Tiradentes

Joaquim José da Silva Xavier (Portuguese: [ʒwɐˈkĩ ʒuˈzɛ dɐ ˈsiwvɐ ʃaˈvjɛʁ]; 12 November 1746 – 21 April 1792), known as Tiradentes (Portuguese: [tʃiɾɐˈdẽtʃis]), was a military officer and political activist in Colonial Brazil. He is best known as one of the leading figures of the Inconfidência Mineira, an unsuccessful separatist movement against Portuguese colonial rule in the Captaincy of Minas Gerais.

Born into a rural landowning family, Tiradentes fell into hardship following the death of his parents. He performed various jobs during his youth, including as a miner, a merchant, a soldier and a dentist, the last of which gave rise to his nickname. During the 1780s, amid a crisis of Minas Gerais' mining economy and increasing fiscal pressure imposed by the Portuguese Crown, Tiradentes became involved with the dissatisfied intellectual elite of the captaincy. He soon established himself as the principal propagandist of an emancipationist movement that sought the independence of Minas Gerais from Portugal, informed by Enlightenment ideas and inspired in part by the American Revolution. The movement was ultimately betrayed by a co-conspirator, Joaquim Silvério dos Reis, before it could take place, leading to Tiradentes' arrest in 1789. Following proceedings that lasted nearly three years, he was sentenced to death, hanged and quartered on the charge of lèse-majesté.

Tiradentes' execution, initially intended as exemplary punishment, was later reinterpreted as an act of civic martyrdom, especially after the proclamation of the republic. He subsequently became one of the principal political symbols of the Brazilian nation, and his legacy has been invoked by various factions and regimes. The day of his execution was established as a national holiday.

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