The 1824 Confederation of the Equator and Cultural Production in Brazil

Abstract

During the 1824 Confederation of the Equator revolt in northeastern Brazil, a middle-class junta rose to power and waged a war against the monarchy in Rio, journalists participating in creating pedagogical ideological pamphlets, actively engaging in battles, and governing until the revolt was suppressed after a few months. Despite the short duration of this rebel government, the Confederation of the Equator and its ideology have been addressed in cultural production by authors and painters associated with different political movements in the nineteenth, twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, including Jõao Cabral de Melo Neto, Carlos Queiroz Telles, Antônio Parreiras, Gustavo Barroso, Cícero Dias, Murillo La Greca, Heloneida Studart, José Pimentel and Câmara Cascudo. This thesis discusses the history of the event, the content of the message of these thinkers, the spread of their ideas over the course of the nineteenth century and the deployment of the Confederation and its ideas by cultural producers in order to prove that this event has had an impact on the arts in Brazil.