Praieira Revolt - Event

Event

The principal event occurred near the journal Diário Novo ("New Journal") which is located on the Praia Street (Beach Street) in Recife, the capital of Pernambuco and its principal port (the revolution is named after the name of the street). The radical wing of the Liberal Party of that state, also known as the "praieiros", met regularly in the premises of Diário Novo. They were committed to removing the provincial governor Antônio Chicorro da Gama and the powerful entrenched Pernambucan aristocracy that was linked to the Conservatives.

The revolt was a culmination of mounting conflicts between Liberals and Conservatives that escalated with the end of the War of Tatters in 1845. Under the unreformed colonial social structure that remained from the 18th century, a small group of landowners in the influential province of Pernambuco controlled most of the workable land and preferred to concentrate on agricultural products for export. Since Brazilian economy was based on slavery and sugar, the long depression in the world sugar market aggravated social and racial ills in the 1840s.

In this feudal atmosphere of enforced silence, the editor of the short-lived journal O Progresso (1846–1848), Antônio Pedro de Figueiredo, spoke out for half of the province's population that were "vassals under the yoke" and declared that "the division of our soil in grand properties is the source of the major part of our ills." Another contemporary observer maintained that the Cavalcanti family owned one third of Pernambuco's sugar plantations (engenhos). Cavalcante was head of the Conservative Party in Pernambuco and a network of kinship ties extended the family's power. A popular saying of the time went:

Quem viver em Pernambuco,

Deve estar desenganado.

Ou há de ser Cavalcante,

Ou há de ser cavalgado.

which translates approximately as:

Whoever lives in Pernambuco,

Should not be deceived.

Either you are mounter,

Or you will be mounted.

The key to this saying is the witty Portuguese pun between Cavalcante (a rich family of Pernambuco, but also horse rider, mounter) and cavalgado (ridden, mounted).

The breaking point was the appointment by the Emperor of a new Conservative cabinet led by Pedro de Araújo Lima. A rebellion against the new provincial government, initiated by the "praieiros" in Olinda, began on November 7, 1848 and spread rapidly through the state. A "Manifesto to the World" calling for free and universal voting rights, freedom of the press, federalism and the end of the "Poder Moderador" (the Moderating Power – the supremacy of the emperor over the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches of the government that was instituted in the Brazilian Constitution of 1824), was on January 1, 1849. However, with only 2500 combatants, the movement quickly collapsed and was dispersed by the government forces. Other similar provincial movements swiftly followed suit.