Contestado Rebellion in Brazil 1912-1916

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Contestado region of Brazil emerged from a jurisdictional dispute between Santa Catarina and Paraná. Both states issued deeds to the same land. This no-man's-land attracted fugitives from throughout Brazil. The construction of the São Paulo-Rio Grande do Sul Railroad and the timbering and colonization operations of United States capitalist Percival Farquhar added foreign elements to the already volatile mix. The Brazil Railroad and the Southern Brazil Lumber and Colonization Company forced Brazilians off their expropriated lands, imported European immigrants, and sawed away at virgin pine, cedar, and walnut trees. In this environment of tumultuous destruction of the forests, social tensions rose with evictions and the sudden introduction of foreigners and modern technology. The local "colonels" secured their own interests, abandoning their customary paternalism and leaving the mass of people adrift. By 1912, the Contestado was afflicted with a collective identity crisis, which caused many to turn to messianic religion as solace.

A local healer, Miguel Lucena Boaventura, known as José Maria, gained a substantial following among the dispossessed of the Contestado during 1912. He argued that the Brazilian Republic was evil, and that only a monarchy could restore Brazil's honor. Members of the Paraná Military Police fired on an assembly that Boaventura was preaching to and he was killed. In the ensuing battle, the crowd drove off the soldiers. Followers of José Maria refused to accept his death, however, and believed that he was either alive or would rise again. His story mixed with the Luso-Brazilian belief in supernatural assistance in desperate times. This phenomenon, called Sebastianism, transformed the submissive population, accustomed to acting only with the "colonel's" approval, into a resolute fighting force.

In mid-1913, José Maria's followers began gathering at Taquaraçu to await his resurrection. In December of that year, they defeated another government force.* Clashes continued, with the Contestados winning nearly every battle. By September 1914, there were over 10,000 rebels (possibly as many as 20,000) ranging over nearly half of Santa Catarina. Their attacks on the railway and lumbering operations and the failure of negotiations with federal authorities led to an escalation of hostilities and a fierce military campaign that in 1915 involved some 7,000 troops (and an additional 1000 mercenaries), modern artillery and machine guns, field telephones and telegraph, and the first use of aircraft in a Brazilian conflict. The fighting was spread over a wide area, and the many redoubts of the "fanatics," as the army called them, made suppression slow and difficult and also revealed the military's weaknesses. The Brazilian commander, General Fernando Setembrino de Carvalho, used his forces to burn every field and house in the Contestado region. Rebels concentrated in the fort of Santa Maria. After a two month siege, Setembrino de Carvalho took Santa Maria, killing 600 of the Contestados. The rebellion formally ended in January 1916 at Perdizinhas. The total number of casualties was uncertain but sizeable. One estimate suggested 800-1000 government forces were killed, wounded or missing while 5000-8000 rebels were killed, wounded or missing.

Army reformers, a key group of whom returned from training in Germany by the end of 1913, wrote commentaries on the campaign in the new military monthly, A Defesa Nacional . They regarded the Contestado as "an inglorious conflict that discredited our arms." They blamed the republic for its "lack of elevated political norms, the abandonment of thousands of Brazilians . . . segregated from national society by the lack of instruction, by the scarcity of easy means of communication, by the want of energy, and by the poverty of initiative that, unhappily, has characterized the administrations generally since the time of the monarchy." They warned military leaders that "the lesson of the Contestado" was that the army's passivity in accepting poorly conceived political measures would only damage it "morally" and would bring Brazil "the most funereal consequences." The Contestado became an important component in the army's institutional memory. Veterans played meaningful roles in military and national affairs in the next decades.

*Some sources take December 1913 as the starting date of the rebellion.

References

Guerra do Contestado; Footnotes to History: Contestado; Brazil - A Country Study.

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