On the stage of history, the General of the Masses

the construction of an insult amid political machinations, leaked correspondence, and the scandal of a restorationist uprising in 1834

Abstract

On June 22, 1834, the play A Rusga da Praia Grande ou o Quixotismo do General das Massas was performed at the Teatro Nacional in Recife. On that occasion, the show was part of a celebration honoring the president of the province of Pernambuco, Manoel de Carvalho Paes de Andrade, who was returning from the province’s interior after a victory over insurgents known as cabanos, who were threatening the imperial order. The staging of this play in the pernambucan capital at that moment thus held broad political significance in Brazil during the Regency Period. This article analyzes how the nickname that gives the play its title was coined to discredit José Ignacio de Abreu e Lima, a general from Bolívar’s Colombia who had returned to Brazil in 1832 advocating for the restoration of Pedro I to the throne. To that end, I examine the circulation and political uses of the epithet “General das Massas [General of the Masses]” in certain periodicals published in Rio de Janeiro and Recife within the broader context of the Regency Period, amidst the leaking of Abreu e Lima’s private correspondence. These letters, to the scandal of the political class in both Rio and Pernambuco, portrayed him as an organizer of armed insurrections near Rio de Janeiro and in Pernambuco, at times in coordination with the cabanos. I conclude by showing how the label “General das Massas,” originally intended to disparage Abreu e Lima and later reappropriated in positive terms by historians who studied his political and intellectual trajectory, was just one among many insults and provocations deployed in the heat of political tensions during the 1830s Regency period.