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scarcelyanabstraction.YettheSertão,seeminglydeadattheendofdrought,resurrected
itself, flowered, and became rich with the rains—“nature in love with itself.” This was a
Sertões
, and fed the enduring myths of Northeastern resilience.
In a world so lacking in justice, so fickle and so deadly, the idea of utopi-
as—intentional communities of fairness and virtue in life, rather than paradise in
death—had a particularly strong hold in the Northeast. The utopian imagination was de-
rivedfromPortuguese,Catholic,indigenous,andslavetraditions.Theseincludedthere-
workingofmedievalPortugueseSebastianism, thestoryofthereturnofawarriorprince
lost in battle against the infidels at Ceuta (Morocco) in 1578 to install—somewhere—a
regime of righteousness and a new Jerusalem. This myth certainly resonated with the
dreams and desires of the oppressed and has become an enduring metaphor in Brazilian
ticesoffolkprophecyandtheJesuiticutopianismof“CitiesoftheSun”whoseChristian
communalism and syncretic practices stretched throughout the Bahian Sertão. Indigen-
ous myths of “Lands without Evil” with roving messiahs and pilgrimages envisioned
genous and Catholic spiritualism into religious practices with African roots; a complex
millenarianism had always been part of the New World African cultural dynamic.
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The late nineteenth century produced scores of millenarian movements in native so-
ulations tried to adapt to a more pervasive integration into emergent modern economies
lenarian uprising had striking parallels with that of Canudos, including charismatic folk
prophets, indigenous populations (Tarahumara and Yaqui), valiant “bandit” fighters, and
accusations of fanaticism and monarchism, and it likewise ended in a complete destruc-
revealed deep structural economic change, the rise of new power relations, and signific-
ant modifications in access to resources, traditional territories, and native landscapes of
identity.
The threads of these different millenarian traditions—Catholic, native, and Afric-
an—were significant parts of Canudos practices and legends. Modern historiography of
the place reflects the rise of Marxist, subaltern, and moral economy approaches to rural
studies that focus on deep inequalities and cultural mechanisms supporting precarious
livelihoods in order to refute the perception of Canudos as a place of “religious fanat-
zealots reflects his (and the more general coastal) arguments about modern rationality
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