A Quilombo Called Canudos - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 51

could flee, were given ranchos, wives, and provisioning grounds, and were expected to
serve and protect the family with whom they were allied. Disciplined by violence, this
population was both admired and reviled by locals and outside observers and was the
foundational social matrix for what has come to be called social banditry. Aware of all
thewaterandallthepathsthroughwhatseemedtobeonlytracklessthicketsofthe caat-
inga , 49 the jagunços inhabitedthecomplexintersection ofracial,cultural,andeconomic
politics at the margins of the great sesmarial landscapes.
In times of duress, and under the afflictions of the Northeastern droughts, these ja-
gunços might easily engage in simple thievery as a well as “social” or “redistributive”
banditry,thoughtheywereoftenseenasplain marauders, ambushing convoysandsteal-
ing cattle and women. They were more likely to engage in plunder when the precarious
livestock and planting that formed their livelihood were undone by the lack of rain and
when patrons abandoned the outback as they did during drought. Jagunços were “crim-
inalized” when they slipped beyond the control of their masters but were idolized and
fearedwhenintegratedintopowerstructures. Jagunços ,alongwiththewanderingsaints,
were the most powerful figures toemergefromthe humble soil ofthe outback with stor-
ies of bandit kings like Lampião, and his consort, Maria Bonita—Robin Hood figures to
some in the Sertão. 50
Those same jagunços became the defenders of Canudos and the clandestine heroes
of da Cunha's tropical Iliad. They were, wrote da Cunha, “Conselheiro's best disciples
. . . capable of loading their homicidal blunderbusses with the beads of their rosaries.” 51
These sertanejo jagunços would later morph from Rebel Warriors to Defenders of the
Nation when the terrain of battle shifted to the Amazon.
Indians and Aldeias
There were still many Indian groups in the Sertão at the end of the nineteenth century.
The occupation of the interior of the Northeast proceeded only through extensive,
centuries-long Indian wars, including a massive offensive against the coastal tribes, a
campaign known as the Guerra dos Bárbaros—the Savage Wars—in the seventeenth
century, and ceaseless guerrilla war elsewhere. 52 In the Northeast, these campaigns las-
ted well into the nineteenth and even twentieth centuries, in spite of the external imagin-
ary of the “vanishing Indian.” 53
The coastal world of the Northeast and Bahia had been dominated by Tupí groups,
who had been embroiled in the frontlines of Portuguese expansion and were sucked into
the early phase of native slavery, where cane, cholera, and malaria took their toll. Just
back of the Tupi terrains were the territories of the Karirí, of the Gê linguistic group
and the kinfolk of da Cunha, whose lands extended from the São Francisco basin prac-
tically to São Luis in Maranhão, and paralleled the coastline roughly to Salvador. As