Abstract
The Prestes Column rebellion is one of the most mythologized events in modern Brazil: from 1924 to 1927, a group of junior army officers marched nearly 15,000 miles through Brazil’s vast interior regions. This Homeric epic into the so-called “backlands” launched the careers of some of Brazil’s most important figures and, for nearly a century, has attained a mythic status in folklore and political history. Seeking to both explain and intervene in this legend, I argue that the myth of the Prestes Column emerged from and remained tethered to the stigmatized image of the interior. As a corrective to the Column's dominant narrative and intervening in scholarship on myths more generally, I reimagine the interior as both a place and an idea. The enduring symbolism of the backlands shows that exclusion, rather a byproduct of national mythologies, is the pillar on which the ideas of inclusionary myths are based.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 101-132 |
Number of pages | 32 |
Journal | Hispanic American Historical Review |
Volume | 101 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Feb 2021 |
Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)
- Prestes Column
- interior history
- tenentismo
- mythology