Portrait of Emiliano Felipe Benício Mundrucu (Emiliano Mundrucu)

Emiliano Felipe Benício, a soldier and politician, was educated in the army and took part in the revolution of 1817. In the 1824 Confederation of the Equator, he stood out as commander of the Fatherland Braves Battalion, composed only of mixed-race men. Arrested and sentenced to death, he fled to Boston, in the United States, and then spent some time in Haiti. Later on, he traveled to Great Colombia, where he was accepted into the Republican troops in Caracas, Venezuela. He returned to Pernambuco in 1837 and remained there until the 1840s. Meanwhile, he was stigmatized and called a “Haitianist” in the face of fears and rumors of black mobilization.