Augusto Ivan de Freitas Pinheiro and Eliane Canedo
Research and contributions: Cristiane Titoneli
The vaccine revolt
It was public health specialist Dr. Oswaldo Cruz who raised the idea of submitting a draft bill to the National Congress, reinstating mandatory vaccination. Although available since the previous century, it was not widely accepted. Under this draft bill, the government would be permitted to enter, inspect and demolish houses and buildings; only vaccinated people could get jobs, go to school and engage in civic acts. It also suggested setting up a Vaccine Court headed by a specially appointed judge, blocking the possibility of filing suit in the regular courts.
This step was in the interests of the government, with a majority in Congress, but was resisted by the minority members, as well as the press and the people of the city, who were still traumatized by the truculence of the previous yellow fever campaign. While the government underscored the number of cases of this disease – more than 4,000 deaths in Rio de Janeiro so far – the opposition highlighted the virulence of public health agents, who were not trustworthy, questioning the mandatory status of the vaccine.
During the Vaccine Revolt in 1904, the people of Rio set up barricades in front of the Moinho Fluminense mill, protesting against mandatory smallpox vaccinations ordered by the Director-General for Public Health, Dr. Oswaldo Cruz.
Made from the pustules of infected cows, the vaccine formula also prompted widespread mistrust, feeding into grassroots beliefs, with fears that vaccinated people would start to look like cows. It was rejected by Black people, due to their traditional veneration of Omolu, an African orixá deity with the power to spread diseases while also keeping his followers safe and sound through rituals. Introducing a scientific way of preventing diseases was viewed as an attempt to truncate the power of this divinity.
This grassroots dissatisfaction was stirred up by opportunistic opposition from monarchists seeking a loophole through which they could return to power, the military, and more radical Republicans, all blending into a “strange and explosive coalition”. 32 Seizing on the outrage prompted by the regulation of this Act on November 9, 1904, a military uprising tried to force President Rodrigues Alves out of office, just a few days later.
Known as the Vaccine Revolt, this grassroots insurrection broke out on November 10, 1904, and was violently suppressed by the government. The cavalry charged the crowd, firefights broke out, trams were overturned, and police stations looted. Downtown streets were closed by barricades, one of them right in front of the Moinho Fluminense mill, which also came under attack from the demonstrators. However, there was no way of controlling the mob, armed with sticks, bricks and kerosene-soaked corks provided by local merchants, who had also been affected by the restructuring of these urban areas.
The most violent protests took place in the Saúde district. Clutching carabines and revolvers, and well supplied with ammunition and dynamite bombs, local residents remained on standby, protected by chest-high barricades made from sandbags, ripped-up tramlines, overturned vehicles, tree trunks and wires. The final violent clash took place in the Largo dos Estivadores square (at that time, the Largo do Depósito), with countless dead and wounded. Bombarded from the sea by the Deodoro battleship, the entire neighborhood was surrounded by the 7th Infantry Battalion, advancing through the Praça da Harmonia plaza. There was no way of facing up to these State forces: the insurgents were beaten and punished.
This rebellion was so powerful that President Rodrigues Alves called in both the Army and the Navy on November 14, 1904. However, the dissidents had already scattered, paving the way for an attempted military coup, which was quickly stifled by decreeing a state of siege, two days later. That same day, the government revoked the mandatory vaccine requirement, after which this grassroots movement faded away completely.
The city that appeared after this uprising was unrecognisable, as described by Nicolau Sevcenko:33 “sidewalks ripped up, houses collapsing, windows shattered and doors broken, rails torn out, wrecks of trams, cars and carts burned in the streets, potholes blasted by dynamite and firecrackers, ruins of burnt-out buildings, broken streetlights and bulbs, benches and clocks, overturned statues, improvised trenches and barricades thrown up with all sorts of materials, barbed-wire barriers, bullet holes everywhere, bloodstains, dead horses and smoking ashes.” These clashes left thirty people dead, with 110 injured and around a thousand arrests, in addition to hundreds of people who were deported. The city was quite different, not only through the destruction caused by these skirmishes; more particularly, this violence left long-lasting scars, embittered by a climate of terror and revenge.