The Cheese, The Worms and YOU

we don't talk about bruno

In 2021, in a rare moment of the planets aligning, the corporate cloacas of contemporary Disney squeezed out a diamond from the rough, and for a fleeting moment, we could all come together about the universal politics of wanting to fornicate with a scrawny rat man… but, let’s put the Tumblr sexy(-)man back in his cage for now, because in this video, we don’t talk about Bruno. 

(Intro/Title)

In the movie Encanto, we meet the Columbian Madrigals. For people who haven’t watched it, let me give you a quick rundown. Spoilers ahead. 

The movie starts with a the young Alma and Pedro fleeing from an armed revolt. While Pedro is killed, Alma and her three children are saved by the candle in her hands. As the magic of the candle unravels, it repels the attackers and creates the Casita – essentially a pocket dimensional house protecting the village from the outside world. 

We cut back to 40 years later, as Alma is now the Abuelita – Grandmother, and along the years they have discovered a secondary effect of the candle: When a Madrigal child turns five years old, the candle will grant that child a boon, a unique magical ability. 

Or at least, that’s what they think is supposed to happen. The main character, Mirabel, for reasons that are revealed later, seems to have been denied powers by the candle. Ten years later, as the young Antonio is successfully granted a magical ability, the house starts forming cracks that are only visible to Mirabel. 

It turns out, the candle did assign Mirabel a power. She has the ability to see the abusive behaviors and genetional trauma that’s been running rampant the family, and break the seal of emotional supression. 

”I love this family! We all love this family! You’re the one that doesn’t care! You’re the one breaking our home!... The miracle is dying, because of you!” (Encanto 2021)

What follows is Alma realizing she had let her anxiety and fears lead her down a destructive path in the name of keeping the short-term peace. 

Mirabel must destroy the house, in order so that she can rebuild it, making her the succesor to Alma’s role as Matriarch. The movie ends with the rebuilding of the Casita, as the family is united and stronger. 

Encanto is – allegedly – inspired by – sorry if I butcher this – ”Guerra de los Mil Días” – The Thousand Days War, a civil war in Columbia from October 1899 to November 1902. 

An 1898 election resulted in the conservative corpse, Manuel Antonio Sanclamente achieving presidency. Columbian politics was reaching a boiling point. From 1860 to the 1880s, Columbia had been under Liberal rule, dubbed the Olimpo Radical - A race to enact reforms reversing the grip of colonialism, establishing Columbia as an independent country, and pushing for real separation of Church and State. 

But, as the strong Catholic forces in the country reacted to the latter, the Conservatives eventually overthrew the Liberals by force by the 1880s. The Hegemonía Conservadora was instated in 1885, hailing in La Regeneración, a 15 year long period of authoritarian nightmare. Liberals saw the dismantling of everything they had built, as well as an expansion of authoritarian power. A key weapon of suppression from the Conservatives was Law 61 of May 1888, which gave the President and his executive branch powers that were as close to the recipe for a Dictatorship as you could get. 

Suddenly, the President and his executive branch could simply declare something “subversive” and send out orders without approval of Congress, as well as granting legal exempts for corrupt politicians, enabling immense voter fraud, suppression and exclusion. This “narrowed Liberals’ institutional power to minimal levels in Colombian history.”(Mazzuca og Robinson 2009)  

As an 1898 Voting reform was pushed in the Colombian Congress, and as Saclamente got elected, the reformist Liberals were waiting with baited breath to see what he would do. Saclamente blocked the reform. On October 17th, 1899, the Liberals saw no other option than to revolt, starting the bloodshed that lasted for 3 years. 

”disorganized but highly disruptive guerrilla-style warfare raged in the rural areas, with great destruction of property and loss of life both in combat and from disease” (Britannica, 2025)

4 percent of the male population died (Mazzuca og Robinson 2009) .

Eventually, Columbia would see voting reform. Even though the Liberals lost the war, the fear of a repeat of a bloodshed of such scale, led to the Constitutional Amendments of 1910, which would last 80 years, even under consistent Conservative leadership of the country. 

Encanto, however, is not the first fictional reference to this war I have come across. 

When I was a kid, I remember in my Dad’s book collection was ”One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel García Marquez. The book is about the fictional town of Macondo run by the family Buendías. The town is mostly cut off from the outside world, and live in peace. However, the patriarch of the family, José Arcadio, is impulsive and inquisitive. The impulsiveness eventually leads to contact with other towns, and participation in civil wars. A once peaceful town is overrun with chaos brought in from the outside world. All it takes is one person to break. At the end of the book, the town falls to ruins. 

How do I transition out of this? Something about ruins. 

When I was about 6th or 7th grade… 

For the record, I wrote that into the script 4 years ago, before the meme…

We were learning about some of the horrible stuff that had happened in history. We learned of The Plague, and I remember the textbook vividly describing the abscesses bursting out on people’s skin... We also learned of Colonization and Slavery. But something that struck me when watching Encanto, and thinking back to those history textbooks, was how the victims of history were portrayed. 

During the classes in which we learned about the Colonization and the Human Trafficking of natives from Africa to the Caribbeans, there was - for some parts - an interesting focus on naming the institutions and people who committed these atrocities. We were learning about the Danish East-Indian Company, and about Columbus, and the Danish captains who experienced life on one of the ships. 

We also learned of one enslaved person, and their story, but the focus was on naming the perpetrators and uncovering the horrible things they did. 

For contrast, in the same school, we were taught about the Copenhagen Bombardment of 1807. This was told through the story of a woman who gave birth during the bombardment, and ALLEGEDLY named her child Raquetta Bombardina. 

This story is not true. A quick internet search got me to a blog post from 2007 that links the original story back to a rumor, mentioned in Sophie Thalbitzers ”Grandma’s Memoirs” from 1807 (Thalbitzer 1922). 

Regardless, the story focused on the Copenhagen citizens, and how they experienced it. I dug up the original and made a rough translation, so you can get see what I’m describing. 

”On a beautiful summer day, night was falling. I, my sister, and some kids sat in the courtyard and played ’the priest and the pulpit.’ By the post sat a man and lady, who were wrenching washed clothes. The Landlords girl was running around, shooing a small dog inside, and a soldier was pumping his rifle barrel clean. Everything was the deepest peace, cozy summer evening peace. Suddenly, a pair of heavy shots were heard. ‘They have begun’ they all yelled, but as we didn’t see the results of the shots, the older people continued their activities calmly. Only us children went after my mother’s directions into the hall. In the meantime, we had hardly gone well in there, before a bomb dropped in the front house, ripped a pair of windows to the yard, and fell not so far away from the people by the post and blew to many pieces. “

”In such way it is told by Thomas Overskou, who as a boy experienced Copenhagen's Bombardment. He lived in the poorhouse, Noah’s Ark, located on Studiestræde No. 8 (Study Street). The Englishmen’s cannons opened fire September 2nd, 1807, at 7.15 pm, and the bombardment lasted till about 7am next morning”

”All over Europe, there was outcry over Copenhagen’s destiny. For the first time, the world experienced that women and kids, sick and old, were the targets of the war’s violence. Time would tell, that it wasn’t the last time, that terror bombardments like that would be used” (Ind i Historien - Bind ???)

The reason I bring this up, is because in Encanto, they handle it in a similar fashion. Note how the perpetrators, the men on the horses are faceless, and that the movie itself doesn’t even focus that much on these people. They’re on screen for about 3 milliseconds, and the movie itself focuses more on the P.O.V. of the Madrigals and the Encanto. 

This video is about Micro-History. :)

This type of history is also known as ‘History from below’

One of the earliest examples of this, is Carlo Ginzberg’s The Cheese and The Worms from 1976, zooming in on the world-view of Domenico Scandella. He also went by Mennochio and that’s how Ginzburg refers to him, and as such I too will be reffering to him as Mennochio. 

Mennochio was an Italian miller from the sixteenth century Friuli in north-eastern Italy. The wacky title refers to Domenico’s cosmology. He believed that in the beginning everything was chaos, but then the elements formed like cheese does in milk. In that mass appeared worms, who then became angels. How do we know this? He was on trial for heresy! (Ginzburg) 

‘What is Cultural History?’ by Peter Burke is the book which coincidentially was both a textbook I read when I was studying Hisory, and also the book that introduced me to The Cheese and The Worms. In it, Burke says:

”Since the 1970s, hundreds of micro-historical studies have been published, focusing on villages and individuals, families and convents, riots, murders and suicides. Their variety is impressive, but it is likely that these studies are subject to the law of diminishing intellectual returns to a given approach. The great problem is to analyze the relation between the community and the world outside it.”

Encanto, though it is fiction, is a great example of this method. It recognizes that historical events can be experienced differently by ‘regular’ people, and that historical events are a part of, but not necessarily the entirety, of a person’s lived experience. The civil war is only one among the problems they face. For the Madrigals, the civil war is not about Liberals vs. Conservatives, it’s first and foremost about the safety of their family. 

The historical event is the premise, but not the focus of the movie. 

Not that this is new, per se. But, as mirco-historians for the past 50 years have been expanding the scope of historical analysis, so has the types of narratives that Disney is known for. As a former history student, I can find a princess story like Cinderella amusing, but I have also studied elements of the European Monarchy, and I know how fake the glamour and wealth was (Scocozza 2012) They were able to have pretty castles, because of what was basically a royalist version of fascist feudalism, keeping the majority of the people in the country working to death in the fields with no say in the matter. Encanto is able to exist, because scholars and activists have fought for DECADES to decolonize and diversify academia and media. 

I want to make it very clear here that Disney is in no way Paving The Way of anything, they are simply threading water, in which it was finally safe enough for them to take an investment risk. As soon as it’s not profitable anymore, they will grab their suitcases and flee.  

So basically, Encanto is – to me – a fiction companion to Micro-History, and I think that’s pretty neat. 

Why Micro-History?

In a time of having a computer in your pocket with instant access to an incomprehensible amount of ‘news about the world’, I want to offer Micro-History as an inspiration. To not let the largest scales of power that you cannot directly change reserve all of your brain, but only some space. I don’t nessecarily mean to make a seperation between global and local scale politics. When right wing polticians in my own little country of Denmark proposed a law to ban medical care for 16 and 17 year old trans kids, directly translating Irreversible Damage to (Quote Mette Thiesen: Irreversibel Skade), it’s obvious to me that the line between Local and Global is not always clear cut. 

What I do want to inspire, is a continued zoom-in on the individual stories of humans that are directly affected by an event. On that same note, if YOU feel overwhelmed by the scale of an event, focus on the local and focus on what you can personally do, realistically, in your own life. 

For example, I have many times been overwhelmed by the rise of transphobia in the US and the world at large. Can I realistically do something directly about the US? No. So instead, I joined a local protest, aimed at the politician who was trying to push this agenda closest to me. 

And for now, we won. The bill didn’t even make it to the voting phase, as it was deemed to be going against the current rights of doctors to treat their patients.(B 62 2023) Showing up outside the parliament that day showed the ministry that people in this country cared. 

I want this to be both an introduction to a field of history and a push into your local sphere. If there’s something, anything, you care about, and you feel like you have spare energy – which, let’s face it, not a lot of us do – look up if there’s initiatives local to you. Protests, unions, volunteering, blockades, local elections, public hearings, anything. And if any of that is not possible, just reaching out to a friend, texting them, playing video games or boardgames with your friends that are struggling. Hell, even thanking a service worker for their service can make someone’s day. 

In a world experiencing a counter-reformation beyond comprehension, it’s okay to just be a miller thinking about cheese and worms. 

Bibliography

• B 62: Høring before the Sundhedsudvalget, Folketinget (2023).

• Britannica Editors. 2025. “The War of a Thousand Days | Colombian Civil War, Conservative-Liberal Conflict, Political Violence | Britannica”. oktober 28. https://www.britannica.com/event/The-War-of-a-Thousand-Days.

• Buttenschøn, Claus, og Olaf Ries. 1993. Ind i historien : Danmark og verden. Bind 2 : 7. klasse. Ind i Historien.

• Folketinget. 2017. “B 62 Voting Results”. januar 9. https://www.ft.dk/samling/20222/beslutningsforslag/b62/71/355/afstemning.htm. 

• García Márquez, Gabriel, Gregory Rabassa, og Gabriel García Márquez. 1971. One Hundred Years of Solitude. 1. print. Avon Books.

• H.F., Kline, W. P. McGreevey, og R. L. Gilmore. 2026. “History of Colombia.” Encyclopedia Britannica, maj 1. https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Colombia.

• Madrid, Raúl L. 2025. The Birth of Democracy in South America. 1. udg. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009633802.

• Mazzuca, Sebastián, og James A. Robinson. 2009. “Political Conflict and Power Sharing in the Origins of Modern Colombia”. Hispanic American Historical Review, nr. 89: 285–321.

• Minster, Christopher. 2020. “What Was the Thousand Days’ War?” ThoughtCo, januar 2. https://www.thoughtco.com/the-thousand-days-war-2136356.

• Oldrup, Thomas. 2007. “Raquetta Bombardina - En And?” HISTORIE-R, april 15. https://migmigmigmig.blogspot.com/2007/04/raquetta-bombardina-en-and.html.

• Scocozza, Benito. 2012. “Landbruget – 1600-1700”. Gyldendal og Politikens Danmarkshistorie at  Lex.dk, februar 22. https://gyldendalogpolitikensdanmarkshistorie.lex.dk/Landbruget_-_1600-1700.

• Thalbitzer, Sophie Dorothea. 1922. Grandmamas Bekiendelser. Gyldendalske Boghandels Nordisk Forlag.