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Chapter Reference: Progress; Neocolonialism
Millenarian movements, organized partly in expectation of the Christian "millennium" (the second coming of Christ and the end of the world as we know it), have occurred with some frequency in Brazilian history. The largest and most famous millenarian event in Brazilian history was the prophet Antonio Conselheiro's holy city of Canudos, created and destroyed during the 1890s in the arid backlands of northeastern Brazil. Other major millenarian events have occurred in southern Brazil. Importantly, millenarianism is not just about religion. It always has political implications, and most of the time it seems a response to the changing conditions of people's lives. Millenarian movements are truly mass movements. Papers on Brazilian millenarianism normally focus on Canudos, but they should also give some account of the broader phenomenon. The sertão of Northeastern Brazil is the region most associated with millenarianism, but related events have occurred in many other parts of Latin America, notably Mexico.
Questions for Analysis and Further Reflection:
- Millenarian movements often seem to offer a way out, an alternative path, in moments of spiritual and material crisis. What alternatives were offered by the millenarian movement in Canudos, the millenarian visions of the Caste War in Mexico, or the Contestado rebellion in Brazil? How do the moments of spiritual and material crisis envisioned by the movements compare?
- The religious connection to the millennium, and the association of nonreligious millenarian movements with a belief in the end of the world, is a powerful initial uniting idea and force. After all, talking about the end of the world does get people's attention. But what held millenarian communities together, year after year, when the world did not end?
- How have major millenarian movements like Canudos been treated in national history? Are you familiar with millenarian movements in U.S. history?
Bibliography: (Titles with ** are good starting places.)
** Diacon, Todd A. Millenarian Vision, Capitalist Reality: Brazil's Contestado Rebellion,
1912—1916. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991.
This readable account deals with a millenarian movement in Southern Brazil, seeking an answer to the question of why people joined the movement.
Dumond, Don E. The Machete and the Cross: Campesino Rebellion in Yucatan. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
Like Reed (below), Dumond focuses on Mexico's millenarian caste war.
** Graziano, Frank. The Millennial New World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
An overview of millenarianism in Latin America, with examples from Mexico to Peru to Brazil.
** Levine, Robert M. Vale of Tears: Revisiting the Canudos Massacre in Northeastern
Brazil, 1893—1897. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
A useful survey of Brazilian millenarianism as well as the best detailed account of Canudos.
Pessar, Patricia R. From Fanatics to Folk: Brazilian Millenarianism and Popular Culture.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.
An anthropological approach that views the problem in a broader cultural context.
** Reed, Nelson A. The Caste War of Yucatán, rev. ed. Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2001.
An old-fashioned narrative account of a millenarian movement that occurred in Mexico's Yucatán peninsula in the second half of the nineteenth century, pitting the Maya against the state.
Other Resources:
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