Backlands (68 page)

CHAPTER VIII

LAST DAYS

Something really extraordinary and completely unexpected happened. The devastated enemy suddenly came back with incredible vigor. The troops who had engaged with him from the beginning did not really know him. They had perceived him, until that day, as an astute antagonist, able to disappear in the labyrinth of trenches and lure him on, staunchly repelling the most violent charges, and peerless in his agility in surviving even the most unexpected attacks. They started to view him as a hero.

The dragnet of thousands of bayonets only motivated him and made him more aggressive in battle. And the battles continued from September 23 on, as intensely as before, striking out at all points in the circumference of the siege in a whirling, dizzying motion. The
jagunços
fought down the line, trench by trench.

It was like a huge wave breaking into a churning whirlpool. Dammed by the advance trenches to the east, it flowed back with a bright wake of gunfire toward Cambaio, crashing against the slopes that descend steeply to the river. Under direct fire from our mountain trenches it flowed north and then burst foaming on the bed of the Vaza-Barris until it swept over the stockades that formed a barrier on that side. There it roared south and the soldiers could see it rising and falling, in turbulent eddies, within the settlement itself. After crossing the river it rose up the outer spurs of Mount Favela, receiving fire the entire time, and then twisted noisily to the east, rushing at the left flank of the Fifth Bahian Police. Stopped here, it subsided at the barrier of the Twenty-sixth and then receded from this point to the center of the square in a twisting course. A minute later it broke against the black line. Hardly visible now in the glare of the fusillade, it surged north over the same places it had been before. Always repulsed, always attacking, the wave of
jagunços
kept crashing on and on, with the force of the ocean in a hurricane. Then it stopped. The furious storm was followed by sudden stillness. An absolute quiet fell on both camps. The army forces kept their battle formation but they were given a moment of rest.

Then the cannons boomed. They were firing at the new church. Above the broken cornices, figures could be seen hanging on to the swaying blocks of stone or dashing around in all directions. In addition to the spray of case shot, whole sections of the wall that had been battered by the artillery now fell on them. This was more than they could take and they were forced down, slipping and sliding like monkeys, running for cover in the rubble of the Sanctuary. But they would suddenly pop up again, somewhere on the line, and attack the trenches. Again they would be pushed back, and the cycle of rotating assaults would start over.

Those who before had cast aspersions on the burrowing enemy were now amazed. As in the former bad days, but more intensely now, they were throttled by fear. The displays of foolish bravery stopped. An order was issued that there would be no more bugle calls. The only call to arms was the one made by the enemy. The hills were depopulated and the men stopped strutting and prancing around in open defiance of the enemy’s bullets. Men of courage now crawled carefully through covered passageways, stooping and dashing across open areas. Communications again became very difficult. The supply trains were vulnerable to vicious attack the moment they crossed the hills along the Calumbi road. A number of supply men fell wounded on the last stage of the haul at the entrance of the camp.

The situation had suddenly become unnatural.

It was difficult to comprehend how the
jagunços
still had so many munitions after months of war. They did not ration them. On some occasions, in the pitch of battle it was as if a sustained howling wind was blowing over the camp.

The Mannlicher and Mauser made a smooth hiss; the Comblains had a vibrant hum; blunderbusses cracked as sharply as machine guns. There were projectiles of every kind flying over every point of the far-flung line: over the tents at headquarters, over the hills, to the protected Mount Favela pass where the supply train drivers and the wounded were quartered, over the trenches, along the winding riverbed and the deepest depressions. The fire burst through the leather tent flap of the field hospital and startled the patients and shattered glass vials in the pharmacy beside the hospital. The fire grazed the leafy huts and fell within a hair of the hammocks, shaking the exhausted fighters who were trying to catch a nap. It pounded like a rockslide against the walls of the engineering commission huts and first-column headquarters. It lashed the folds of the tents. It drenched the hillsides. The bullets cracked and ricocheted, bounced and slid into the schist folds, shattering them to splinters like grapeshot.

The battle was feverishly coming to a final climax that would end the conflict. But this spectacular show of resistance on the part of the backlanders made cowards of the conquerors.

The first prisoners arrived on September 24.

The troops brought them in proudly. At first they had found just a few children, ages four to eight, who were straggling along the road and shaking with fear. A more extensive search of the occupied huts yielded a few women and wounded men. They were in terrible condition. One of them was barely conscious and had to be supported under the armpits by a soldier on either side. He had a deep scar on his chest from a saber wound. Another was the old dying half-breed who had tried to shoot at the soldiers. He looked like a disinterred corpse. Months ago he had suffered a stomach wound from a grenade blast. On his abdomen were two holes rimmed with red scar tissue, through which his intestines bulged. He could not even cry out. They left him in the shade of a tent in a state of agony he had probably been enduring for at least three months.

Some of the women offered interesting information. Villa Nova had escaped the settlement on the Várzea da Ema trail. The people in the settlement had been hungry for some time, since all the supplies were given to the fighting men. The most important revelation was that the Counselor had not been seen in a long time.

Moreover, since all the exits were cut off, the villagers were starting to suffer from thirst.

That is all the information they could give. They were so weak that they were barely able to talk. One of them alone was not in the same debilitated condition as the rest. He had a sturdy build, was of medium height, and had broad shoulders. He was a perfect specimen of the backland Hercules found at
sertanejo
fairs. His bone structure was like iron and his prominent joints were gnarled and rigid. Everything indicated that he was a front-line fighter, possibly one of the warriors who had hung like acrobats from the cornices of the new church. Although he was white skinned he was sunburned and his face was covered with freckles. He wore a belt with an empty knife sheath dangling down to his knee. They had seized him in the middle of a fight. He had taken down three or four solders and would have been able to escape if he had not been wounded by a stray bullet that hit him in the right eye socket and knocked him out. They brought him trussed like a wild animal to the tent of the first-column commander. There they released their hold on him. He stood panting from the exertion of the fight. He raised his head. His good eye was sparkling and the wounded eye was full of blood. His expression was frightening. He stuttered and tried to say a few words, which they could barely understand. He took off his broad-brimmed leather hat and ingenuously motioned for permission to sit down.

The soldiers viewed this gesture as an act of utter insolence by an outlaw.

He was brutally shoved out the door. Outside they looped a rope around his neck. He did not protest. They dragged him to the right side of the camp where the unfortunate man and his grim handlers disappeared into the brush.

As soon as they reached a clearing, a horrible scene ensued. In these cases the soldiers would demand that their prisoner salute the republic. This was seldom done. It was the customary preliminary to the cruelty that would follow. They seized the victim by the hair and bent his head back to bare his throat. Then they decapitated him. Often the eager murderers did not want to go through these gory procedures and simply thrust their knife into the prisoner’s belly, disemboweling him.

We had strong men in our ranks who relished these disgusting acts of cowardice. They had the tacit approval of the leadership. In spite of three centuries of underdevelopment, the
sertanejos
did not rival our troops in acts of barbarism.

We will expose these atrocities with a deposition.

The incident we have narrated was a common one. It was minor in the greater scheme of things.

It started after the first reversals caused irritation among the troops and it became a coldly accepted practice, just a minor detail compared to the more pressing matters of war. The moment a
jagunço
was taken prisoner, if he was able to carry a gun they did not waste time in debate. They cut off his head or ripped out his guts. A commanding officer might make a show of disapproval but this was generally ignored.

It was a simple job. They would tie a leather strap around the victim’s neck and drag him through the rows of tents. They did not concern themselves with shocking their comrades or that their prey would try to escape. At the least sign of resistance they would tug on the halter and it would do the work of the knife. Strangulation would substitute for a beheading. They would proceed to the first deep depression in the hills, just a formality, and then would execute the victim. Depending on the mood of the assassins, they might introduce variations. It is well known that the
sertanejos
fear death by cold steel above all else. It is not because they fear death but because they believe that by dying in this fashion their souls will not be saved.

Our men played with this superstition. Sometimes they would promise the
jagunço
a bullet if he would give them information they wanted. This information was rarely given. In most cases the prisoner would not say a word, stoic and unbreakable— facing eternal damnation. The soldiers would try to make him salute the republic with vivas
.
Or they would mock him with insults and cruel remarks in a brutal, hysterical chorus. Then they would set to beheading their victim or hacking his stomach open with knife thrusts. This unwritten tragedy would play itself out against the backdrop of the desolate hills, spiny with cacti and rocks. Laughing ghoulishly, the soldiers would return to camp. There no one questioned them. The incident was too common. The
jagunços
knew full well what their fate would be if they were captured. The people in the settlement were informed about this system of justice, and this is why they put up such a fight. They would have surely surrendered to any other enemy, in light of the tortures they had suffered during this campaign, but instead they fought to the death.

When they were captured and trussed they were taken to the military leaders. By that time they were resigned to their fate. They were strangely serene, which was inexplicable in fighters of so many races and types—they were mestizos of every kind, with personalities as varied as the shades of their skin. Some of these creatures were at the lowest rung of our social ladder yet they presented an incredible arrogance in the face of their tormentors. We record one or two cases.

A black man, one of the few pure Negroes in the settlement, had been captured in late September. He was led to the presence of the commander of the first column, General João da Silva Barbosa. He was still worn out from the skirmish in which he had been captured and from the mistreatment he had received from the soldiers. He was tall and lean and his emaciated body made him seem taller than he was. His thin and slightly stooping posture betrayed the ravages of hunger and of combat. His long hair revealed only a small part of his narrow brow. His notably prognathous face was a bruised and filthy mask covered by a tufted white beard. He walked with a wheeling gait. His unstable and tottering gait, his wooly hair, the small forehead, flattened nose, thick lips, crooked buck teeth, small eyes glinting in their deep sockets, and his long, dangling arms, made him look like an old, sick orangutan.

He did not get in the door. They would not waste time on him because he was an animal and not worth questioning. The general of the brigade, João da Silva Barbosa, gestured from the hammock where he lay recovering from a wound. The corporal attached to the engineering commission, famous for these deeds, understood him at once and brought out the rope. He was short and had difficulty getting the halter around the man’s throat. The prisoner calmly helped him, tying the noose around his own neck.

Those who observed the scene included a headquarters lieutenant and a fifth-year medical student. They witnessed a transformation in the poor man as soon as he started to walk to his death. The filthy body now straightened and took on a sculptured elasticity that was stupendous. It was as if a statue had been made out of the mud. He was now erect and rigid, in a beautiful pose that expressed his pride. His head was held high, his shoulders were thrown back, and he walked like a nobleman while his eyes lit up his dignified face. He walked with determination behind his captor. He was silent, impassive. His muscles stood out against the bones of his skeletal frame. He gave an impeccable performance. He looked an ancient statue of a Titan, buried four centuries ago and now unburied, blackened and chipped, in the heap of ruins of Canudos. It was a reversal of roles, a shameful contrast.

Yet this did not impress anyone.

One concession was made to the human race. They did not kill women and children. There was a condition, however. The prisoners must not appear to be dangerous. There was a case of a forty-year-old
mameluca
who had been captured and brought to the tent of the commander in chief. The general was indisposed and he interrogated her from his cot, surrounded by officers. The customary questions were asked: what were the conditions, how many fighting men were there, what supplies they had. Usually the answer was “I don’t know” or a passive “Would I know?” This one was fresh, aggressive, and angry and she bluntly told them how she felt.