It lasted 109 days. The Juliana Republic was declared on 29 July 1839, in the council chamber of a small Atlantic port called Laguna, and by mid-November it was gone, swallowed back into the Empire of Brazil that it had tried to leave. But in those few months, the breakaway state gathered around it a cast worthy of an opera: a hard-bitten gaucho general, an exiled Italian revolutionary who would one day help unify Italy, and a young Brazilian woman on horseback who became one of history's most celebrated rebels. Most countries that fail this quickly are forgotten. Laguna never forgot.
The Juliana Republic did not appear out of nowhere. To the south, in Rio Grande do Sul, ranchers and gauchos had already risen against the imperial government in 1835, in the long separatist struggle known as the Ragamuffin War, or the Farroupilha Revolution. They had grown weary of taxes and policies set by a distant court in Rio de Janeiro, and they proclaimed their own Riograndense Republic. What they wanted next was room to grow, and allies. In July 1839, rebel forces under General David Canabarro and the Italian seafarer Giuseppe Garibaldi crossed into the neighboring province of Santa Catarina and, with help from the local population, seized the harbor town of Laguna on 22 July in an action remembered as the Capture of Laguna. A week later, on 29 July, the town's municipal chamber proclaimed the Free and Independent Catarinense Republic. Canabarro stepped in as interim president while elections were arranged, and the two young republics agreed to stand together against the empire.
Among the people Garibaldi met in Laguna was a local woman named Ana Maria de Jesus Ribeiro, born in the town and known to the world as Anita. She did not stay on the shore while the men sailed and fought. She learned to handle a horse and a weapon, rode into skirmishes, helped the wounded, and shared the dangers of the campaign at Garibaldi's side. Their partnership, forged in this brief Brazilian republic, would carry them across an ocean. Anita followed Garibaldi to Europe and fought in the wars that would eventually help unite Italy. Today a museum in Laguna bears her name, and her likeness stands in monuments on two continents.
A republic on the coast lived or died by its ships. The rebels hoped to push north and take the provincial capital, Nossa Senhora do Desterro, the island city that is now Florianopolis. They never got the chance. As they prepared their assault, the Imperial Brazilian Navy found their small fleet near the Massiambu River, on the mainland south of Santa Catarina Island, and destroyed it. Without a navy, the breakaway state was trapped. The empire tightened its grip, blockaded the coast, and in November 1839 imperial troops retook Laguna. The Free and Independent Catarinense Republic ceased to exist, four months after it was born.
Some places measure their history in centuries of continuity. Laguna measures part of its identity in a single, defiant season. The town's cobbled historic center, with its pastel colonial houses and old church facades, looks much as it did when revolutionaries argued independence in the council hall, and a museum named for Anita Garibaldi keeps the memory close at hand. The episode folded into the larger memory of the Ragamuffin War, which ground on until 1845 before ending in a negotiated peace, and which remains a point of fierce regional pride across southern Brazil; gauchos there still wave the old rebel colors. The Juliana Republic was small, brief, and ultimately defeated. It is remembered anyway, because for 109 days it dared to be its own country, and because the people who fought for it became legends whose names outlived the borders they tried to draw.
The Juliana Republic centered on Laguna, on the southern coast of Santa Catarina at roughly 28.47 degrees south, 48.77 degrees west, where a chain of coastal lagoons meets the Atlantic. From the air, look for the long sandbars and shallow inland lagoons that gave the town its name, with the open ocean to the east. The historic port and old town sit on the inner shore. The nearest major airport is Florianopolis-Hercilio Luz International (ICAO SBFL), about 90 km up the coast on Santa Catarina Island, the former capital the rebels never managed to capture. Best viewed from 3,000-6,000 feet on a clear day, when the contrast between dark lagoon water, white dunes, and green hills is sharpest. Coastal cloud and sea fog are common in the morning.