Was Tiradentes the leader of the Inconfidência Mineira?

The hero in the middle of the picture

In Brazilian paintings and schoolbooks, Tiradentes stands at the center: bearded, on his feet, speaking while seated men listen. That image was fixed after 1890, when the new Republic adopted him as its martyr. The records of the inquiry into the 1789 Minas Conspiracy, the Inconfidência Mineira, tell a story that is less flattering to the legend and more interesting as history.

An ensign among important men

Tiradentes held the lowest officer rank in the Dragoons of Minas. The men around him stood far higher. Tomás Antônio Gonzaga, a poet born in Porto, had until recently been the ouvidor, the district judge of Vila Rica. Cláudio Manuel da Costa was a wealthy Coimbra-trained lawyer who had served as government secretary. Alvarenga Peixoto was a colonel with mines and heavy debts. Lieutenant Colonel Francisco de Paula Freire de Andrada commanded the Dragoons themselves, which made him the ensign’s own superior officer. Add priests, landowners and José Álvares Maciel, a young scholar fresh from England.

The talk moved among the houses of these important men, such as Gonzaga’s and Cláudio’s. There the plan took shape: strike on the day of the derrama, the hated gold levy, move the capital to São João del-Rei, found a university, even design a flag.

What the ensign actually did

Tiradentes was the plot’s voice outside those houses. He told anyone who would listen that the land was rich and its people poor. He hunted for someone to translate the laws of the American states. In 1789 he went to Rio to sound out support. The judge later accused him of inviting everyone “so wildly that he chose neither people nor occasion.” A man who recruits in the open is a propagandist, not a hidden chief.

Who the documents name

Other testimony points elsewhere. In his denunciation, Colonel Joaquim Silvério dos Reis reported hearing that Gonzaga was “the first head of the conspiracy.” Gonzaga denied everything to the end and was exiled to Mozambique. The wealthy defendants all denied, and accused each other when brought face to face.

Tiradentes did the reverse. At his fourth interrogation, on January 18, 1790, he confessed that he had devised it all, with no one else moving him to it. The court wanted a culprit, and he gave it one. Queen Maria I had already signed a letter sparing the condemned, except a leader who had also preached revolt in public. His confession and his talk made him the only man who fit both conditions, which is why he alone was hanged.

So who led it?

The documents point to no undisputed commander, which is why the question stays open. The conspiracy belonged to a circle of Vila Rica’s elite, meeting in homes such as Gonzaga’s and Cláudio’s, with Tiradentes as its most exposed recruiter. The sentence made him the head, the Republic made him the hero, and the records show an ensign among colonels, priests and judges. The bearded leader of the paintings came later, in 1890. For the plot itself, see What was the Inconfidência Mineira?.