Why did a millenarian movement erupt in the Brazilian interior in 1912? Setting out to answer this deceptively simple question, Todd A. Diacon delivers a fascinating account of a culture in crisis. Combining oral history with detailed archival research, Millenarian Vision, Capitalist Reality depicts a peasant community whose security in economic, social, and religious relations was suddenly disrupted by the intrusion of international capital. Diacon shows how a "deadly triumvirate" comprised to foreign capital, state power, and local bosses engineered a land tenure revolution that threatened smallholders' subsistence, sparking rebellion among the Contestado peasants. Unlike most analysis of millenarian movements, Diacon combines a material analysis with a careful exploration of the movement's millenarian ideology to demonstrate how a particular combination of external and internal forces produced a crisis of values in the Contestado society. Such a crisis, Diacon concludes, gave a special power to the millenarian vision that promised not only outward reform, but inner salvation as well. This work offers a significant contribution to the literature of millenarian movements, popular religion, peasant rebellions, and the transition to capitalism in Brazil.

Book Information
ISBN 9780822311676
Author Todd A. Diacon
Format Paperback
Page Count 216
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press