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Bringing the Countryside Back In: A Case Study of Military Intervention as State Building in the Brazilian Old Republic*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Todd Diacon
Todd Diacon
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of History at theUniversity of Tennessee, Knoxville.
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Abstract

Brazil's Contestado Rebellion (1912–1916) pitted 20,000 millenarian rebels against two-thirds of the Brazilian army. A major event in the consolidation of the Brazilian Republic, it serves as an important case study of the dynamics of central state intervention in the Brazilian hinterland. Local notables took advantage of a new, unprecedented central state presence to press for advantages in their local struggles. At the same time, officer experiences during the rebellion led them to question the institutional arrangements that they felt produced the conflict. The result was a new officer push for a nationalist, central state intervention during the Republic.

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Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , October 1995 , pp. 569 - 592
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 d'Assumpção, H. Teixeira, A campanha do Contestado vol. 1 (Belo Horizonte, 1917), p. 89Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., p. 90.

3 Barman, R., Brazil: The Forging of a Nation (Stanford, 1988), p. 2Google Scholar.

4 For an interesting history of the Brazilian flag and national anthem, see Carvalho, J., A formação das almas: o imaginário da Repúlblica no Brasil (São Paulo, 1990), esp. ch. 5Google Scholar.

5 Anderson, B., Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York, 1983), p. 15Google Scholar. Anderson then cites Ernest Gellner's remark that ‘Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist’. For more on the ‘imagined community’ idea as applied to Brazilian history, see Carvalho, A Formação das almas, esp. ch. 6.

6 Schneider, R., ‘Order and Progress’: A Political History of Brazil (Boulder, 1991), pp. 59–80Google Scholar. See also Hahner, J., Civilian-Military Relations in Brazil, 1889–1898 (Columbia, 1969)Google Scholar.

7 The English translation of Os Sertões is Rebellion in the Backlands trans. Putman, S. (Chicago, 1944)Google Scholar. See also Levine, R., Vale of Tears: Revisiting the Canudos Massacre in Northeastern Brazil, 1893–1897 (Berkeley, 1992)Google Scholar. For the Contestado Rebellion, see Monteiro, D., Os errantes do novo século (São Paulo, 1974)Google Scholar; de Queiroz, M. Vinhas, Messianismo e conflito social: aguerra sertaneja do Contestado: 1912–1916 (São Paulo, 1981)Google Scholar; Diacon, T., Millenarian Vision, Capitalist Reality: Brazil's Contestado Rebellion, 1912–1916 (Durham, N.C., 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Diacon, Millenarian Vision, pp. 44–114.

9 A prime example of the impact of officer experiences in the countryside can be found in the career of General Góes Monteiro. Specifically, Góes's experiences battling the 1924 Tenente rebellion in southern Brazil, and his participation in the pursuit of the Prestes Column, introduced him to a Brazil short on infrastructure development and central state authority. The general criticised the lack of communication and transportation networks that made it difficult to pursue the enemy. In some places, such as southern Mato Grosso, Argentina exercised de facto authority. Finally, the Brazilian army, unable to capture Prestes, was forced to rely on civilian troops controlled by the very local notables that Góes particularly disliked. Together, several have argued, these experiences played a major role in the development of the general's interventionist mentality. Coutinho, L., O general Góes depõe, 2nd edn. (Rio de Janeiro, 1956), pp. 14–15, 30, 35–8Google Scholar; Smith, P., Góes Monteiro and the Role of the Army in Brazil (Bundoora, 1979), pp. 4–6Google Scholar; Monteiro, P., with an introduction by Smith, P., ‘The Brazilian Army in 1925: A Contemporary Opinion,’ Florida International University Occasional Paper Series (Fall, 1981)Google Scholar. See also, Prestes, A., A Coluna Prestes (São Paulo, 1990), pp. 260–8, 283Google Scholar.

10 Piazza, W., Santa Catarina: sua história (Floriznópolis, 1983), pp. 30;, 507–19Google Scholar; Lemos, Z., Curitibanos na história do Contestado 2nd edn. (Curitibanos, 1983), pp. 81–7, 89–97Google Scholar.

11 Piazza, Santa Catarina, pp. 289–305. In his well-researched history of a frontier region in the northeastern state of Ceará, Billy Jaynes Chandler demonstrates how local notables seized control of centrally-appointed Imperial positions of authority during the Empire. Chandler, B., The Feitosas and the Sertão dos Inhamuns: The History of a Family and a Community in Northeast Brazil, 1700–1930 (Gainesville, 1972), pp. 51, 58, 77, 91–102, 168Google Scholar. Richard Graham argues in his recent study of crown-society relations that constant local elections for national offices cemented ties between local elites and central state authorities. Graham, R., Patronage and Politics in Nineteenth Century Brazil (Stanford, 1990)Google Scholar. Both of these studies challenge the view that the Empire was a time of significant, independent, ‘external’, state authority over local notables. For this latter view see especially Pang, E. and Seckinger, R., ‘The Mandarins of Imperial Brazil’, Comparative Studies in Society and History vol. 14, no. 2 (03 1972), pp. 215–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barman, R. and Barman, J., ‘The Role of the Law Graduate in the Political Elite of Imperial Brazil’, journal of Inter-American Studies, vol. 18, no. 4 (11 1976), pp. 423–50Google Scholar

12 On local politics in the Contestado and the general absence of central authorities before the rebellion see Diacon, Millenarian Vision, ch. 2. Studies of the Old Republic that emphasise local oligarchical power and the general absence of central authorities independent from those oligarchies include Chandler, The Feitosas, chs. 5, 6 and 9; Pang, E., Bahia in the First Brazilian Republic: Coronelismo and Oligarchies (1889–1934) (Gainesville, 1979)Google Scholar; Lewin, L., Politics and Parentela in Paraiba: A Case Study of Family-Based Oligarchy in Brazil (Princeton, 1987), pp. 229–34, 247, 250–1, 288–95, 320–2, 347, 414Google Scholar; Macauley, Neil, The Prestes Column: Revolution in Brazil (New York, 1974)Google Scholar; and Diacon, T., ‘Searching for a Lost Army: Recovering the History of the Federal Army's Pursuit of the Prestes Column in Brazil, 1924–1029’, unpublished ms., 1995Google Scholar.

13 See O Trabalho, 3 Dec. 1910, for a discussion of War Minister Hermes da Fonseca and the military significance of a railroad line through the Contestado. d'Assumpção, A companha do Contestado is an excellent source on the military and infrastructure development in the Contestado.

14 Carvalho, Campanha, pp. 319, 328–9.

15 Two clearly written summaries of these interventions are Keith, ‘Armed Federal Interventions’, and Hayes, ‘The Military Club and National Polities’. See also Lewin, Politics and Parentela in Paraiba, pp. 295–307. Morais, F., Chatô: o rei do Brasil (São Paulo, 1994), pp. 64–80Google Scholar provides a different perspective on the Salvationist intervention in Recife.

16 The Canudos Rebellion is the most famous example of this process of rural rebellion, military repression, and the shock of the encounter of two different Brazils. The rebel defeat of several expeditions, combined with Euclydes da Cunha's gripping account of Canudos, forced literate urban Brazilians to face the stark differences between their European-like world and the Brazilian backlands. In addition to the sources cited in note 7, see Skidmore, T., Black into White: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought (New York, 1974), pp. 103–10Google Scholar; Needell, J., A Tropical Belle Epoque: Elite Culture and Society in Turn-of-the-Century Rio de Janeiro (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 220–1Google Scholar.

17 The map is reprinted in Peixoto, D., A companha do Contestado: episo'dios e impressoes, 2nd edn. (Rio de Janeiro, 1920)Google Scholar. The absence of official maps was the rule, not the exception, in early twentieth century Brazil. According to Frank McCann (personal communication), as of 1912 the Army had completed a map of only one Brazilian state – Rio de Janeiro. For the purposes of this discussion the important point is that events in the Contestado forced a rapid turn of official attention to this economically marginal region.

18 For reports on rebel attacks against lost soldiers see General F. Carvalho, ‘Ordens do dia do Quartel Geral das forças em operações [no Contestado]’, Arquivo Setembrino de Carvalho, Fundaçã Getúlio Vargas, Rio de Janeiro (hereafter cited as AC/FGV).

19 This of course was not the first nor last time central state authorities turned to private armies for help in defeating unrest in the Brazilian interior. For a complex discussion of such cooperation during the Empire, see Uricoechea, F., The Patrimonial Foundations of the Brazilian Bureaucratic State (Berkeley, 1980), pp. 18–22, 35–8, 85–96Google Scholar. Ten years after the Contestado Rebellion Captain Pedro Aurélio Góis Monteiro was also forced, much to his chagrin, to depend on exactly such an alliance during his pursuit of the famous Prestes Column. Prestes, A Coluna Prestes, pp. 260–8.

20 Carvalho, ‘Ordens do dia’, 24 Sep. 1914 and 13 Feb. 1915, AC/FGV. J. Farias to General F. Carvalho, 2 May 1915, AC/FGV. Peixoto, Campanha, pp. 430–1.

21 Carvalho, ‘Ordens do dia’, 19 and 22 April 191;, AC/FGV. d'Assumpçã, A campanha do Contestado, vol. 1, p. 140; vol. 2, pp. 92, 212, 257, 260, 311–12, 316–18.

22 O Diário da Tarde (Curitiba, Paraná), 14 and 19 Sept. and 9 Oct. 1914.

23 O Dia (Florianópolis, Santa Catarina), 1 and 16 Apr. 1914.

24 Carvalho, ‘Ordens do dia’, 26 Sep. 1914, AC/FGV.

25 O Diário da Tarde, 11–15 Dec. 1914.

26 Peixoto, Campanha, p. 502.

27 Ibid., pp. 503–4.

28 Ibid., p. 503. O Diário da Tarde, 11–15 Dec. 1914.

29 O Trabalho (Curitibanos, Santa Catarina), 13 Jan. and 23 Feb. 1913. A Folha do Comércio (Florianópolis, Santa Catarina), 21 Feb. 1913.

30 Various telegrams to Carvalho, 15–26 Apr. 1915, AC/FGV. d'Assumpção, A campanha do Contestado, vol. 1, pp. 92–5, 144, 337. Peixoto, Campanha, pp. 448.

31 Soares, J., Guerra em sertões brasileiros (Rio de Janeiro, 1931), p. 114Google Scholar; d'Assumpção, A campanha do Contestado, vol. 1, p. 337; Lemos, Curitibanos, p. 182.

32 Cava, R. Delia, Miracle at Joaseiro (New York, 1970), pp. 151–6Google Scholar; Hayes, R., The Armed Nation: The Brazilian Corporate Mystique (Tempe, 1987), pp. 105–6Google Scholar; Love, J., Rio Grande do Sul and Brazilian Regionalism, 1822–1930 (Stanford, 1971), pp. 156–63Google Scholar.

33 Hayes, The Armed Nation, ch. 3; Keith, H., ‘Armed Federal Interventions in the States During the Old Republic’, in Keith, H. and Hayes, R. (eds.), Perspectives on Armed Politics in Brazil (Tempe, 1976), pp. 51–77Google Scholar; R. Hayes, ‘The Military Club and National Politics in Brazil’, in Perspectives on Armed Politics, 139–76; Moraes, J., A esquerda militar no Brasil vol. 1, Da conspiração republicana à guerrilha dos tenentes (São Paulo, 1991)Google Scholar.

34 Carvalho, Memórias, pp. 191–204; d'Assumpção, A campanhado Contestado, vol. 2, p. 37; Skidmore, T., Politics in Brazil, 1930–1964: An Experiment in Democracy (New York, 1967), pp. 82, 10;, 141, 156, 170, 180–93Google Scholar; Alexander, R., ‘Brazilian Tenentismo’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 36, no. 2 (05 1956), pp. 232, 238CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wirth, J., ‘Tenentismo and the Brazilian Revolution of 1930’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 44, no. 2 (05 1964), p. 163CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCann, Frank D., ‘The Nation in Arms: Obligatory Military Service During the Old Republic’, in Alden, D. and Dean, W. (eds.), Essays Concerning the Socioeconomic History of Brazil and Portuguese India (Gainesville, 1977), p. 224Google Scholar; Beloch, I. and Abreu, A. (eds.), Dicionário histórico-biográfico Brasileiro, 1930–1983 (Rio de Janeiro, 1984), vol. 1, pp. 682–4; vol. 3, P. 2648Google Scholar.

35 Carvalho quoted in Peixoto, Campania, p. 561.

36 Peixoto, Campanha, pp. 730, 748.

37 Ibid., pp. 442 passim. Dona Olga? (last name unintelligible), Interview by Irani Produções, Tres Barras, Santa Catarina, 1985.

38 ‘Telegram from General Setembrino de Carvalho to the President of Paraná’, reprinted in O Diário da Tarde, 7 Jan. 1915.

38 d'Assumpção, A campanha do Contestado, vol. i, p. 73.

40 Peixoto, Campanha, p. 297. For Brazil Railway Company requests for army protection of both the trace and company colonies see the numerous telegrams collected in AC/FGV. See also A Folha do Comércio, 22 June 1914. The company sought indemnisation from the Brazilian government for losses suffered during the rebellion. 'Conference: WCF[orbes] with Mr. Dapples, Jan. 28, 1915', Forbes Collection, vol. 1, Baker Library, Harvard University. W. Cameron Forbes was appointed receiver of the Brazil Railway Company in 1914.

41 Carvalho, Memórias, p. 170; Peixoto, Campanha, pp. 292–7; Diacon, Milknarian Vision, pp. 45–51. For more on the Brazil Railway Company, see Gauld, C., The Last Titan. Percival Farquhar: American Entrepreneur in Latin America (Stanford, 1964)Google Scholar.

42 Peixoto, Campanha, pp. 285–6. For the influence of German training and strategy see McCann, F., ‘The Formative Period of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Army Thought, 1900–1922’, Hispanic American Historical Review vol. 64, no. 4 (11. 1984), p. 746CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hilton, Stanley, ‘The Armed Forces and Industrialists in Modern Brazil: The Drive for Military Autonomy, 1889–1954’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 62, no. 4 (11. 1982), pp. 653–4Google Scholar; Hayes, The Armed Nation, pp. 118–22.

43 Skidmore, Black into White, pp. 53–69. For the most recent discussions of racist theories in Latin America during this period, see Stepan, N., The Hour of Eugenics: Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca, 1992)Google Scholar; Zimmerman, E., ‘Racial Ideas and Social Reform: Argentina, 1890–1916’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 71, no. 1 (02 1992), pp. 23–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Skidmore, Black into White, pp. 106–7. This is not to say that da Cunha ignored the environment in his study of the Canudos Rebellion (Rebellion in the Backlands). Indeed, as Skidmore notes (p. 106), ‘The first quarter of the book was a long, detailed essay on the interaction of man and his environment in the sertão’. My point is that while da Cunha focused almost exclusively on the permanency of the physical environment, the Contestado officers focused instead on the more easily transformed, or shaped, man-made environment.

45 d'Assumpção, A campanha do Contestado, vol. 1, p. 239; vol. i, p. 210.

46 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 329. Peixoto, Campanha, pp. 29–32. Carvalho, Memórias, pp. 113, 128–40.

47 Peixoto, Campanha, pp. 60, 307.

48 Ibid., p. 394; Carvalho, Memorias, pp. 137–8.

49 Tertuliano Potiguara quoted in Peixoto, Campanha, p. 83; d'Assumpção, A campanha do Contestado, vol. 2, pp. 235–6, 447–8. For example, the establishment of a telephone link between the Santa Maria battlefield and regional headquarters in Calmon greatly facilitated troop movements during this, the last great siege and battle of the rebellion.

50 d'Assumpção, A campanha do Contestado, vol. 1, p. 1.

51 Carvalho, Memórias, p. 113; Peixoto, Campanha, pp. 78, 80–2; Telegram, General Setembrino de Carvalho to Minister of War Vespasiano d'Albuquerque, quoted in Peixoto, Campanha, p. 82.

52 Peixoto, Campanha, p. 282.

53 Ibid., pp. 262, 250 passim; Carvalho, Memoriás, pp. 79–80, 256–8; d'Assumpção, A campanha do Contestado, vol. 1, pp. 160–2; vol. 2, pp. 21, 27, 92, 97.

54 Carvalho, Memoriás, pp. 79–80.

55 Report of the Minister of War to the President of Brazil, May 1915, quoted in Peixoto, Campanha, p. 265.

56 McCann, 'The Formative Period', p. 752.

57 A Defesa Nacional, Jan. 1917, quoted in Peixoto, Campanha, p. viii; 'Remember', Revista dos militares, no. 58 (Apr. 1915), quoted in Peixoto, Campanha, p. 275; A Defesa Nacional, quoted in Peixoto, Campanha, p. 751.

58 McCann, ‘The Formative Period’, pp. 743, 746, 748–9.

59 I do not mean to suggest that national leaders, both military and civilian, responded only to rural events, or that rural events alone shaped and thought and actions of the national elite during the last 15 years of the Old Republic. Indeed, to make such an argument would be ludicrous given what we know about this era. The growing urban labour movement of the late teens and early twenties clearly alarmed elites, and prompted a mixture of repression and reform labour legislation, especially when strikers demanded not just economic gains but the overthrow of the socioeconomic system as well. Nevertheless my point remains: while we possess a considerable knowledge of these urban events, we still know very little about the comparable impact of rural events on national politics in Brazil. T. Skidmore, ' Workers and Soldiers: Urban Labor Movements and Elite Responses in Twentieth-Century Latin America', in Bernhard, Virginia (ed.), Elites, Masses, and Modernisation in Latin America, 1850–1930 (Austin, 1979), pp. 79–126Google Scholar; Fausto, B., Trabalho urbano e conflito social, 1889–1920 (São Paulo, 1976)Google Scholar; Maram, S., ‘Labor and the Left in Brazil, 1890–1921; A Movement Aborted’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 57, no. 2 (05 1977), pp. 254–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wolfe, J., Working Women, Working Men: São Paulo and the Rise of Brazil's Industrial Working Class, 1900–1955 (Durham, N.C., 1993)Google Scholar.

60 Carvalho, Memórias, pp. 139–40.

61 Skidmore, Black into White, pp. 114–23.

62 Ibid., pp. 113–14.

63 Hayes, The Armed Nation, p. 119. For a similar textbook treatment of the impact of the war in Brazil, see Burns, E., A History of Brazil, 2nd edn. (New York, 1979), pp. 376–7Google Scholar. For an especially clear, well-written essay that also emphasises the impact of World War I on officer thought, see Carvalho, J., ‘As forçes armadas na Primeira Republica: O poder desestabilizador’, in Fausto, Boris (ed.), O Brasil Republican), Tomo III, vol. 2 (Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, 1978), pp. 183–234Google Scholar.

64 Skidmore, Black into White, pp. 152–8; Hilton, ‘The Armed Forces’, pp. 629–33; McCann, ‘The Nation in Arms’, pp. 230–1.

65 In addition to works cited in note 9, and McCann's mention of the impact of the Contestado on military thinking, Stanley Hilton argues in passing that the difficulties of repressing rural rebellions contributed to officer calls for reform. McCann, ‘The Formative Period’, p. 752; Hilton, ‘The Armed Forces’, p. 632. For examples of textbooks and histories that ignore how legalist officer experiences in the countryside shaped the evolution of Brazilian military thought during the Old Republic, see Flynn, P., Brazil: A Political Analysis (Boulder, 1978), pp. 19, 43–5Google Scholar; Schneider, ‘Order and Progress’, ch. 3, pp. 110–11; Carone, E., A República Velha, vol. I. Instituições e classes sociais, 1889–1930 (Rio de Janeiro, 1978), pp. 349–76Google Scholar; Sodré, N., História militar do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1965), pp. 177–233Google Scholar; Carvalho, ‘As forças armadas na Primeira Repúblics’.

66 Carvalho, Memórias, pp. 89, 79–80.

67 Peixoto, Campanha, pp. 491–506; O Diário da Tarde, 11–15 Dec. 1914.

68 Carvalho, J., Os bestialiados: o Rio de Janeiro e a República que não foi (São Paulo, 1987)Google Scholar; Hahner, J., Poverty andPolitics: The Urban Poor in Brazil, 1870–1920 (Albuquerque, 1986)Google Scholar; Chaloub, S., Trabalho, lare botequim: o cotidiano dos trabalhadores no Rio de Janeiro da Belle Epoque (São Paulo, 1986)Google Scholar; Janotti, M., os subversives da República (São Paulo, 1986)Google Scholar; Topik, S., The Political Economic of the Brazilian State, 1889–1930 (Austin, 1987)Google Scholar; Queiróz, S., os radicals da república: jacobinismo-ideologiae ação, 1893–1897 (São Paulo, 1986)Google Scholar; Needell, A Tropical Belle Epoque; Graham, S., House and Street: The Domestic World of Servants and Masters in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro (New York, 1988)Google Scholar; Rago, M., os praeres da noite: prostituição eos códigos da sexualidade feminina em São Paulo (Rio de Janeiro, 1991)Google Scholar; Andrews, G., Blacks and Whites in São Paulo, 1888–1988 (Madison, 1991)Google Scholar.

69 Volume 50 of the Handbook of Latin American Studies (Austin, 1990), covering works written between 1979 and 1988, lists 64 articles, monographs, memoirs, and historiographies that (a) examine wholly or in part the history of the Old Republic, and (b) clearly demonstrate an urban or rural focus. The result: 44 works concentrate on urban Brazil to just 20 for the countryside. What is more, of the 44 urban works, 30 discuss the histories of just two cities, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. That is, more work has been done on the republican history of these two cities than for all of rural Brazil.

70 Holloway, T., Immigrants on the Land (Chapel Hill, 1980)Google Scholar; Weinstein, B., The Amazon Rubber Boom, 1850–1920 (Stanford, 1983)Google Scholar; Stolke, V., Cafeicultura: homens, mulherese capital, 1850–1980 (São Paulo, 1986)Google Scholar; Levine, Vale of Tears.

71 For a recent study of the impact of the Canudos Rebellion (and, hence, the countryside) on national politics, see Levine, R., ‘Canudos in the National Context’, Americas, vol. XLVII, no. 2 (10 1991), pp. 207–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This article appears in a special issue in honour of the centennial of the creation of the Brazilian Republic. It is the only article (out of a total of seven contributions) that considers at length the importance of rural events in the history of the Republic. For a brief mention of how events in the countryside may have shaped elite reactions to urban events, see Diacon, T., ‘Down and Out In Rio de Janeiro’, Latin American Research Review, vol. 25, no. 1 (1990), p. 247Google Scholar. For a lengthy study of how the actions of rural elites could shape urban politics, see Lewin, Politics and Parentela in Paraiba. Recently, the Brazilian magazine Veja polled fifteen Brazilian intellectuals, and arrived at a selection of the twenty best books (fiction and non-fiction) ever written by Brazilians. This canon, the article's author noted, is much more rural than urban in terms of the themes and settings of the included works. Gama, R., ‘Biblioteca nacional: A pedido de VEJA, quinze intelectuais escolhem os melhores livros do BrasiP’, Veja, vol. 27, no. 47 (23 11 1994), pp. 108–12Google Scholar.