Mud-Walled Jerusalem, Mud-Walled Troy - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 64

ilies or brothels in Salvador. Bastos's affecting images would soon become famous as
photographic documentary of the War of Canudos.
The prisoners came in, and as da Cunha put it, “there were few whites or negros
among them. . . . The unmistakable family likeness pointed to the perfect fusion of the
three races. And around them all were the victors, separate and disparate, protiform
types,thewhiteman,theblack,the cafuso ,themulattowithallgradationsofcoloring.” 9
The backlands, according to the environmental theories of his time, had stabilized a ra-
cial mixture. The “pure form,” the racially consolidated sertanejos , were what da Cunha
would call “the bedrock of our race.” 10 His earlier assertions about polygenic theories
of racial origin and darker people as a different species from superior whites evaporated
and never appeared again in his writing. But what happened now, to the horrified gaze
of the journalists was the degola : throat cutting and beheadings. For the men it was “off
with their heads, out with their guts.” 11 Da Cunha's Sertão becomes a “cry of protest,
somber as the bloodstains it reflects.” 12 The hacking up of prisoners in front of their
families, in front of indifferent military commanders who mustered not the slightest re-
proach,completelytraumatizeddaCunha.Inthefinaldays,asthebrutalitybecameeven
more vicious, he became impossibly more distressed.
Da Cunha still remains a powerful witness to the horrifying concluding events. His
sympathy and revulsions oscillated between the sertanejo fighters and the Brazilian mi-
litia as his own identities as coastal elite, military aide, and backland half-breed warred
within him. The final assault no longer vaunts the brisk reportage of battalions lined up
and Krupps cannons firing away, but rather an elegiac and anxious lament of endless
fratricide. Racial triumphalism, the premise so arrogantly articulated in the early part of
Os Sertões ,hasceased tomean anything.Canudosdoesnotfitintoanytheoryofhistory
and civilization that da Cunha had advanced before he took the boat to Bahia. There is
no racial stigma that underpins the epic brutality on the Vasa Barris, only the mark of
Cain.
The final battle involved hand-to-hand combat, in each of the 5,200 houses that made
up the “monstrous urbs” of Canudos. Many had stayed, according to da Cunha, because
they expected that the dead Conselheiro would return with battalions of angels and the
armiesofSt.SebastiantocrushtheRepublicanforces.Thebeleagueredinhabitantswere
inatrueendtime,soperhapstheybelievedanythingwaspossible.Whatallthereporters
saw was unrelenting battle waged behind a “breastwork of corpses” and what eventu-
allybecameanenormouspyre,raisingthenauseatingreekofrottingandroastinghuman
flesh. “The terrible exploits are veiled in obscurity for all time. . . . There before them, a
tangible reality was a trench of the dead, plastered with blood and running with pus. It
was something beyond their wildest imaginings.” 13