THE old republic, period of Brazilian history best known by historians as FirstRepublic, extended from 1889 to 1930. It was the first phase of the Republic in Brazil and, as such, it was a period full of tensions, whether in the economy, in politics and also in society as a whole.
Social inequality, tax increases, unmet needs, racism, fear, political dissatisfaction, etc., all of this was the root of revolts in the First Republic. Over the more than forty years of this first phase, different revolts took place in the countryside, in the city and even in the military.
The purpose of this text is to list the main revolts that took place during the First Republic, bringing a short summary about each of them.
Summary
The uprisings in the First Republic were motivated by numerous factors, such as social inequality and poverty, police violence, fear, religious fanaticism, etc.
The four main revolts of the period, that is, the most studied are: Canudos, Contestado, Vacina Revolt and Chibata Revolt.
The Canudos War took place between 1896-97 and was motivated by the dissatisfaction of the Bahian elites with the training from the camp that had a religious leader who was not linked to the Church and a social experience with an air of egalitarianism.
The Contestado War took place in a region disputed by Paraná and Santa Catarina and involved the dissatisfaction of the sertanejos with poverty and religious fervor.
The Vaccine Revolt was motivated by the population's dissatisfaction with the violence of the modernization process in Rio de Janeiro combined with fear of the forced vaccination campaign.
The Chibata Revolt was triggered by the dissatisfaction of black and mestizo sailors with the physical punishment they suffered in the Navy.
Ruins of the village of Canudos.**
The Canudos War took place in the backlands of Bahia between 1896 and 1897 and pitted the Brazilian Army against the inhabitants of a village called beautifulmount. The camp was led by Antônio Councilor, a blessed (local religious leader) who settled in the region in 1893, after participating in protests against the increase in taxes that had taken place since the Proclamation of the Republic.
The camp, which became known as Belo Monte, was on the banks of the Vaza-Barris river and was already inhabited. With the arrival of Antônio Conselheiro, the place grew and came to have about 24 thousand inhabitants.|1| Belo Monte became a center that brought new perspectives of life to a population of needy ex-slaves who had no access to land.
Antônio Conselheiro's role as a religious leader was also extremely important and responsible for attracting thousands of people to look for the blessed, and this made Canudos a pilgrimage center. Canudos was not a village with an egalitarian lifestyle, but, in the words of historians Lilia Schwarcz and Heloisa Starling, it was “a social and political experience different from that of the central government republican".|2|
The religious leadership of Antônio Conselheiro presented itself as a risk to the Church, due to its great popularity and social and political experience with traits of egalitarianism. Both aspects posed a threat to the local economic elites, which were based on the latifundium and the domination of the colonels. Therefore, Canudos was a risk for the elites of the First Republic and, therefore, in the view of these elites, it needed to be eliminated.
Thus, military expeditions were organized with the aim of destroying the camp. THE first shipment it was organized by the state of Bahia and was defeated by the resistance formed in Canudos. At second and third expeditionsthey were organized by army troops and were also defeated, including their commander killed in action.
At fourth expedition, organized from April 1897, the troops sent were made up of about 6500 soldiers (including officers) equipped with modern weaponry — including cannons. The final result was Canudos devastated. the troops burned and dynamited the camp, and the prisoners were beheaded.
Also access:Understand a First Republic practice known as sticking
The Contested War took place in a disputed area by the states of SantaCatherine and Paraná between 1912 and 1916. As happened in Canudos, in the Contestado region, a series of poor and despondent sertanejos found, in the speech of a religious leader, called JosephMaria, an alternative for his life and started to follow him.
The context in which the Contestado took place was tense. First, there was the territorial dispute between Santa Catarina and Paraná. In addition, part of the contested region was handed over to Percival Farquhar (a magnate known for building the Madeira-Mamoré railroad) to build a railroad linking Rio Grande do Sul and São Paulo.
In the land assignment agreement, Farquhar was also given land within a 15 km radius of the railroad, so that it could exploit the wood available in the region. It turns out that the region was already inhabited by people who lived on subsistence agriculture and mate herb. The company linked to Farquhar, responsible for logging in these lands, organized troops of jagunços to expel the inhabitants of the area.
In addition, thousands of railroad workers lost their jobs, which reinforced the pool of poor people. The war itself began in October 1912, when a group of people led by José Maria settled in Irani, in the region contested by the two states. The grouping of people in Irani was understood by Paraná as an invasion coordinated by the people of Santa Catarina, and thus, this state attacked the sertanejos. In this attack, José Maria was eventually killed.
After José Maria's death, religious fervor continued with the sertanejos founding a series of autonomous communities. The existence of these communities was seen by the local colonels as a threat, and it was from there that the repression against the autonomous communities formed by the sertanejos began.
The root of the conflict is explained by historian Paulo Pinheiro Machado as follows:
The episodes of police persecution against the monk José Maria were motivated by the fear of the concentration of poor people in the countryside. Local and state authorities, mostly large ranchers and National Guard officials, they felt that their mission was to subdue the sertanejos who no longer submitted to their respective colonels. Autonomous groups were formed, with strong religious ties, in which mystical expectations were mixed with social criticism. Originally, these communities were neither hostile nor militarized, but their yearning for independence aroused the wrath of rulers, the press and farmers.|3|
The Contestado War lasted until January 1916 and was responsible for the death of about 10 thousand people. The autonomous communities were destroyed and, in the following decades, a bleaching process that region.
The Vaccine Revolt took place between November 10 and 16, 1904, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, then capital of Brazil. The Vaccine Revolt was a popular revolt that happened due to the dissatisfaction of the population due to the violence of the process of sanitization of the capital. At that time, Rio de Janeiro was undergoing a forced vaccination campaign against the population against smallpox.
The context of the Vaccine Revolt in Rio de Janeiro was troubled and was triggered by the forced vaccination campaign. Brazil, at the time, was governed by Rodrigues Alves, and the capital, by presidential order, was going through a process of modernization and revitalization. In this process, for example, the widening of a series of avenues in the city was ordered.
The revitalization process, in turn, took place at the expense of vacancy of thousands of people from downtown Rio de Janeiro. The evictions took place in a violent manner and were carried out precisely to make room for the works of modernization and revitalization. Alongside this, a campaign was carried out to eradicate diseases that intensely affected the country at that time, such as smallpox and yellow fever.
The vaccination campaign was led by the health worker OswaldoCross, and the way it was conducted allied to the lack of information led the population to rebel. Compulsory vaccinations happened violently, and, in addition, services such as enrollment in schools began to require a vaccination card.
The population's fear of vaccination led to a great revolt in the streets of Rio de Janeiro during the aforementioned days. The result of the revolt, in addition to material destruction in the capital, was the death of 30 people and more than a hundred wounded.
The Chibata Revolt took place in 1910 and was triggered by the dissatisfaction of black sailors against the physical punishment to which they were subject in the corporation. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Brazilian Navy was an institution marked by racism, since the most lows of the corporation were occupied by blacks and mestizos who were punished with lashes when any rule was violated.
By 1910, sailors had already expressed their dissatisfaction with whipping when someone was punished. The trigger for the sailors' revolt came when MarcellinRodriguesMenezes was punished with 250 lashes without the right to medical treatment. Sailors, dissatisfied with physical punishment, racism and social inequality, rebelled.
The sailors took control of four Navy vessels demanding an end to physical punishment. The leader of the rebels was JoãoCandid, also known as the Black Admiral. Members of the revolt drafted a manifesto to the president Hermes da Fonseca and threatened to attack Rio de Janeiro if their demands were not met.
The Chibata Revolt was harshly repressed with thousands of sailors being laid off. Others ended up being arrested, tortured and sent to Ilha das Cobras, while others were sent to work in rubber plantations in the Amazon. Many of those sent to the rubber plantations were shot on the way.
other revolts
The four revolts discussed above were only the best known revolts of the period, as, throughout the First Republic, several others took place in different parts of Brazil, such as like:
Cangaço;
Juazeiro Revolt;
Copacabana Fort Revolt;
Paulista Revolt;
About Column;
Armada Revolt;
Federalist Revolution etc.
Urban and rural uprisings in the Old Republic
Many historians classify the revolts of the Old Republic (or First Republic) as rural or urban. In the case of rural revolts, historian Boris Fausto also states that they can be classified in three different ways.|4|:
Those that combined religious content with social need: Canudos and Revolta de Juazeiro.
Those that combined religious content with social claim: Contestado.
Those that expressed social demands without religious content: rural workers' strikes organized in the 1910s.
From this division of urban revolts and rural revolts, there is a table below that classifies some of those that took place during the First Republic.
urban revolts |
rural revolts |
Vaccine Revolt |
straws |
Revolt of the whip |
contested |
Revolt of 18 at Fort Copacabana |
Juazeiro Revolt |
worker strikes |
Cangaço |
|1| SCHWARCZ, Lilia Moritz and STARLING, Heloisa Murgel. Brazil: a biography. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2015, p. 333.
|2| Idem, p. 333.
|3| MACHADO, Paulo Pinheiro. Tragedy announced. Journal of History of the National Library, Rio de Janeiro, year 7, nº 85, p. 18-19, Oct. 2012.
|4| FAUSTO, Boris. History of Brazil. São Paulo: Edusp, 2013, p. 253-254.
*Image credits: FGV/CPDOC
**Image credits: FGV/CPDOC
By Daniel Neves
Graduated in History
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/historiab/rebelioes-na-republica-velha.htm