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Canudos in the National Context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Robert M. Levine
Robert M. Levine*
Affiliation:
University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida
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Extract

In 1893, the penitent known as Antônio Conselheiro convinced several thousand devout followers to join with him in creating a religious community at Canudos in the Bahian sertão. It grew precipitously, attracting pilgrims from every part of the region, some from places more than two hundred kilometers distant. Within two years it had become the second largest urban center (after the capital, Salvador) in Bahia, Brazil's second most populous state. As soon as the effect on the traditional labor system began to be felt by landowners, pressure was applied to state officials, who in 1896 agreed to take action to dismantle the settlement. This would prove arduous, but after four bloody military campaigns, Canudos was destroyed by the Brazilian army in 1897. The so-called “rebellion” left an indelible legacy on late nineteenth-century Brazil. Taken to be a symbol of the clash between urban rationality and rural “backwardness,” Canudos was celebrated as a pivotal national victory for “progress” and “civilization.”

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , October 1991 , pp. 207 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1991

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References

1 The author would like to thank colleagues Joseph L. Love, Gerald M. Greenfield, Joan Meznar, Peter Beattie, and Steven Topik for their useful and constructive comments during an earlier period of writing, and Consuelo Nováis Sampaio for her permission to consult her research in manuscript form. Roderick Barman, Nancy P.S. Naro, Sheldon Maram, Walter Brem, Tulio Halperin-Donghi, and José Murilo de Carvalho also offered useful observations and advice.

2 See Hobsbawm, Eric, The Age of Empire, 1875–1914. New York: Vantage Books, 1989, p. 22.Google Scholar

3 See, for example, Burns, E. Bradford, “The Destruction of a Folk Past: Euclides da Cunha and Cataclysmic Cultural Clash,” Review of Latin American Studies, 3:1 (1990), 17–36Google Scholar; Facó, Rui, “A Guerra Camponesa de Canudos,” Revista Brasiliense (São Paulo), Nov.-Dec. 1958 Google Scholar; Cava, Ralph della, “Brazilian Messianism and National Institutions: A Reappraisal of Canudos and Joaseiro,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 48:3 (August 1968), 408–420.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Consuelo Nováis Sampaio, “Da transição política da República ao Movimento de Canudos,” paper presented to the seminar, “A República e o Movimento de Canudos,” Museu Eugenio Teixeira, Salvador, Oct. 17, 1989, ms.

5 See Falla com que abriu no dia l’de maio de 1889…da Assembleia Legislativa, Provincia da Bahia o Des. Aurelio Ferreira Espinheira, l’ Vice-Presidente da Provincia, Salvador: Typ. Diario da Bahia, 1889, p. 98, blaming the necessity of importing foreign workers “due to the law of May 13th;” Secretaria da Agricultura, Viação e Obras Públicas, Relatório apresentado ao Dr. Gov. do Estado da Bahia pelo Enginheiro Civil José Antônio Costa, 1896. Bahia: Typ. Correlo de Noticias, 1897, p. 31. In the end, unlike subsidized colonization programs in the south, which brought up to 200,000 immigrants from Europe each year, very few immigrants came and stayed in Bahia or in other northern states.

6 Sampaio, , “Da transição política,” p. 7.Google Scholar

7 The following groups were prohibited from voting: women, males under 21, beggars, men who could not sign their names, members of cloistered religious orders, and foot soldiers.

8 Padre Alexandre Often, S.V.M., Só Deus é Grande, Ph. D. diss., Gregorian University, Rome, 1987, Anexo, pp. 4–5.

9 Antonio Marques da Silva, statement, Itapicuru, March 19, 1965, in “Jagunços” file, Núcleo do Sertão, Salvador.

10 Manuel Benício, Júlio Procópio Favilla Nunes, Aristedes Milton, Salomão de Souza Dantas, Frei João Evangelista, F. Benavides, Durval Vieira de Aguiar.

11 See the author’s “Mud-Hut Jerusalem: Canudos Revisited,” in Scott, Rebecca J., ed., The Abolition of Slavery and the Aftermath of Emancipation in Brazil. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1988, pp. 119–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 See Mônaco Janotti, Maria de Lourdes, Os subversivos da República. São Paulo: Brasüiense, 1986.Google Scholar

13 His older brothers included Antônio, a leading slaveholder planter-entrepreneur and Imperial-era politician linked to São Paulo's commercial success, and Martinho Prado Jr., an outspoken republican. See Levi, Darrell E., The Prados of São Paulo, Brazil: An Elite Family and Social Change, 1840–1930. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987.Google Scholar

14 Levi, Darrell E., The Prados of São Paulo, p. 172.Google Scholar

15 See Renault, Delso, A vida brasileira no final do seculo xix. Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio Editora, 1987, p. 178.Google Scholar

16 de Laet, Carlos, “A Imprensa,” p. 244.Google Scholar

17 Levi, , The Prados of São Paulo, p. 174 Google Scholar; p. 245 note 62. See O Estado de São Paulo, 1–20 March 1897. Prado’s last major monarchist statement, Salvemos o Brasil, was published in Rio de Janeiro in 1899 under the pen name “Graccho.” See also Hahner, June E., Civilian-Military Relations, p. 175.Google Scholar

18 de Laet, Carlos, “A Imprensa,” p. 246.Google Scholar

19 Cunha, , Rebellion in the Backlands, p. 279.Google Scholar

20 Levi, , The Prados of São Paulo, pp. 172–73.Google Scholar

21 General Commandante em Chefe Artur Oscar de Andrade Guimarães, Ordem do dia 102, Canudos, 6 October 1897, in Museu da Polícia Militar, São Paulo.

22 The would-be assassin was described a half-century later by Pernambucan historians and diplomat José Maria Bello as “a young half-breed soldier from the North.” ( Bello, , History of Modern Brazil, p. 156)Google Scholar

23 Rodrigues, Raymundo Nina, As Collectivadades Anormaes, 1897, rpt Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1939, p. 70.Google Scholar David Pace examines the broad nineteenth-century search for a systematic science of human nature, which motivated Nina Rodrigues and his contemporary analysts of Canudos. See his Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Bearer of Ashes. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983, p. 79.

24 “Wolsey” (César Gama), Libello Republicano: acompanhado do commentários sobre a Campahna de Canudos. Salvador: Typ. Diàrio da Bahia, 1899.

25 The speech was scheduled to have been made to the Senate on November 6, 1897. It was published years later in Obras Completas de Rui Barbosa. Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da Educação e Saúde, 1954, Vol. 24 (1897), pp. 183–187.

26 Interview with Francisco de Assis Barbosa, Rio de Janeiro, Fundação Casa Rui Barbosa, June 16, 1985.

27 Samuel Putnam, translator’s Introduction, Rebellion, p. v.

28 See, for example, Romero, Silvio, Estudos sobre a poesia popular no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro, 1888,Google Scholar rpt. Petropólis: Ed. Vozes, 1977; and his Etimologia brasileira (1888). See also Leite, Dante Moreira, O Caráter Nacional Brasileiro, pp. 191–210.Google Scholar The foreign thinkers included Gustave Le Bon, Scipio Sighele, Lewis Henry Morgan, Edward Tylor, John McLennan, James Frazer, and John Lubbock. See Pace, David, Claude Lévi-Strauss, p. 79.Google Scholar See Romero, Silvio, “O Carater Nacional e as Origins do Povo Brasileiro,” in de Mendonça, Carlos Sussekind, Silvio Romero: sua formação intelectual, 1851–1880. São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 1938, pp. 48–52 Google Scholar; Cantos populares do Brasil, 1890, rpt. Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio Editora, 1954 and the same author’s Doutrina contra doutrina: o evolucionismo e o positivismo no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Liv. Francisco Alves, 1894.

29 A good overview of this theme is provided by Pereira de Queiroz, Maria Isaura, “Identidade Cultural, Identidade Nacional no Brasil,” Tempo Social (São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo), 1(1), 1989, 29–46, esp. 30–31.Google Scholar See Rodrigues’, Raymundo Nina, “O animismo fetichista dos Negros bahianos,” published serially in Revista Brasileira between April 15 and September 4, 1896 Google Scholar and collected and reedited in Biblioteca de Divulgação Scientifica, Salvador, vol. II, cited in As Colletivades Anormaes, p. 71; Nery, Màrcio, Historia e pathogenia da paranoia. Rio de Janeiro: n.p., 1894, esp. p. 59.Google Scholar

30 Eric Hobsbawm, pp. 32–35.