The monument of the "guarani warrior": the fountain of Conceição de Mato Dentro and the independence of Brazil in Minas Gerais

Abstract

On April 22nd in 1825, when Brazil celebrated the fourth year of independence and Empire, the village of Conceição do Serro (Mato Dentro) in Minas Gerais inaugurated a fountain decorated with a sculpture of an indigenous – a “Brazilian genius”. This water monument transformed the appearance of the village’s public square by reinforcing and inserting in the local imagination its adhesion to the young Empire that was conformed from the independence in 1822. The presence of the indigenous allegorized in triumphant gestures, that praised certain civic virtues, coexisted with the tensions and violence imposed on the natives who inhabited the cerrado’s fields that gave that place its name. Among the celebrations of independence and accession to D. Pedro as a legitimate monarch, the native people represented a challenge to be overcome for the expansion of the civilizing project imposed on those who should submit to the Emperor. It is therefore necessary to analyze that figure of the idealized indigenous, considered the symbol of the nation, made of stone adorned with feathers, earrings, necklace, and cloak; an imagined native just like the Brazilian country that was conforming at that moment, amid so many wars and symbolic disputes over the former colony that became independent.