The road from Rio to Petrópolis confronts us with everything the city wishes to hide.
After taking the bus in a terminal buried by viaducts, one passes next to the corpse of Leopoldina station, where only train husks roll towards the towns of the Baixada Fluminense. For the first few miles of the Brazil highway, solely the hills resist to natural destruction, and the filthy waters of Guanabara Bay show us its shores of concrete and waste.
It is difficult to accept the ugliness that surrounds Rio de Janeiro, and the agony of the beautiful valley that surrounds its beaches. Fortunately, concrete towers disappear little by little, and humble plantations start growing around the highway.
Then starts the ascension of the Serra dos Orgãos, a mountain range of tall, sharp peaks that endlessly rise in the horizon. One slowly rolls through the slopes of those mountains, getting always further away from the grey gates of the city.
***
In one of the rooms of São Cristovão Palace, Empress Leopoldina gives birth to a baby boy. Nurses and nuns quickly surround the young woman, trying to help her cope with the night’s heat, but she prefers to close her eyes and forget it all. On that dawn of 1826, Rio de Janeiro’s court hoped to receive a new heir.
The child’s name was Pedro de Alcántara, and he would lose his mother and father at 5 years of age. His Austrian mother would be defeated by the harsh solitude of the tropics. His father, Pedro I, left to liberate Lisboa, and passed away mere weeks after his triumph.
Condemned to a lonely childhood, the prince of Brazil grew up surrounded by books and tutors, who tried their best to teach him the art of governing. With no time for distractions, his only pastimes would be literature, sciences and long walks through the gardens of São Cristovão.
In Rio’s old port, courtesans were growing impatient. They feared that their nation would be engulfed by the anarchy that was destroying the lands of Argentina. Taking no risks, they decided to crown young Pedro when he reached 15 years old. On that fateful day, his brief childhood came to an abrupt end.
***
Since their arrival from Portugal, each one of Brazil’s monarchs chose a land of refuge, in order to hide from the pressures of government. João VI inhabited the quiet island of Paquetá, while Pedro I prefered to rest in the hostels of São Paulo.
Pedro II found his refuge in a little valley of the North, where weather was colder and the atmosphere was far calmer than the unbearable hustle of Rio de Janeiro. To avoid complete solitude, he ordered a german colony to be built at the gates of his palace.
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The Imperial City of Petrópolis is currently a lovely little town, proud of its breweries and wooden houses. Surprised by its german surnames and misty nights, Brazilian view it as a perfect imitation of Europe.
On summer afternoons, when the euphoria of carnaval takes over Rio, some look for solace under the Araucarias of Petrópolis, walking over its metal bridges and feeling like they are in Paris. Pompous mansions surround the half-drained Koeller canal, but not even the Imperial Palace enforces severity on its people.
Even today, Petrópolis is a land of tranquility.
***
Peace would be short for the Emperor: shortly after he founded Petrópolis, his ministers came to imitate him. For decades, he had to govern a Nation that wished to leave poverty behind, and yet refused to abandon slavery.
But the pettiness of politics was simply an obligation in his disciplined life. He had a harder time accepting the wars that raged in the frontier, and none more that the long massacre of Paraguay. For 6 long years, his young generals warred mercilessly, emptying an entire country in order to defeat the restless president Solano López.
When the conflict ended, Pedro II, barely 40 years old, was already an aged man. Exhausted by the bloodshed, he left to discover this Europe that his books described, leaving the Americas for the first time in his life. During his travels in the Old World, the Emperor enjoyed a freedom that he never allowed himself to have.
The return to Brazil was unbearable. He couldn’t stand the sordidness of politics.
***
In a little square of Petrópolis. a statue portrays Pedro II as many remember him. A bearded emperor wearing black, austere clothes, with books in his hand. His face was severe and sad, sporting the look that he probably had in his final years.
Tired of governing, he only saw slavery vanish when he was 60, surrounded by ministers that only thought of his succession. But the old man knew that his Empire would not last: powerful men couldn’t forgive his support for abolition.
***
In the Campo de Santana park, general Fonseca nervously glanced at his horsemen, riding around the trees. Soon, his soldiers would surround the parliament, and canons would triumphantly spit their fire upon the Bay.
Shyly, one of his guards started singing the Marseillaise, and soon, the whole regiment followed suit. Garbling some french words, the old general followed the melody, and ordered the army to chant along.
So be it. The old Empire had fallen. Brazil would be a Republic.
Even today, the Proclamation of the Republic is remembered as a vaguely ridiculous event. Paintings portraying it are minor and half-hearted, and its heroes are forgotten generals. The soldiers and businessmen that directed it were a powerful minority, that was completely unknown to a people that mostly appreciated its progressive emperor.
However, old Pedro II barely responded to the uprising, and accepted exile.
He would die in a sad Parisian Hôtel, ending his life in solitude.
A century later, the austere Petrópolis Cathedral would receive his ashes, returning the Emperor to his refuge among the mountains.
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