Tiradentes Day

On April 21,Tiradentes Day is celebrated.

The holiday alludes to the death of the miner Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, better known in national historyas Tiradentes, the Herói of the Inconfidência Mineira. Let’s reminisce about that story.

On the morning of April 21, 1792, he was killed by hanging in a public square in Rio de Janeiro. Of all those involved in this conspiracy movement against the Portuguese Crown, only Tiradentes was executed. His body was dismembered and nailed to poles through the streets of Minas Gerais. Although some scholars argue that this was a maneuver by Portugal to discredit the Inconfidência Mineira movement and imply that everything was nothing more than an adventure of an “unbalanced dentist”, he would eventually become a national hero.

In the 19th century, the republican movement elected him as a civic-religious martyr and anti-monarchist, making the paintings that bring him closer to the image of Christ thrive. April 21 became a national holiday in 1890, shortly after the Proclamation of the Republic. His image as a patriotic soldier was exalted both by the dictatorship of 1964-1985 and by left-wing movements, which considered him a symbol of rebellion;