Backlands (46 page)

Of course he should have reacted. The amazing thing is that anyone was surprised. Canudos was a miserable hole in the desert, not even a dot on our maps, as remote and indecipherable as a page torn from an old book. The only comparison that comes to mind is that of geologic strata, which when disturbed or inverted reveal a modern formation below an ancient one. The moral stratification of people can also show inversion and melding of layers, with sinuous furrows and abrupt synclinal eruptions that break out into faults in the form of ancient strata through which the race has long since passed. Canudos was, more than anything else, a lesson that should have awakened curiosity similar to that aroused in an archaeologist when he discovers a prehistoric village under the foundations of a modern Swiss city.

For the Brazilian, the situation only raised tempers. We failed to comprehend the significance of the event. This eruption of the past into our present, baring all the cracks and fissures of our evolution as a society, should have alerted us to the opportunity to correct those flaws. But we did not understand the lesson. In the capital of our country, citizens were happy with burning a few journals at the stake and the government then began to act. That meant calling up new battalions.

When the first reports of the disaster filtered in, the whole country was plunged into turmoil for days. The report given by Major Cunha Mattos was unacceptable. It hardly summarized the principal stages of the action. It was also full of strange errors and was lacking the emotional quality that one might have expected under the circumstances. Those who read it got the impression that there had been a tremendous slaughter, and later reports confirmed this view. The information that circulated was unreliable and contradictory. It exacerbated the agitation and curiosity of the people. The result was endless gossip and speculation. It was impossible to discern the causes of the event. Accounts were circulated, accepted avidly, and then rejected when the next version was released. Rumors spread through homes and on the street. The people became more nervous and frightened. Nothing was known, not even who had participated in the rout. With all the inconsistency, all reports were immediately warped beyond recognition.

It was said, for example, that Colonel Tamarindo was not dead. He had escaped with a few soldiers and was on his way to Queimadas. Then this story was amended. He had escaped, but was badly wounded in Maçacará, where he had arrived on death’s door. This was in turn followed by the somber confirmation of his death.

The wildest ideas were being spread around. The backlanders were not just a bunch of lunatics; they were a “well-disciplined army” equipped with Mausers and artillery. Some, including Captain Villarim, had been blown up by their grenades.

Once in a while the truth came out in heroic trappings. Salomão da Rocha’s tragic death appealed to national pride. There was also the legend of Corporal Roque, not as exciting, but which also made a strong impression. The courage of this modest soldier transformed him and led to the climax of the battle. He was Moreira César’s orderly. When troops fled and his commander’s body was left by the road, he remained with it, guarding the remains. He fought off the enemy until his last bullet was spent, giving his life for his dead commander.

This wonderful episode, highlighted by popular imagination, was almost a consolation for the horror of the defeat that the army had sustained. Donations were made and public eulogies were planned to commemorate the event. This obscure soldier was on his way to fame when he cut short rumors of his death by making his appearance in the flesh along with the last remaining stragglers from Queimadas.

This was not the only time the public was disillusioned. While on the one hand the nature of the disaster was downplayed, its consequences became ever more obvious. Some three hundred officially reported dead returned to the living. Just three days after the battle the expedition had arrived in Queimadas, about 125 miles from Canudos. A week later it was confirmed that 74 officers were present; two weeks later, on March 19, 1,081 troops were all safely accounted for.

We saw how many there were to start with. The numbers speak for themselves. Yet they did not deter the public’s enthusiasm.

State governors and legislatures and the governments of municipalities continued to cry for revenge. Official announcements, all with the same rhetoric, repeated the single theme that the enemies of the republic, the monarchist rebels, must be destroyed. Like the citizens who lived in the federal capital, the people in other cities held meetings, made speeches, and proclaimed resolutions in support of the government and whatever it chose to do to protect the country and avenge the honor of the army. A time of national mourning was declared. Formal action on this decree was recorded in the minutes of municipal councils in the most remote towns and villages. Masses for the dead were held at all the churches. Archbishops sent out orders to the clergy, both secular and regular, to add the
pro pace
prayer to the mass. Men were volunteering for the army. A number of battalions were raised, including the Tiradentes, the Benjamin Constant, the Académico, the Frei Caneca—all of these led by tough veterans who had seen fire from the time of the revolt of the fleet. There were also others, with patriots of all types: the Deodoro, the Silva Jardim, the Moreira César battalions, etc. Yet even this was not enough.

At army headquarters a recruiting campaign was under way to fill slots in the various branches of the army, and the president of the republic announced that he would call up the members of congress themselves if necessary. The vice president, in a show of patriotism, wrote to the Military Club, offering his services. There were many plans and bright ideas. Engineers created blueprints for a new railway to be constructed from Vila Nova to Monte Santo, via the Itiúba pass. It would be completed in just thirty days. At the end of this time a shrill convoy of steaming engines would burst into the backlands. Meanwhile the fate of the republic was in the balance at Canudos.

There were reports to confirm this. Canudos was not a bandit hideout. There were men of rare courage there and names were mentioned: among them fugitives from the September revolt, men who were well-known army and navy officers and who had been recruited by the Counselor.

This was accepted as fact: One of the bandit chiefs was a brilliant Italian engineer who was an expert on Abyssinian warfare. A stream of detailed information ensued. The population of the settlement of fanatics was so large that when almost seven hundred deserted, they were not noticed as missing for days. The reports kept coming with relentless regularity. Each one added more anxiety to the charged environment. The
jagunços
already controlled Monte Santo, Cumbe, Maçacará, and maybe Jeremoabo. After wreaking havoc on these villages, they were moving south. Their forces were regrouping in Tucano and with fresh recruits they were on their way to the coast to attack the capital of Bahia.

The people were in such a nervous state that they thought they could hear the march of the savages.

Moreira César’s battalions were now hailed as the legions of Varus. They had been pursued by a horde of barbarians. Not only the
jagunços
were involved. In Juazeiro, a city in the state of Ceará, a dangerous heretic, the messianic cleric Padre Cícero, was assembling hundreds of fresh recruits for the Counselor. Another mad prophet in Pernambuco, José Guedes, unsettled the officials who interrogated him with his stoic resistance. The wily João Brandão in Minas Gerais had outsmarted guards watching a pack train loaded with rifles and made off with the weapons for a hideout deep in the backlands of the São Francisco River. This mad lawlessness also infected the South, where the Monk of Paraná joined the ranks of fanatic leaders.

The monarchist conspiracy was finally coming out into the open. These were just the opening shots of a very successful movement being fought by backlands gunslingers. The government had to act without further delay.

All the states in the republic had now mobilized battalions: the Twelfth, Twenty-fifth, Thirtieth, Thirty-first, and Thirty-second from Rio Grande do Sul; the Twenty-seventh from Paraíba; the Thirty-fourth from Rio Grande do Norte; the Thirty-third and the Thirty-fifth from Piauí; the Fifth from Maranhão; the Fourth from Pará; the Twenty-sixth from Sergipe; the Fourteenth and the Fifth from Pernambuco; the Second from Ceará; the Fifth and part of the Ninth Cavalry as well as an artillery regiment from the federal capital; the Seventh, Ninth, and Sixteenth from the state of Bahia.

General Arthur Oscar de Andrade Guimarães, commander of the Second Military District, was offered the command of the new expedition. He accepted it after issuing the following statement: “Every great idea has those who are martyred for it. We are called upon to make sacrifices so that we can be sure that the future generations of our country inherit a strong, honored republic.”

The message resounded: The republic must be saved.

The troops were mustering in Salvador. They arrived in separate detachments and immediately continued to Queimadas. It was urgent to assemble the troops in this temporary base of operations. There was also another consideration. There was a growing suspicion on the part of the new expeditioners that Salvador harbored monarchists. Although this was entirely unfounded, these new recruits acted as if they had conquered the town. They were convinced this was just another Canudos on a larger scale. The ancient capital high on the mountain was still the ocean metropolis where Batavian and Norman “sea sweepers” had come into port. It was built for defense. Its ancient forts, with their crumbling walls, were scattered along the heights, their cannon holes still pointed out to the ocean. The steep hills rose above the mud wall trenches built by Governor Tomé de Souza in 1549 when he was governor of Brazil and who made Salvador the capital for two centuries. This colonial city with its narrow streets and alleys, which today look just as they did in the sixteenth century, was for these soldiers just a bigger version of a backlands scrub patch. They were not inspired by it, just irritated. They were like Cossacks in the streets of Warsaw. The citizens of Salvador were taken aback at their rude remarks as they strutted around the city with a loud clanking of spurs and jingling of swords. As this continued, it led to public disorder.

Here is but a single example. The officers of the Thirtieth Battalion took their loyalty to the republic to an extreme. They tried to destroy a shield at the entry to the customs house, which displayed the imperial arms. As they hacked away with mallets, their comrades were incited to attack innocent bystanders.

Patriotic zeal was quickly becoming insanity. Protests finally came from the press in the North of the country. Popular unrest was about to ignite into riots. As a cautionary measure, the troops that arrived and disembarked in Salvador immediately changed trains for Queimadas. Soon all the detachments assigned to Monte Santo were assembled there. The commander issued the plan of the day for April fifth:

This was the fourth expedition. The commander’s order did not include a plan of operations. This might have been because the plan was implicit and did not differ from the operations of the former expeditions. Many of the army corps favored encircling the settlement from several strategic points. The decision was to attack the rebel town from two sides. One column would come from Monte Santo. The second, after organizing in Aracajú, would march to Canudos via Sergipe and Jeremoabo.

Based on what we have previously seen, it seems redundant to insist that this plan was going to repeat the errors of the former expeditions on a larger scale. Instead of a single compact detachment of soldiers, there would now be two that were going to become trapped in the vast backlands snare. Even in the best scenario, it was not a given that the campaign would be successful. A look at the map would confirm that two columns converging from the routes that were chosen would not guarantee that the rebellion would be put down. Not even a battle on the ground would guarantee that outcome.

The Rosário and Jeremoabo roads, which join at a significant distance from Canudos, would not make it possible to lay siege to the town. If the
jagunços
were attacked from the southeast, they still had access to the Cambaio and Uauá roads on the north and east, leading to the Várzea da Ema plain. The huge region of the São Francisco backlands would offer them a place to hide and prepare a counterattack. But the government forces should not have assumed that the residents of Canudos would abandon the town. They would fight back, as they did before. To attack from just one side would give the Canudos rebels many options to fortify the resistance.