A Quilombo Called Canudos - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 49

claimed communal grazing lands andwater andcollecting rights became vigorously and
viciously contested. 36
The rural population became increasingly impoverished as the nineteenth century
drew to a close. Dantas notes that numbers of small farmers were gradually removed
from better parcels and lacked the financial or political wherewithal to purchase them
or dispute removal. Small farmers and newly freed slaves were squeezed on several
fronts. Their agriculture supplied the caravans the small markets and fed the estates, but
they toiled largely unseen and were viewed as vagabond “surplus” labor. Elites saw this
autonomous labor, where it was not under “subjection,” as fundamentally criminal and
describedsuchworkersas vadios (vagrants)or jagunços .” 37 “Fromslaverytovagrancy”
was one of the catch phrases of the Northeast at the time. New laws were enacted to
press the landless or semi-landless “vagrants” into military service, to incarcerate them,
and to use them as an unpaid work gangs. 38
Canudos, where values of Christian (or syncretic) charity and communalism held
sway, where free access to watered land was assured, became a compelling draw for
backlanders facing the post-slavery economic regimes. This was especially so in times
of intense drought, as the backlanders knew what might lie in store once they fled the
land they had been working: refugee camps, peonage, exile, and death. As the droughts
of 1894 and 1896-97 set populations once more in motion, landed small farmers might
sell up, while the landless simply walked the routes of ancient sertanejo migration, fol-
lowing pilgrimage trails to the brejos , the wetlands of the high Sertão, to Canudos.
Formerlyprosperoustownswiththousandsofpeopleweresometimesreducedtofew-
er than a hundred. The settlement of Quemadas declined from 4,504 in 1892 to three oc-
cupied houses in 1897. Towns within a radius of two hundred miles lost more than half
their populations to Canudos, and distant hamlets became virtually deserted. 39 By 1897,
the time of the final assault, Canudos had exploded from a modest hamlet to a popula-
tion of perhaps twenty-five thousand, the second largest town in Bahia. 40
The massive migration to Canudos was disastrous for the Coronais . This letter to the
Baron of Jeremoabo highlights landowner anxieties: “Antonio Conselheiro continues to
be the reason that many people leave here and other places are now threatened with be-
coming depopulated. The exodus is widespread.” 41 Departures on the scale described
by the Baron's correspondents were alarming. Equally troubling was this note from his
cousin, José Américo: “We'll soon see this Sertão confiscated by him [Conselheiro] and
hispeople: hehasmore than 16,000,It'samiserable bunch; anyone whowasaslave, all
the criminal elements from all the provinces, there is not one human being among them
. . . and I lack workers, I have only four drovers . . . and we're not doing well because of
the lack of rain.” 42
Of Cattle, “Cannibals,” and Quilombos