The Revolt of the Lash (Portuguese: Revolta da Chibata) was a naval mutiny in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in late November 1910. It was the direct result of the use of whips ("lashes") by white naval officers when punishing Afro-Brazilian and mixed-race enlisted sailors.
At the beginning of the new century rising demand for coffee and rubber enabled Brazilian politicians to attempt to transform their country into an international power. A key part of this would come from modernizing the Brazilian Navy, which had been neglected since the 1889 coup, by purchasing battleships of the dreadnought type, which had been recently introduced. Social conditions in the Brazilian Navy, however, did not keep pace with this new technology. Elite white officers were in charge of mostly black and mixed-race crewmen, many of whom had been forced into the navy on long-term contracts. These officers frequently inflicted corporal punishment on the crewmen for major and minor offenses alike despite the practice's ban in most other countries and in the rest of Brazil.
In response to this violence, sailors launched a carefully planned and executed mutiny in Rio de Janeiro on 22 November 1910. Led by João Cândido, these men managed to take control of both dreadnoughts, one brand-new cruiser, and an older coastal-defense ship, giving them firepower that dwarfed the rest of the navy. To capitalize on the threat these ships posed to the Brazilian capital, the mutineers sent a letter to the government that demanded an end to what they called the "slavery" being practiced by the navy.
While the executive branch of the government plotted to retake or sink the rebelling warships, they were hampered by personnel distrust and equipment problems; historians have since cast doubt on their chances of successfully accomplishing either. At the same time, Congress—led by Senator Rui Barbosa—pursued a route of amnesty, appointing a former navy captain as their liaison to the rebels. This latter route was successful, and a bill granting amnesty to all involved and ending the use of corporal punishment passed the lower house by a veto-proof margin. However, many of the sailors involved were quickly discharged from the navy, and many of the original mutineers were later thrown into jail or sent to rubber collecting regions in the Brazilian Amazon.
Background
In the years preceding the revolt, the Brazilian populace saw frequent changes in the country's political, economic, and social climate. For example, in May 1888, slavery in Brazil was abolished with the enactment into law of the Lei Áurea, a law vehemently opposed by the Brazilian upper class and plantation owners. This discontent among the social elite directly led to a peaceful coup spearheaded by the army and led by Benjamin Constant and Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca. Emperor Pedro II and his family were quickly and quietly sent into exile in Europe; they were replaced with a titular republic with Fonseca as president.
The next decade was marked by several rebellions against the new political order, including naval revolts (1891, 1893–94), the Federalist Rebellion (1893–95), the War of Canudos (1896–97), and the Vaccine Revolt (1904), during which the quality of the Brazilian Navy severely declined relative to its neighbors thanks to an Argentine–Chilean naval arms race. By the turn of the twentieth century, an antiquated Brazilian naval fleet with just forty-five percent of its authorized personnel (in 1896) and only two modern armored warships could be faced by Argentine and Chilean navies filled with ships ordered in the last decade.
However, at the dawn of the new century, rising demand for coffee and rubber gave the Brazilian government an influx of revenue. Contemporary writers estimated that seventy-five to eighty percent of the world's coffee supply was grown in Brazil. Prominent Brazilian politicians, most notably Pinheiro Machado and the Baron of Rio Branco, moved to have the country recognized as an international power, as they believed that the short-term windfall would continue. A strong navy was seen as crucial to this goal. The National Congress of Brazil drew up and passed a large naval acquisition program in late 1904, but it was two years before any ships were ordered. While they first ordered three small battleships, the launch of the revolutionary British HMS Dreadnought—which heralded a new and powerful type of warship—caused the Brazilians to cancel their order in favor of two dreadnoughts. These ships would be named Minas Geraes and São Paulo, and would be accompanied by two smaller cruisers, Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul, and ten destroyers of the Pará class.
Conditions in the navy
This technological modernization in the Brazilian Navy was not matched by social change, and tensions between the navy's officer corps versus the regular crewmembers kindled much unrest. A quote from the Baron of Rio Branco, the esteemed politician and professional diplomat, shows one of the sources of tension: "For the recruitment of marines and enlisted men, we bring aboard the dregs of our urban centers, the most worthless lumpen, without preparation of any sort. Ex-slaves and the sons of slaves make up our ships' crews, most of them dark-skinned or dark-skinned mulattos." Racial differences in the Brazilian Navy would have been immediately apparent to an observer at the time: the officers in charge of the ship were nearly all white, while the crews were heavily black or, to a lesser extent, mixed-race. The visual differences belied deeper distinctions: darker-skinned crewmen, who by the time of the revolt would have been older slaves freed under the Lei Áurea (or sons born free under the 1871 Law of the Free Womb), were almost universally less educated than their white overseers.
The navy, along with other military branches, served as dumping grounds for thousands of young, poverty-stricken, sometimes orphaned black individuals who were stuck in the 'dregs' of Brazil's cities. Many had committed or were suspected of committing crimes—though those not in legal trouble were far from safe, as some recruits were seized off the streets or simply on the losing end of settling a personal score. Such measures served as a "perfect marriage of punishment and reform": people who had or were likely to commit crimes would be removed from society and trained in skills that would benefit the country. These men were commonly sent to the navy, apprenticed around the age of 14, and bound to the navy for fifteen years. João Cândido, a leader in the later Revolt of the Lash, was apprenticed at age 13 and joined the navy at 16. Individuals forced into the navy served for twelve years. Volunteers, who perhaps unsurprisingly made up a very low percentage of recruits, signed on for nine years.
Another point of contention came from the navy's heavy use of corporal punishment for even minor offenses. While such measures had been banned in the general population since the Imperial Constitution of 1824 and in the army since 1874, the navy was only affected in November 1889, when the new republic's legislature forbade such discipline. They rescinded the law less than a year later amid widespread noncompliance. Instead, corporal punishment would only be allowed in a Companhia Correcional (Correctional Company). The legislature envisioned this as a curb on the practice, as only sailors with violent or subversive histories would face the lash. The reality was very different: because the companies existed anywhere on the ships, any sailor could be theoretically transferred to the Companhia Correcional but not have any change in their daily routines.
Most of the Brazilian Navy's officer corps believed that corporal punishment was an essential tool in maintaining discipline on their ships. An anonymous Brazilian admiral, representative of his time, wrote in 1961 that "... our seamen of that time, lacking the moral and intellectual requirements for appreciating the debasing aspects of the punishment [whipping], accepted it naturally, as an opportunity to show their physical and moral superiority. ... All this is ... understandable in the face of the backward mentality and ignorance of the personnel that composed the ship's crews."
Rebellion
Preparations and prelude
Crewmen aboard Minas Geraes began planning for a revolt years before 1910, according to João Cândido, an experienced sailor who would later become the leader of the Revolt of the Lash. The conspirators were motivated by the treatment of enlisted men in the Brazilian Navy, extending beyond the lash to even their substandard food, which led to not-uncommon outbreaks of beriberi. Some had formed a committee and had been meeting secretly for years in Rio de Janeiro. This semi-formal organization was only expanded when they were sent to Newcastle in the United Kingdom for training—the operation of such large and complex warships required specific skills. When interviewed years after the mutiny, Cândido said that they "maintained the committees in the very hotels where we were residing, awaiting the construction of the ships. Almost two years paid by the Brazilian government, we sent messengers to sound out the situation here [in Brazil]. We did this so that when we arrive, we would be prepared to act"—they were just "waiting for a date and for power," referring to the brand-new warships.
The experience of these crewmen in the United Kingdom was such that historian Zachary Morgan believes that it was a pivotal formative period in shaping the later mutiny. The sailors were paid on time, in cash, and received extra money because they had to buy their own meals; during their time there they faced little if any discrimination; and the Armstrong shipyard workers unionized and even successfully went on strike in the meantime, delaying the completion of the new Brazilian warships. Moreover, they were able to observe their British Royal Navy counterparts—an experience that Morgan says would have been "jarring" because these sailors "were no longer impressed, no longer lashed, [and] were accepted as citizens."
The revolt started shortly after the brutal 250 lashes given to Marcelino Rodrigues Menezes, a regular Afro-Brazilian enlisted sailor, for bringing two bottles of cachaça on board the ship. There is some scholarly disagreement on if this number is correct and exactly when this sentence was carried out, but all agree that it was the immediate catalyst. A later Brazilian government observer, former navy captain José Carlos de Carvalho, told the president of Brazil that Menezes' back looked like "a mullet sliced open for salting."
Mutiny
About the warships
Minas Geraes, São Paulo, and Bahia represented the newest and largest ships in the Brazilian Navy. All had been completed and commissioned only months before; the first two were dreadnoughts and possibly the most powerful commissioned warships of their type, and Bahia was the fastest scout cruiser in the world. Deodoro was a comparatively older vessel, dating back a bit over a decade, but it was in good condition after a recent refit.
A significant percentage of the naval crewmen stationed in Rio de Janeiro, perhaps 1,500 to 2,000 out of 4,000, revolted at around 10 pm on 22 November. They began on Minas Geraes, where the ship's commander and several loyal crewmen were killed, and the gunfire on board the dreadnought alerted the other ships in the harbor that the revolt had begun. By midnight, the rebels had São Paulo, the new cruiser Bahia, and the coast-defense ship Deodoro all under control, with the "Admiral" João Cândido in overall command.
The crews of the smaller minelayer República, the training ship Benjamin Constant, and the torpedo boats Tamoio and Tymbira all revolted as well, but they made up only two percent of the overall mutineers. The majority of República's crew left to bolster São Paulo and Deodoro; those aboard the other ships either joined with the rebels or fled ashore.
While most officers were allowed to peacefully leave their ships after the uprisings began, there were notable exceptions: on Minas Geraes, for instance, officers on board had time to draw their weapons and defend themselves. The ship's captain, João Batista das Neves, was killed in the fighting along with several loyal and rebel crewmen. Other bloodshed was much more limited: on the cruiser Bahia, the only officer present was killed after he shot a rebel crewman, and one lieutenant on São Paulo killed himself. Civilian technicians (some of them British), machinists, and other personnel integral to the warships were kept aboard without violence.
By the end of the evening, key warships that remained in government hands included Bahia's sister Rio Grande do Sul, the aging cruiser Almirante Barroso, and the new destroyers of the Pará class. Their potential power, however, was dwarfed by the dreadnoughts—each of which outgunned the combined firepower of all of the warships that remained—and was severely tempered by personnel issues. First, naval officers were suspicious of even those enlisted men who remained loyal to the government. Officers took over all of the positions that would be involved in direct combat, and the numbers of enlisted men were reduced wherever possible. Further complicating matters were missing weapon components, such as firing caps for the destroyers' torpedoes, without which they could not be fired. When caps were finally located and delivered, they did not fit the newer torpedoes carried by the destroyers. The correct caps were only fitted two days after the revolt began.