Cecília Colony

Cecília Colony (Portuguese: Colônia Cecília) was an experimental commune based on anarchist principles. The colony was founded in 1890, in the municipality of Palmeira, in the state of Paraná, by a group of libertarians mobilized by the Italian writer and agronomist Giovanni Rossi.

The foundation of Cecília Colony was the first effective attempt to implement anarchism in Brazil. Rossi, an anarchist writer, was instigated by the Brazilian musician Carlos Gomes to seek audience with Pedro II for the purpose of establishing a libertarian community capable of propelling a "new time".

Interested in the colonization of Brazil, Pedro II met the request and wrote Rossi offering lands in the Southern Region to be occupied by Italians. But this donation, in fact, did not happen: shortly after their supply by the emperor, the Brazilian Republic was established, which did not recognize land concessions granted to foreigners by the deposed Empire. Instead, Rossi had to buy the land through the "inspector of land and colonization."

Brazil received a lot of immigrants, mainly Italians, at the end of the nineteenth century. The living conditions in the countryside which caused emigration from Italy was not very different in Brazil, both in coffee farms and colonial nuclei, being distant from an innovative process: the immigrant was inserted into Brazil as a potential proletarian. It was in this social environment that anarchism spread in Brazil.