page_title: Vaccine Revolt
section_title: Uprising
hierarchical_section_title: Vaccine Revolt / Uprising
caption_attribution_description: Português: Legenda: "Espetaculo para breve nas ruas desta cidade: Oswaldo Cruz, o Napoleão da seringa e lanceta, à frente de suas forças obrigatorias, será recebido e manifestado com denodo pela população. O interessante dos combates deixará a perder de vista o das batalhas de flores e da guerra russo-japoneza. E veremos no fim da festa quem será o vaccinador, á força!".
context_page_description: The Vaccine Revolt or Vaccine Rebellion was a period of civil disorder which occurred in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
context_section_description: To eradicate smallpox, Dr. Cruz convinced the Congress to approve the Mandatory Vaccination Law on October 31, 1904, authorizing sanitary brigade workers, accompanied by police, to enter homes and apply the vaccine by force. 
  Rio de Janeiro's population was confused and discontented by this time. Many residents had lost their tenement housing to the new developments, while others had had their homes invaded by health workers and police. Articles in the press criticized the action of the government and spoke of possible risks of the vaccine. Moreover, it was rumored that the vaccine would have to be applied to the “intimate parts” of the body (or at least that women would have to undress in order to be vaccinated), stirring further outrage among the conservative underclasses and helping to precipitate the rebellion that followed. Many intellectual contingents within Brazilian society opposed the law as well, including the Positivist Church, medical associations, and much of the National Congress. Although most of these objections stemmed from the practice's perceived infringements upon individual rights, vaccination was still considered a valid subject of debate among the global scientific community at the time.
  On November 5, the opposition created the Liga Contra a Vacina Obrigatória (League Against Mandatory Vaccination). Formed by a coalition of radical republican politicians, ideological factions within the army, and journalists, this group subsequently began to recruit trade unionists at large gatherings held at the Centro de Classes Operairias. The violence finally began when a few young attendees leaving one of these meetings argued with a police officer, and were promptly arrested. Witnesses to this incident furiously besieged the police station to which the men were taken, and continued to fight with cavalry officers brought in to disperse the excited mob.
  From November 10 through 14, Rio de Janeiro descended into violence as each party to the conflict became entrenched in its position. Rioters looted shops, overturned and burned trams, made barricades, pulled out tracks, broke poles and streetlights, and attacked federal troops with rocks, sticks, debris, knives, and stolen guns. Factory laborers revolted in their own workplaces on the outskirts of town, while impoverished and evicted townspeople attempted to secure control over the heart of the city. The momentum of opposition forces reached its zenith on November 14, when cadets of the Escola Militar da Praia Vermelha (Military College of Praia Vermelha) mutinied against President Alves for his rejection of the terms presented to him in a thinly-disguised ultimatum by General Olimpio da Silveira. Silveira's march on the presidential palace was thwarted, however, when his would-be allies at the academy of Realengo were arrested before they could mobilize. In response, the government suspended mandatory vaccination and declared a state of siege. Its forces successfully drove the rebels from their strongholds beginning on November 15, and concluding on November 18 after a grueling period of close-quarter fighting in the predominantly Afro-Brazilian district of Saude. The rebellion was contained, leaving 30 dead and 110 wounded.
caption: The Vaccine Revolt in a cartoon of Leonidas, published in the journal O Malho on 10/29/1904.
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