The Revolt of the Whip , which took place on November 22, 1910, was a military revolt in which Navy soldiers staged a mutiny and took control of two battleships that were moored off the coast of Rio de Janeiro . The trigger of the revolt was the dissatisfaction of the enlisted soldiers with a punishment to which they were subjected:the whiplash .
The whip as punishment
The revolt had as its trigger the practice used as a form of punishment, which were the lashes. If any enlisted soldier committed a serious fault, he could be punished with a number of lashes. The use of whips was a cruel punishment, but it was an old practice in the Brazilian Navy, which used whips since Brazilian independence and was based on a Portuguese code called Artigos de Guerra . Reports say that shortly before the revolt began, on a trip that a battleship made along the coast of Chile, the soldiers had already expressed their dissatisfaction when one of them was punished with lashes. Here's the story:
“Adalberto told his children that while traveling from Bahia to Chile, on the eve of the rebellion there were protests when a sailor was lashed on deck. Each blow was followed by a boo, coming from the crews of the foreign ships that witnessed the scene. This type of punishment existed only in Brazil”|1| .
The beginning of the revolt
The Revolt represented much more than a dissatisfaction against violent punishment, but also against racism and social inequality, since the superior layer in the Navy at that time was only formed by whites, while the rank and file soldiers were mostly formed by blacks and mulattos.
When the movement began, the soldiers took control of the battleships São Paulo and Minas Gerais on November 22, 1910, they pointed the ships' guns at Rio de Janeiro and threatened to fire if their claims were not accepted. The manifesto of demands sent to President Hermes da Fonseca (1910-1914) was probably written by the sailor Adalberto Ferreira Ribas.
During the negotiations, soldiers were promised that their demands would be accepted and that those involved would be given amnesty, however these promises were not fulfilled and the revolt was violently suppressed and those involved were arrested. in Ilha das Cobras and others were transferred to a ship that was sent to Acre and there they performed forced labor in rubber plantations and on a railroad that was being built in the region.
|1| MOREL, Marco and ALMEIDA, Sílvia Capanema P. de. The white admiral. National Library History Magazine. Ed. nº 53, p.38-39, 2010.
*Image credits:Zoltan Katona and Shutterstock
Take the opportunity to check out our video lessons related to the subject: