Buried in the Trenches: The Black Battalion and Brazil’s Forgotten Heroes of 1932

Ghost Soldiers of a Revolution

In 1932, São Paulo erupted in armed rebellion against the provisional government of Getúlio Vargas. Known as the Revolução Constitucionalista, it was the most significant civil conflict in 20th-century Brazil, pitting the industrial heartland against federal forces. But this wasn’t simply a regional tantrum; it was a political confrontation born from disillusionment and betrayal.

Vargas had seized power in 1930, ending Brazil's Old Republic and promising democratic reform. But instead of drafting a new constitution, he dissolved Congress, centralized authority, and postponed elections indefinitely. For São Paulo’s elite—accustomed to political dominance through the café com leite alliance (coffee-producing São Paulo and dairy-dominated Minas Gerais)—this was not just an affront to their influence. It was a break in the constitutional order.

On 9 July 1932, São Paulo rose up, demanding a new constitution and the restoration of democratic rule. Thousands of civilians volunteered for battle. Among them: a significant contingent of Black men, many organized through local branches of the Frente Negra Brasileira, who formed a segregated military unit now remembered—when remembered at all—as the Black Battalion of Sorocaba.

The Revolution’s Dark Matter

The revolution lasted just 87 days and ended in military defeat. But politically, it succeeded: in 1934, Vargas convened a constituent assembly. What did not survive, however, was the memory of those who gave their lives from the margins of the nation’s social fabric.

The Black Battalion was one of the few explicitly racialized units in the war, composed of volunteers who were told that their participation might earn them social recognition—or at least inclusion in the imagined community of the republic. Many of these men were descendants of the enslaved, barely a generation removed from the abolition of slavery in 1888. For them, fighting in the trenches was not simply a gesture of political alignment—it was a gamble for dignity.

Yet history wrote them out.

No names on the Ibirapuera Obelisk. No presence in schoolbooks. No portraits in the war museums of São Paulo. Their contributions, like their bodies, were buried in silence.

Erasure as Policy

Brazil’s racial democracy myth—a belief in harmonious, colorblind coexistence—depends on strategic forgetting. It rewards cultural contributions while suppressing political ones. Samba, capoeira, and Afro-Brazilian religiosity are celebrated when stripped of resistance and recast as folklore. Likewise, the Black soldier becomes palatable only when invisible, abstracted, or depoliticized.

The erasure of the Black Battalion fits this pattern. Though historians estimate that at least 25% of São Paulo’s volunteer fighters were Black or mixed-race, post-war memorials emphasized white martyrdom. The famed MMDC acronym—honoring the first four white students killed in a street protest—is etched into stone. But what of José Coriolano de Souza? Pedro Ananias dos Santos? Alfredo Antônio de Jesus? They were not only soldiers—they were symbols of a multiracial claim to citizenship that Brazil was unwilling to honor.

Memory is a Battlefield

To control the past is to control the terms of belonging. And this is why the Black Battalion’s absence matters.

Their story destabilizes the comfort of national unity. It reminds us that Brazil’s wars were not just regional or ideological—they were racialized. That even in a moment when “the people” rose up for democracy, some people were only conditionally included in that dream. And once the fighting ended, those conditions expired.

Yet their memory is not entirely lost. Local communities in Sorocaba and São Paulo have begun restoring these stories—through oral history projects, public tributes, academic research, and digital activism. In the age of Instagram and TikTok, the story of the Black Battalion resurfaces through collective refusal to forget.

Toward a New Monument

The Ibirapuera Obelisk stands 72 meters tall, imposing and white. But its grandeur is incomplete. It tells a selective story of martyrdom, omitting the blood and bodies of those who lacked the privilege of historical remembrance. The true monument to the Black Battalion has yet to be built—not in stone, but in memory.

Perhaps we need less marble and more curriculum. Less patriotic myth and more historical reckoning. Perhaps a truly democratic nation is not one that avoids its uncomfortable truths, but one that elevates them into collective consciousness.

Black Patriots, White Silence

The Black Battalion fought for a constitution that did not protect them. They entered the trenches of São Paulo with hope that their sacrifice might rewrite the terms of their existence. Instead, they were forgotten.

To remember them now is not just to rewrite a footnote in a war—it is to confront the deeper architecture of exclusion that still governs Brazilian identity. In the face of racism, selective memory, and institutional amnesia, recalling the Black Battalion is an act of political resistance.

It is time to give them names, space, and justice. They are not ghosts. They are the foundation.