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Lucia Maria Bastos Pereira das Neves The forgotten in the independence process: a history to be made

Almanack, Guarulhos, n. 25, ef00220, 2020 http://doi.org/10.1590/2236-463325ef00220

Pedro. Composed by the local political elites, they organized themselves assuming wide autonomy in internal affairs, transforming, in the expression R. Barman, into the government of “small homelands”^[1]. They were, therefore, at the origin of the local influence in the administration and fiscal affairs of the provinces, which came to characterize the political structure of Brazil in the Empire, seeking to prevent any attempt by a powerful centralized government in Rio de Janeiro.

One of those involved in these imbroglios was Cassiano Espiridião de Melo e Matos. Born in Bahia, graduated in law in Coimbra in 1819, he returned to Brazil, being dispatched as a judge from outside Ouro Preto^[2]. Thus, as the 1821 movement took over the main regions of Brazil, Cassiano Espiridião took a favorable position to the formation of a governing board, in opposition to captain-general Manoel de Portugal and Castro, who accused this attempt to be a turmoil organized by “revolutionaries, rioters of the troops and the people”, who wanted “absolute independence from the province of Minas Gerais”, having taken immediate steps to stifle the rebellion^[3]. However, spirits did not calm down, with conflicts arising between the old administration and those who proclaimed a constitutional system, along the lines of the one implemented by the Lisbon Courts. Such disagreements transpired in a controversy in the newspapers of Rio de Janeiro, involving different letters and opinions. In one of these controversies, there was Espiridião de Melo e Matos. In a letter to the editor of Gazeta do Rio de Janeiro, our character criticized the anti-constitutional attitude of his editor, emphasizing that the provisional governments had not been installed with the sole purpose “to

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1. BARMAN, Roderick. Brazil: the forging of a nation (1798-1852). Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988, p. 75
2. At the University of Coimbra, he was a colleague of Almeida Garrett, being later one of the characters invoked in his work under the name of Spiridião Cassiano di Mello i Matoôs. Cf. RIBEIRO, Maria Aparecida. Images of Brazil in the work of Garrett: invocações e exorcismos. Revista Camões, Lisboa, n. 4, p. 115-127, 1999. Available at: https://bit.ly/37DT5VM. Accessed in Jun 18th, 2020.
3. Explanatory memory of the Anti-Constitutional Mr. Manuel de Portugal e Castro, Governor and Captain of Minas Geraes, both in the Act of Oath of the Bases of the Constitution on July 17th and in the District Elections on the 19th and 20th of August in the year of 1821 [s.n.t.], p.2.