The Vaccine Revolt (Portuguese: Revolta da Vacina) was a popular riot that took place between 10 and 16 November 1904 in the city of Rio de Janeiro, then the capital of Brazil.

Its immediate pretext was a law that made vaccination against smallpox compulsory, but it is also associated with deeper causes, such as the urban reforms being carried out by mayor Pereira Passos and the sanitation campaigns led by physician Oswaldo Cruz.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the urban planning of the city of Rio de Janeiro, inherited from the colonial period and the Brazilian Empire, no longer matched its status as a capital and center of economic activities.

A group of florianist and positivist soldiers, with the support of some civil sectors, tried to take advantage of popular discontent to carry out a coup d'état in the early hours of 14 to 15 November, which, however, was defeated.

At the turn of the 19th century, at the same time as the abolitionist movements that put an end to slavery and the monarchy took place, in addition to the revolts that convulsed the first years of the First Brazilian Republic, large contingents of European immigrants and former slaves from the decaying coffee producing zones flocked to Rio de Janeiro, then capital of Brazil.

[3] The precarious sanitary conditions favored the proliferation of diseases such as the bubonic plague, smallpox and yellow fever, endemic in Rio de Janeiro, especially in the poorest regions.

In his first message to Congress, Alves declared that problems in the capital affected and disturbed national development as a whole, and adopted sanitation and improvement of the port of Rio de Janeiro as priorities for his government.

[a][8] Without significantly changing the financial policy of his predecessor, Rodrigues Alves embarked on an intensive program of public works, financed by external resources, which managed to start the economic recovery.

[9] Despite being the most important in the country and one of the busiest in the Americas at the time, the port of Rio de Janeiro still had an old-fashioned and restricted structure, incompatible with its fundamental role in Brazilian economic activity.

The limits of the pier and the shallow depth prevented the docking of large international transatlantic ships, which were anchored offshore, forcing a complicated, time-consuming and costly system of transhipment of goods and passengers to smaller vessels.

Knowing the extent and urgency of the works he had to carry out and prefiguring the resistance and reactions of the population to the demolitions, Passos demanded full freedom of action to accept the position, without being subject to legal, budgetary or material embarrassments.

[12] The law foresaw that the judicial, federal or local authorities could not revoke administrative measures and acts of the municipality, nor grant possessory interdicts against acts of the municipal government exercised for imperative reasons; it ended any bureaucratic control or postponement of the reforms and, in cases of demolition, eviction or interdiction, there would be only one notice posted in the place, providing for penalties against disobedience; it also provided for the eviction of residents in the buildings to be demolished, as well as the removal of their furniture and belongings, which would be done by the police.

[15] The works on the port were contracted in 1903 with the English firm C. H. Walker, which had built the docks in Buenos Aires, and began in March 1904, comprising in its first part the 600-meter stretch that went from the Mangue to the Gamboa pier.

[19] Doctor Oswaldo Cruz was in charge of sanitation in the city, assuming the General Directorate of Public Health (DGSP) with the intention of tackling yellow fever, smallpox and the bubonic plague.

[17] He structured his campaign on military bases, using legal instruments of coercion and, to a lesser extent, means of persuasion, such as the "Councils to the People", published in the government press.

The de-rat control of the city resulted in the issuance of hundreds of subpoenas to property owners requesting them to remove rubble and carry out renovations, especially the waterproofing of the ground and the suppression of basements.

[28] After the approval of the bill, the League Against Mandatory Vaccine was founded on 5 November, in a meeting at the Centro das Classes Operárias presided over by Lauro Sodré and Vicente de Souza and with the presence of two thousand people.

In the justifications of the petitions sent to the Chamber by workers, the invasion of houses, the demand for residents to leave for disinfection, and the damage caused to domestic utensils were mentioned more than once as a reason for complaints.

In addition, there would be fines for refractory workers and a vaccination certificate would be required for enrollment in schools, access to government jobs, employment in factories, accommodation in hotels and guesthouses, travel, marriage and voting.

A notice in Correio da Manhã the day before had summoned the people to wait in Praça Tiradentes, where the Ministry of Justice was located, for the results of the commission that would examine the vaccine regulation project.

The conflicts spread, reaching Praça Onze, Tijuca, Gamboa, Saúde, Prainha, Botafogo, Laranjeiras, Catumbi, Rio Comprido and Engenho Novo.

[51] Warned, the government concentrated troops from the Army, Navy, Brigade and Firefighters around the Catete Palace and sent a contingent to face the school, which had set off at ten o'clock with about three hundred cadets.

There were disturbances in Méier, Engenho de Dentro, Encantado, Catumbi, São Diogo, Vila Isabel, Andaraí, Matadouro, Aldeia Campista and Laranjeiras.

[53] Shortly before the final assault on the Saúde neighborhood, to be carried out by land by the 7th Infantry Battalion and by sea by the battleship Deodoro, Horácio José da Silva, known as Prata Preta, was arrested.

The first ones were, in fact, pieces of wood wrapped in silver paper, suspended by wires around the trenches, while the cannons were nothing more than a public lighting pipe placed on two wagon wheels.

On that day, the Minister of Justice received a complaint that "three dangerous anarchists" had been sent to Rio de Janeiro with the intention of agitating the working class and ordered that measures be taken to prevent disembarkation.

Whatever popular frustrations or progressive ideals that the anti-vaccination movement and its allies might have expressed were thoroughly swept aside with the re-imposition of lawful authority, as the processes of unequal economic development and gentrification continued to accelerate following the uprising.

Moreover, the economic power of these native-born Brazilian workers was further diminished as increasingly large quantities of foreign laborers arrived in Rio de Janeiro on an annual basis.

In Rio de Janeiro, the Military School of Praia Vermelha was closed and its students exiled to Brazil's remote border regions and then dismissed from the Army.

[60] The poor rank-and-file of the revolt were much less fortunate, as many hundreds were deported to both the offshore detention facility of Ilha das Cobras and the frontier region of Acre, although their participation was not always proven.