The uprising was suppressed with a brutality that stained the soil red. Twenty men were captured. Dona Isabel, watching from the balcony alongside Mariana, ordered exemplary punishments. -hongngoc

It was the year of grace 1790, and the Pernambuco sun was unforgiving. It hovered over the Zona da Mata like an incandescent eye, transforming the vast sugarcane fields of the Rising Sun Plantation into a green and suffocating sea.

The air was a dense and palpable mixture: the sweet, sickening smell of molasses boiling in the cauldrons blended with the …