The development of the city of Belo Horizonte, the new capital of Minas Gerais, is also emblematic.26 Local republican politicians built the city in an attempt to unify, politically and culturally, a state whose economy was in decline. Furthermore, state politics were bogged down by infighting between the different factions within the oligarchies that governed from the old state capital, Ouro Preto. The development of Belo Horizante was both authoritarian and violent. The existing village of Curral del Rey was completely destroyed and its impoverished residents were exiled to the new suburbs. The new capital itself was planned and built by the most modernizing and republican of the regional elite, who dreamt of progress and technology. Thus the new town was curiously modern, with wide avenues allowing for a better flow of traffic, an abundance of public squares, and the strict observance of a sort of urban hierarchy. Services, including the railway, the hospital and the shops were established on one side of the city; and on the other side, the theatre, schools and the State Assembly. The layout was planned for maximum dramatic effect. At the highest point of the city there was a rectangular plaza surrounded by imposing government buildings, including the governor’s palace – and in the centre, a statue representing Liberty. The plaza was named the Praça da Liberdade and the palace the Palácio da Liberdade. After all, this was the land of the Republic and of Tiradentes, the hero of the 1789 Minas conspiracy.
These three cities were forerunners of what was to occur in other Brazilian towns. The royal court in Rio de Janeiro was reinvented as the federal district of the Republic. São Paulo was restructured as the political and economic hub of the wealthy coffee region, and Belo Horizonte was planned and built to be the new capital of Minas Gerais. Those in the republican government were bound and determined to forge a modern alternative to the empire. And yet there was no getting around the fact that Brazil’s economy was still sustained by agricultural exports. It was not just a simple question of the Republic versus the monarchy – progress versus backwardness. It was a time when the past coexisted with the present, social inclusion with social exclusion, and modern technology with political and social repression. Furthermore, although there was an increase in opportunities for employment, the movable professions experienced the most growth – street sellers, small businesses, carpenters, shoemakers and coach drivers. Two completely different worlds existed side by side, yet were unexpectedly interconnected.
And it was not long before another aspect of modernity emerged. The marginalized rural population – banished to the darkest corners of the interior – began making headlines in the newspapers. But it was from the cities, not the countryside, that the first signs of revolt were to come.
RUMBLINGS FROM THE CITIES
Between 10 and 16 November 1904 the people of Rio de Janeiro revolted against measures enacted to eradicate yellow fever. The most serious uprising was in the suburbs, where the poorer classes reacted against the compulsory smallpox vaccination ordered by Oswaldo Cruz.27 The uprising was mainly the result of misinformation, aggravated by the different origins and customs of the immigrants. The situation led to chaos. Trams and public buildings were destroyed and the sanitary agents were attacked. The government reacted harshly: a state of siege was declared, constitutional rights were suspended, and the leaders of the movement were deported to the south of the Amazon, in what is the present-day state of Acre. The revolt was finally controlled and smallpox eradicated from the city of Rio de Janeiro; but the cost had been 30 deaths and 110 wounded.
From the government’s side, the plan for the eradication of disease was objective and rational. Public health had become a priority. The question had increasingly concerned Brazilian intellectuals and politicians since the 1880s. Travellers, journalists, doctors, social scientists and the literati were all aware of the high incidence of tropical diseases and illnesses transmitted by African slaves and immigrants, both in the cities and in the rural areas.28 Above all, miscegenation was considered a terrible problem, almost a local plight. Racial theories based on social Darwinism and the criminal anthropology of Cesare Lombroso, who penned his theory in the middle of the nineteenth century in Italy, were greatly in vogue in the country.29 It was thought that humanity was divided into natural hierarchies and each race had distinct and unalterable potentials, with the white Caucasians at the top of the social evolutionary pyramid and the black Africans at the bottom. According to these theories the mixed races were considered the worst of all, with a propensity for every kind of ‘hereditary degeneration’. According to Brazilian professionals such as Dr Raimundo Nina Rodrigues (1862–1909) of the medical school in Bahia, people of mixed race were more likely to be criminals and suffer from madness as well as other racial ‘stigmas’. Given the doctor’s beliefs, it is no coincidence he published a book entitled The Human Races and Penal Responsibility in Brazil (1894) wherein he proposed two different penal codes, one for whites and the other for blacks, adapted according to the ‘evolutionary stage of each group’.
While fallacious theories must be questioned, it is true that there were a series of epidemics in Brazil. In October 1916, Dr Miguel Pereira commented, ‘Brazil is still an immense hospital.’ The phrase became a metaphor for the country, almost an epitaph. Medical statistics of the time reveal a terrifying list of contagious diseases. Some epidemics were considered ‘imported’, such as cholera, one of the main causes of fatalities at the time. Others were seen as ‘domestic’; among these were yellow fever, smallpox and the bubonic plague. Specialists believed the improvised huts where most people lived only worsened the situation. They were made of clay, the natural habitat of the insect known as the ‘kissing bug’,30 the transmitter of the recently discovered Chagas disease. It was also thought that these dwellings contributed to the prevalence of malaria and intestinal infections. And the immigrants were blamed for introducing trachoma, a dangerous form of infectious conjunctivitis. All these epidemics were a stain on the country’s already fragile reputation and the republican government’s urban reforms were aimed at eradicating them. They were in large part successful.
The Oswaldo Cruz Institute sent scientists into the interior of the country to introduce the same health measures that were being implemented along the coast. Between 1907 and 1913 they travelled to regions in the interior of São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Bahia and the São Francisco and Tocantins basins, reaching as far as the Amazon.31 In addition to the diseases mentioned above, many people died from leprosy, syphilis and tuberculosis. Although these ‘Brazilian pathologies’ affected the population as a whole, including agricultural workers in the interior, it was the formerly enslaved people, the immigrants, slum dwellers, workers and those who lived in the countryside who suffered most.
Of all these ‘dangerous groups’ of Brazilians, the sailors in the navy took pride of place. In November 1910, in Rio de Janeiro’s Guanabara Bay, these sailors rebelled in what became known as the Revolta da Chibata (Revolt of the Whip).32 The seamen, most of whom were African Brazilians or mestizos, were brutally controlled by a system of corporal punishment, especially flogging. The revolt exposed the violence against the poor population, as well as the racism and cruelty that prevailed within the armed forces. Whipping was a tradition inherited from the Portuguese navy, but in Brazil it carried deeper significance due to its association with slavery. Although slavery had been abolished in 1888, flogging continued in the navy, supported by a law that permitted officers to ‘break the will’ of rebellious sailors.
The revolt broke out on 16 November 1910, when a number of Brazilian and foreign ships anchored in Guanabara Bay for the investiture of the new president, Marshall Hermes da Fonseca. Rui Barbosa had been the favourite to win the election, which for the first time had excited widespread popular interest. Marshall Hermes da Fonseca’s victory – despite the fact that he had been supported by Pinheiro Machado from the republican Conservative Party – represented the return of the military to power. Rui Barbosa, in contrast, was in favour of republican institutions and a
civilian government.
While the president’s investiture was celebrated on land, at sea the situation was entirely different. On-board the largest and most powerful of the navy’s battleships, the Minas Gerais, which was anchored in the bay, the crew, standing at attention, were forced to witness the flogging of the sailor Marcelino Rodrigues Menezes. After 250 lashes, he was taken straight to prison without any medical treatment. For some time the sailors had been planning to revolt against such brutal punishments, and this was the last straw. In the evening of 16 November, while Hermes da Fonseca was attending a reception in honour of his victory, the sailors seized control of the battleships Minas Gerais, São Paulo and Bahia – as well as the patrol ship Deodoro – and proceeded to fire warning cannon shots at the city. They demanded that corporal punishment be abolished within the navy, or the city would be bombarded. The National Congress accepted their demands and gave amnesty to the rebels, who returned the battleships to their officers. A few days later, however, on 4 December, the government took revenge. Twenty-two sailors were arrested on the Ilha das Cobras and charged with conspiracy. They were tortured so brutally that only two of them survived. One of the survivors was the leader of the revolt, João Cândido – dubbed the ‘Black Admiral’ by the press – who, to the fury of the navy, became a popular hero.
The ‘Revolt of the Whip’ had serious consequences. Until the end of the First Republic, in 1930, the navy was virtually excluded from politics. But the sailors’ uprising was a far from isolated event among the military. The same period saw the ‘revolt of the military academy’, the ‘revolt of the sergeants’ and the ‘bloody spring’, all of which exposed dissatisfaction at the heart of the Republic. These rebellions reveal two important aspects of the way the military interacted with the government. The first is that much of the significant political action in the country took place outside the realm of institutions or political parties. The second is that the military’s intention was to bring about government reform. The participants saw themselves as the instrument of the will of the people and, to some extent, reflected the concept of the ‘citizen soldier’.33
In general, however, the ‘regeneration of the cities’ – as the urban reforms were called at the time – went along with the conviction, based on scientific determinism prevalent at the time, that the poor and mestizo populations were somehow ‘degenerate’. With an economy based on services and agricultural exports and limited by emerging industrialization, urban life was precarious. There were periods when supplies were insufficient, and food prices constantly rose, as did the cost of rents and transport. Inflation made conditions even worse for the poor and increased the uncertainty. In the ironic words of writer Mário de Andrade,34 in the new cities ‘there were as many shacks as coconut trees’.35 On the other hand, sometimes less is more. After all, there were many occasions when people took to the streets to protest the shortages, rent increases, and everything else that made their lives unstable.
ANOTHER COUNTRY WHERE ‘THE OTHERS’ LIVE
Unrest was not restricted to the towns. In various regions of the country social movements erupted that combined issues of agrarian reform and the struggle for landownership with a strong element of religion. These conflicts – Contestado, Juazeiro, Caldeirão, Pau-de-Colher and Canudos – combined mysticism and revolt. They were the result of the modernization that excluded the population at large. Abandoned by a republic that used rural property to bolster the power of the local oligarchs, groups of poor farmers from the interior began to demand the right to own land. Most interestingly, they made an unexpected mystical link between history and millenarianism, with visions of living in a community that would be harmonious and just.
In 1896 an armed conflict began in the sertão (backlands) of the northeast that was to garner much attention in the early years of the Republic. The conflict became a national scapegoat, a ‘monarchist canker’ according to the elite gathered almost two thousand kilometres away in Rio de Janeiro. The enemy of the newly founded republic was the poverty-stricken population of a village called Canudos in the arid interior of Bahia. In 1897 journalist Euclides da Cunha was sent to cover the conflict by the newspaper the Estado de São Paulo. He was appalled by what he saw.36 A fervent republican, he had disembarked in Bahia with the conviction that the government forces were about to defeat a horde of ragged fanatics – accused of being ‘monarchists’ – holding out in a primitive village. He was amazed to discover, there in the Bahia sertão, a long and mysterious war, an enormously brave and determined adversary, a sacred refuge, an organized community and unknown lands. The impact of his discovery radically changed Euclides da Cunha’s point of view. He began to write down everything that he saw – and the book that resulted from those notes turned him into one of Brazil’s greatest writers. Os Sertões37 went far beyond a report on the war. It became a denunciation. The book reveals the devastating effect of the droughts and wildfires on the arid landscape of the northeast. Euclides da Cunha was able to inscribe the natural surroundings with fear, isolation and abandonment. In the sertão of the northeast he saw Brazil’s centuries-old collective abandonment of its people.
Os Sertões was published in 1902 and gives a far more detailed analysis of the war than Euclides da Cunha’s original articles for the Estado de São Paulo.38 But it maintains his accusations. He blames the Church, the Republic, the state government of Bahia and, above all, the army for the massacre of the inhabitants of Canudos. He denounces the war against the poverty-stricken backlanders as fratricide. After his detailed description of the local terrain he constructs his account of the Canudos tragedy as though it had emerged from the local topography, with images of the ravages of war, the decapitation of prisoners, and the courage of those who resisted, decimated by hunger, thirst, disease and the heavy weaponry of the army. Euclides da Cunha’s book is a monument to the memory of Canudos.
Above all, the Canudos campaign (1896–7) made a great impression on the collective imagination of the country.39 The socio-religious war was led by Antônio Conselheiro. The region was home to a myriad of rundown estates, a consequence of the severe droughts and chronic unemployment. Thousands of men, women and children wandered those arid backlands. In May 1893, Antônio Conselheiro and his followers arrived at the village of Bom Conselho, in the interior of Bahia. They soon learned about a drastic tax increase on the produce they had brought to sell at the local market, a new tax imposed by the Republic. In front of everyone gathered at the market, Antônio Conselheiro tore down the proclamations nailed to the walls and burned them. In response, the governor of Bahia, Rodrigues Lima, sent the military police to arrest the holy man and disperse the group. But the backlanders fought back and put the soldiers to flight. After the conflict, Antônio Conselheiro decided to stop travelling around the region. He withdrew, along with his followers, to the abandoned Canudos estate. From the day of his arrival to the end of the war the number of his followers grew from 230 to around 24,000, making it one of the most densely populated areas in Bahia. They renamed the village Belo Monte.
The republican government and the landowners of the region viewed Canudos as a significant threat. The new way of life in the arid sertão that Antônio Conselheiro promoted did not include submission to those in power. On the other hand, life in the village was not an experiment in egalitarianism. The design of the urban community, the social relationships and distribution of tasks all indicated that social hierarchies had not been eliminated. Nonetheless, it is equally true that it was a social and political experiment. Life in the village was very different from that of the central republican government: work was based on the principle of collective ownership and use of the land and the distribution of what it produced. Everyone who arrived there received a plot of land to cultivate and a place to live. The villagers planted crops, bred cattle and mules, and fabricated tanned leather. The result of all production was divided between the worker and the community. What is more, Antônio Conselheiro’s religious authori
ty did not depend on recognition by the Catholic Church. Canudos was controlled neither by the local estates nor by the region’s political leaders. It was a subversive experiment in a society that heretofore had been run by the landowners.
The Republic sent four increasingly large military expeditions to Canudos. In March 1897, Colonel Moreira César, commanding 1,300 soldiers, led the third expedition to attack the villagers, submitting them to machine-gun fire for hours on end. Nevertheless, the villagers managed to defeat the government troops. Colonel Moreira César was shot and killed. As the surviving government soldiers fled they were ambushed and attacked by the backlanders and hundreds of them died. The repercussions of the defeat were tremendous. In Rio de Janeiro, the capital of the Republic, the newspapers declared that Canudos was a stronghold of primitive and reactionary monarchists that had to be destroyed. The people of the village were steadfast in their resistance, even when faced with the violent attacks of the fourth expedition, which comprised 421 officers and 6,160 soldiers, all armed to the teeth. In October 1897 the army guaranteed that the lives of all those who surrendered would be spared. Unfortunately, they were not true to their word and many of the men, women and children who surrendered were decapitated. On 5 October the army set light to the village with kerosene and then dynamited the remains.
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