**Context**: In the early 1920s, Brazil’s “Old Republic” was basically an exclusive club run by coffee barons and regional oligarchs. Elections were rigged, corruption was everywhere, and if you weren’t part of the coffee-and-cattle elite, you didn’t get a say in anything.
Enter the “Tenentistas” – literally “Lieutenants” – a group of young army officers who decided, “Okay, if the politicians won’t fix Brazil, we will.” They wanted honest elections, social reforms, and an end to the oligarchic circus. Unfortunately, they weren’t exactly swimming in resources… or good plans.
After a failed revolt in 1924, one of the rebel groups, led by LuÃs Carlos Prestes, refused to surrender. Instead, they thought, “What if we just… kept walking?”
And thus began the Prestes Column – around 1,500 rebels marching over 25,000 km (approximately 16,000 miles in freedom units) across Brazil’s vast interior from 1924 to 1927. They crossed jungles, droughts, swamps, fought off government troops, landowners, malaria, and probably every mosquito in Latin America. They never got defeated, never got captured. They just… kept moving.
They didn’t overthrow the government, but they did become a symbol of idealism and defiance. Prestes himself later became a communist leader, and fun fact: Mao Zedong would later say he took inspiration from the Prestes Column when planning his own Long March.
3 Comments
**Context**: In the early 1920s, Brazil’s “Old Republic” was basically an exclusive club run by coffee barons and regional oligarchs. Elections were rigged, corruption was everywhere, and if you weren’t part of the coffee-and-cattle elite, you didn’t get a say in anything.
Enter the “Tenentistas” – literally “Lieutenants” – a group of young army officers who decided, “Okay, if the politicians won’t fix Brazil, we will.” They wanted honest elections, social reforms, and an end to the oligarchic circus. Unfortunately, they weren’t exactly swimming in resources… or good plans.
After a failed revolt in 1924, one of the rebel groups, led by LuÃs Carlos Prestes, refused to surrender. Instead, they thought, “What if we just… kept walking?”
And thus began the Prestes Column – around 1,500 rebels marching over 25,000 km (approximately 16,000 miles in freedom units) across Brazil’s vast interior from 1924 to 1927. They crossed jungles, droughts, swamps, fought off government troops, landowners, malaria, and probably every mosquito in Latin America. They never got defeated, never got captured. They just… kept moving.
They didn’t overthrow the government, but they did become a symbol of idealism and defiance. Prestes himself later became a communist leader, and fun fact: Mao Zedong would later say he took inspiration from the Prestes Column when planning his own Long March.
Neat, thank you for informing us
That’s a rabbit hole to get yourself into.