Insurgent Pernambuco: From the Cabanos War, 1832–1835, to the Praieira Revolution, 1848–1849

Abstract

In 1817, and again in 1824, radical liberals took power and proclaimed a republic in Pernambuco. These movements were violently repressed by imperial troops who landed in Alagoas and were supported by large landholders, who mobilized allies while they advanced on Recife and Olinda, where the rebels had most support, including among the black and mixed population. The fall of Pedro I in 1831 reopened these wounds and rekindled the dispute for land in the forests between Alagoas and Pernambuco, where the Cabanos rebels lived—also known as the “people of the forests.” Armed by those who fought against the republicans in 1817 and 1824, the Cabanos defended their right to own the land they held and fought for the return of Pedro I. The people of the forests were a mix of posseiros, Indians, and quilombolas, and in 1833 under the leadership of Vicente de Paula, a poor pardo with an uncertain past, they totally escaped the control of landholders. The Cabanada defeat (1835) coincided with the beginning of the regresso in court, which strengthened the conservatives of Pernambuco, guaranteeing the hegemony of those led by the Cavalcanti clan and by the Marquis of Olinda. This faction only left the Pernambuco government in 1845, during the “liberal quinquennium” (1844–1848), when the Praieiro Party rose to power, bringing together rebels from 1817 and 1824 and rural landholders whose demands had not been met by the hegemonic conservative alliance, which would only return to the provincial government in 1848, after the fall of the Liberal cabinet in Rio de Janeiro. However, the Praieiros refused to give up their positions and their posts in the national guard and civil police, starting the Praieira Rebellion, which had the support of various rural landholders and the free poor urban population mobilized by radical liberals around a nativist demand: the “nationalization of retail trade.” The crushing of the Praieira Rebellion sealed the destiny of the liberal opposition, confirming the conservative dominion in Pernambuco and in the capital of the empire.