A Short Prelude - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 3

and protected by jagunços (the fighters of the Northeastern outback), Canudos was em-
blematic of all the atavism that Brazil, in its yearning for stature among modern states,
wanted to forget.
The republic, faced with multiple insurgencies, deemed it essential to quash any res-
istance to the state in the most decisive military and symbolic ways and to quell any
rumors about restoration of Dom Pedro or his family. The importance of a victory at
Canudos for the military regime that had barely come to power cannot be overemphas-
ized.Thefraillegitimacy onwhichtherepublicrested,theideological importance ofthe
military as the great unifier of the nation, and the rationalist triumph over “superstitious
hordes” were necessary ifBrazil was toposition itself as anenlightened state rather than
a backward nation led by a constitutional monarch. Da Cunha was sent to the outback
as an “embedded reporter” and aide to General Bittancourt to report on events for the
newspaper Estado do São Paulo .
Civilization's triumph over barbarism—the usual colonial story, glossed with the
fashionable ideologies of conquest and racism that infused most imperial tracts of the
day—seemed to frame Os Sertões , but by the end of the topic these received ideas
were in rubble, just like the rebel city. Os Sertões chronicles the suppression of Ca-
nudos, providing an extraordinary account of military campaigns (and guerrilla war-
fare). The topic is celebrated not just for the brilliance of the writing but also because da
Cunha's authorial voice, initially sneeringly superior, insisting on the inevitable victory
ofBrazil'scoastalcivilization andthewhiteraceoverthepathetic barbarismofthemes-
tizo backlanders, increasingly empathizes with the doomed rebels, with their vibrant life
and culture unfolding in the dry forests and in their “mudwalled Jerusalem.” Resisting
the assaults of the republic (and handily defeating three of the four expeditions against
them), the backwoodsmen held off a brutal siege by five thousand troops. Brazil's well-
armed militia hardly advanced in three months. The blockade (and the latest German
weaponry) eventually took their toll and the republican army triumphed, but only after
house-to-house combat extraordinary in its lethality on both sides. Those who had given
themselvesupasprisonersofwarwereslaughtered,whilethehuddlingwomenandchil-
dren of Canudos were sent off to brothels or dismal lives of indentured servitude. The
conflict was one of the major wars of its age anywhere on the planet and was followed
avidly in the national and European press. 2 In Brazil, it was meant as an object lesson
for other insurgencies. Even so, other uprisings, like the Contestado Rebellion in Santa
Caterina (1914-17), took their inspiration from the Canudos resistance. 3
DaCunhabeganhisbookasanarrativeonthetriumphofwhitecultureandtheinevit-
ableextinction ofdegenerate racesbythemoreadvanced ones.Heproposedhisworkas
a kind of nostalgic ethnography of a vanishing world, crumbling before inevitable civil-
ization. At the end, with Canudos's Vasa Barris River literally running red, the prisoners