The idea that women's political activism is stimulated by men going to war is a recurrent concept in women's history and certainly applicable to Spanish America, as we have seen. This chapter, focusing on Brazil, will argue that it describes the Farroupilha or Ragamuffin Revolt of Rio Grande do Sul (1835–45) particularly well, not only as regards the changes wrought in women's consciousness about their role in society, but also in respect of women's self-perceptions in relation to Brazilian national and regional identities in the wake of formal independence in 1822. The Farroupilha Revolt has long since entered the popular imaginary of the Brazilian south, fuelling the strong sense of a separate, regionalist gaúcho identity. For a period of ten years in the first half of the nineteenth century, a liberal revolution, followed by the declaration of an independent republican and federalist state, split Brazil's southernmost province on the Uruguay border off from the rest of the nation, sparking a protracted civil war. In addition to the deep-rooted regional mythology that still attaches to these events in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the success of the historical television mini-series, A Casa das Sete Mulheres, produced by Som Livre/Rede Globo in 2003, tended to reinforce the image of the Farroupilha Revolt as Brazil's nostalgic national emblem of a utopian republican ideal.

In fact, the Farroupilha Revolt crystallised a specific point of crisis in the tension between regional and national identifications in Brazil, which brought a new dimension to the ways in which the women and men of Rio Grande do Sul conceived their patriotic sense of belonging. Closely related to this, and as this chapter will endeavour to show, the war was also a field of gender conflict and transformation. The declaration in 1836 of an independent republic in Rio Grande do Sul predictably did not include citizen rights for women, any more than it made provision for the liberation of slaves (M. Flores 2002: 91). However, the question of women's cultural, social and military participation in Brazil's public, political life did clearly emerge as a contingent, instrumental issue brought about by the crisis of the conflict.