellia in his buttonhole, whom they should look out for on the platform at the city’s Central Station. The abolitionists in Recife also adopted the symbolism of the flower, naming the barge that took escaped slaves to Ceará the Camellia. Public support for the legitimacy of the abolitionist cause now led, for the first time in the country’s history, to the development of a political strategy within government to emancipate the slaves.
At the same time the links between different groups of slaves were strengthening, whether through acts of solidarity, blood ties, marriage and adoption, or through the black fraternities that began to proliferate. As the authorities were by now clearly losing control, they opted for negotiation: contracts between masters and former slaves, promises of wages and autonomy. Everything was still aimed at making the process a gradual one, in an effort to postpone the inevitable. Yet, abolition was actually already becoming a reality, due to both private initiatives and those of the slaves themse
lves. New heroes of the movement emerged, among them José do Patrocínio, a republican and democrat whose mother had been a slave. Vast crowds gathered to listen to his inflammatory speeches. The struggle for abolition took three major forms: the fight of the abolitionists, the actions of the slaves themselves, and the political struggle at the national level. Brazilians flocked to join the new great cause.
It was becoming harder and harder to resist. Perhaps it was for this reason that the Lei Áurea was so succinct: ‘As from the date of this law, slavery in Brazil is abolished. All dispositions to the contrary are revoked.’ The law, signed on 13 May 1888, emancipated 700,000 slaves, which by this time represented a small proportion of the total population of Brazil, estimated at 15 million people.
This belated freedom for the slaves meant the last strong tie to the monarchy had been broken. The coffee planters had lost all hope that they would receive some sort of financial compensation, which resulted in legal action against the Crown. Celebrated abroad as a victory for Dom Pedro II’s government, the law of 13 May also brought joy and optimism to most Brazilians. It was certainly for them the most popular measure of Dom Pedro II’s reign. On 23 May 1888, Joaquim Nabuco – now known as the prince of abolition – wrote: ‘Abolition has been achieved! No one expected that such a great feat would be achieved so soon, and no national event has ever been commemorated with such enthusiasm. For twenty days the city has been in a state of delirium […]. The monarchy is more popular than ever …’65 The famous politician was both right and wrong. Some people believed the emperor had travelled to Europe intentionally to allow his daughter Isabel to sign the popular legislation, thus paving the way for her succession to the throne.
Certainly the princess’s public image changed dramatically after the law – she became known as ‘the Redeemer of the blacks’. But the way that abolition was officially enacted – as if it were a gift rather than a conquered right – ignored the part that the slaves themselves had played in the struggle. The strategy was to pretend that slavery had been ‘re-evaluated’ by the government. The idea was that, upon receiving the ‘gift’ of their freedom, former slaves should be grateful and continue to work as dependents of their new employers. Once again, in the interpretation of the law, the long-standing idea of a gradual process towards emancipation was evident. The government was planning to restructure the former relations of servitude, and to engage in complex processes of the exchange of favours and the maintenance of traditional forms of submission.
The law was to have far-reaching consequences. Abolition led not only to material losses for the plantation owners, but to the loss of their prestige. This small but powerful group that had had such close links to the Crown now rapidly abandoned their previous ally and joined the republicans. Despite the attempt of the monarchy to compensate them with titles and baronetcies, the lack of financial indemnity led to a permanent break between the coffee planters and the state. Furthermore, the fears surrounding a possible regime with Princess Isabel as empress led to an increasing number of plots and intrigues against her husband, the Count of Eu. He was presented as a ‘Frenchman’ and a foreigner, and compared to the ‘Austrian’ Marie Antoinette, whom the French had never forgiven.66 Despite Isabel being known as ‘the Redeemer’, and the climate of euphoria that the government did its best to capitalize on by issuing commemorative coins and decorations, there could be little doubt that the theatre of the monarchy was coming to an end.
Ten days later, when he received the news of abolition, the emperor was in Milan. When she considered that his health had recovered sufficiently, the empress read him the telegram which had been sent by his daughter Princess Isabel on 13 May. Most reports say that his response was ‘serene’ and that all he said was ‘Thank God’. This has a certain appearance of political propaganda, coming from a man who had done nothing to abolish slavery for at least fifty years. The royal party set out on their return to Brazil, a country that for the first time in almost four centuries no longer had any slaves.
However, contrary to predictions, the emperor’s reception was heart-warming. On the top of the Sugarloaf an enormous flag had been hoisted with the single word Salve.67 It was now the emperor who needed attention: he was ill. Dom Pedro II was in fact no more than a ghost of his former self – and the same was true of the monarchy.
THE MONARCHY STUMBLES – AND FALLS
To all appearances the year 1889 started well. On 28 February the French writer and geographer Pierre Émile Levasseur informed the government that he had completed his long article on the Brazilian Empire, which would be published in the Grande Encyclopédie. With the aid of the statesman, the future Baron of Rio Branco,68 it had been extended from the original fifteen pages to fifty-one. Only one country – Germany – was allocated more space in the encyclopedia than Brazil. The same year the Grand Rabbi of Avignon, Benjamim Mossé, wrote a biography praising the emperor. It was generally suspected that this tribute to Dom Pedro II was also really the work of Rio Branco. In 1889, Brazil participated in the Universal Exhibition in Paris, constructing a grandiose pavilion in the style of a fantasy castle. The building had a glass dome and a majestic tower 40 metres high. There was a kiosk where coffee was sold, and the halls were decorated with enormous paintings of tropical fruits by the black artist Estevão da Silva. Six colossal statues represented the rivers of Brazil, and a Victoria amazonica lily floated in a vast basin of water.69
Overseas, everything seemed to be going well for the empire; however, at home the picture was very different. While the country paid tribute to the centenary of the French Revolution, the republican movement was gaining strength, and it was becoming increasingly radical. During the liberal government led by the prime minister, the Viscount of Ouro Preto, a Black Guard was created to protect the monarchy, as a kind of parallel force to the army.
The situation was complex and paradoxical. Many former slaves supported the monarchy and opposed the republicans (who were referred to as ‘the Paulistas’) as if they had been their oppressors. Given the very real possibility of a return of slavery, they preferred to support the devil they knew: it was the monarchy that had abolished slavery and deserved their loyalty. Many Brazilians were suspicious of the Black Guard. Rui Barbosa,70 for example, called it ‘a band of ragamuffins chanting Long Live the Monarchy and the Liberal Party’. He also called it ‘legalized capoeira’.
The atmosphere was already tense when, on 15 June, as the imperial family were leaving the Teatro Sant’Ana after attending a concert by Giulietta Dionesi, a shout of ‘Long live the Republic’ came from the middle of the crowd. The emperor seemed unperturbed and told the officer in charge to ‘leave those people in peace. Let everyone do as they please.’71 A few minutes later, however, after the monarch had entered his carriage, a shot was fired at him. The police arrested the culprit: Adriano do Vale, a twenty-year-old Portuguese immigrant who had recently lost his job in a shop. The next day the event was dramatized in the press, with many newspapers displaying the picture of the ‘regicide’ on the front page. In the tense atmosphere of 1889 this relatively insignificant event acquired a significance it hardly deserved. It was seen by some as symbolic of the fragility of the monarchy, and by others as clear evidence that the monarchy’s enemies were preparing to act.
The reaction came swiftly: the chief of police, José Basson de Miranda Osório, threatened to prosecute anyone who shouted ‘Long live the Republic’ or ‘Death to the Monarchy’ in a public place, under article 90 of the criminal code. Meanwhile the culprit was locked up in a cubicle on the Ilha das Cobras while the jury considered its decision.72 During the second half of the year hardly a day went by without some incident indicative of the restless mood. On the occasion of Princess Isabel’s silver wedding anniversary, on 15 October, 1,500 members of the Black Guard lined the streets. The newspapers added fuel to the fire with sensationalist stories about a wave of anarchy and Dom Pedro II’s plans to abdicate in favour of his daughter. At the same time the army beg
an to demand greater representation in government.
On 6 June 1888 the Cabinet headed by João Alfredo73 had fallen and was replaced by another, this time led by the Viscount of Ouro Preto. He planned to take the wind out of the sails of the rapidly growing republican movement. His political platform was freedom of religion, greater autonomy for the provinces and municipalities, freedom of education, reform of the State Council and a reduction in export rights. Opinion was divided: for some the programme was too radical, but for others it did not go far enough. When the conservatives, who had a majority in the Chamber of Deputies, rejected the Viscount of Ouro Preto’s plan, he decided to dissolve the body. The incident was not only a clear indication of the ferocious struggle between conservatives and liberals, but also that the issue of centralized monarchy was becoming a side issue. The more radical idea of ending the monarchy and establishing a republic began to be openly discussed.
The greatest fear was that the situation would get out of control. Members of the Paulista Republican Party began to create ties with the military and draw up plans for a counter-revolution. Meanwhile, the Baile da Ilha Fiscal (Ball on Fiscal Island), which has become the symbol of the fall of the monarchy, took place on 9 November 1889.74 Dom Pedro II had come down from the peace and quiet of his winter palace in the mountain town of Petropolis to inaugurate the São Sebastião hospital in Caju. After presiding at the meeting of the Council of Ministers the emperor attended a ball being held by the government to welcome the Chilean navy. The event caused a great stir. The ostentation and luxurious setting were seen as provocative given the political situation; it was said that the armed forces had intentionally been excluded from the guest list, and it was rumoured that orgies had taken place. In his novel Esaú e Jacó, Machado de Assis recalls: ‘Seen from the docks or from the sea, inside and outside, it was like a Venetian dream; all those people from Carioca society living a few hours of splendour, new to some, memories of the past for others.’
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