A Quilombo Called Canudos - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 57

germs of disorder and crime.” 82 With terms like immoral , thieving , and dangerous , the
language of threat had in the past placed quilombos at the center of an intense and
anxious official discourse of political security and criminality, requiring destruction of
such communities. In addition to this idiom of the “other,” da Cunha framed Canudos's
necessary annihilation in the modern language of historical laws and the Spencerian lo-
gic of biological progress: the populations of Canudos “had not evolved.” 83
Canudos and Total War
WasCanudosa quilombo ?Technically,ifthetermislimitedtoitsnarrowusageas“slave
refuge,” no, since the settlement grew and was obliterated after abolition. It may have
beeninearliermoments,asdaCunhanoted;theBaronofJemoabo'scorrespondentscer-
tainlyclassifieditasaslave,ex-slave,andcriminalrefuge. 84 Butifthetermcanbeamp-
lified into its broader meaning, a place of socioeconomic and political autonomy—and
this is the way the term is widely used in modern Brazil—then Canudos takes on the
functional, symbolic meanings and practices of a quilombo . With the debates about ter-
ritory, identity, and land rights that have emerged since the 1988 constitution, which re-
cognized traditional land rights and ethnic territories, a more complex historiography of
quilombo communities easily encompasses Canudos. The term quilombola or quilombo
is now an umbrella for a diversity of pathways, ethnic routes, and roots of settlements in
ongoing legal battles to ratify historical holdings. 85 The “lineages of liberty” took many
forms, including the occupation of abandoned agricultural settlements. Other lands, ter-
ras do Santo , were technically “owned” by a saint but occupied by Afro-Brazilian com-
munities who made their living there. In addition, refugees from rural violence formed
communities of safety and livelihood. 86 Following current usage, Canudos would cer-
tainly fall into the quilombo category, and in all likelihood, had it not been destroyed, it
might well have received title to its land under the current legislation, especially given
its renown.
Canudos had other cultural features that also marked its quilombo lineage. First, as I
have noted, Canudos, like quilombos , had numerous syncretic and folk elements, rites,
andspiritualpracticesthatservedtounifyethnicallyandculturallypopulationsandgave
social meaning to people who were for the most part dispossessed and disposable. Ca-
nudos clearly placed autonomy, folk religion, noncoercive labor relations, and commun-
alism in opposition to the practices of the secular state, conventional Catholicism, and
the oligarchic economies of labor coercion. 87 It was fundamentally a withdrawal from
these national institutions and a symbolic and practical, rather than revolutionary, chal-
lenge to them.
The usual backland villages and missions were also culturally syncretic, but Canudos
had elements that made it much more quilombo -like. These pertain to the quilombo as