The Revolta Contra Vacina of 1904: The Revolt Against “Modernization” in Belle-Époque Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

RANCISCo de Paula Rodrigues Alves's modernizing administration (19021906) imposed a new urban plan, portworks, and drastic measures against disease on Rio de Janeiro. In 1904, in a crisis linked to the administration's obligatory smallpox vaccination plans, a popular revolt dominated the capital and cleared the way for a nearly successful military coup. The historiography to date has either neglected this revolt or (more recently) focused on one aspect to the exclusion of the other. Here, I point to the Revolta Contra Vacina as the culmination and conjuncture of more general and more radical conflicts and resistance within Brazil's Old Republic (1889-1930)a failed revolution against one sort of modernization which gives another meaning to the events and indicates another perspective on Rio's belle epoque. In October 1904, an opposition newspaper in Rio posted a portrait of a man suffering from a grisly tumor that had distorted his arm and chest. The paper, the Correio da Manhd, did this so that our public may evaluate well what it is risking with obligatory vaccination. The daily then went on:

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 39 citations exist upstream.