A Quilombo Called Canudos - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 60

Theseweretheinternalmilitaryfeaturesof quilombos ,buttohostileoutsidersthekey
elementof quilombos wasaneedfortheirtotalobliteration. Quilombos hadbeensitesof
“necessaryannihilation”sincethe1500s,forliterallyhundredsofyearsandthousandsof
expeditions. 91 Once discovered, quilombos were objects of total war where all military
resources were used to the maximum and elimination was the goal. This reality defined
the quilombo history that stretched from Palmares to Canudos. Canudos was the most
artillery-heavy war in Brazilian history. Every person (women and children too) was ul-
timately described as a jagunço and considered to be a combatant.
Canudos was the largest and most symbolically important quilombo since the king-
dom of Palmares. Its hold on the Brazilian imagination as a place of resistance, social
reimagining, and economic justice remains transformative. It was not for nothing that
the authoritarian military dictatorship of 1964-85 flooded the ruins of the rebel city for
a dam in an (unsuccessful) attempt to expunge its memory and symbolic resonance.
This was the social landscape that awaited da Cunha.