Caneca, Frei Joaquím do Amor Divino (1779–1825)

Frei Joaquím do Amor Divino Caneca (b. 20 August 1779; d. 13 January 1825), Brazilian Carmelite friar, priest, journalist, and revolutionary. Born in Recife, Pernambuco, Caneca joined the Carmelite order in his native province and achieved prominence as a teacher of geometry and rhetoric. In 1817 he joined the Pernambucan republican revolt, for which he forfeited a nomination to be bishop of Maranhão and spent four years in prison in Salvador da Bahia. Freed after the 1821 liberal coup in Bahia, Frei Caneca returned to Pernambuco, where he became a member of the provincial junta. In 1822 he disavowed the regional republicanism of 1817 and advocated Pernambuco's adherence to the independent Brazilian monarchy proclaimed by Emperor Pedro I in Rio de Janeiro. He founded a newspaper, Typhis Pernambucano, to propagate his liberal-feder-alist-constitutionalist ideology.

Frei Caneca denounced the emperor's closing of the national Constitutional Convention of 1823 and led the fight in Pernambuco against the ratification of Pedro's centralist Constitution of 1824. After Pedro declared the constitution ratified, despite its rejection by the municipal councils of Recife and other northeastern cities, Frei Caneca declared it void in Pernambuco and called for the formation of an autonomous government for the Northeast. The result was the separatist Confederation of the Equator, which was crushed by imperial troops in 1824. Frei Caneca and fifteen other confederation leaders were condemned for insurrection; he died before a firing squad in Recife.

See alsoPernambuco .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Joaquím Do Amor Divino Caneca, Ensaius políticos de Frei Caneca (1976).

João Afredo De Souza Montenegro, O liberalismo radical de Frei Caneca (1978).

Additional Bibliography

Carvalho, Gilberto Vilar de. Frei Caneca: Gesta da liberdade, 1779–1825 Rio de Janeiro: Mauad, 2004.

                                          Neill Macaulay