Backlands (33 page)

Even the brushwoods take on a different appearance.
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It takes a new terminology to describe the backlands flora accurately, with its various changing aspects. One would perhaps best refer to this region as the classic example of the
caatanduvas
, the indigenous term for sick forests, which extend to the south and east all the way to Monte Santo.

The small contingent made its way into this region on the second day of the expedition, after bivouacking a few kilometers out of Juazeiro. They had to proceed along forty kilometers of desert road until they came to a tiny waterhole known as Ox Lake, where they found a few traces of water. From this point they continued on into the desert, stopping at Caraibinhas, Mari Mucambo, Rancharia, and other isolated settlements. Some of these were deserted because the summer heat was a sign of the approaching drought. The few inhabitants who had stayed, either to avoid traveling in the drought or because they were afraid of the unrest, now made their way north driving their goats, the only animals that can adapt to this soil and climate.

The exhausted troops arrived in Uauá on the nineteenth, after a terrible crossing.

This settlement, consisting only of two streets converging into an irregularly shaped town square, is the liveliest place in that part of the
sertão
. Like most of the villages whose names are pompously inscribed on our maps, it is a mix of hamlet and Indian camp. It is an ugly cluster of about a hundred badly constructed houses and run-down shacks with a sad and depressing appearance.

This place is at the crossroads of four highways—to Jeremoabo, running by Canudos, and to Monte Santo, Juazeiro, and Patamoté. On Saturdays these roads bring to its fair a large number of country people who cannot afford a longer trip to more prosperous places. They crowd here on festival days as if they were going to the capital in the faraway “big lands,” their term for the coastland, which they fear and can only vaguely imagine. They are decked out in their Sunday best or clad in brand-new leather clothing. They gawk at the wares of two or three poor shops and browse through the pitiful display of industrial products at the fair booths, such as the tanned leathers and caroa fiber hammocks, that to them look like valuable items. During the week Uauá is deserted, with just one or two open shops. It was a day like this, when the inhabitants were inside to avoid the noon heat, that they were surprised by the sounding of military trumpets. The troops had arrived.

They entered by way of the street that led from the highway and positioned themselves at the square. They were an attraction. Both curious and timid, the citizens stared at the soldiers as if they were in the presence of a potent army. In fact, the bedraggled soldiers were covered with dust and out of formation. Their rifles with gleaming bayonets were propped on their shoulders.

After they stacked their weapons, the soldiers billeted for the night. A watch was set on all sides and guards were posted at each of the four roads leading into the village.

While it looked like a battle-staging area, this obscure settlement was nevertheless just a stop along the way. After a brief rest the expedition would immediately set out for Canudos, at dawn the next day, the twentieth. This did not happen. There, as everywhere else, they were confronted with contradictory information, which hindered their ability to take decisive action. As a result, the entire day was wasted in inquiries; an immediate attack was finally ordered after a dangerous delay. When night fell an incident occurred that would only be revealed the next day. Almost the entire population fled the town. They left their dwellings without being noticed, in small groups, slipping furtively between the ranks of the sentry outposts. In the sudden fearful exodus entire families, even the infirm, slipped out into the open fields under the cover of night.

This event should have been understood as a warning. Uauá, like other neighboring places, was under the rule of Canudos. The people who lived there were faithful followers of Antônio Conselheiro. Hardly had the troops stationed themselves in the square when these supporters headed for the threatened city, arriving at dawn on the twentieth, to give the alarm.

The mass departure of the town indicated that the emissaries had time to return to warn the townspeople of a counterattack by the men of Canudos. They were simply evacuating the battlefield. The military expedition, however, did not pay much attention to the incident and prepared to resume its march the next day. Unaware of the seriousness of the situation, they slept peacefully in their quarters that night.

They were awakened by the opponent that they thought they would surprise.

At dawn on the twenty-first a band of
jagunços
was sighted on the horizon. A distant sound of song could be heard over the silence of the still-sleeping earth, echoing sonorously over the desolate waste. The warrior band was advancing to Uauá, marching to the droning cadence of kyrie eliesons and praying. It was a penitential procession like those that had been practiced by superstitious backlanders who would petition to heaven when the long summers would usher in the punishing drought.

Their approach was true to form. Rather than stage an attack at night, the backlanders approached in daylight to announce their arrival from a distance. They were awakening their enemy for the fight.

At first glance, they did not look like fighters. They held up symbols of peace: a religious banner, the “flag of the divine,” and, in the strong arms of a Titan believer, a great wooden cross, tall as a stone statue in a public park. The combatants were armed with old muskets, the cowboy’s poke, scythes, and poles. They were submerged in a crowd of believers who, unarmed, carried icons of their favorite saints and dried palms taken from church altars. Some processed as if they were on a religious pilgrimage, with stones from the road on their heads. They recited their coconut rosaries as they walked. They likened the arrival of the soldiers to one of the periodic natural disasters that descended upon the land. They marched to battle praying and singing, as if they were seeking a decisive test of faith.

There were many of them. Some informants exaggerated the number threefold, saying there were three thousand. But they advanced in a disorderly fashion. A small platoon positioned in the surrounding
caatinga
could have dispersed them in a few minutes. The settlement in front of them had no sentries. They were fast asleep.

Everything indicates that the crowds approached until they reached the line of advance guards. They woke them up. The startled sentries fired their weapons at random and then retreated hastily to the square where the rear guard was posted, leaving to the enemy a comrade who had been knifed. The alarm was sounded. Soldiers zigzagged through the square and down the streets. They bolted still half-asleep and half-naked from doorways; they jumped out of windows, adjusting their weapons and trying to pull on their uniforms as they ran. They did not enter into any kind of formation but, under orders from a sergeant, they scattered like untrained sharpshooters. The
jagunços
were already at the square, right behind the retreating sentries. The encounter began brutally, a fierce hand-to-hand combat with crushing clubs and rifle butts, clashing knives and sabers, zinging revolver and musket shots, while the aggressors crushed the fragile line of defense and drove the soldiers back. And the crazed crowd, between vivas to the Good Jesus and to the Counselor, and strident whistles from their
taquara
reeds, oozed forward into the square raising the flag of the divine, brandishing their saints and their weapons, and following the bold
curiboca
who used his huge wooden cross as a battering ram as he cleared a path for them.
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This event happened in an instant and was the only military maneuver witnessed by those who saw the action. From that time forward they could not distinguish who was who. It was chaotic, like a riot at a fair. For the most part the soldiers sought cover in the houses and drilled holes in the walls through which to fire, in a full defense. That saved them. The backlanders, crowded around their religious images in the square, were now being mowed down. They fell in large numbers. The fight became one-sided, despite their superior numbers. They were hit with repeated fire and they could only retaliate with one round of musket shot for every hundred from the Comblains. While the soldiers bombarded them, the
jagunços
had to laboriously reload their primitive weapons with gunpowder, wadding, and bullets. They had to stick the ramrod down the long barrel of their
trabucos
, slowly loading them with those ingredients as if they were filling up a mine. Then they had to prime and cock the weapon and finally fire it, completing a heroic process that took a full two minutes of immobility in the dizzying din of the battle.

After a while they gave up the hopeless struggle and went after their enemy swinging bare knives, cattle pokes, and gleaming scythes. But this crazed attack was even more deadly to them. Their numbers were depleted without gaining any advantage over their bunkered adversaries, who would fire on them from windows that burst open with explosions of gunshot. At one of these, a half-naked lieutenant, who awoke late to the scene, fought for a long time. He rested his rifle on the window ledge and aimed at the chests of his attackers, never missing a shot, until he fell back dead on the bed that he had slept on and never had time to leave.

The fierce battle continued for about four hours, without any incidents worthy of being recorded and without any visible sign of tactical maneuvers. Everyone fought for themselves, in response to the circumstances. In the yard of the house in which he was billeted, the commander did the only thing that could be done in the disorder. He distributed cartridges by tossing them over the garden wall after grabbing them by the handful from cases hacked open with a machete.

Still clustered around the flag of the divine, which was now shredded by bullet holes like a war pennant, the
jagunços
wound their way through the streets, going around the village, and then they straggled back to the square, shouting vivas and curses. Eventually, as they went around in these crazy circles, they abandoned the action and dispersed through the neighboring area. It could be that they understood the futility of their efforts, or perhaps they thought they could lure their enemy to the open plain.

The battlefield was gradually abandoned. At last they receded into the distance and all that could be seen of them was the dot of the holy banner that was leading them back to Canudos. The soldiers did not pursue them. They were exhausted.

Uauá was in shambles. Fires smoldered in several places. The dead lay flat and the wounded writhed on bloody floors, balconies, and doorways, in the streets and the square under the blazing sun.

Among them were dozens of backlanders, 150 according to the official report of the battle, a disproportionate number to the 10 dead—a lieutenant, a sergeant, 6 privates, and 2 guides—and 16 wounded of the federal troops. Even though he still had 70 able-bodied men, the commander decided not to continue the mission. The attack had shaken him. He had seen the resolve of the backwoodsmen close up. His own victory terrified him, if it could be called that, because of its terrible results. The army doctor with the troops went insane under the pressure of the battle. He was no use in treating the wounded, some of them in serious condition.

It was urgent that they retreat before nightfall or before another attack, which terrified the troops. They decided to leave immediately. As soon as their dead were given crude burials in the chapel at Uauá they headed out again under the terrible sun.

It was like a retreat.

The crossing to Juazeiro was made under forced march, in four days. When the expeditionary band arrived, their uniforms in shreds, wounded, lame, and exhausted, they looked like a defeated army. The population became alarmed and prepared to flee. Trains with their engine fires going waited in readiness at the stations. All able-bodied citizens fit for combat were called into service. The telegraph lines wired the news of an incipient backlands war to the entire country.

The reversal at Uauá demanded swift retaliation.

This, however, was planned amidst disagreement between the commander of the federal troops in Bahia and the governor of the state. The governor was an optimist who dismissed the backlands disturbances as a mere pubic disorder that could be easily handled by the police. The commander considered them to be far more serious and potentially escalating to military operations.

The second expedition was thus organized without a firm plan or clearly defined rules of engagement, in response to conflicting orders by two independent officials of equal rank. At the outset it comprised a hundred enlisted men and eight military officers, along with a hundred men and three officers from the state troops. This force set out for Queimadas on November 25, under the command of Major Febrônio de Brito of the Ninth Infantry Battalion. At the same time the district commander requested more equipment from the federal government, including four Nordenfelt machine guns, two Krupp field guns, and 250 additional troops—100 from the Twenty-sixth Battalion of Aracajú and 150 from the Thirty-third of Alagoas.