Backlands (31 page)

Then they entered the small temple and found themselves in front of Antônio Conselheiro, who received them cordially enough. And with his habitual placidity he offered them the same peaceful greeting.

The account of Brother Monte Marciano relates that “he wore a tunic of indigo blue, his head was bare, and he held a staff. His wild hair fell to his shoulders. His beard was long and tangled with streaks of white. His deep-set eyes rarely looked at anyone directly. His complexion was so pale it was almost corpselike. His manner was grave and humble.” This report indicates that the new arrivals were very impressed.

The almost cordial reception encouraged them. Contrary to what they had expected, the Counselor seemed to be pleased with their visit. He broke his habitual reserve and stubborn silence. He informed them about the progress of the work, invited them to come and see it for themselves. He courteously offered to guide them to the building. And so they all followed the old hermit, who by then must have been in his seventies, and who leaned on his staff, walking with a dragging gait, his thin body convulsed by sudden fits of coughing.

They could have not asked for a better start to their mission.

This reception was a semivictory. But the missionary would undo it all with his lack of tact. When they reached the choir loft and were at some distance from the crowd of faithful following them, he thought this would be an ideal moment to state the purpose of his visit.

It was a premature and counterproductive move, destined to fail.

I took advantage of being practically alone with him and told him that I was there in peace and that I was greatly surprised to find armed men here and that I could not but condemn the fact that so many poor families lived here in idleness in a state of such abandonment and misery that it led to eight or nine deaths in a day. Thus by order of the archbishop I was going to open up a holy mission and advise the people to disperse and return to their homes and work in the interests of each one and for the general good.

This intransigent and barely veiled threat, and the departure from diplomatic protocol in the interests of dogma, would not have pleased Saint George the Great, who was not perturbed by the barbaric rites of the Saxons. It was an impulsive act of defiance.

“Even as I was speaking these words and before I had finished, the chapel and the choir loft was filled with people chanting: ‘we want to stay with our Counselor!’”

Disorder was imminent. What contained it was the admirable calm, we must call it the Christian meekness, of Antônio Conselheiro. But the missionary himself will tell the story:

This clear and respectful explanation did not satisfy the Capuchin, who had the courage of a believer but not the fine tact of an apostle. He countered with a paraphrase of the “Prima Petri”: “Sir, if you are a Catholic, you must accept that the church condemns all rebellions and, recognizing all forms of government, teaches that constituted authorities rule in the name of God.”

It was almost the exact phrase that Paul had used in the time of Nero.

And he continued:

In bringing up these meaningless political arguments and ignorant of the real meaning of the backland disturbances, Brother Monte Marciano makes it clear why his mission failed. He unmasked himself as a mere propagandist and he was missing only the shotgun of the curate of Santa Cruz under his vestments.

Here in Brazil, from the bishop to the last Catholic, we recognize the government. Only you refuse to pledge allegiance to it? This is evil thinking, and you are following a false doctrine.

This last statement rang out like a shot. And from the crowd came the immediate and arrogant response: “It is Your Reverence who holds the false doctrine, not our Counselor!”

This time the situation was getting out of hand, but the Counselor restrained his followers with a calm gesture. He turned to the missionary and said: “I will not disarm my people but neither will I interfere with your holy mission.”

The mission began badly. In spite of this, things went along smoothly and peacefully enough to the fourth day. There were about five thousand in the congregation. The able-bodied men were especially visible. “They carried rifles, guns, muskets, and large knives. From the ammunition belts around their waists to the round caps on their heads, they looked like men about to go to war.”

The Counselor also participated in the services, standing by the altar at attention, his face expressionless like a strict inspector’s. “Now and then he made a gesture of disapproval, which the congregation validated with sharp protests.”

The worshippers observed no decorum at all. Once in a while some distraught individual would violate the ancient privilege given to sacred oratory and proceed to criticize the sermon. Thus, when the preacher came to the subject of fasting as a means of disciplining the flesh and the passions, without calling for prolonged fasting but saying that “one may fast by eating meat for dinner and taking just a cup of coffee in the morning,” the sermon was boisterously interrupted with comments such as “That’s not fasting; that’s stuffing yourself!”

On the fourth day of the mission, when the Capuchin returned to the dangerous subject of politics, things began to degenerate. There was angry talk about the “preaching of this Masonic, Protestant, and republican padre” who was “an envoy of the government, which will come with troops to take our Counselor and kill us all.” The monk, however, was not frightened off by the incipient rebellion but faced it squarely. He took up the subject of murder in his next sermon, not attempting to avoid the dangers of his controversial theme, speaking of the gallows in the house of those condemned to death and making other imprudent allusions that we need not repeat here.

The reaction came immediately. João Abade took the lead, sounding his whistle loudly in the square and calling the faithful together. This was on the twentieth of May, on the seventh day of the mission. The crowd burst out in a cacophony of vivas to the Good Jesus and the Divine Holy Spirit before the house where the visitors were staying, to let them know that, when it came to eternal salvation, the people of Canudos did not need their intervention.

That was the end of the mission. With the exception of “55 marriages of couples living in common law, 102 baptisms and more than 400 confessions,” the results were nil or, rather, negative.

The missionary, “like the early apostles at the doors of the cities that expelled them, shook the dust from his sandals,” emulating the example of the disciples.

Accompanied by his companions, he left furtively by the alleyways.

He climbed the roadway along the slopes of the Favela. As he reached the top of the mountain, he paused. . . . He looked for the last time at the settlement below. Overcome by a wave of sadness, he was inspired to compare himself with “the Divine Master before Jerusalem.”

But the monk left cursing the city. . . .

PART II

THE BATTLE

CHAPTER III

THE BATTLE BEGINS

When the matter of quelling the violence in the Canudos backlands became urgent, the governor of Bahia was distracted by other rebellions. The city of Lençois had been invaded by a bold band of gangsters and their attacks were spreading to the diamond mines. The town of Brito Mendes had fallen to other bandits, and in Jequié every manner of crime was being attempted.

It was an old problem.

The tract of land that is silhouetted by the Sincorá Mountains and stretches as far as the banks of the São Francisco River had been for a long time the large stage on which the undisciplined people of the
sertão
committed their atrocities.

Opulently endowed with splendid mines, that landscape was cursed by its own wealth. Over two hundred years ago restless adventurers had sought out the place, driven by the dream of fabulous riches. As they scoured the mountainsides and riverbeds, they did little more than strip the land and lay it to waste with their mining operations. Leaving behind their picks and dredges, they left a legacy to their children, and by extension to the rough cowboys who followed them, of the same unstable and unproductive way of life that had been given free play in this fertile place, and where for years gold dust and diamonds in the rough were the common currency.

The result was that they made no effort to cultivate the soil, where they had no permanent home and which they roamed in search of digs. They lived in restless idleness and carried on the adventurous spirit of their forebears, who long ago had also turned the land into a desert. And when, little by little, they had sifted through the last of their pebbles and exhausted their stock of furs, they had no other recourse but to turn to banditry in order to continue their undisciplined way of life.

The
jagunço
, who pillaged cities, succeeded the miner, who pillaged the earth. The political boss took over from the old
capangueiro
, or gang leader. These transitions are a good example of environmental processes. Let us briefly summarize them.

We saw previously how the brave and hardworking
mamelucos
arose from the wild movement of the
bandeiras
and the measured pace of the missions. This race appeared at an opportune time in our colonial history and proved to be a conservative force that made up the core of our newly formed national identity. They helped to create a state of equilibrium between the frenzy of the gold rushes and the romantic utopias of the missionaries. This race proved to be the only positive element in our society from the beginning of the eighteenth century when the mines from Jacobina to Rio de Contas were discovered. Soon, however, these men were faced with dangerous forces that would either corrupt their strong nature or lead them to a sorry fate. In fact, the
mamelucos
were transformed by their contact with the greedy backlands pioneer. These settlers came from the east, terrorizing the Indians with fire and blade and establishing settlements that, unlike those that were already there, did not grow up around a cattle ranch but from the ruins of native villages, called
malocas
. They trampled the region, setting up camp for a long time in front of the Barrier Mountains that run from Caetité northward. When the depleted mines required heavy equipment for more intensive exploitation, they set their sights on the fertile untouched lands that lay beyond, in the very core of the country, between the forests extending from Macaúbas to Açuaruá.

They moved forward, leaving destruction in their wake until they reached a new barrier, the São Francisco River. They crossed it. Ahead of them as far as they could see, carved into the plains, was the wonderful valley of the Rio das Éguas. This golden land was so rich that the auditor of Jacobina wrote in a letter to Queen Maria II dated 1794 that “its mines are the richest ever discovered in Your Majesty’s dominions.”

By this time they had reached the frontier of Goiás.

They did not take another step. The result was terrible. Marking the pastures of the cattle breeders were red heaps of upturned clay. From the athletic build of the cowboy burst forth the fearless
jagunço.
He is one of the most serious protagonists in our cursed history of undisciplined heroes. An entire society was changing. The old solid and peace-loving peasant culture was ceding to one that was characterized by dissolute homelessness, restless aggression, and lazy lawlessness.

Let’s imagine that from the titanic frame of the cowboy suddenly burst forth the incomparable virility of the
bandeirante
. This issue would be the
jagunço.

He is a telling product of the history of the region. Born of the late crossing of racial stocks, which the environment further diversified, he carries the essential attributes of both. He divides his time between the laborious cow hunt and the bandit’s bold expeditions. And the land, that incomparable land, still sustains him and his herds even in the dry grip of the drought. His herds drink from the brackish pits. The land assists him always in his warrior’s existence. It gives him free saltpeter to make gunpowder and lead and silver for bullets from the mines of Açuaruá.

It is natural that since the beginning of the nineteenth century the dramatic history of the São Francisco settlements would reflect unique circumstances. All the stirring episodes of this story are made of partisan rivalries and the unpunished atrocities of a weak political system in which local powerbrokers rule. These disturbances usually occur in the location of the mines where gold fever was most intense, yet they point to the distant origins that we have described.

As an example, the entire valley of the Rio das Éguas and, to the north, the Rio Prêto form the homeland of the bravest and most useless men in our country. From these parts they habitually embark on expeditions to challenge the bravery of the political henchmen. Such forays usually end with arson and sacking of towns and cities throughout the valley of the big river. Heading upstream, by 1879 they had already arrived at the mining town of Januária, which they proceeded to occupy. Then they returned to Carinhanha, where they had started, loaded with booty. From this northern city, the story of their evil exploits grows until we arrived at Xique-Xique, which was legendary in the electoral campaigns in the time of the empire.