Marcus Carvalho paper

Transcrição

The “Commander of all forests”: The Cabanada, 1832-1835
Marcus J. M. de Carvalho
Paper to be presented at the conference “Rethinking Histories
of resistance in Brazil and Mexico”, Manchester, 2008
The following paper will deal with the Cabanada in Pernambuco, a rebellion that spread
throughout the South Zona da Mata following the end of a three day military uprising in the city or
Recife, the Abrilada, of April 14, 1832. The Cabanada involved Indians, peasants, slave runaways
and landlords. Its major leader, Vicente de Paula, was a son of a priest, whose real name was not
really known, until he was finally arrested almost fifteen years after the rebellion was crushed. The
Abrilada was a barracks uprising led by military officers who had been discharged from their posts
after the abdication of Pedro I, king of Brazil until April 7th, 1831. The Abrilada supportersincluded
army officers and soldiers, plantation owners and the Portuguese-born poor. The Abrilada was led
by well known military officers, including two former Comandante das Armas of the province of
Pernambuco. There is one common aspect to the Cabanada and the Abrilada. The restoration of
Pedro I was the professed motivation of the rebels in both cases. The purpose of this paper is to
investigate the meaning of this professed motivation for different groups involved in these
eventsThis paper will analyze the class-straddling alliances and thus attempt to understand the
motivations of the rebels. . I will argue the restoration of Pedro I had different meanings for those
who participated in those two events.
The Abdication of Pedro I in April of 1831 had a considerable impact in Brazilian politics.
The cabinet which fell in October of 1830 was the last chance the king had to forge an alliance with
the Parliament. In that same month, ten thousand new weapons arrived for the army. It was
interpreted as a proof that the last absolutist cabinet had indeed planned a military coup. A new
cabinet was formed, which included a few liberals from the parliamentary opposition, but as the
historiography states, it was an useless measure. Pedro's plan to consolidate his autocratic Empire
was doomed to failure. Unable to control the Parliament, Pedro abdicated in April of 1831 and left
for Portugal, leaving his son, a five year old boy, to succeed him. Constitutionalist liberals in
Pernambuco felt more confident than any time, since the seccecionist 1824 rebellion.1 However, the
Commander of Arms, and other officers of the army troops in Recife would resist.
After the downfall of Pedro I, the Regency at Rio de Janeiro changed the Presidents of the
provinces and several other officers of the bureaucracy. The Abrilada was a barracks uprising led by
officers who had been dismissed from service after the downfall of Pedro I. The uprising was
preceded by rumors that a major outbreak in the backlands would soon occur to support other
restorationist leaders in the backlands, led by Pinto Madeira.2 According to their plans, Pedro
should disembark in Barra Grande-always the landing point for the royalist troops-to start the
conquest of Pernambuco.3 The possibility of a widespread restorationist rebellion in Northeast
Brazil did not escape the Regency at Rio de Janeiro. A few days before it actually broke out, the
minister of justice had written to the provincial government that Pedro I was aware of the Pinto
Madeira rebellion and approved of it.4
THE ABRILADA
The leader of the Abrilada was Francisco José Martins, an absolutist and a personal friend of
the former Emperor, in late 1831, when in Europe, he may have met Pedro I in London to talk about
Pedro's return to Brazil through another coup.5 The literature tended to consider the Abrilada as just
another chapter in the political struggle between liberals and Absolutists, the so-called “colunas”.6
But the word "restorationist" here conceals a very complex alliance of groups with different specific
interests and class positions. As one "liberal" paper stated, there were also men who participated in
1
the liberal 1824 rebellion who by 1831 were siding with the absolutists and restorationists.7 It must
therefore be asked, what was the meaning of the rebellion for its participants? What united the
participants was that they all lost out with the fall of Pedro, the rise of liberals to the presidency of
Pernambuco in October 1831, and the growing nativism of the period.
The Abdication of Pedro I also hurt the faction of the local elites which supported the crown
in the struggle against the 1824 rebellion. They were best represented by the Cavalcanti brothers.
When Pedro was king, they were among the most outspoken anti-absolutist Deputies in the National
Assembly. However, the Cavalcanti were actually neither restorationists nor absolutists. Rather,
they aimed to overthrow the local government and replace it with one of their choice. The
Cavalcantis discreetly supported the Abrilada. Actually, a few of the major meetings to plan the
rebellion took place on the plantation of their father. However, as the Abrilada was quickly
defeated, the Cavalcanti brothers dropped their support, kept their low profile in the event, and
retired to the their plantations to wait for the fallout.8 As representatives of a large fraction of the
landed elites, they understood that political unrest was often dangerous to order and private
property.
Yet, the Abrilada did not only find support within local elites alienated from power.9 There
were those among the free-poor who supported the uprising. Portuguese clerks and artisans living in
Pernambuco were one such group, for natism had increased after the downfall of Pedro I. In
November of the precendin year, 1831, there had been a barracks uprising, when several Brazilianborn soldiers and lower-rank officers sided with the crowd of Recife and demanded that Portuguese
artisans and employees with less than two million réis10 should be banished of the country. Such
men, as militia soldiers, also supported the Abrilada.11 In that sense they were responding to
increased competition between Brazilian and Portuguese free workers in Recife. The alliances were
clear: Just as the Portuguese poor had supported the Abrilada, led by officers who had lost their
ranks in 1831, Brazilian tailors had signed the petition sent to the Regency in November of the
preceding year supporting Brigadier Vasconcellos, the man who had replaced those officers with
the 1824 rebels.12
Among the poor, sources say many soldiers in Pernambuco also supported the Abrilada, in
spite of their usual nativist attitude: economic reasons weighed more than ideologies. Many had
been dismissed without compensation after the downfall of Pedro I and roamed the streets of
Recife. The provincial government knew those unemployed men supported the attempted coup of
April 1832.13 Among them a major of the Henriques Batallion, the corps of black freedmen, was
arrested as a restorationists.14
The same was true of various Brazilian army officers. Not all of Abrilada rebels were
Portuguese-born. Francisco José Martins and Bento José Lamenha Lins, the two major army leaders
of the Abrilada, were Pernambucan-born. The motivation of those officers was that they had helped
to crush the 1824 liberal rebellion. For that reason they rose in the military rank, occupying key
commanding posts in Pernambuco and other provinces before the fall of Pedro I. After the
Abdication of Pedro I, they lost their commanding posts and faced the possibility of being arrested
at any time.
Even admitting the power of absolutist ideology, which indeed penetrated the army, one
may see that there were other issues involved. According to the Abrilada army leader Martins, his
troops were loyal to the Regency, but the new provincial government had arrested several Brazilianborn citizens who had served the previous governments. It had also disarmed the 53rd battalion,
which was mostly composed of Portuguese citizens who had served Brazil since independence.15
Obviously Martins was speaking on his own behalf. Whether or not his complaints were tru, he and
other officers had lost their previous privileges and commanding positions.
But even officers who had not been dismissed after 1831 could suffer from the new political
conjuncture. It was known in Pernambuco that army officers resented the fact that they had been
left aside in the lists of commanders of the Municipal Guard. According to reports of the Council of
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Government, there were at least 300 army officers in Pernambuco, but none was appointed to any
commanding office in the recently-created Municipal Guards.16 Among those left out of that corps
were officers who had been involved in the 1824 rebellion.17 However, by February, 1832, all
officers, of whatever party affiliation, were summoned to enlist, or lose their wages.18 That meant
they would have to enlist as subordinates of civilian militia commanders, and be totally dependent
on the provincial government rather than on the Crown, as the army was.
To further aggravate the unrest in the barracks, foreign soldiers were summoned for physical
exam -yet a good excuse to dismiss the remaining Portuguese-born soldiers in Pernambuco.19
Following that policy of demobilization, the few Portuguese officers who were still at arms were the
first ones to be dismissed.20
Finally, the Regency sanctioned a law, in January 17th, 1832, which ended the privilege
army officers hitherto had to be tried by military courts in case of political crimes.21 It is not certain
by what date the new legislation reached Pernambuco, but it was not much later than early March,
1832. That law meant that officers could be prosecuted for their participation in an illegal secret
society, such as the Coluna do Trono e do Altar, an Absolutist club, without the privilege of being
tried by their peers. This was enough to lead several army officers to mutiny in April, 1832.
The leaders of the Abrilada, however, could not count with much more than a couple of
hundred followers. When they failed to seize the major fortress of Recife, the mutiny was doomed.
The rebels then marched to the countryside, where they could count on the protection of cattle
ranchers in the backlands,22 planters in Vitória county, a cotton-growing area, and plantation owners
near the border of Pernambuco and the province of Alagoas. The major restorationist leaders in the
countryside were captains and sergeants major of the colonial Ordenanças, or their subordinate
officers. These men had lost part of their prestige due to the judicial reforms of 1828, thant created
the justice of peace, and the creation of the National Guard in 1831, which eliminated the posts of
captains and sergeants major from the formal state hierarchy. The higher posts in the local National
Guard and the justices of the peace would perform the same tasks as the captains or sergeants major
in the Ordenanças, but their jurisdiction was smaller. Captains major were authorites in a whole
termo (county), but justices of the peace only had jurisdiction over a parish. Actually, in some cases
captains major even used their influence to compel their subordinates not to leave the local militia.
The law stated that men could only join the National Guard after being dismissed by the
commander of the local militia. Thus, the issue was up to commanders of the local militia.23
Among planters who supported the Abrilada, one of the best known was Captain Major
Domingos Lourenço Torres Galindo, a cotton planter in Vitória.24 He had lost the 1829 elections for
the local justice of peace. Nevertheless, in March, 1830, a member of the Council of Government
complained that he still had armed men under his order, as if there were no justice of the peace in
his area of influence to do the necessary police work.25 In April he would still arrest and release
people without regard to the newly created judicial hierarchy.26
After the fall of Pedro, Galindo was the leader of those who constantly conspired in Vitória
against the faction which was rising to power. That even included Portuguese citizens who openly
discussed the possibility of Pedro's return to Brazil.27 As a wealthy planter in a relatively rich
county, he could still enjoy considerable power. It was only after the fall of Pedro I, and the naming
of the brother of the leader of the 1824 rebellion as president of the province, that the provincial
government dared to confront him. By early 1832, Galindo was required to return the weapons he
had received from the state in 1829 when he pursued the rebels of the ill-fated República de
Afogados.28 But he did not return them. It was already clear that Galindo was sending weapons and
troops to help Pinto Madeira, whose proclamations had already reached the town of Vitória in
February of that 1832.29
It was also Galindo who recruited a modest rancher in the district of Panelas named Antônio
Timóteo de Andrade. Not much is known about Antônio's background, but he helped to repress the
1824 rebels in the area as a militia officer of lower rank, for in 1826 he still had problems with
3
those who were hiding in Cimbres county.30 Called a "nigger" (negro) by state official,31 Timóteo
would later prove his bravery becoming one of the most feared Cabano commanders.32 Although he
soon was killed in combat, his brother João Timóteo replaced him as one of the major Cabano
leaders. Antônio Timóteo may be considered as one of the men who made the Abrilada turn into a
peasant rebellion. He convinced Indians and peasants around Panelas to rebel.33
In the frontier between Pernambuco and Alagoas, there were many planters who supported
the Abrilada. In 1824, an armada was sent to Barra Grande, in that frontier, in order to crush the
liberal rebellion. The army which fought against the liberal rebels of 1824 was stationed for several
months in Barra Grande. Planters who helped them in the area received land grants and honors from
the government.
One of them was Sergeant Major Manoel Affonso de Mello, who received a medal from the
Crown for his participation in the struggle against the 1824 rebels.34 According to another source,
he also enriched himself when he seized lands and property of his local opponents who supported
Carvalho's regime but fled after the defeat of the 1824 rebellion.35 Nevertheless he lost the 1829
elections to a competing group, the Accioly Linses and Feliciano Joaquim dos Santos, allies who
gained the posts of justice of the peace and juiz ordinário in his district.36
Lieutenant Colonel João Batista de Araújo had been dismissed as commander of the militias
in Barra Grande in June of 1831. But he continued to act as such, assembling troops and displaying
his armed men at local elections. In spite of the fact that he lived in Alagoas, Araújo also entered
Pernambuco with his troops marching along the beaches of Coroa Grande and Abreu, flaunting his
de facto power. It was known that he and Mello were coordinating their operations and helping each
other to mobilize men (including Indians) to support Galindo and Pinto Madeira. Sources say that
Portuguese citizens assembled in Barra Grande to gather money for a rebellion. They also counted
on the support of other captains major Alagoas and Pernambuco, whose names were not
mentioned.37 The leader of the County Council of Sirinhaém requested the Pernambucan president
to send troops against Galindo and Araújo.38
According to the President of Alagoas, Araújo was feared and obeyed by the people of Barra
Grande. He had been enmeshed in local politics for a long time, losing one brother because of
political violence.39 In the 1824 rebellion, like Mello, he received a medal for his bravery when he
fought against the liberal rebels,40 but this action gained him many enemies.41 Nevertheless, the
President of Alagoas regarded Araújo as a loyal government official and dismissed reports
mentioned above as the gossips of Araújo's enemies.42 The Pernambucan Commander of Arms
thought otherwise and wrote the President of Alagoas, accusing Araújo of disturbing the peace with
his armed retainers.43 However, since Araújo could easily retreat to Alagoas, there was little the
Pernambucan authorities could do. Those charges were sent again to the Alagoas executive the
following year, but he still did not act on them.44 Perhaps he did not wish to, for he was a relative of
the Cavalcanti brothers and thus was not eager to help the Pernambucan government, under the
Cavalcanti's enemy Francisco de Carvalho.45
Pernambucan militia troops, however, were already on the lookout for Araújo in January,
1832. The justices of the peace in the district in the frontier between Pernambuco and Alagoas had
already assembled troops and weapons in order to fight Araújo if he attempted to cross the frontier
again.46
It was only by the end of April, 1832, when the Abrilada proved that Araújo indeed was
involved in a plot for a broader rebellion, that the President of Alagoas summoned that officer to the
capital to verify the facts.47
On the Pernambucan side of the border, however, troops had alrady been sent against the
allies of João Batista de Araújo in late April of 1832. They were commanded by two men who had
supported the 1824 liberal rebellion. One of them, Major Carapeba would die a few months later
fighting against the Cabanos. The other, the planter Feliciano Joaquim dos Santos, survived the
4
1830's, and would later participate in the Praieira rebellion.48 The operation against the
"restorationist" rebels on the frontier also involved other planters in the area of the Beltrão
Mavignier and Accioly Lins clans, not to mention Colonel Santiago, a member of the Sociedade
Federal, a rebel in 1824. His family had lands very near the border, where one of his brothers still
lived at the time of the Abrilada. As the new commander of arms of Pernambuco after the Abrilada,
Santiago would himself fight his enemies in November, 1832.49
From April to August, 1832, those troops stayed in the area hunting down their local
enemies. Armed by the provincial government and with the support of the 500-mem Municipal
Guard, they were a considerable force. The Pernambucan troops, however, felt frustrated that they
could not cross the frontier of Alagoas to arrest Araújo50 but in August of 1832, when the President
of Alagoas finally decided to cooperate, in spite of the support that Araújo had in the area.51 In a
joint operation Pernambucan and Alagoan troops were finally sent against Araújo and Affonso de
Mello in August of 1832.52
In September, the governments of Alagoas and Pernambuco started to coordinate their
operations, leading an all-out attack against the troops under Captain Major Torres Galindo in
Pernambuco and his allies on the frontier. In September, 1832, Galindo fled to Sergipe, where he
would stay at least until 1833, under the protection of Colonel Bento de Melo Pereira.53 Araújo,
Mello, and the Captain Major of Flores were not as fortunate, and were arrested in October.54 The
same fate was shared by Pinto Madeira, who suffered his first major setbacks fighting local enemies
who had the help of army troops from Rio, under the command of General Labatut. He was finally
arrested in November, 1832.55
THE CABANADA
It seems therefore that, by late 1832, there was not much left of a restorationist rebellion led
by captains major and members of the landed aristocracy. In Pernambuco, they had been defeated
by troops commanded by their local opponents with the help of the Municipal Guard sent from
Recife. In Ceará they had been defeated by a corps sent from Rio de Janeiro to help the local
militia.
However, what seemed to be just another struggle among the landed elites, turned into the
Cabanada, a rebellion of people who lived in cabanas (peasant huts). Indians, peasants, and slaves
were involved.
The Cabanada lasted from the time of the defeat of the captains major until the end of 1835.
The rebels swarmed over a wide area of the south of Pernambuco and Alagoas. Their major leader
turned out to be a man known as Vicente de Paula, born in Goiana, a son of priest, whose past is
shadowy.56 But we know that he had been brought to rebellion by Antônio Timóteo, the rancher
mentioned above, who, in turn, had become a rebel under the influence by Captain Major Galindo.57
Military officers observed that many cabanos used shirts dyed to the color of red wine
(camisas tintas).58 They fought bravely and seldom left their dead on the battlefield. Ostensibly they
were fighting to restore Pedro I. But they continued to fight even after Pedro died in Portugal in
September, 1834. By then, the repressive forces were using a scorched-earth policy to defeat the
rebels, and advising the remaining population to leave the area or be treated as Cabanos.
Nevertheless, only a promised amnesty to rebels (except the leadership and slaves) and the
entreaties of a bishop, who went to the area to pacify the Cabanos, finally brought a petering out of
the rebellion.59
According to the historiography, the expansion of the sugar industry was the long-term
cause of the rebellion. It dislocated Indians and peasants, and brought slaves from Africa. For
Andrade and Lidoso, those groups rebelled because of increased exploitation. Lindos also agreed
with Andrade, stating that the Cabanada also had evident links with the divisions of the landed
5
aristocracy.60 In order to understand why the Cabanada happened at a certain moment in history and
not at another, and in one area of Northeast and not elsewhere, it is necessary to study the Cabanada
within the broader context of national and provincial politics, at a time when the institutions of the
newly independent state were created. The Cabanada cannot be understood without reference to the
existing clientelistic networks. Andrade had already noted the participation of landlords in the
Cabanada. Other pieces of evidence also demonstrate that the Cabanos received help from several
senhores de engenho and even from Portuguese merchants in Recife.61
Before dealing with clientelism, it is important to investigate economic issues that helped to
trigger the Cabanada. One of them was the monetary crisis that hit Brazil in the late 1820's because
of the widespread counterfeiting of copper coins. For the small sums necessary for daily expenses
of the population, copper coins were the major means of payment. They had suffered a devaluation
of at least fifty percent by the late 1820's.62 In spite of that devaluation, the Pernambucan Council of
Government estimated in 1832, that the nominal value of copper coins was forty to fifty percent
higher than its real value.63 The worst problem, however, was that by the late twenties the
counterfeiting of copper coins became widespread, aggravating the monetary crisis and producing
one of the major police problems of the period. By 1830, the problem was so serious that the
Emperor spoke about it in his Adress from the Throne to the National Assembly.64 In spite of the
action of the police, by April 1833, the National Assembly would be convoked by the Regency with
the specific purpose of finding a solution to the problem.65
Those fake coins were known as xenxem or chanchan, after the sound they made when a bag
containing them was shaken. Those coins reached the interior of Pernambuco by the late 1820’s.
The local government admitted that some of those coins circulating in Pernambuco were very
similar to the real ones, and were thus easily passed from hand to hand. There were all kinds of
people involved in that kind of crime. Even foreigners were involved in that profitable crime, and it
was a large scale one. At least ninety bags of those coins had been brought by British citizens to
Recife in the middle of 1830.66 Later, in 1832, it was the turn of American counterfeiters to attempt
to introduce in Pernambuco 200 barrels of falso coins, which had arrived in the US brig Carolina.67
Throughout the interior, landowners also learned to make coins without outside help. That
was the case, for example, of the planter Lourenço Bezerra of Buíque, in the Sertão.68 For the
government of Pernambuco, counterfeiting had become a severe problem. Some people indeed
turned counterfeiting into an "industry," employing slaves in the making of copper coins.69 In spite
of the severe measures taken by the government, by early 1832 it was knowns that large quantities
of copper were being imported to Pernambuco for counterfeiting.70 Even the richest merchants in
Recife complained about the problem. In May, 1832, a commission representing the merchants of
Recife, headed by the ubiquitious slave trader José Ramos de Oliveira, met with the Council of
Government to request urgent measures to stop counterfeiting. They found out that even the money
coined by the government was irregular in size, shape and weight.71 Later, even the government,
inadvertently or not, used counterfeit money to pay their troops who were fighting against the
Cabanada, leading scores of men to desert.72 One of the corps paid in copper coins in 1834, rebelled
and marched back to Recife.
People grew increasingly suspicious of copper coins. British merchants in Pernambuco may
have been the first, in 1832, to reject any payments in that kind of money.73 That event seemed to
have started a chain reaction: By 1834, the problem was not forgeries anymore but the flat rejection
of copper coins in some counties.74 Journeymen in Recife were the greatest victims, according to
the local County Council.75
It is difficult to evaluate the impact of counterfeit money on local markets in the early
1830's. There are no documents of the rural poor on the subject. But, taking into consideration the
violent reaction of the soldiery fighting against the Cabanos and knowing that journeymen were
hurt by the problem, one may assume it disturbed local trade. At the time of the Abrilada, one
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Crown envoy in Recife said that the xenxem problem alone was enough to trigger a rebellion in
Pernambuco.76
There were other economic reasons for the peasantry to rise in 1832, but in order to
understand them it is necessary to look first at the links between the peasantry and the landed
aristocracy. In order to do that, one must not forget the essential assumption about clientelism: The
reason why peasants, squatters, landless workers and even Indians had to submit to dependency was
that joining a clientelistic network was the only way to guarantee access to land in the Zona da
Mata.
In turn, in order to understand clientelism, one must look at the judicial reforms of 1827
through 1831. They not only affected the landed elite; ranchers and tenants also gained or lost ranks
in the military and quasi-military organization. It is in the impact of this legislation in the provinces,
that one sees how national politics affected local clientelism. In a situation of competition, holding
an office could make a decisive difference in local politics. For the effectiveness of the post, it was
essential that the person holding it be a member of the ruling faction in the provincial government.
For example, it was useless for landowners near Alagoas to complain about João Batista de Araújo,
as long as the Cavalcantis were in power, and the president of Alagoas was their relative. However,
as soon as the liberals were back in power, after the downfall of Pedro I, the Municipal Guard was
sent to help the government allies in the Southern Zona da Mata against Araújo and others who had
fought against Francisco's brother Manoel de Carvalho's in 1824. The case of Torres Galindo is
similar. As a powerful landlord, he could pose as captain major, in spite of the elections for the
justice of the peace and the formal disappearance of his post. But as soon as his enemies rose to
power, much stronger forces from Recife were sent against him.
It is also significant to consider cases which seem to but do not really, contradict the model
above, such as that of former Sergeant Major Affonso de Mello, the Absolutist who had been
arrested even before Carvalho rose to power. Mello's local enemies, the Lins clan and Feliciano
Joaquim dos Santos, were more powerful than Mello, and had no need to resort to the state
apparatus to arrest him.77 In that case there was no competition on a more-or-less-equal basis, but
just the displacement of one landlord by others who were more powerful. However, when Mello
sought the support of Araújo and Galindo, he found the protection he needed. Against those more
powerful landlords, there was a need for state help. That could only come after the rise of Francisco
de Carvalho to the Presidency of Pernambuco in 1831. Carvalho was a brother of the leader of the
1824 rebellion.
Alliances at various levels, as in a feudal political structure, were therefore an essential part
of the political game. In that sense the local Corpos de Ordenanças can with a certain degree of
accuracy be equated with that vertical alliance. There is no reason to believe the Cabano leaders
escaped that rule. The clientelistic ties may as well have been as follows: Vicente de Paula, the
major leader of peasants and slave runaways involved in the Cabanada, had been a sergeant in the
Ordenanças. Possibly he had been a subordinate of Ordenanças Captain Antônio Timóteo, who was
the man who convinced him to rebel. As for Timóteo, he was brought into the insurrection by
Domingos Torres Galindo, a Captain Major, the highest officer in the Ordenanças hierarchy. Later,
Vicente became the general of the Cabanos. He would then still refer to his troops as "Ordenanças,"
thus maintaining the colonial militia hierarchy throughout the rebellion.78
Not even the Indians still living in Pernambuco escaped that hierarchy. The organization of
Indians in Brazil was as militarized as that of the peasantry and the population at large. Throughout
the colonial era they had been used to fight against the maroons and other enemies of the landed
aristocracy. In Pernambuco, Indian troops had had an essential role both in the defeat of the Dutch
in 1654 and in the destruction of the Palmares quilombo forty years later. They were commanded
by their own "captains," but that official was subordinate to the local captain major. The Indians of
Pernambuco lived in a state of poverty. They were divided into several small groups throughout the
7
Province. Writing in 1827, the President of Pernambuco observed that they had participated in the
political events of recent years and had fought for both contending factions.79
The Indians of Jacuípe fought on the Crown side in 1824. At the time, their captain received
a medal.80 In 1832, their clientelistic networks would again lead them to ally with local landowners.
It was known that Araújo, Mello, and Timóteo were persuading Indians in the area to join their
faction.81 Knowing of that alliance of planters and Indians, the landowners of Carvalho's faction
went to their village to draft all men from age eighteen to twenty-five. The Indians reacted by rising
in open rebellion against the government, with the support of several landowners in the area.82
According to one source, the Jacuípe Indians became the most "ferocious" Cabanos.83
A fact that demonstrates that clientelism was important for defining who would join which
side is that not all Indians in the area followed the losing faction in 1832. The Indians of Barreiros,
for example, chose to help the state,84 or if one prefers, they followed the lead of other local
landowners. They chose, therefore, the winning side in 1832.85 Thus, it seems clear that there were
advantages to side with factions of the gentry, for if it was the winning one, access to land (or this
case keeping it) was more assured.
It seems that, contrary to what Lindoso assumed,86 the Cabanos cannot be singled out from
the rest of society as if they were a group living in the forests between Pernambuco and Alagoas,
completely isolated from the rest of society. They were part of the poor rural population who lived
in the outskirts of the plantations, and as such they could often isolate themselves from the
plantation economy and state justice; but they could not escape the clientelism forged by the
interplay of seigneurial justice and peasant resistence and accomodation.
Paradoxally, it is also with reference to clientelism that one can understand the major
motivations the Cabanos had to continue to fight even after their bosses surrendered. Contrary to the
historiography, the latifundia and the relations of production were not just long-term causes for the
Cabanada. Instead, it seems that they triggered the Cabanada. The troops that went to fight against
Araújo, Timóteo, Galindo and Mello were commanded by local landowners who seized the
opportunity to evict this rural population and the Indians from their lands. That is why the Cabanos
continued to fight. Not all Cabanos were evicted peasants, but a large number of them were
expelled by the invading army from Recife, with the support of planters from Sirinhaém, Rio
Formoso and Escada, south of the capital.
It is also important to note that, in spite of constant requests, no significant number of
National Guardsmen from the northern coast participated in the war against the Cabanos, and for
obvious reasons: Landlords who could not expand their holdings in the area of the Cabanada had no
incentive to send their retainers to fight against the Cabanos.87 The troops which fought against the
cabanos were those of planters who had land in the area of the rebellion, planters who used the
government help to expand their holdings. For that reason, it seems that one of the best explanations
for the Cabanada is that of the Provincial Assembly of Pernambuco: To the dismay of the landlords
who commanded the troops on the battle site, in April of 1835, that body concluded that the reason
for the continuation of the war was the presence of the troops themselves.88
The Cabano peasantry rebelled in obedience to their bosses, but they were the first victims
of the invading army of landlords commanding their National Guardsmen and militias. Again state
help was essential for the success of the operation, but this time it came mostly in the form of
financing for the troops, cavalry, and weapons. At least until early 1833, the sources mention very
few army units employed against the Cabanos. The personal retainers of local landlords and the
Municipal Guard from Recife were the core of the invading troops, who amounted to 1,240 men
active in the Jacuípe River Valley, in September, 1832.89 In the following year, troops who had
participated in the Setembrizada were brought directly from the prison in Fernando de Noronha
island to Barra Grande to fight the Cabanos. At about the same time other corps from Rio de Janeiro
and Ceará also arrived from the latter province, where they had been employed against Pinto
8
Madeira. By June, 1833, roughly 800 army troops were fighting against the Cabanos, but the core of
the troops was still their seigneurial retinues, for the latter had increased to more than 3,000 men.90
That explains why the troops on the government side were so unreliable. Drafted very near
the area of the rebellion, those men were reluctant to fight against the rural poor who could as well
have been themselves. By the end of 1832, landlords were already finding it increasingly difficult to
muster troops. Nobody wished to fight for them, unless they were paid the same wage the
Pernambucan President was paying to the elitist Municipal Guard of Recife, which had increased
from 400 réis in December, 1831, to 500 réis in April, 1832, and finally to 600 réis per day in
December, 1832.91
Eviction may have been another reason for rebellion. There are no data about land tenure
patterns in Pernambuco at the time nor documents to prove that people were actually evicted at the
time. However, the legislation did not grant any protection to those who lived between plantations
and common forests. The behavior of both Cabanos and their enemies indicate that many people
may have lost their lands. The best ecological conditions for sugar cane was in the southern Zona da
Mata. Sugar plantations occupied most of the land near the coast, and in the valley of the major
rivers, up until where they were navigable by the rafts which brought sugar boxes to the coast.
Nevertheless, it was precisely in the area near the frontier of Pernambuco and Alagoas, near the
Jacuípe Valley that the plantations could still advance in the late 1820's.
This was demonstrated in 1829. In that year, Manoel Zeferino dos Santos, a member of the
Council of Government of Pernambuco, gave a formal legal opinion about the need to bring
immigrants to colonize Pernambuco. After all, the slave trade would have to end by 1831 (in
theory) because of the treaties with the British. He stated that the only area that still had fertile
"terras devolutas"92 was in the Jacuípe Valley.93 Incidentally, Santos would become president of
Pernambuco in October, 1832, exactly when the fight was becoming most intense. It is worth
mentioning that both the families of Santos and Colonel Santiago, the Commander of Arms during
Santos' government, owned land at the site of the Cabanada.94
That was not the only advantage of encroaching on lands between Pernambuco and Alagoas.
About the same time, that the slave trade was about to become illegal, the local elites started to
think of workers to replace the slaves. According to the Coluna President, Thomaz Garcia de
Almeida, in 1829, the best solution for the coming scarcity of labor was to replace slaves with
Indians.95 In the following year he repeated the same argument in his inaugural address.96 In 1831,
President Francisco de Carvalho Paes de Andrade, leader of the liberal faction, repeated the
message.97
Neither Carvalho nor Almeida indicated in their speeches if they intended to enslave the
Indians or to employ them as free workers. If their intention was to enslave the Indians, it seems
that there were already precedents to follow. According to Abbey Luís Ferreira Portugal, a member
of the Council of Government o Pernambuco, in 1830, Indians needed protection. In several
instances they were already being forced to work in Pernambuco as if they were slaves.98
Taking into account that the sugar economy was doing well in the late 1820's and that the
area between the forests and the coast was the ideal one for sugar plantations, one can infer that
there was expansion there. To verify this hypothesis one would need data that do not exist for
Pernambuco. What is known is that in 1846, the President of Pernambuco requested the Minister of
the Empire to make Água Preta, on the northern limit of the forests, a separate county. He recalled
many people there had been Cabanos and were still "savages" more than ten years later. And
indeed, some of the greates battles were fought near that town. In the following years, once the
cabanos had been crushed, the area had grown relatively wealthy.99 In 1846, Eisenberg counted at
least 44 engenhos there,100 when in the early 1830's that area was occupied by subsistence farmers
and forests, while the plantations were mostly nearer the coast, away from the forests of Água
Preta.101
9
There are no inventories available for the area that allow a thorough investigation to identify
the men who seized those lands. But it is well documented in the Comando das Armas records that
some planters in the area were among the best known opponents of the Cabanos. Feliciano Joaquim
dos Santos, José Antonio Correia Pessoa de Mello, José Pedro and his nephew Pedro Ivo Veloso da
Silveira, and Luís Beltrão Mavignier, were all planters who had commanded troops against the
Cabanos. In addition, the president of the province after November, 1832, Manoel Zeferino dos
Santos, and the commander of arms, Colonel José da Silva Santiago, also had brothers who owned
engenhos in the area. They did not get along well, to the point that both asked the Regency at Rio de
Janeiro to dissmiss each other. In those letters, the president of the province complained the
commander of arms was using the Cabanada as an excuse to attack and plunder his one engenho of
his family.102
Looking back at the chronology Andrade made for the Cabanada in his volume, and
employing other documents, one can see that the Cabanos were not just raiding engenhos, but
actually attempted to conquer sites which were nearer the coast and outside the forest. They acted as
if they had been pushed into the forest by the first incursions of the "liberal," or “jacobin”103 troops
as Vicente de Paula referred to the landowners army in 1832. Actually, the authorities pushed the
Cabanos back to starve them, which was fruitless, for they soon learned to live off lizards and
mushrooms.104
In summary, the sequence of events in the war against the Cabanos is as follows: First, the
attacks of the government troops were directed against Domingos Torres Galindo in Vitória and Pau
d'Alho, and on the frontier between Pernambuco and Alagoas (in Una county) against Manoel
Affonso de Melo and João Batista de Araújo.105 However, Araújo, Melo, and Galindo soon moved
to Panelas, because there they could find defensible positions, which was not the case near the
coast, or in Vitória.106 In September they had already opened up a trail from Panelas to Jacuípe,
where they could hide and benefit from the hills and forests of Jacuípe and Água Preta, and later
return in their sorties southwest of the forests, in the plantation area of Rio Formoso and Porto
Calvo. As the time went on, the cabanos were pushed to the forests.107 In October, the authorities
decided to draft the Indians of Jacuípe as a punishment for the support they gave to Araújo, but
certainly also used the draft as an excuse to evict them. Those Indians rose in open rebellion. By
November, Araújo, Mello and Galindo had been arrested and most of the senhores de engenho gave
up the fight for the restoration of Pedro I.
Nonetheless, it was after that date that the fight became bloodier. Thereafter the authorities
start to refer constantly to attacks of "savages" and "bandits" against the headquaters they
established south of the forests. Throughout the rebellion, the Cabanos tried to conquer that site in
the Jacuípe valley where the "liberal" seigneurial army established its headquaters. Within a few
months, however, the rebels were being pushed further to the hills and forests of Cafundó and into
the province of Alagoas, where they were not always followed by the troops.108 In some instances
they also attacked Barra Grande and Porto Calvo, but their major target usually was the Jacuípebased headquaters, on the fringes of the plantations, south of the forest. The Jacuípe river valley
was the home of the Indians who followed Vicente de Paula. The Cabanos seized and subsequently
lost that position several times through the rebellion.109 According to the authorities, they always
returned to that site.110
The strategy of the Cabanos was clear: They attempted to reconquer the lands in the fringes
of the coastal plantations, and later hid in the forests and hills further north.111 By late 1832 few of
the Cabano landowners, such as Colonels Barrinhos (Manoel Joaquim de Barros) and Major
Vicentinho (Vicente Ferreira de Santana), were still commanding troops. There were several who
still helped the Cabanos, but the major leader was already Vicente de Paula, who was not a captain
major nor plantation owner. It is fair to assume that landowners who supported Vicente de Paula did
so as a means to check their local enemies. Most Cabanos were fighting to defend themselves
against the draft and eviction.
10
The authorities were not capable of winning a clear victory. But in March, 1834, they
changed the strategy and put 4,000 troops surrounding an area stretching in the coast from Porto
Calvo to Sirinhaém, until roughly sixty kilometers inland (ten leagues)-in other words, roughly
from the fringes of the plantations until Água Preta. They spread proclamations ordering the people
to settle elsewhere, or otherwise be treated as Cabanos. Those who appeared at Água Preta and gave
up their weapons were also forgiven. Some clothes and food were given to hundreds of starving
women and children. In March, the government troops started to operate in the area, shooting at
anybody on sight and destroying all they could in the area.112 Nevertheless, in May 1834, the
Cabanos were still able (for the last time) to seize the Jacuípe Arraial.113
By January, 1835, 862 men, in addition to an uncounted number of women and children,
had given up the fight and showed up at Água Preta.114 However, a much greater number did not,
for, in May, 1835, the commander of the government troops claimed he had made 1,072 prisoners,
and had killed 2,326, since June, 1834, in addition to an uncounted number of Cabanos who died of
hunger and illness.115 There were not too many Cabanos left. The Indians of Jacuípe had showed up
and given up the fight in April, in addition to another 398 people.116 Several priests were already in
the area trying to to convince the peasants to give up the fight, in addition to the Bishop of
Pernambuco, who arrived in March and stayed there until the end of July, preaching to the
“habitantes das matas”(forest inhabitants”[?]).117 The amount of 4,000 réis was being paid to each
Cabano who gave up his gun to the authorities, a very cheap price according to the commander of
the government troops, but alluring, nonetheless, for all the Cabanos who showed up were ill or
suffering of malnutrition.118 In June, Barrinhos, João Timóteo, Serafim Soares and other Cabano
commanders gave up the fight, totalling 1021 men.119 The only exception was Vicente de Paula.
Amnesty was not offered to him. The government wanted to capture or kill him. Vicente de Paula,
fled to the forests of Alagoas with his slave runaway troops, which the authorities estimated at 50 to
150 men.120 The area which had been surrounded had been cleared of Cabanos. The engenhos could
thereafter expand without problems.
The Cabanada, as long as it lasted, involved landowners, peasants, slave runaways and
Indians. It was an enduring alliance throughout the rebellion. To say that the peasantry and the
Indians did not act independently of clientelism is not to say they were incapable of opposing the
regime. What it means is the affiliation of the peasantry to different factions of the elites was a
necessary precondition for having access to land. The problem was that often the rural and urban
poor were found on the losing side.
According to the President of the Province, in 1827, the participation of Pernambucan
Indians in the events fo 1824 only served to "corrupt" them further, for they learned to steal and kill
as they followed the different factions.121 Throughout both the Cabanada and the Pinto Madeira
rebellions, the elites emphasized that the peasantry who rose up did not do it for ideology, but to
steal cattle, horses and food.122 The authorities did not understand peasant appropriation was part of
the game. For the “gente das matas”, stealing was at least as legitimate as eviction. The general
commander of the troops operating against the Cabanos in 1834 understood that fact. He found one
Cabano child with an corn in his hands, when there had been no food in the government's
headquatters for the past three days. He asked the child how he had gotten it, and the latter
answered in a very innocent and natural way that he had "pillaged." The officer was shocked.123
But that was not the limit of the Cabanos' political consciousness. In their manifestoes, the
Cabanos stated that they were fighting for the restoration of Pedro I. Andrade and Lindoso
disagreed over the motivations of the rebels. Why were dislocated Indians, runaways and peasants
fighting for the sake of an Emperor who had done nothing to improve their lot? In fact their position
deteriorated under his regime after 1822. Andrade answered that the Cabanada was "sui generis,"
because peasants and escaped slaves comprised its cadres, but its professed aims were reactionary.
He explains that was an apparent paradox because there was no chance of upward mobility for those
men, at a time when the elites were failing to maintain the balance of power among themselves.
11
Once the rebellion started, it was the fear of retaliation and the strong leadership of Vicente de
Paula which kept the Cabanos fighting.124
Lindoso, however, thought that Andrade misunderstood the ideological contents of the
sources left by those who fought against the Cabanos. For Lindoso, the contradiction between the
cadres of the rebellion and their stated purposes was not a real one, bur rather a result of the
ideological nature of the sources left by those who quashed the insurrection. In the few documents
they wrote, the Cabanos (all signed by Vicente de Paula and a handfull of senhores de engenho)
confirmed their restorationist purposes. But Lindoso believed that was a way to disguise from the
elites the real intents of the rebellion, which, for Lindoso was abolitionist and anti-latifundium.125
Basing his arguments largely on secondary sources, Lindoso also argues that apparent contradiction
was resolved in practice, because after the rebellion the Cabanos created an alternative space to the
space of the slave economy. In that Cabano space, they revived Indian traditions mixed with
African ones, creating a unique society.126
It seems that Andrade was nearer the truth.
In the few documents left by the major Cabano leader, Vicente de Paula, he made clear his
restorationist intent. As the “Comandante” or “General” of all forests (“todas as matas”), or even
more pompous, Comandante Geral do Imperial Exército de Sua Majestade Imperial Dom Pedro
I,127 he fought so bravely, there is no reason for believing, as Lindoso does, that he was lying to
deceive the elites from his true purposes, that he professed a restorationist ideology just for the lack
of a discourse of his own. He was not a Bachelor of Laws but he could write, however poorly. His
handwriting was not the worst among letters in the archives in Pernambuco. Years later, a president
of Alagoas who met Vicente de Paula admitted that he was not as a ignorant fellow as his enemies
portrayed.128 And that is what Vicente's well articulated manifestoes confirm. It seems therefore that
Vicente indeed believed that the return of Pedro I would be beneficial to him and his followers.
But then what are the social metaphors behind the restorationist discourse of the Cabanos?
For Vicente de Paula restorationism certainly had a different meaning from that of the Abrilada
army officers. The latter meant to maintain the prerogatives and privileges army officers enjoyed
during the reign of Pedro. Vicente de Paula, on the other hand, identified the "jacobinos" as the men
who had brought havoc to the area where he lived. As he said in a letter to Pinto Madeira, those
were the men who burned the houses of the peasantry.129
With the reforms of 1827-1831, seigneurial justice had much to gain. The full fruition of
those reforms coincided with the fall of Pedro. More than ever before, law was in the hands of the
local bosses in the countryside. Even the army had been eliminated as the ultimate source of
authority against seigneurial justice. Instead the peasantry would now be drafted into the National
Guard and do all the police work -certainly an additional burden.130 After the downfall of Pedro in
1831, even the forests were not protected any longer, as they had been since colonial times when
they were a royal monopoly for naval construction.131 Following an argument about an European
model, one can say that the Emperor had been eliminated as the last resort against encroachments of
the landed aristocracy.132 However vague that protection could be, the old times – when copper
coins were money, when the common forests were still protected, when the peasantry was not being
pushed into what remained of these forests, when peasants had to do obeisance to a few captains
major instead of scores of justices of the peace – seemed to have been better.
Rather than withdrawal from society the evidence points to the fact that the Cabanos
actually wished to intervene in politics and change it. Their understanding of the situation was
limited but they made alliances with merchants in town and planters in the countryside. After the
defeat of the rebellion, Vicente de Paula had an important role in the politics of Alagoas, as the
works of Andrade and Lindoso have demonstrated. He still "stole slaves," according to his enemies,
who nevertheless were never able to prove that he sold any of them. But even his allies in the
landed elites never felt confortable with him. One of the few "white" senhores de engenho to
command troops against the government until the end of the Cabanada, Serafim Soares, gave up the
12
fight in May of 1835. He told the commander of the government troops that he did not wish to obey
Vicente de Paula, for "he had never enjoyed the company of niggers" (ele nunca gostou da
companhia de negros).133
Contrary to landowners, who were appointed to high posts in the militias according to their
wealth, Vicente rose to power through personal bravery, military skill and charisma. He ended the
Cabanada as de facto general, although he was never an officer in the militias. Perhaps he also
could have fared better at the virtual end of the war in 1835. He was offered amnesty, although
probably not sincerely. But he chose not to surrender, for the elites did not comply with his only
conditions: manumission of the slaves with him and the requirement that those who followed him
could keep their weapons.134
In the following years, Vicente de Paula approaches the “primitive rebel” model of
Hobsbawm's social bandit.135 He was a thief for the landed aristocracy, but a hero for the slaves he
"stole" and the population that lived in Riachão do Mato, the village he founded after the Cabanada.
In the early 1840's, to the surprise of the authorities, Vicente de Paula sought a formal post
in the National Guard as the commander of the area he lived.136 He therefore wished to be absorbed
into the formal hierarchy of the state. That does not mean he abandoned his vocation as an
emancipator; the contrary is true, he continued to "steal slaves" to the point that in 1845 the
Pernambucan government offered 1:000,000 réis (one million réis) for his capture, the greatest
price put on a head in Pernambuco, and ten times the price put on the quilombola leader
Malunguinho's head in 1827. Further, if a slave arrested or killed Vicente, he should be freed and
receive that reward, although deducting his own value from that amount.137
The elites denied Vicente de Paula his request for a post in the National Guard but they
sought his help in settling the political quarrels of Alagoas in 1844.138 Most interesting is fact that in
1848, when landowners in Pernambuco started yet another war, both liberal and the conservative
factions sought his support, writing deferential letters to a man they constantly called a thief.139
Obviously each party later alleged how dishonest the other had been in calling on such a
"bandit."140 However, Vicente preferred to remain a "thief of slaves" until his final arrest in 1850,
an arrest only possible because the governing elites lured him into a trap. He was attracted to a
meeting that supposedly would serve to regularize his situation and that of his dependents, although
the authorities did not say how. Like Zapata and many other peasant leaders, he was betrayed, but at
least he was not killed.141 He spent eleven years on the prison island of Fernando de Noronha,
where he would lead a rebellion of prisioners in 1853.142 He was finally released in 1861, and
returned to Pernambuco as a seventy-year-old man.143
Certainly the most interesting character of Pernambucan history in the period, Vicente de
Paula was more than a maroon leader. It is significant to note that throughout the Cabanada
government sources refer to him with contempt as a caudilho. As such, in 1848 he had a chance to
legalize his situation by alleging with the elites, when they sought for his support, as noted above.
But he chose not to rather he used the opportunity to attack and rip off engenhos, steal cattle and
slaves.144 As a unique type of caudilho he seemed to be fairly well acquainted with local and
national politics, or at least as well acquainted as landowners at the time. Vicente de Paula was a
free man who commanded over a population which may have exceeded a thousand people in the
early 1840's.145 It included not only maroon slaves, but also peasants, and even Indians. That is why
he posed a greater danger to society than maroon leaders, even those like Malunguinho who
threatened the provincial capital in the late 1820´s.
1
After Pedro I closed the Brazilian Constitutional Assembly, in 1823, a group of liberals seized the government of
Pernambuco. Pedro I did not accept the new President of the Province, Manoel de Carvalho Paes de Andrade, who
sent envoys to Rio de Janeiro, trying to appease the emperor. Pedro send the navy to Recife, closing its harbour, and
an army to the frontier between Pernambuco and Alagoas, which marched to Recife. Andrade and his followers then
13
secceeded from Brazil, forming the Confederação do Equador. After the defeat of the Confederação, many people
were executed. Many of the allies of Pedro I in Pernambuco and Alagoas became nobles and received several other
benefits from the crown.
They tried to negotiate with the court at Rio de Janeiro.
2
Joaquim Pinto Madeira in Ceará. It was known that he had many sympathizers within the army stationed in
Pernambuco Diário de Pernambuco (Recife), 02/14/1832; "Correspondêcia Oficial," 02/09/1832, idem, 02/16/1832.
3
APEJE (Arquivo Público Estadual de Pernambuco Jordão Emerenciano, Recife), Correspondência da Corte 33,
04/14/1832. Bandeira de Retalhos (Recife), 03/27/1832. O Harmonizador (Recife), 04/15/1832. Barra Grande had
been the harbor where the Cavalcanti family members joined to fight against the 1824 rebel government. It was also
there that the army troops from Rio de Janeiro disembarked to destroy Carvalho's government.
4
"Correspondência Oficial," 03/09/1832, in Diário de Pernambuco (Recife), 04/06/1832.
5
O Harmonizador (Recife), 05/17/1832. O Carapuceiro (Recife), 04/28/1832. Letter of 06/05/1832 in O Equinoxial
(Recife), 08/10/1832.
6
Amaro Quintas, "O Nordeste, 1825-1850", in Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (Ed.), História Geral da Civilização
Brasileira, São Paulo, Difel, 1985, vol. 2, tomo II, pp. 201-202. Manuel Correia de Andrade, A Guerra dos Cabanos,
Rio de Janeiro, Conquista, 1965, pp. 34-38.
7
This term refers to Barra Grande, where the Cavalcanti faction stationed to fight against Carvalho's government in
1824. Diário de Pernambuco (Recife), 07/06/1831.
8
IHGB (Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, Rio de Janeiro), Lata 219, Documentos 45, 04/24/1832.
9
One of the man arrested for his participation in the Abrilada was José Francisco de Azevedo Lisboa, a slave trader in
Recife. "Correspondência Oficial," 04/23/1832, in Diário de Pernambuco (Recife), 05/05/1832.
10
The petition did not state if it was 2:000"000 réis of income or property, but it probably meant of property, otherwise
it would only allow very rich Portuguese citizens to stay. The wage of magistrate in the Court of Appeals in
Pernambuco was 1:500"000 réis a year. That President of that court of justice (the Chanceler), the civil servant with
the highest wage in Pernambuco, however, received 2:200,000 a year in 1828. A Professor of the Law school
received 600"000 réis a year, and a school teacher could make from 200 to 500"000 a year in 1832. APEJE,
Ministério da Justiça, IJ1 820, "Relação dos Ordenados, Propinas e Outros Quaisquer Vencimentos Pagos Pela
Fazenda aos Magistrados," 04/19/1828. Francisco Augusto Pereira da Costa, Anais Pernambucanos, Recife:
Fundarpe, 1983-1985, vol. 9, pp. 251, 274.
11
O Harmonizador (Recife), 05/17/1832.
12
"Representaçao" in Diário de Pernambuco (Recife), 11/14/1831. Letter in idem, 11/16/1831.
13
"Correspondência Oficial," 04/17/1832, in Diário de Pernambuco (Recife), 04/26/1832. ANRJ, Ministério do
Exército, IG1 270, 04/17/1832.
14
ANRJ, Ministério do Exército, IG1 270, 04/17/1832.
15
ANRJ, Ministério da Justiça, IJ1 , 04/14/1832, 04/18/1832.
16
APEJE, Atas do Conselho de Governo 2, 01/11/1832, 01/18/1832.
17
Diário de Pernambuco (Recife), 02/15/1832, 02/17/1832.
18
Ordem do Dia of 02/09/1832 in Diário de Pernambuco (Recife), 02/16/1832.
19
APEJE, Ofícios do Governo 34, 02/16/1832.
20
Diário de Pernambuco (Recife), 04/26/1832.
21
Nélson Werneck Sodré, História Militar do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Civilização Brasileira, 1965, p. 120.
22
The Abrilada rebels had connection with the rebellion of captains major in the Sertão, led by Pinto Madeira, against
local authorities. His major ally in the backlands of Pernambuco was Captain Major José da Costa Nunes in Flores.
By April, 1832, Pinto Madeira had achieved his first victories against the newly empowered elites. If there was ever a
chance for the "restorationists" to succeed in Northeast Brazil, it was in the beginning of 1832. João Alfredo de Sousa
Montenegro, Ideologia e Conflito no Nordeste Rural, Tempo Brasileiro, 1976, passim.
23
24
Pereira da Costa, Anais, vol. 9, p. 487. José Aragão, História de Vitória de Santo Antão, Recife, FIAM/CEHM, 1983,
p. 146.
25
APEJE, Atas do Conselho de Governo de Pernambuco 2, 03/30/1830.
26
APEJE, Juízes Ordinários 2, 04/20/1830.
27
Diário de Pernambuco (Recife), 05/13/1831. Letter, n.d. in Diário de Pernambuco (Recife), 07/06/1831.
28
29
APEJE, Ofícios do Governo 34, 02/29/1832, 04/09/1832.
30
APEJE, Informações 1, 11/23/1826, 11/26/1826.
31
ANRJ, Ministério da Justiça, IJ1 694, 09/24/1832.
32
Andrade, p. 49.
33
BNRJ (Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro), Seção de Manuscritos, I-32, 11, 2, 08/13/1832, 09/14/1832, 09/28/1832.
João Pereira Callado, História de Lagoa dos Gatos, Recife, FIAM, Centro de Estudos de História Municipal, 1981,
pp. 136, 181.
34
Letter of 09/28/1824, in Publicações do Arquivo Nacional (Rio de Janeiro), 1931, 22: 344-349.
35
APEJE, Correspondência da Corte 32, 03/14/1831.
14
36
APEJE, Camara Municipal 7, "Ata Geral da Eleição de Sirinhaém," p. 445. Ibid., 8, "Empregados da Justiça de
Sirinhaém, p. 297.
37
"Correspondência Oficial," 06/02/1831 in Diário de Pernambuco (Recife), 07/02/1831. Ibid., 07/12/1831, 08/04/1831.
ANRJ, Ministério do Império, IJJ9 280, 06/20/1831.
38
President of the Camara de Sirinhaém to President of the Province in Diário de Pernambuco (Recife), 08/04/1831.
39
APEJE, Presidentes de Província 7, 08/13/1831, 08/22/1831.
40
Document of 09/28/1824, in Publicaçoes do Arquivo Nacional (Rio de Janeiro), 1931, 22: 344-349.
41
ANRJ, Ministério do Império, IJJ9 280, 07/04/1832.
42
43
44
APEJE, Presidentes de Província 8, 04/28/1832, 05/16/1832. Andrade, p. 50.
45
IHGB, Lata 219, Documentos 45, 04/24/1832.
46
47
APEJE, Presidentes de Província 8, 05/02/1832.
48
ANRJ, Ministério do Exército, IG1 270, 04/19/1832, 04/20/1832, IG1 05/05/1832. Diário de Pernambuco (Recife),
05/04/1832.
49
ANRJ, Ministério do Exército, IG1 270, 04/19/1832, 11/22/1832. APEJE, Atas do Conselho de Governo 2,
08/07/1832.
50
51
52
53
APEJE, Presidentes de Província 8, 09/19/1832. In May, 1833, he returned with fresh troops to help the Cabanos.
Ibid., 05/22/1833.
54
APEJE, Presidentes de Província 8, 09/19/1832. Araújo later fled from jail and joined the rebels again. But by then
his participation was eclipsed by that of the peasant leader Vicente de Paula. APEJE, Presidentes de Província 8,
11/05/1832. BNRJ, I-32, 11, 2, 12/01/1832.
55
56
José da Costa Porto, Os Tempos da Praieira, Recife, Fundação de Cultura da Cidade do Recife, 1981, pp. 46-52.
57
58
BNRJ, Seção de Manuscritos, I-32, 11, 2, 11/28/1833. ANRJ, Ministério da Justiça, IJ1 694, 02/20/1833. Red was the
color most often used in people's dress in colonial Brazil. It was based on both Portuguese and Brazilian Indian
traditions. Red was also the easiest color to dye textiles, for a very common native plant, the coipuna (leptospernum
tintorium) could be used for that purpose (See: Freyre, Casa Grande e Senzala, pp. 104-108. Note 11 of Luís da
Camara Cascudo, in Henry Koster, Viagens ao Nordeste do Brasil. Recife, Secretaria de Educação, 1978, p. 175). In
spite of the apparent lack of any political motivation for the use of red, the Cabanos chronologically preceded
Garibaldi's red shirts, who fought for the unification of Italy in 1848. They were therefore the first "colored shirt"
movement.
59
The best history of the Cabanada is still: Andrade, op.cit.
60
Andrade, pp. 42, 201-204. Lindoso did not establish such a connection but the evidence tends to confirm Andrade's
hypothesis. Dirceu Lindoso, A Utopia Armada: Rebelioes de Pobres nas Matas do Tombo Real, Rio de Janeiro, Paz e
Terra, 1983, p. 29.
61
See, for example, BNRJ, Seção de Manuscritos, I-32, 11, 2, 12/13/1832, 08/31/1833, 10/27/1833. Andrade, passim.
Manoel Diegues Jr., O Banguê das Alagoas, Rio de Janeiro, Instituto do Açúcar e do Álcool, 1960, p. 194.
62
José Honório Rodrigues, Independência: Revolução e Contra-Revolução: Economia e Sociedade, Rio de Janeiro,
Francisco Alves, 1975, p. 61.
63
APEJE, Atas do Conselho de Governo de Pernambuco 2, 02/09/1832. O Carapuceiro (Recife), 03/22/1834.
64
"Fala" of 09/03/1830, in Instituto Nacional do Livro-MEC, Falas do Trono. São Paulo: Melhoramentos, 1977.
65
"Fala" of 04/01/1833, in Falas do Trono.
66
APEJE, Correspondência da Corte 32, 08/31/1830, 12/13/1830.
67
ANRJ, Processos de Presidentes de Província, Pernambuco, Códice 954-15, pp. 110-11, 117, 163.
68
BNRJ, 14-4-4, 01/07/1831.
69
APEJE, Correspondência da Corte 32, 08/31/1831. O Carapuceiro (Recife), 03/22/1834.
70
APEJE, Atas do Conselho de Governo de Pernambuco 2, 03/29/1832, 03/31/1832.
71
APEJE, Atas do Conselho de Governo de Pernambuco 2, 05/26/32. "Parecer," 05/29/1832, in Diário de Pernambuco
(Recife), 06/01/1832.
72
ANRJ, Ministério do Exército, IG1 65, 06/06/1833, 09/13/1833. O Mentor Pernambucano (Recife), 01/01/1833.
73
74
O Carapuceiro (Recife), 03/22/1834. APEJE, Polícia Civil 2, 03/25/1835.
75
APEJE, Câmara Municipal 13, 01/08/1834.
76
IHGB, Lata 219, Documentos 45, 04/24/1832.
77
It must be recalled nevertheless that Mello was only arrested under President Joaquim José Pinheiro de Vasconcelos,
who entered office on February, 1830. He was the last president appointed by Pedro I to Pernambuco, at a time when
15
the Emperor faced a strong Cavalcanti opposition in the National Parliament. Contrary to the previous president
Almeida, who tried the 1824 rebels and thus had strong political conections with the Cavalcanti faction, Vasconcelos
was a judge who had not been in Pernambuco for long. He acted with moderation and gave the anti-Cavalcanti
opposition breathing space.
78
See for example: ANRJ, Ministério do Exército, IG1, Portarias of 09/01/1833 and 11/20/1832.
79
"Relatório de José Carlos Mayrink Ferrão ao Ministro do Império, 04/05/1826," in Pereira da Costa, Anais, 9: 238239.
80
Document of 09/28/1824, in Publicaçoes do Arquivo Nacional (Rio de Janeiro), 1931, 22: 344-349.
81
APEJE, Presidentes de Província 8, 08/27/1832, 09/04/1832, 10/24/1832. ANRJ, Ministério da Justiça, IJ1 694,
08/29/1832, 11/03/1832. BNRJ, I-32, 11, 2, 09/11/1832, 09/14/1832.
82
83
84
Andrade, p. 124.
85
Years later, in 1846, access to land was guaranteed to the Indians of Barreiros thanks for the service they paid to the
state during the Cabanada. The owner of Tibiri engenho started to enclose his property in 1846. For that reason the
Indians of Barreiros attacked his house and one person was killed. The owner of the of the engenho hired several men
for his personal protection. The Indians then marched to the town of Barreiros, where they stayed for some time,
finally returning to their reservation. The people who lived in Barreiros soon requested the provincial government to
relocate those Indians. But the suggestion was not carried out. Troops were not sent against those Indians, nor were
they punished, for, as the local police authority recalled those Indians had served the nation during the Cabanada.
APEJE, Polícia Civil 327, 06/09/1846. Polícia Civil 14, vol. 2, 08/12/1846.
86
Lindoso, pp. 255-283.
87
ANRJ, Ministério da Guerra, IG1 270, 11/02/1832, 11/13/1832. BNRJ, I-32,11,2, 09/14/1832, 02/01/1834; II-32, 2,2,
02/14/1833.
88
89
APEJE, Presidentes de Província 8, 09/19/1832. In addition to that corps there were also several garrisons throughout
the counties of Rio Formoso and Agua Preta. ANRJ, Ministério do Exército, IG1 65, 12/10/1832, 12/19/1832.
90
ANRJ, Ministério do Exército, IG1 65, 02/25/1833, 04/15/1833, 05/15/1833, 08/25/1833, 08/31/1833. BNRJ, I-32,
11, 2, "Proclamação" of 03/16/1834; 02/01/1834.
91
APEJE, APEJE, Correspondência da Corte 12/03/1831; Atas do Conselho de Governo 2, 04/26/1832. ANRJ,
Ministério do Exército, IG1 65, 05/29/1832 12/10/1832. This demand for a wage is an interesting instance of a
possible breakdown of clientelistic networks.
92
"Terras devolutas" meant lands which had been granted by the Crown until 1825, under the system of sesmarias, but
had not been occupied by the person who received the grant and thus had been returned to the Crown. Thus it did not
mean that there were no people living there, but that the land had been "devoluta" (returned) to the state for its legal
owner had not made a use of it. It was only later, in 1850, that the government finally created the legal means to
legalize the possession of occupied terras devolutas. José da Costa Porto, O Sistema Sesmarial no Brasil (Brasília:
UNB, n.d.), p. 144. But the subsequent history of land policy show that the national state was incapable of conducting
the orderly privatization of public lands.
93
"Parecer", in APEJE, Atas do Conselho de Governo de Pernambuco 2, 08/11/1829.
94
ANRJ, Ministério do Exército, IG1 65, 05/25/1833. Diário de Pernambuco (Recife), 10/13/1832.
95
"Relatório a Assembléia Provincial," 12/01/1829, in O Cruzeiro (Recife), 167: December of 1829.
96
IAHGPE, estatante A, gaveta 12, "Relatório a Assembléia Provincial," 12/01/1830.
97
"Relatório a Assembléia Provincial," 12/01/1831, in Diário de Pernambuco (Recife), 12/05/1831. For a chronicler
with some foresight, this was an example of the bakwardness of Northeast Brazil's elite. Antônio de Miranda Falcão
argued that the government in southeast Brazil undertook statistical studies in order to find out the best ways to solve
their economic problems, by contrast, in Pernambuco and Bahia the farthest the elites went was to think in terms of
replacing slaves for Indians. He believed that mentality explained why the Southeast was advancing and the Northeast
was not. Diário de Pernambuco (Recife), 03/09/1832.
98
APEJE, Atas do Conselho de Governo de Pernambuco 2, 04/01/1830.
99
APEJE, R7 1, Ministério da Justiça, 04/15/1846.
100
Eisenberg, "appendix 3," p. 242.
101
Lindoso underplays the existence of plantations nearby, but he has a good description of the other plots (pp. 84, ff.).
102
ANRJ, Ministério da Guerra, IG-1 270, 07/13/1833, 07/25/1833; IG-1 65, 02/27/1833, 15/05/1833, 25/05/1833,
06/12/1833, 07/27/1833.
103
Literally "Jacobins." By this accusation he meant his enemies were against the Church and the Crown.
104
BNRJ,I-32, 11, 2, 09/28/1832, 01/15/1834. ANRJ, Ministério do Exército, IG1, 05/01/1834, 05/24/1834.
105
Andrade, p. 48. BNRJ, I-32, 11, 2, 05/09/1832.
106
BNRJ, Seção de Manuscritos, I-32, 11, 2, 09/14/1832.
107
108
BNRJ, Seção de Manuscritos, II-32, 2, 2, 12/10/1832.
109
BNRJ, Seção de Manuscritos, I-32, 11, 2, 12/13/1832, 03/03/1834.
16
110
See for example: BNRJ, Seção Manuscritos, I-3, 2, 09/11/1832, 11/05/1832, 01/17/1833, 04/21/1833, 05/31/1833,
06/17/1833, 08/26/1833, 08/31/1833, 12/28/1833, 01/12/1834, 02/21/1834.
112
ANRJ, Ministério da Guerra, IG1 270, 05/07/1834; IG1 94, 05/24/1834.
113
ANRJ, Ministério da Guerra, IG1 94, 05/18/1834.
114
ANRJ, Ministério da Guerra, IG1 270, 05/07/1835; IG1 94, 05/24/1834, 01/05/1835.
115
ANRJ, Ministério da Guerra, IG1 65, 05/19/1835; IG1 94,
116
ANRJ, Ministério da Guerra, IG1 94, 04/03/1835, 04/13/1835, 04/24/1835, 05/15/1835.
117
ANRJ, Ministério da Guerra, IG1 94, 04/04/1834; IG1 270, 07/31/1835.
118
119
120
ANRJ, Ministério da Guerra, IG1 270, 06/22/1835; IG1 94, 08/11/1835, 10/20/1835.
121
"Relatório de José Carlos Mayrink Ferrão ao Ministro do Império," 04/05/1827 in Pereira da Costa, vol. 9, pp. 238239.
122
O Harmonizador (Recife), 03/12/1832. Diário da Administraçao de Pernambuco (Recife), 04/12/1833.
123
124
Andrade, pp. 197-212.
125
Lindoso, pp. 80-81.
126
After the Indians of Jacuípe and the peasantry gave up the fighting, Vicente de Paula went west with the runaway
slaves, and into the Province of Alagoas, where he would found a village in the late 1830's, called Riachão do Mato,
which was a two days walk from Panelas. He lived there in relative peace until he returned to the political arena, and
to free more slaves in the mid 1840's (see Andrade, p. 201-205). It was that society, unique indeed, that Lindoso
described, but it is wrong to suppose as Lindoso did, that it existed before the Cabanada and that the Cabanos were
just that. Lindoso, passim. All the information about Riachão do Mato at the time of Vicente de Paula is based on the
account of one single priest, Frei Plácido de Messina, who spent twenty days there in 1842. IAHGPE, Estante A,
Gaveta 16, letter of Frei Plácido de Messina to the Barão da Boa Vista, 11/26/1842.
127
See letter of Vicente de Paula in ANRJ, Ministério da Guerra, IG1 94, 09/01/1833.
128
Costa Porto, pp. 46-47.
129
130
The formation of the National Guard was itself a reason to rebel. Deserters had to flee when caught. No wonder the
Commander of Arms of Alagoas believed that all the 342 National Guardsmen who deserted their corps between
August and September, 1832, had joined the Cabanos. BNRJ, Seção de Manuscritos, II-32, 2, 2, 11/09/1832.
131
IHGB, Lata 51, Documento 10, "Relaçao das matas de Alagoas que têm princípio no lugar do pescoço e de todas a
que ficam ao norte deste até o rio Ipojuca," 08/20/1809. Lindoso, pp. 99-101. Note that loss of rights to use royal
(Monte del Rey) forests and the direct appropriation of Indian lands was also a contributing factor to the Mayas
rebellion in the Caste War of 1847-1855. See Nelson Reed, The Caste War, pp. 41, 47-48.
132
Barrigton Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern
World, Boston, Beacon, 1967, p. 21.
133
134
135
Eric Hobsbawm, Bandits, New York, Random House, 1981, pp. 9-11, 58, 131-142.
136
APEJE, Polícia Civil 4, 10/30/1841, 10/14/1841, 11/29/1842.
137
APEJE, R 1-2, Reservados, 08/28/1845.
138
Andrade, pp. 193-194.
139
See documents in Autos do Inquérito da Revoluçao Praieira, Brasília, Senado Federal, 1979, pp. 40, 313. APEJE,
Ofícios Reservados, R 18-5, 02/11/1849.
140
Andrade, pp. 194-195. Urbano Sabino Pessoa de Mello, Apreciação da Revolta Praieira em Pernambuco, Rio de
Janeiro, 1849; reprint ed., Brasília: Senado Federal, 1978, pp. 123-124. General Mello Rego, A Revolução Praieira,
Rio de Janeiro, Imprensa Nacional, 1899, p. 34. Jerônimo Martiniano Figueira de Mello, Crônica da Rebeliao
Praieira: 1848-1849, Recife: 1850; reprint ed., Brasília: Senado Federal, 1978, p. 128.
141
Diário de Pernambuco (Recife), 05/05/1850. Rego, pp. 175-178.
142
APEJE, Seção de Impressos, "Relatório do Presidente José Bento da Cunha Figueredo a Assembléia Provincial em
1854."
143
Rego, p. 212.
144
Rego, p. 176. An interesting narrative of Vicente de Paula's activities after he had been invited by the provincial
government to fight against the liberal rebels in 1848 is in: APEJE, "Relatório do Presidente da Província Honório
Hermeto Carneiro Leão à Assembléia Provincial," 05/18/1850.
145
In 1842, Vicente de Paula took more than 400 people with him from Riachão do Mato to a mass in Panelas in 1842,
a two days walk away. Frei Plácido de Messina, when he went to Riachão do Mato a few days later, observed the
population in the area was large ("povo numeroso"). They all paid "total obedience" ("obediência total") to Vicente de
Paula who, nevertheless, was a very poor man ("um homem muito pobre") according to that priest. IAHGPE (Instituto
111
17
Arqueológico, Histórico e Geográfico Pernambucano, Recife), Estante A, Gaveta 12, letter of Frei Plácido de Messina
to the Barão da Boa Vista, 11/26/1842.
18

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