Find out about the ‘Carrancas Revolt,’ the largest slave rebellion in Brazil’s southeast region

Brasil de Fato

Fifty-five years before May 13, 1888, went down in history as the day Princess Isabel formally signed the abolition of slavery (making Brazil the last Latin American country to do so), another episode would mark the date as a day that shook the slave structure of what was, then, an empire. The Carrancas Revolt was the largest and bloodiest slave rebellion in Brazil’s southeast region.  

The episode “was unique because the slaves’ confrontation targeted the manorial family,” says Marcos Ferreira de Andrade, a professor at the Federal University of São João del-Rei (UFSJ, in Portuguese) and a historian who has been researching the subject for three decades. The revolt was also the one that carried the largest collective sentence in the history of Brazilian slavery.  

The uprising

May 13, 1833, was a Monday and, apparently, it was just another ordinary afternoon on the Campo Alegre farm, owned by the influential Junqueira family in the south of Minas Gerais state. Their properties spread across what are now the towns of Carrancas, Cruzília, Luminárias and São Tomé das Letras. 

With the patriarch Gabriel Junqueira heading to Rio de Janeiro to serve as a member of parliament, his son (named after him) would be responsible for the administration of the farm, whose profits were extracted from the forced labor of around 100 Black enslaved people. Nicknamed “senhor moço” (“young sir”, in a rough translation) by the enslaved people at the farm, Gabriel was a justice of the peace, a sort of police chief.  

It was almost midday when he rode out to the plantations to supervise the work. By surprise, he was knocked off his horse by the enslaved man Domingos Crioulo, then beaten and clubbed to death by two others, Julião Congo and Ventura Mina. The latter was the main organizer of the uprising.  

According to what Julião Congo said later in the interrogation, at that moment, “the horse ran away and a faithful boy rode up” and headed to the farm to tell Junqueira’s family what was happening. The name of the young man, enslaved like his companions whom he had denounced, was Francisco.

As a result, when they approached the farmhouse, the insurgents realized that two armed horsemen were already waiting for them. They went to the nearby Bela Cruz Farm, owned by José Francisco Junqueira, the deputy’s brother.  

On the farm, the rebels led by Ventura Mina met Joaquim Mina, an important figure among the Black workers on Bela Cruz Farm. The attack on the estate’s headquarters resulted in the violent deaths of all seven white members of the Junqueira family who were there, including three children, one of whom was a newborn. In the early evening, the farmer’s son-in-law was murdered in an ambush as he crossed the gate.  

Part of the rebels went to Jardim Farm. There, the farm’s owner, João Cândido da Costa, had locked all but two of the enslaved people in the sezalas (slave quarters). Cândido Costa trusted these two men and armed them to join the white men who shot the insurgents. In the confrontation, Ventura Mina, Inácio, Matias, Firmino and Antônio Cigano died. Others took refuge in the bush. Some took days to be captured. 

The reaction of slavers 

In the article Contam que houve uma porção de enforcados. E as caveiras espetadas nos postes: literature e oralidade na Revolta dos Escravos de Carrancas (“They say there were a lot of people hanged. And the skulls stuck on poles: literature and orality in the Carrancas Slave Revolt,” in a rough translation) (Estudos Históricos),” Marcos de Andrade reports that Ventura Mina’s leadership was stressed in the testimonies and proceedings of the case.  

“In the accusatory libel, he was described as a slave who had a ‘fiery and ardent genius, was enterprising, active, laborious, had a great influence over the defendants and strangers of whom he was loved, respected and obeyed’,” says the article.  

Some of Ventura’s 31 fellow prisoners arrested claimed to have taken part in the uprising because they were afraid of him – it’s not known whether this was true or was said because he was already dead. The fact is that the justification didn’t help: 17 people were sentenced to hanging.  

One of them, José Mina, said in his testimony that the insurrection had been planned for two years. Damião – who, just like Joaquim Mina, Jerônimo and Roque Crioulos, was pointed out as the organizer of the revolt alongside Ventura Mina – didn’t give slaveholders the pleasure of seeing his murder. He hanged himself first.  

The only man convicted who managed to avoid the death penalty was Antônio Resende. “But on condition that he hanged the rest of his comrades-in-arms, as well as serving as executioner for the rest of his life. He was held in prison in São João del-Rei,” Andrade told Brasil de Fato.

The Carrancas Revolt left 30 people dead: 21 Blacks and nine whites.

In an investigation into “the memory of captivity” that persists to this day in the region, Marcos de Andrade learned of a place in Cruzília (Minas Gerais state) called Cabeça Branca (“White Head”, in English). There, the heads of the insurgents were said to have been placed on stakes. Over time, only white skulls could be seen, hence the name.  

The researcher found notes by genealogist Mariana de Andrade Bueno, José Francisco Junqueira’s great-great-granddaughter, saying that one of the heads had been sent “as a souvenir” to one of the farmer’s daughters, Ana Francisca Junqueira. She had left it stuck at the entrance to the Chapadão farm, one of her properties. 

The law of revenge 

Less than a month after May 13, 1833, the fear and revenge of the slave-owning elites took the form of a bill. Presented to the national parliament by the then Minister of Justice, Aureliano de Souza e Oliveira Coutinho, it proposed speeding up, without appeal, the trial of enslaved insurgents who had attempted their masters’ lives.  

The law that established a summary rite for sentencing Black people to death in Brazil lasted until 1891. It was approved on June 10, 1835, months after the Revolt of the Malês in Salvador, Bahia state.

Historian João José Reis, a scholar dedicated to researching Black rebellions in Bahia in the first half of the 19th century, points out that the uprising in Minas Gerais “influenced the repression that followed the Revolt of the Malês because it hastened the implementation of the law created after Carrancas”. 

“The largest slave rebellion in the province of Minas Gerais, which frightened the slave-owning elite of the southeast region, included captives from diverse origins: minas, angolas, benguelas, congos, cassanges and moçambiques. Bantu-speaking enslaves also had a significant presence,” says João José Reis.    

“As well as slaves of African origin, the Creoles – natives and/or children of enslaved people with white people – were also significantly involved,” he adds. 

The Revolt of the Malês had another characteristic. “Those involved were all native Africans whose ancestry went back to a few ethnic groups or African nations, particularly Nagôs (Yoruba speakers). Religion (Islam) played a central role in its conception and development,” explains Reis.  

The role of fake news in the Carrancas Revolt 

The 1830s in Brazil were a turbulent decade. When Dom Pedro I abdicated from the throne in 1831, his son was five years old. As a result, the country was ruled by regents and two major groups formed by the political elites were vying for power: the moderate Liberals (monarchists who considered Dom Pedro I to be an absolutist) and the Caramurus (or restorers, who advocated the return of Dom Pedro I to power). The Junqueira family was affiliated with the former.  

On March 22, 1833, a few months before the Carrancas Revolt broke out, Ouro Preto (then the capital city of Minas Gerais) was taken by the Caramurus. Composed mainly of Portuguese merchants and soldiers, the group overthrew the governor and took power of the province of Minas Gerais for two months.  

The facts and rumors surrounding the event – which became known as the Military Sedition or Revolt of the Year of Smoke – spread and reached the enslaved people of southern Minas Gerais. One piece of fake news had a major impact: that the Caramurus were freeing the enslaved people in the city of Ouro Preto.   

According to documents Marcos de Andrade analyzed, one person appears as the main propagator of the rumor. “Francisco Silvério was a farmer and businessman who moved around various farms in the region and depended on access to the paths and roads that crossed many properties,” he describes in the article A pena de morte e a revolta dos escravos de Carrancas: a origem da lei nefanda (“The death penalty and the Carrancas slave revolt: the origin of the ‘nefarious law’”) (Revista Tempo).

Silvério, says Andrade, became an enemy of the Junqueira family and an ally of the military who had taken over the province. “As he was a trader and needed to get around the entrances to the region, he had an old claim against some landowners in the Carrancas parish and managed to get access to a road during the sedition,” he says. 

For the historian, there is no doubt that the rumor played “a crucial role in the Revolt” because of “the expectation of freedom”. “The rumor spread by Francisco Silvério that the Caramurus had abolished slavery in Ouro Preto fell like a powder keg in the senzalas, to the extent that it was spread by Ventura Mina”.  

“The slaves believed,” says Andrade, “that, in the Carrancas region, the moderate liberals were enslaving them illegally.” 

“From a historical point of view, we know that the Caramurus belonged to the slave-owning elite. Francisco Silvério Teixeira even owned 19 slaves. In his case, it seems to have been another strategy to put an end to the dominance of the Junqueira family and their allies in the region,” he points out.

Regarding the political interpretation the enslaved Black people had, Andrade says that “right there on the Junqueira family’s properties, they saw not only the political and economic rise of their masters but also the disagreements and enmities that arose. So, if being a Caramuru meant fighting for freedom, even in such a violent way, they became Caramurus”.

Why is this May 13 so little known?  

The Regency’s reaction to the Carrancas Revolt had a double strategy, says Andrade. On the one hand, deadly and exemplary punishment. On the other, the near silencing of the issue in the press and parliamentary speeches. 

But this is not the only reason why, in Andrade’s opinion, the rebellion is so little known. It has to do, he points out, with the “path of Brazilian historiography”.  

“The Carrancas Revolt took place in a rural area and the most important documentation about it – the criminal records – was ‘asleep’ in the archives of the São João del-Rei Regional Museum,” he explains.  

It wasn’t until 1992 that a project carried out by a public academic institution and the then São João del-Rei Higher Education Foundation (currently named UFSJ) mapped the collection. Marcos Ferreira de Andrade was a scholarship holder on the project. The findings “presented an unprecedented story completely unknown to historiography”, he points out. 

To this day, discoveries are being made about the episode. Most recently, through “oral memory” about “a trial of slaves killed in a confrontation”, says Andrade, announcing that two new productions on the subject will soon be launched: a book and a documentary film.  

Exactly 191 years ago, on May 13, 1833, the Carrancas Revolt took place. Two years later, on May 13, 1835, four insurgents from the Malês Revolt were executed. More than half a century later, on May 13, 1888, the Golden Law was signed by Princess Isabel.  

“These are just coincidences in the dates of very different and distant events,” says Marcos Ferreira de Andrade. But they are “closely related to slavery in Brazil, in a context of its intensification and subsequent disintegration, as well as referring to the calendar of the most emblematic slave revolts that took place in the 1830s”. As such, he adds, “they represent one of those ironies of history.”