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Abstract
In 1911 the prophet Jose Maria began preaching in the interior of southern Brazil. He spoke of the evil Brazilian Republic, and of the need to return to the monarchy. His fame and following grew, alarming local elites. Troops were sent to disperse the "fanatics," and thus began the Contestado Rebellion.
What followed was a millenarian rebellion pitting 20,000 rebels against 7,000 soldiers. To uncover its origins, this dissertation details the abrupt transition to capitalism in the backwater Contestado region, a process sparked by the entrance of international capital, and European colonization. By 1911 the Brazil Railway Company had received title to one million hectares in return for building a railroad across the interior. During that same era 25,000 colonists purchased 200,000 Contestado hectares. Thousands of local peasants lost their land as a result.
Local elites' participation in the capitalist transition led up to a millenarian rebellion. Before capitalism powerful ranchers granted land to their ranch hands (agregados). Ranchers served as godfathers to their agregados, participating in a religious practice which sanctified planter dominance, but at the cost of making them morally responsible for the subsistence of their godchildren.
With the capitalist transformation local elites became land and labor brokers. Patrons expelled agregados from lands recently sold to colonists. They organized construction gangs composed of their agregados. The external pressures of capitalism now produced an internal crisis of values as patrons threatened client subsistence, and thus broke with reciprocal obligations established and sanctified by religious practice.
The millenarian vision addressed both the material and spiritual crisis, thus accounting for its special appeal in the Contestado. It promised salvation, and ordered patrons and clients to recreate their relationship in "holy cities." The internal crisis thus resolved, it ordered the now reunified local society to destroy the external enemy composed of the railroad, European colonists, and unrepentant patrons. The vision thus reached a receptive audience not because people were easily fooled by mystical figures, but because the nature of the millenarian call very much addressed the specific concerns and fears of a population suffering from an internal crisis of values.
