Backlands (45 page)

Only the artillery went along at a dignified pace, its ranks intact, as if it were on parade. It would occasionally stop to sweep the roadside weeds with cannon fire. Then it would continue rolling along, impervious and terrifying to watch.

These steel cannons and the brave soldiers who manned them stalled the ultimate humiliation of the troops. Their courage distinguished them from their comrades. After a while the pursuers focused on the artillery and the escape of the rest of the expedition was due to the work of Salomão da Rocha’s four Krupps and his men. To face them was like coming up against a huge dam. The roaring wave of
jagunços
would just break and recede on contact with them.

The pursuing backlanders kept up their jeering, which was an ugly combination of bullying and cowardice. Then an epic episode occurred.

Kept at a distance for a while, the
sertanejos
slowly closed in on two divisions, which either fought them off while retreating or, lining up in battle formation, let them have a deadly round of cannon fire.

The exploding grenades set the dried weeds on fire. The crackling of the flames could be heard even though they were invisible in the clear, bright morning air. With cries of pain and fury, the
sertanejos
burst out of their hiding places in the brush and, blinded by the smoke, came out to the edge of the road. They shouted and cursed, firing their rifles and pistols. They could not understand how this small group of soldiers could resist when they were determined to attack them with their knives and cattle prods.

These same heroic soldiers, now reduced to a small band, were making slow progress. One by one, they dropped dead. The frightened and wounded mules bucked and turned, stalling the supply train. Finally, it came to a halt. The cannons were stuck at a bend in the road and could not be budged.

Colonel Tamarindo went to the rear and was stoically trying to encourage his men. At this critical moment he made up for his previous irresponsibility. He did what he could to help his men but his attempts were in vain. He had ordered the bugles to sound the command “Column right, halt!” But the buglers had no effect; in fact, they only encouraged the retreat. There was only one command that would be followed and that was “Break ranks!”

A few angry officers pointed their rifles at their men’s chests but they were unable to stop them. They ran like madmen, away from their officers, away from the
jagunços.
When their companions following behind them were shot dead, they did not even turn their heads. Captain Villarim fought single-handedly. As he lay dying, there was not a single man there to comfort him. The crippled and wounded were abandoned, left to drag themselves over the ground as they cursed their deserting comrades.

Over the chaos, the buglers’ notes were not heard or heeded. At last they stopped the call. There was no more infantry left to summon.

The road was littered with abandoned equipment, backpacks, rifles, belts, and swords. Left entirely alone, Colonel Tamarindo galloped desperately down the road as if he would single-handedly head off the vanguard. The artillery was completely abandoned just before reaching Angico and the
jagunços
seized it immediately. This was it. Captain Salomão da Rocha was left with less than six loyal followers. The enemy bore down on him and he was murdered with a machete, next to the cannon that he never abandoned. The horrible battle was done.

Soon after, Colonel Tamarindo was hit by a bullet and fell from his horse. He was still alive when the army engineer Alfredo do Nascimento reached him. The old commander croaked his last order to his comrade: “Get Cunha Mattos.”

But this order could hardly be carried out.

The third expedition was finished. It had completely disappeared. Most of the fleeing soldiers got lost in the desert and wandered with no sense of direction. Many were left to die. Some left the main road for Cumbe or even more remote points. The rest eventually showed up at Monte Santo. Colonel Souza Menezes, commander of the outpost, left as quickly as he could for Queimadas, as soon as he heard of the disaster. This place had become the destination of a human stampede.

Meanwhile, the
sertanejos
were harvesting the spoils of war. Along the road and in various locations, weapons, ammunition, and uniforms were thrown about. The crimson stripes of the uniforms stood out against the gray of the brushwood and would have made the fleeing soldiers too visible. Most of the troops therefore had not only shed their weapons but their clothes as well.

So it was halfway between Rosário and Canudos that the
jagunços
assembled their backlands arsenal. They now had more than enough arms for their needs. The Moreira César expedition had achieved one thing: It supplied the enemy with all their equipment.

The
jagunços
hauled four Krupps back to their settlement. They were now armed with formidable Mannlichers and Comblains to replace their ancient muskets. They had no use for the uniforms and military gear that had been on the soldiers’ bodies. They did not want to be soiled by anything that had touched the skin of the enemy. They disposed of them in an evil manner.

Their success had encouraged not only their mysticism but their brutality. The
sertanejos
made the most of every detail of the soldiers’ cowardly retreat. The government’s power was now, in fact, the government’s weakness. The term
government weakling
would be used for the rest of the campaign. They had seen this impressive and terrifying army arrive with weapons that made their own look like toys. They had watched the troops attack, invade, set fire to their settlement, and blow it to pieces. Then they had watched them retreat, break ranks, and run as they abandoned their equipment along the road. It was certainly a miracle. This troubled them but they could only interpret it one way. They obviously were under divine protection. This certainty grew and inflamed their most barbaric instincts.

A strange event illustrated this. It was an evil diversion that recalled the perverted religious rites of the Ashantis and came after the events described here. After they ended their search of the roads and trails, and gathered up their spoils of war, they collected the dead, decapitated them, and burned the bodies. They lined the heads up on both sides of the highway with the faces turned to the road. Above the heads they hung the remains of the uniforms and equipment, the trousers and capes, the saddles, belts, blankets, backpacks, and canteens.

The brushwood now bloomed with the bright red of officers’ stripes, the pale blue of dolmans, and the gleam of shoulder straps and stirrups.

There is a final terrible detail we must record, which completes this barbarous scene. At a side of the road, impaled on a gum tree, hung the body of Colonel Tamarindo.

It was a horrible sight. Like a ghoulish manikin, the lax corpse resembled a demoniac’s hallucination. It remained there for a long time.

Three months later, when a new force set out for Canudos, it saw rows of bleached skulls along the road, with shreds of uniforms in the tree branches. At one spot, the spectral remains of the old colonel offered mute testimony of a terrible drama.

CHAPTER VI

The news of the trouncing of the Moreira César expedition turned into a major national disaster. The fourth expedition was organized as a response to the emotional reaction of the general public. The way it was done, however, hardly reflected the gravity of the situation.

The general state of alarm triggered the wildest rumors about how such a large and well-equipped army led by a famous commander could have been so completely crushed. From this confusion arose the notion that the insurgents were not acting alone against the government but were supported by unknown rebels who would attack suddenly from various fronts to eliminate the new regime. Since there had been a few cases of armchair revolutionaries in select federal and state capitals, a few years before, who were advocating the restoration of the monarchy, this was used as the grounds for irrational speculation.

Events as grave as this required an explanation, so one was found. The unrest in the backlands was the first manifestation of a huge conspiracy against the newly established institutions of the republic. Canudos was a slum Koblentz, and the rebel chieftain Pajehú was Brunswick in disguise. The defunct Braganza royal line had found its monk in João Abade. Antônio Conselheiro, the state-fair messiah, held the future of the Brazilian people in his arthritic hands.

The republic was at risk and must be protected. This was the outcry in the atmosphere of public hysteria.

Was this an exaggeration? Any newspaper of the day would carry editorials like the one from the
Gazeta de Notícias
that follows:

The writer concludes:

And here is another opinion from
O Paíz
:

Statements like these were common, such as the one from
O Estado de São Paulo
:

This was the mood of the press and the man in the streets.

A few citizens called a rally in the capital and adopted the following resolution:

The same message was heard everywhere. The popular imagination was obsessed with the revival of monarchist sentiment. The legions of imagined monarchist rebels were no more than a few tenacious visionaries. The president of the republic finally broke his usual aloof silence. “We are aware that behind the Canudos episode there are political motives. We are ready. We have everything we need to win, by whatever means and against any foe.”

Finally, the mob took over. Here is an account from the
Jornal do Brasil.

It was late. The agitation of the crowd grew as the numbers swelled. As their anger escalated, they remembered the monarchist journals, and as if on command, they made for the editorial offices of the
Gazeta da tarde
,
Liberdade
, and
Apóstolo
. The police arrived, but not in time. The mob, jeering and shouting, “Long live the republic!” and “Remember Floriano Peixoto,” broke into the offices and destroyed and set fire to them. They tossed everything they could find out to the street and took it to São Francisco de Paula Square. There they made an enormous bonfire of all the objects they had collected: books, papers, pictures, furniture, equipment, and signboards. Another bonfire was made on the Rua do Ouvidor.

At this point we must interrupt our search through the debris and focus our attention on a certain similarity between the events at Rua do Ouvidor and an incident in the
caatinga
, both of them equally savage. Backlands violence was making its mark on history and was a harbinger of social unrest that was not just found in a corner of Bahia but was spreading to the capitals of the Brazilian coast. The man of the backlands, a crude figure in leather, had partners in crime who were potentially more dangerous than he was. Do we need to be more blunt?

This environment was producing, through the process of heredity, a generation of new, albeit developed, cavemen. They wore gloves and had a veneer of culture, but they were complete troglodytes. Civilization generally weeds out such peoples but occasionally a traumatic event will bring them back. When they return, new lawlessness ensues. These people lack significance other than to give us perspective. They remind us to stress this point: To attribute the crisis in the backlands to a political conspiracy is to show ignorance of our race.

This situation is much more complex and interesting. It has to do with circumstances that have nothing to do with dreams of returning monarchies. Not understanding these facts has worse consequences than wiping out three expeditions. It proves that we are not much more civilized than our backward countrymen. At least they were logical. Isolated both in space and in time, the
jagunço
could only behave as he did. He was compelled to put up a terrible fight against the country that, after having ignored him for three centuries, tried to civilize him at gunpoint.