Backlands (63 page)

The
jagunços
were not intimidated by these new arrivals. They remained defiant and confident. They had devised a method of communication and would send messages from one village to another or across the labyrinth of huts by firing their weapons in a certain pattern. They were also more organized. They received supply trains, which came in on the roads across the Várzea da Ema. Our troops could not capture these convoys because they were afraid to leave their positions and they also were concerned about ambush. To the north, beyond the mountains, and on to Canabrava and Cocorobó, roving bands of
jagunços
moved swiftly, circling the battalions at a distance. They remained invisible but they left behind unmistakable signs of their passage. Sometimes an inexperienced soldier would wander in the hills and be hit by a bullet from outside the settlement. This invisible line of siege extended well beyond the borders of Canudos. The cavalry and work animals at pasture on both banks of the river many times started to stampede from the firing. One day in August, twenty artillery mules were captured by the enemy even though they were guarded by an experienced battalion, the Fifth of the line.

These incidents demonstrated the energy and determination of the rebels.

The army forces, on the other hand, did not give them any respite. The three Krupps had been mounted on the slope since July 19. The vanguard of the Twenty-fifth was at the base of the hill. Their position was trained on the square and they kept up a steady barrage of cannon fire. This started fires that were difficult to extinguish and completely destroyed the old church. The wooden framework could be seen sticking out of the roof, which had partly collapsed. It was unbelievable how the sexton would still make his way into the belfry to sound the sacred melody of the Ave Maria.

As if the cannon barrage at close range were not enough, the Whitworth 32 was brought down from Mount Favela on August 23. This was the day that General Barbosa was wounded as he was reviewing the center battery, next to the headquarters of the first column. The arrival of the big cannon made instant revenge possible. This was done at dawn the next morning and it was formidable. As the huge weapon roared, enormous chunks of shrapnel fell through the church walls, blowing up the roof and taking away what was left of the belfry. The bell itself flew through the air, its clapper clanging noisily as if still sounding an alarm. This was the bell that every evening had called the fighting guerrillas to their prayers.

Aside from this incident the army lost the round. Something got stuck in the mouth of the cannon and silenced it forever. Eight soldiers were killed as the enemy began a stupendous counterattack that lasted until dawn. It continued the next day after a brief pause. Four of the army’s men fell, along with six of the Twenty-sixth who took advantage of the chaos to desert, bringing the day’s total losses up to ten. The battle continued on the twenty-sixth, with four casualties; on the twenty-seventh four more were killed; on the twenty-eighth, four wounded; on the twenty-ninth, one officer and four privates went down; and this continued at the same rate until the troops were completely exhausted.

The losses since mid-August along with those from previous engagements had made a reorganization of the ranks imperative. The number of brigades was down from seven to five. With more and more top officers killed or wounded, it was evident that the expedition was weakening. Junior officers now commanded fifteen of the twenty infantry battalions, not including the Fifth Regiment of the artillery, the Fifth Bahian Police, a rapid-fire battery, and a cavalry squadron. Two of the brigades were led by lieutenant colonels. The only reason that the command of the companies was not the responsibility of the sergeants was because there were fewer sergeants than sublieutenants.

The situation would soon change. Canudos was about to receive thirty battalions, in addition to other branches of service.

The division that was about to save them was on the way.

CHAPTER VII

A NEW PHASE OF THE BATTLE

Queimadas was established as a settlement in the beginning of the century. Now in full decline, it had turned into a noisy armed camp. The irregularly shaped central park was surrounded by a cluster of poor huts. The town was deeply striated with gullies carved by the torrential rains. In reality it was just a clearing in the wild. The monotony of the plains and barren hills surrounding the town gave it a sad appearance, making it look like an abandoned town quickly being overrun by the
caatingas.

The place evoked painful memories. All the previous expeditions had assembled here, on the ground between the village square and the
caatinga
. The parched, gray-white leaves of the vegetation gave the town its name, derived from the word for “burnt” or “parched.” The repugnant detritus of these visits by the previous expeditions was littered everywhere: heaps of rags and tattered uniforms, old shoes and military boots, kepis and soldiers’ bonnets, smashed canteens, and the remains of bonfires left by the units who had set up camp here from the beginning of the Febrônio expedition. On this bit of garbage-strewn ground ten thousand men had bivouacked. Their dreams, hopes, fears, and disappointments left poignant echoes there.

Over a small hill, beyond the underbrush, was a long, wide strip of land with a shooting target at the far end. This was the firing range where the Arthur Oscar de Andrade Guimarães division practiced. At one side was a small, low chapel, almost like a tent with walls, covered with graffiti in the soldiers’ crude handwriting. All the battalions had contributed something to these mementos, leaving their remarks on the wall of the holy house with a knifepoint or chunk of charcoal. These were devilish inscriptions formed with short, inflammatory exclamations, curses, threats, and vivas scrawled all over the chapel walls. The black characters were punctuated with exclamation points as big as lances.

The Monte Santo road begins here along a gentle decline, down the narrow, infamous trail. Three successive expeditions had passed here, full of hope. Miserable fugitives came this same way now, in the opposite direction. After fording the shallow, still waters of the Jacuricí, the trail winds across the plains beyond. At the beginning it runs parallel to another road, where the posts of the new telegraph line are located.

The railroad runs along the other side. These signs of progress are meaningless here and do not change the backward character of the place. After stepping off the train, the visitor walks a few hundred yards between lines of squat houses and then finds himself at the edge of the village square, in the middle of the backlands.

In reality this is the point where two populations meet, each one a stranger to the other. The cowboy dressed in leather will come out of the
caatinga
and make his way into the ugly settlement, tie up his nag beside the railroad where citizens of coastal towns pass by, who are ignorant of his existence.

The new recruits became aware of this dramatic difference when they reached Queimadas. Here they found a complete divide between the coastal cities and the clay dwellings of the interior. It was a contrast that had disturbed our social development and had become an obstacle to our national unity. The new fighters were in a strange country now, with other customs, scenes, and a different kind of people. They had the feeling of going to war in another country. They felt that they had left Brazil. Total social separation completed the geographical distance, creating the sensation of being very far from home. The mission that had brought them here only served to deepen the sense of separate-ness. There was the enemy, somewhere to the east and to the north, hidden in the endless highland plains. Far, far away, beyond the plains, a terrible drama was unfolding.

Surely it was a paradoxical country whose own native sons invaded it, armed to the teeth, and gutted it with their Krupp cannons. They committed these acts knowing nothing at all about the land. They had never seen it before. They looked in amazement at the dry earth, its rugged, brutal contours and thorny vegetation. The alien land was strewn with heaps of rock and crumbled hills torn by caverns and ravines, and all around were the parched, barren tablelands and the rolling plains.

They were being asked to do what troops before them had done: to invade a foreign territory. It was a geographical fiction. This was the tangible reality, there for all to see, and a witness to what had happened before. The soldiers sensed this and were obsessed with the thought. The unknown backwoods people were returning, day by day, their mutilated and beaten comrades who a few months ago had traveled that same road, strong in body and spirit. As a result they had no spirit left. They did not have the will to penetrate the depths of those mysterious badlands.

Fortunately, when they arrived at Queimadas, the effect that the place had on them was helped in part by encouraging news from the front. There had been no more disasters and the army troops were holding their positions in spite of the daily barrage of fire. The Girard Brigade and the São Paulo Battalion had come to Canudos in time to fill in the gaps in the ranks. The guerrillas, meanwhile, were beginning to exhibit the first symptoms of decline. They did not ring the bell of the old church anymore to show how unaffected they were. There was no bell to ring. In the intervals between exchanges of fire, the sad hymns were no longer heard. They had stopped attacking the lines. At night there was not a single light or sound. The settlement lay blanketed in darkness.

The rumor started to circulate that the Counselor was a prisoner of his own people, who had rebelled when he announced his intention to surrender and declare himself a martyr.

Other details were cited, all indicating that the conflict was dying out.

The new fighters believed that it was over even before they reached Canudos. Everything seemed to point to it. The first prisoners were being brought back after all the months of fighting. It was noticeable that there was not a grown man among them. These captives, who were under heavy guard, were pathetic: a half-dozen women with undernourished infants at their breasts, followed by older children ranging from six to ten years of age. The soldiers stared at them as they went through the town—the place was crawling with uniforms of all types and rank.

It was a sad sight as these pitiful creatures in rags came into the square, clutching their young in their hands. All eyes were on them, gazing insatiably as if seeing right through them.

They were like exotic animals at a fair.

The excited crowd exchanged excited comments, a buzz of voices punctuated by loud expressions of astonishment. The wretched little group was a temporary diversion from the long, tedious hours spent in the camp.

It stirred their curiosity without touching their hearts.

One of the children, who was very thin and hardly able to walk, wore on his head an old kepi he had found on the road. It fell over his shoulders and covered a third or more of his scrawny chest. The big, wide hat wobbled comically with every step the child took. Some of the spectators laughed callously. Then the child raised his face and looked them straight in the eye. The laughter died suddenly as they saw that the child’s mouth was a gaping bullet wound that had torn open his entire jaw.

The women were mostly repugnant. Their faces were hardened and their eyes told the story of their pain and hatred. One of them stood apart. Suffering had sculpted her face without taking away its beauty. She had a classic Judaic profile that was marred now by the sharp outline of her cheekbones. Her face was pale and ravaged by hunger. She had big black eyes that were pools of dignified sorrow. She told a simple story. It was a tragedy in a few words, common enough, with the invariable ending from a bullet.

They were put in a long house on the square. The poor people were surrounded by insistent groups of curious bystanders who subjected them to interminable questioning. Finally, they focused their attention on the children, thinking something might be learned from their innocent honesty.

One of these, a boy younger than nine but with the shoulders of an athlete, shocked them with his precociousness and his cleverness. He smoked a cigarette as he talked. He inhaled with the self-assurance of a habitual smoker. He volunteered a stream of information, almost all of it made up. His audience listened seriously, because it was a child speaking. But when a soldier came into the room with a Comblain rifle in his hand, the boy stopped his patter and to everyone’s surprise he said in an uppity tone of voice that the “comblé” was a piece of junk, it was a “sissy” gun and made a “hell of a noise” but it did not have any kick. He preferred a “manulixe,” a real rifle. So they gave him a Mannlicher and he started to work the lock as deftly as if it had been a favorite toy. They asked if he had ever fired one.

With a winning smile he said, “And why not? Those soldiers are old geezers. When us young bucks go after ’em, it’s all over. We cut ’em down a notch.”

The boy was, of course, incredibly depraved. It was a lesson to everyone. He was a trained bandit, flotsam of this desert combat, carrying the burden of the tremendous legacy of its mistakes. Three centuries of barbarism had been packed into the nine short years of his life. It was clear that the Canudos campaign had to have a higher goal than the stupid one of wiping out a backlands town. There was a more serious enemy to contend with, and the battle would be slower and more dignified. The entire campaign would turn out to be a barbaric, senseless criminal act if the country did not follow the path of the artillery with a campaign of education. The mission of this new war would be to draw these rude and backward fellow citizens into the mainstream of modern life and into the life of the country.

But this was no time to dream of the future, with so many difficulties requiring an immediate solution. The minister of war stayed for four days in Queimadas, assuring that nothing would stand in the way of mobilizing the army troops, and then he left for Monte Santo.