Who said ‘Independence or Death’?

Letters on the road

The cry of Ipiranga, the Grito do Ipiranga, is the scene Brazil remembers every September 7, its Independence Day. It happened on a hilltop near a stream called the Ipiranga, on the road into São Paulo, in 1822. Two couriers from Rio caught up with Pedro, the son of Portugal’s King João VI, who was governing Brazil as prince regent. They brought letters from his wife, Leopoldina, and from his minister José Bonifácio, with news from Lisbon: the Portuguese parliament, the Cortes, was annulling his decisions and ordering him home.

Father Belchior Pinheiro de Oliveira, who was traveling with Pedro, read the letters aloud. In his account the prince crumpled the papers, stamped on them, asked the priest’s opinion and made up his mind. To the handful of men around him he said: “I proclaim Brazil forever separated from Portugal.” That was the first cry, and almost no one heard it.

The second cry

Pedro’s guard of honor had ridden ahead, so he rode on to meet it. “It must have been about half past four in the afternoon,” its commander, Gama Lobo, recalled. The blue-and-white ribbons of Portugal were torn from the men’s hats and thrown to the ground. Swords went up, and Pedro spoke again, this time to the troops:

By my blood, by my honor, by my God, I swear to bring about the freedom of Brazil! […] Brazilians, our motto from this day on will be Independence or Death!

A motto, a divisa, is the line written on a coat of arms. Pedro was not issuing a decree. He was taking an oath: Brazil would be free of Portugal, or its people would die trying. Notice that the word independence appears only in the second cry.

Whose words are these?

The exact wording comes to us through Belchior, who stood next to the prince and left the fullest account. Other witnesses remembered it differently. Canto e Melo, who was also there, wrote in 1862 that Pedro shouted É tempo!… Independência ou morte! Estamos separados de Portugal! (It is time! Independence or death! We are separated from Portugal!). The order changes. The three words at the heart of it do not.

Many books add a command, “Ribbons off, soldiers!” (Laços fora, soldados!). No eyewitness account contains it. What the witnesses describe is the gesture: Portugal’s colors ripped off and thrown to the ground. The line has no source from the time.

Where the motto went

The motto became a title. Pedro Américo called his huge 1888 painting of the scene Independência ou Morte!, and it is the image most Brazilians carry in their heads, with the prince on a horse. The witnesses say he rode a mule: see Did Dom Pedro I ride a horse or a mule?.

The same either-or comes back in the Hino da Independência, the Independence Hymn, whose music Pedro composed himself, to words by Evaristo da Veiga. Its refrain puts the choice to every Brazilian: a free homeland, or death for Brazil. And the oath was tested. The break with Portugal led to a real war, fought in Bahia and other provinces into 1823, as Was Brazil’s independence peaceful? explains.