This movement started in the South of Brazil in 1869 over a dispute over the biblical interpretations of Jacobina Maurer and the healing remedies developed by her husband. Most of the estimated five thousand followers were of German ethnic origin from a largely German colony in Sao Leopoldo. German peasants began arriving in the south of Brazil in 1824 in response to a government colonization initiative. A minority prospered mainly through farming and small-scale family enterprises. The people spoke a dialect of German and lived according to German traditions and rules—much in the same way as the Japanese immigrants were to live when they began to arrive in Brazil to work on the coffee plantations in the early years of the twentieth century. Divorce and remarriage were common among the early German settlers despite the fact that the Canon Law of the Catholic Church was the official law at the time in Brazil. Moreover, Catholics and Lutherans mixed easily and intermarried paying little attention to the rules of their Churches.
Moreover, as the Churches—mainly the Catholic and Lutheran Churches—provided little assistance by way of counseling and guidance the local population selected their own religious guides, specialists, preachers and teachers, the result of which was the formation of a variety of distinctive and different religious communities offering a variety of different biblical interpretations. When the Jesuits arrived in the 1850s they were allegedly shocked by the absence of true religion.
The German peasants were joined by German intellectuals from the late 1840s many of them having immigrated to Brazil after the revolutions of the 1840s in Europe. They were bound together by Masonic ties and struggle to acquire the right to participate in the political process in Brazil, a right reserved for Brazilian born citizens only. Believing themselves to be enlightened and rational, they also set about dispelling what they saw as the superstitious beliefs and practices of their peasant neighbours.
Moreover, economic and social differences began to appear relatively quickly among the population with the rise of Sao Leopoldo from a small rural back-water to a market. This was the cultural, religious and socio-economic background to the rise of Mucker movement and the proclamations of Jacobina.
When defending her behaviour to the police authorities in 1873 Jacobina claimed to be inspired by the Holy Spirit whom she visited during trances. While in trance received knowledge and learnt to interpret the Bible correctly and how to prescribe the appropriate potions to the sick and needy.
Jacobina’s message was millenarian. In a manner not entirely unlike the Japanese female founder of Omoto, Deguchi Nao, she opposed modernity. Among other things she foretold the coming of a New World where barter would replace money as the means of exchange. She also proclaimed that new marriage laws would be introduced and denounced the Jesuits as the Anti-Christ. Her ideal community was one that shared its resources and many of her followers came to live in or close to her compound. Collectively the Muckers built a home for the sick and shared labour and crops.
The community was accused of murdering dissidents in 1873, prison warrants were issued and the army called in and others in the wider community who opposed the movement joined in the attack on its properties. The Muckers put up fierce resistance and only after forty-five days of fighting and much slaughter on both sides were Jacobina and some seventeen of her followers trapped by the army and killed. Other adult survivors were imprisoned only to be found innocent of any crime six years later.
Over time Jacobina’s teachings and healing practices were abandoned, although pro and anti-Mucker factions can still be identified today through family names.
The Mucker movement bears many of the characteristics that Cohn (1970) associates with millenarian movements in Medieval Europe.
