Backlands (30 page)

In the midst of these tragic profiles is a ridiculous figure, Pious Anthony, a skinny, raggedy mulatto emaciated from fasting. He is one of the Counselor’s closest confidants. He is half sacristan, half soldier, enamored of his rifle, who spies, watches, searches, wheedling his way into homes and poking into every corner of the village. He immediately reports every incident to the supreme leader, who rarely leaves the “Sanctuary.” His partner is José Felix, “the Talker,” guardian of the churches, the Counselor’s janitor and majordomo. He is in charge of the pious women, with their blue robes and hemp girdles, and he is also wardrobe master and the purveyor of the scant meals of the leader. He lights the fires for daily prayers. Finally, there is Manoel the Crate who looks over the throng with aristocratic indifference. He is the town healer, the quack doctor. Among the entire nefarious multitude here is one devotee of nature who dislikes the prevailing disorder and spends his days in the forest trying to discover its primitive healing agents.

The prayers would drag out. After they went through all the litanies, said all the rosaries, and chanted all the rhyming beatitudes, there was still a ceremony they were required to perform. This was the “kissing” of the images. The fetishistic ritual had been established by the Counselor himself in order to complete the transformation of a Christianity he poorly understood.

Pious Anthony, the altar boy, would pick up a crucifix, contemplate it with the glazed look of a fakir in a trance, press it to his chest, and fall into a deep prostrate position. He would then imprint upon it a prolonged kiss and in a slow and reverent gesture pass it to the person next to him, who would perform an exact imitation of this reverent mimicry. Anthony would then raise an image of the Blessed Virgin high over his head, and after that one of the Good Jesus, repeating the same motions. Then in succession followed all the saints. Images, veronicas, and crucifixes—they were slowly passed to the eager multitude, one by one, from hand to hand, mouth to mouth, breast to breast. The dull smack of innumerable kisses could be heard in a growing crescendo, mingled with the drone of stammered pleas, tortured mea culpas wrenched from heaving bosoms, and muffled cries from the crowd, still repressed so as not to disturb the solemn ceremony.

The mystic beliefs of each individual gradually merged with the collective hysteria. Occasionally the agitation would increase, as if the crowd were invading the assembly according to the order of a preestablished ritual, as they passed around the sacred relics. Finally, the last of the relics was passed out by Pious Anthony as the first reached the back rows of the believers. At this point the intoxication and vertigo of these simple souls would reach a peak. Individual emotions overflowed into the raging atmosphere with feverish contagion. The images had unleashed supernatural powers that penetrated the consciousness of the crowd and reduced them to the writhing throes of a seductive hallucination. Shouts rang out from all corners, both pious and angry, as the worshipers convulsed in states of possession and some cried out as they fell into unconsciousness. Clutching the saliva-drenched images, the deranged women would collapse in violent contortions while the children wailed in terror. Taken over by the same wave of madness, the fighting men clashed and shook their weapons to a horrible rhythmic beat, vibrations of an explosive barbaric rite.

Then suddenly the din would stop and the breathless crowd watched transfixed as the strange figure of Antônio Conselheiro stood framed in the open door of the Sanctuary at the far side of the arbor.

He approached a small table and began to preach.

He preached against the republic, that much is certain.

The antagonism was inevitable. It was a derivative of his mystic excess, a variant of his religious delirium that was forced upon him.

Yet he did not display the least bit of political knowledge. This
jagunço
was as incapable of understanding the republican form of government as he was the constitutional monarchy. For him both were abstractions beyond his reach. He was instinctively averse to both. He was in the evolutionary stage in which the only form of government he could understand would be an empire headed by a priest or a warrior chief.

We must insist on this truth: The war of Canudos was a regression in our history. What we had before us was the unsolicited armed insurgence of an old, dead society, brought back to life by a madman.
²⁸
We did not recognize this society; it was impossible for us to have known it. The adventurers of the seventeenth century would encounter it in conditions familiar to them, just as medieval visionaries would feel at home among the demoniacs of the Verzegnis or among the startsy of Russia. These epidemic psychoses appear in all ages and all places as obvious anachronisms, inevitable contrasts in the unequal evolution of peoples, contrasts that become especially pronounced when a broad social movement pushes the people to a more advanced way of life. We then see the illogical perfectionists break through the triumphant industrialism of North America and the dour
stürmisch
sect, inspired inexplicably by the genius Klopstock, with whom they share the cradle of the German Renaissance.

The phenomenon is perhaps even more readily explained in our case.

After living for four hundred years on a vast stretch of seaboard where we enjoyed the benefits of a civilized life, we were suddenly given the unexpected inheritance of a republic. Swept up in the current of modern ideas, we left behind a third of our people, in the heart of our country, who lived in a centuries-old state of darkness. Dazzled by a civilization that came to us secondhand, blind copyists that we are, we rejected what was best in the organic codes of other nations. With revolutionary zeal we dismissed the smallest compromise with the realities of our own national situation. We succeeded only in deepening the divide between our way of life and that of our crude native sons, who were more strangers to us than the immigrants who came from Europe. It was not an ocean that separated us but three entire centuries.

And when, through our lack of foresight, we allowed a band of maniacs to form among them, we failed to understand the significance of the event. We looked at it from the narrow perspective of partisan politics. In the presence of these monstrous misfits we had a telling fit of consternation. With a determination that should have been applied to a more appropriate cause, we put them down with bayonets. We rewrote history in a shameful incursion back into these unfortunate regions, opening up once again the overgrown trails of the
bandeiras
.

The backlands agitator, whose revolt was a kind of rebellion against the natural order, became a serious adversary. He was a mighty foe of an extinct regime, capable of destroying our nascent institutions.

Canudos was our Vendée.
²⁹

In the last days of the campaign, when they could enter what was left of the huts, the victors were terribly disappointed. The hard-won victory gave them the right to sack the ruined homes, and nothing was exempt from their insatiable curiosity. But it was one of the most unrewarding spoils of war in history. In place of riches they found broken images and coconut-shell rosaries. What most taunted their greed were the letters, miscellaneous writings, and especially the terrible verses that they found on poor scraps of paper. These limp sheets, with their irregular handwriting and barbarous spelling, seemed to be a photographic image of the twisted thoughts of these people. They summarized the psychology behind the conflict. These scraps were worth everything because they were worth nothing. They recorded the preaching of Antônio Conselheiro, and as one read them over, it was evident just how harmless his sermons really were: They simply reflected the poor man’s confusion. Every line was imbued with the same vague and incongruous religious doctrine. There was very little of political significance to be found in any of them and nothing that would have supported his messianic cause. If the rebel attacked the government, it was because he believed that the promised kingdom was near at hand. He denounced the republic as the mortal sin of an entire people, an extreme heresy inviting the rule of the Antichrist. The rude poets put these rants into the form of simple rhymes. They lacked the spontaneity of backland troubadours. Yet in these foolish verses they left us living documents. We must agree with Renan, as we read them, that these halting lines produced a crude people’s Bible.

We will transcribe a few lines:

The republic was the symbol of impiety.

But this demonic government is about to disappear:

The law of the hound . . . This was the most elevated slogan of the sect. It summarized their agenda and requires no commentary.

Those poor rebels were really very weak creatures.

They demanded another kind of response. They challenged us to a struggle of a different kind.

Meanwhile we sent them guns and the final, incisive argument of the moralist—bullets.

But in the beginning a more noble and practical effort was undertaken.

In 1895, on a certain morning in May, a figure appeared at the top of a counterfort on Mount Favela, flanked by two others. He was a stranger to those parts, a Capuchin missionary.

He contemplated the immense settlement below for some time and then slowly began to descend the slope. It was Daniel walking into the lion’s den.

Let us follow him.

He was accompanied by Brother Caetano de São Leão and by the vicar of Cumbe. Brother João Evangelista de Monte Marciano crossed the river and approached the first of the outlying huts. He continued to the square, which was overflowing with people: “almost a thousand men armed with rifles, guns, and knives.” As he made his way through the crowd, he must have felt as if he had been dropped into a camp of bedouins. Without revealing any emotion, his spirits lifted by the serene strength of the apostles, he calmly walked to the front of the chapel, where a crowd was huddled in the doorway. Flanked by his apostolic companions, he approached by way of a winding alley. When those at the door saw the newcomers, they were surprised and they emerged to look at them “with a restless manner and a look that was at the same time inquisitive and sinister, revealing their bad consciences and hostile intentions.”

The priests continued on until they reached the house of the old vicar of Cumbe (which had been closed for over a year due to his extended absence out of resentment at the disrespect shown to him by the people here), and there they rested as best they could from the rigorous journey. They were deeply moved by the sight of the unfortunate beings in the square who were armed to the teeth and by the disturbing impression of that turbulent Thebaid.

But there were more unpleasant experiences in store for them.

It wasn’t long before eight corpses were being carried past the door, in hammocks of caroa fiber, by panting pallbearers who hurried along with their load, anxious to get rid of it in the cemetery at the back of the old church. This was being done with no religious ceremony at all, as if in this sinister place the dead were deserters from the cause and unworthy of the least attention.

In the meantime the news of their arrival had run through the town. The Counselor made no move to meet the emissaries of the church. He remained indifferent and continued to go about his work of repairing the chapel. It was the priests who had to go to him.

They left the house and again took the sinuous route to the square. The crossed it without meeting a single remark and they arrived at the work site, where a “crowd of men closed ranks along the door of the chapel,” making a path for them. The startled bystanders gave a lively greeting of peace: “Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ!” for which the common response was “Forever praise his name!”