Backlands (10 page)

This was revealed for the first time by Senator Tomás Pompeu as he put together, by himself, a quite eloquent chart wherein the appearances of droughts during the past and present centuries stand out in a singular parallelism, as we presume that its slight discrepancies can only indicate defects in observation or deviations in the oral tradition through which they were observed.

In any case, what does stand out from any simple observation is a coincidence that is repeated enough times to remove any intrusion of chance.

Citing only the greatest events, therefore, the droughts of 1710-11, 1723-27, 1736-37, 1744-45, 1777-78 in the eighteenth century are matched against those of 1808-09, 1824-25, 1835-37, 1844-45, 1877-79 in this century.

This coincidence is almost invariably mirrored, as if it were a print of the other. It stands out even more in the identical periods of surcease where, in both cases, there is no continuation in the progress of the damage.

During the eighteenth century, in fact, there was a long interregnum of thirty-two years (1745-77), which corresponds with absolute equivalency to the exact matching dates of 1845-77.

If we continue with a closer examination of the picture, new firm-and-positive dates stand out strongly and with the rigor of unknown facts being revealed. We can observe in this a strange and undisturbed progress in the flagellation, interrupted at not too varying intervals of between nine and twelve years and continuing on in such a way as to allow certain predictions of its outbreak.

Still and all, in spite of the extreme simplicity of immediate results here, the problem, which can be translated into the simplest of mathematical formulas, remains insoluble.

Impressed by the reasons behind this rarely altered progression and reducing it, albeit it a bit forcibly, into a period of eleven years, a naturalist, the Baron of Capanema, thought to trace by extraterrestrial facts, so characteristic of the inviolable period in which they occurred, its remote origin. What he found in the regularity in which they appear and disappear intermittently, was a complete match with that of sunspots.

These obscure nuclei, in fact, some broader than others, where the surface was darkened within the blazing enclosure of the faculae, would slowly come into being with the rotation of the sun and have periods of maximum and minimum intensity that vary between nine and ten years. Also, for a long time now, ever since Herschel’s intuitive spark of genius discovered their appreciable influence on the dosage of heat emitted by the earth, the correlation has been steadfastly recorded, supported by geometric and physical data that come together for a single effect.

What is left to do is to equate the smallest of the spots, a screen on the irradiation of the great star, to the high point of the droughts on the tortured planet so as to give evidence that the periods are at par with one another.

It is at this point that, in spite of its most attractive look, the carefully planned theory has failed. Rarely do the data of the summer paroxysms in the North coincide with those just mentioned.

The failure of this attempt, however, does not reveal any lessening in value of an approach so strongly dictated by such notable circumstances so much as it does of this exclusive approach, which seeks a single cause. It is because the matter at hand and the underlying complexity of the concrete facts rely on secondary reasons, closer at hand and stronger, with their continuously progressing modalities based on the nature of the soil and the geographic disposition. The backlands can only be definitively systematized when there has been an extensive set of observations that allows for a definition of the dominant climatic agents.

Be that as it may, the severe climate in the northern states works as a disordered and fugitive agent, with no as yet defined laws, subject to local disturbances that come from the nature of the land itself and from more widespread reactions to its geographical makeup. From this come the currents of air that put it out of balance and give it a variety of effects.

To a large degree and perhaps in some dominant way, the northeast monsoon, with its origins in strong gusts in the uplands of the interior over a broad surface stretching all the way to Mato Grosso, is, as is known, the source of great barometric depressions in summer. Drawn by these, the strong northeasterly winds that come ashore along the northern coast from December to March are singularly favored by the conformation of the land itself in their swift passage over the naked plains, whose intense radiation raises the saturation point, lessening the possibility of rain and repelling it, allowing the wind to carry off intact to the inner recesses of the continent, to the headwaters of the great rivers, all the humidity it had absorbed as it crossed the seas.

The orographic disposition of the backlands, in fact, except for slight variations—strings of mountains aligned parallel in a northeasterly way to the dominant monsoon—facilitates the monsoon’s passage. It channels it. It puts up no opposing slopes against it, nor any barrier to bring about cooling and a condensation in rain.

One of the reasons for the droughts, therefore, is based on the topographical disposition.

The flagellated lands of the North lack any tall mountain range running in a direction perpendicular to the wind and that might bring on a “dynamic colding,” to use an expressive English phrase.

A fact of nature of a higher order can explain this hypothesis.

So it is that the droughts have, over a long time, always appeared between two fixed dates, according to the lore of the backlanders: from December 12 to March 19. There is no single example of a drought’s having ended outside these limits. If it extends beyond, it is inevitably prolonged over the whole course of the year until the frame is reopened once again. With matters being this way, and keeping in mind that it is precisely within this interval that the long stretch of equatorial calm periods, in their slow turn along the equator, reaches its height over those states all the way to the borders of Bahia, could we not consider it in this case as serving as an imaginary mountain running from east to west and giving a momentary correction to the unfortunate orographic disposition? Might it not interpose itself to the monsoon and cause it to halt with a rise in the currents and the subsequent cooling and immediate condensation in the diluvial cloudbursts that then fall suddenly over the backlands?

This string of conjectures serves only to point out the many remote factors that can occur in a matter that is of double interest to us, both in its higher scientific aspect and in its more intimate significance, which involves the destiny of a broad tract of our country. It displaces, therefore, to a lower level the influence that up till now has uselessly emphasized the trade winds, and it is strengthened in some way by the intuition of the backlander himself, for whom the persistence of the northeaster—the “drought wind,” as he has expressively baptized it—means the same as the permanence of an unrelieved and terribly cruel situation.

The beneficent stages come on suddenly.

After two or three years, as occurred between 1877 and 1879 when the sun was scorching the naked plains, its very intensity had its origins in an inevitable reagent. The atmospheric pressure finally falls everywhere in considerable measure. The barrier of heated air takes shape in a greater and more defined way, standing against the winds coming from the coast. In the collision they unleash violent storms, which rise up with flashes of lightning, clouding over the whole sky in minutes, giving off immediately heavy downpours over the scorched desert earth.

Then one seems to make out a rampart of ascending columns that brings about the phenomenon as it collides with the northeaster.

According to many witnesses, the first showers that fall from on high never reach the ground. Halfway down they evaporate into the boiling ascending columns and then go back, repulsed, into the clouds, condensing once more and falling again, pouring forth until they finally touch the soil, which they do not dampen at first as they still evaporate at rapid intervals as though they had fallen onto incandescent plates, to fall again in this quick and continuous exchange until they finally form the first threads of water that flow among the stones as the first torrents plunge down the slopes and pour out into heavy flowing creeks among the gullies, now joining together in fast-flowing rivulets. These thicken into muddy rivers that are sketched out at random according to the makeup of the slopes. Swiftly passing along in their currents are torn-off branches of trees as all goes swirling and clashing in one single wave, in the same chaos of dark and raging waters. . . .

If this sudden attack is followed by normal rains, the backlands are transformed and return to life. Many times, however, with a swift passage of the storm they go back to what they were. The rapid drainage of the terrain and evaporation, which then grows much stronger, turn the land desolate and arid once more. As the burning atmosphere penetrates, the winds double the hygroscopic capacity, and it goes along, day by day, absorbing whatever humidity is left in the ground, beginning once again the inflexible cycle of droughts. . . .

Crossing the backland trails is more exhausting than crossing a naked steppe, however.

In the latter case the traveler has at least the relief of a broad horizon and the perspective of open plains.

Here the
caatinga
brushland engulfs him. It cuts off his field of vision. It attacks and stupefies him. It tangles him up in its thorny scheme of things and has no attraction for him. Rather, it repels him with its stinging leaves, its thorns, its dry wood standing up like lances. And it unfolds before him for mile upon mile, unchanging in its desolate look of leafless trees and twisted, dry branches, all curled around each other and pointing stiffly into space or bending over toward the ground as they recall some immense waving of arms, torture, or the death throes of vegetation. . . .

This is not made up, however, of the reduced species found in deserts—crippled mimosas or rough euphorbias over a carpet of withered grass—and although it seems to contain all manner of different plants, its trees, when seen as a whole, have the look of a single family made up of only a few genera, reduced almost to one invariable species, diverging only in size, with all the same conformation, the same appearance of dying plants, almost without trunks, branching out as soon as they emerge from the ground. This is the result of an explicable effect of their adaptation to the constricting conditions of the harsh environment where they struggle to evolve. The ones that grow with such diversity in the brushwoods are here formed by a single mold. They change back and forth and with slow metamorphosis go along in a tendency toward a quite limited number of types, which are characterized by the attributes of those possessing the greatest capacity for resistance.

This is imposed on them in a tenacious and inflexible way.

The struggle for life in wooded areas means an irrepressible seeking of light as bushes turn into vines, elastic and distended as they flee the smothering shade and lift themselves up, drawn more to the sun’s rays than to their ancient trunks. Here we have the complete opposite. The sun here, more menacing and unlike anywhere else, makes for more misery. The sun is the enemy who must be avoided, deceived, or fought against. The manner in which it is avoided is, in some ways, predictable, as we shall point out in the inhumation of dying plant life as it buries its stalks in the soil. But as the soil, too, is harsh and hard, dried out by drainage on the slopes or sterilized by a succession of strata, the sun’s baking of it is complete. Plants are caught between two quite unfavorable aspects of the soil—red-hot surface and rough terrain. The most robust of plants carry imprinted in their abnormal appearance all the stigmata of this silent battle.

Vegetation, tall and proud in other places, becomes dwarfed, stunted here. At the same time the spread of its leaves becomes broader and stretches out over the surface of the land to make contact with the air so as to absorb any scant moisture diffused in it. Roots atrophy as they struggle against the impenetrable subsoil and are replaced by a radius of secondary shoots that are twisted into ganglia of sap-swollen tubercles. There is an increase in foliage. This stands out stiff, sharp as shears, at the tips of the branches, cutting off the sunlight from the ground, affording a protective cover for the fruit, which is rigid and sometimes shaped like pinecones. In this way the pods have a perfect means of splitting open, bursting as if driven by steel springs, an admirable apparatus for spreading the seeds as they are scattered profusely about the ground. And they all have, without a single exception, the soft scent of flowers, an untouchable barrier that rises up on cold nights and spreads out over the plants, protecting them from any sudden drop in temperature, as though some invisible enchanted tents were covering them. . . .

Arranged in that way, the tree is prepared to make a stand against the brutal environment.

The cauterizing drought settles over the backlands. The white-hot air becomes sterilized. The ground becomes stony, cracked, ridged. The northeaster roars across the barren land, and like a lacerating hair shirt, the
caatingas
spread their thorny branches over the land. . . . With all its functions reduced, however, the plant, as it goes through summer with latent life, feeds on the reserves it has stored up during the slack seasons in order to break the grip of summer, ready to transform itself with the first signs of spring.

Some plants in more favorable terrain will deceive the harsh climate in a better way with a most unusual arrangement.

They can be seen in large numbers, gathered together in clusters or scattered about and isolated. These so-called weeds, bushes a bit over a foot tall, with broad, thick, shiny leaves, make up an exuberant flora that is laughing in the midst of the general desolation. They are the dwarf cashew plants, the typical
Anacardium humile
of the arid plains, the
cajuí
of the natives.
¹⁴
These strange plants expose their roots in a circle and these roots extend down to a surprising depth. There is no way of uprooting them. The descending axis grows in size the deeper one digs. It can finally be seen that it goes about dividing up into forking branches. It makes its way through the earth and comes together in one single vigorous tail at the bottom.