The Prestes Column Rebellion: An Interior History of Brazil

数百年来，巴西有一句流行的谚语将社会描述为“螃蟹粘在海岸上”。在这种观点下，只有沿海地区--以及他们的欧洲后裔精英--才被认为有能力发展成一个现代化的文明国家。相比之下，巴西的内陆在很大程度上被想象成一个充满野蛮和贫困的空间，只有自然资源和劳动力才是有用的。因此，所谓的“边远地区”长期以来一直被困在国家想象的边缘，被里约热内卢、萨尔瓦多和S等沿海城市所谓的优越性所边缘化。为了挑战沿海和内陆之间的传统叙事，这个项目从内部重新审视巴西历史，我称之为“内陆历史”的框架。我试图颠倒经常被用来研究巴西-以及更广泛的拉丁美洲-历史的概念和地理边界，我展示了内陆的人和空间是如何对国家认同、政治和文化的发展起到核心作用的。我的巴西内部史专注于一个标志性的案例研究：Prestes专栏叛乱。从1924年到1927年，路易斯·卡洛斯·普雷斯特斯领导的大约1000名军事叛军在巴西广阔的内陆地区行进了2.5万公里。被称为Tenentes或中尉的叛军没有成功推翻政府，但他们无意中进入内陆，提升了新一代军事领导人的形象，并在几年后启动了政权更迭。这一时期恰逢大众发行报纸的兴起，Prestes专栏成为巴西首批被全国观众实时关注的事件之一。由于特南特人美化了他们在内陆的经历--我们花了两年时间在人民中，我们看到了贫穷，我们知道了真正的巴西--专栏领导人能够利用内陆的想法来证明他们对政治权力的主张是合理的。然而，这种虚构的地位分散了人们生活在内陆地区的实际经历，而且，它还使叛军往往暴力和居高临下的行为合法化。通过研究神话是如何产生的，以及这个过程是如何变得不可见的，我的Prestes专栏的历史揭示了边远地区是现代巴西矛盾形成的中心。随着Prestes专栏的一本书和一期关于拉丁美洲内部史的期刊，我将制作一张互动的数字地图。这个双语可视化工具将允许巴西和国外的用户跟踪Prestes专栏的进展，并探索内陆的当地社区。地图将包括战斗和部队调动等细节，以及不同地点今天的图像。这种当代视角对于观看游行沿途修建的纪念地特别有用，从大规模的公共纪念活动到墓碑和小型纪念碑，都是为叛军和与他们作战的士兵建造的。该网站还将有一个开源功能，公众用户可以提供他们自己的贡献，比如分享家庭照片或关于专栏段落的当地民间传说。在2018年8月里约热内卢国家博物馆发生毁灭性火灾后，在线地图变得更加重要。除了提供研究Prestes专栏的创新工具外，该地图还将作为与巴西内陆历史相关的文件的数字指南。这将包括档案材料和公众贡献--人文研究的一种“公民科学”形式。这场悲惨的大火加速了档案工作者、学者和博物馆馆长之间的网络建设，我的Prestes专栏数字地图试图通过提供一个可访问的平台来展示历史遗产和公众参与，从而加入这一重要的运动。

For hundreds of years, a popular saying in Brazil has described society as 'crabs clinging to the coast'. In this view, only the coastal regions-and their European-descendant elites-were deemed capable of developing a modern and civilised nation. Brazil's interior, in contrast, was largely imagined as a space of savagery and poverty, useful only for its natural resources and its labour. As a result, the so-called 'backlands' have long been stuck in the periphery of the national imaginary, marginalised by the alleged superiority of cities near the coast such as Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, and São Paulo.To challenge the traditional narrative between coast and interior, this project re-examines Brazilian history from the inside, a framework that I call 'interior history'. Seeking to invert the conceptual and geographic boundaries often used to study the history of Brazil-and also of Latin America more broadly-I show how the people and spaces of the interior have been central to the development of national identities, politics, and culture.My interior history of Brazil focuses on a single emblematic case study: the Prestes Column rebellion. From 1924 to 1927, a band of roughly a thousand military rebels led by Luiz Carlos Prestes marched 25,000 kilometres across Brazil's vast interior regions. The rebels-known as tenentes, or lieutenants-did not succeed in toppling the government, but their inadvertent journey into the interior elevated the profiles of a new generation of military leaders and set in motion a regime change only a few years later. This period coincided with the rise of mass-distribution newspapers, and the Prestes Column became one of Brazil's first events to be followed in real time by national audiences. And because the tenentes glorified their experience in the interior-'we spent two years amongst the people, we saw poverty, we know the real Brazil'-the Column leaders were able to use the idea of the interior to justify their claim to political power. Yet this mythic status distracts from the actual experience of populations living in the interior and, moreover, it legitimised the often-violent and condescending actions of the rebels. By studying both how the mythology came to be and also what that process rendered invisible, my history of the Prestes Column reveals how the backlands were central to the contradictory formation of modern Brazil.Along with a book on the Prestes Column and a journal issue on interior history in Latin America, I will produce an interactive digital map. This bilingual visualisation tool will allow users in Brazil and abroad to trace the progress of the Prestes Column and to explore the local communities across the interior. The map will include details such as battles and troop movement, and also images of what the different locations looks like today. This contemporary view is especially useful for seeing the memory sites that have been built along the march, ranging from large-scale public commemorations to tombstones and small monuments for both the rebels and the soldiers that fought against them. The website will also have an open-source feature, where public users can offer their own contributions such as sharing family photos or local folklore about the Column's passage.The online map has acquired even greater importance in the aftermath of the devastating fire at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro in August 2018. Along with providing an innovative tool to study the Prestes Column, the map will serve as a digital guide for documents relating to the history of Brazil's interior. This will include archival material as well as the public contributions-a form of 'citizen science' for humanities research. The tragic fire has accelerated the network-building amongst archivists, scholars, and museum curators, and my digital map of the Prestes Column seeks to join this important movement by offering an accessible platform for historical patrimony and public engagement.