A queer gospel: The mystical worlds of Febrônio Índio do Brasil

Abstract

On August 31, 1927, Rio de Janeiro police arrested a suspect they believed was responsible for the murder of two minors on the outskirts of the city. The individual arrested and later imprisoned for the crimes was Febrônio Índio do Brasil, a mixed-race man from one of the most marginal regions of Minas Gerais and who was, allegedly, homosexual. News coverage of the case established Febrônio as one of the most infamous serial killers in Brazilian history, a legacy he maintains to this day. A fundamental element of the sensationalization of the case was the mysterious connection between the murders and a mystical text that Febrônio published the year before under the title As Revelações do Principe do Fogo. Branded as an incomprehensible book, Brazilian positivists used the Revelações as evidence of Febrônio’s madness and, furthermore, to characterize homosexuality as a mental illness. This essay presents a contextual reading of As Revelações to demonstrate the possibility of interpreting the book as a subaltern reaction to the changing racial and urban geographies of Rio in the 1920s. In a city transformed by a notion of modernity in which black and queer bodies had no place, Febrônio created a mystical world where such bodies could continue to exist. His book is a radical reformulation of the book of Revelation that reveals the queer horizons of a world still to come through the dissolution of the holy trinity and the articulation of an erotic intimacy that unites the messianic Prince of Fire with the Divine. Thus, As Revelações represents the textual creation of a queer mystical world.