In 1968, the floodwaters of the recently completed Cocorobó Dam submerged the remnants of the site of the Canudos Massacre, one of the most traumatic and infamous episodes in Brazilian history. In the 1880s, a local preacher, Antônio Conselheiro, had amassed a large following and built a small settlement – which he named Belo Monte [Beautiful Hill] – near an area known as Canudos, an impoverished part of the semiarid interior of the northeastern state of Bahia. In 1889, military officers overthrew the monarchy that had ruled Brazil since independence (1822) and installed a republic. The new government soon came into conflict with the preacher and his followers, seeing them as a potential source of opposition.