Para os países que falam (Inglês)
Translator’s
Introduction
It is no
surprise that the French group of revolutionary outlaws, Os Cangaceiros,
would take an interest in millenarian revolt since their namesakes in Brazil
fought side by side with millenarian rebels on more than one occasion. And such
an interest is no mere whim. During the Middle Ages, revolt almost always
expressed itself in millenarian language in the Western world, and such
expressions continued, though increasingly less frequently, into modern times.
Thus, those of us who are interested in understanding the ways in which the
spirit of revolt develops in individuals and in larger groups of people could
perhaps learn something from examining millenarianism in its various forms.
In Prophets
and Outlaws of the Sertão, Georges Lapierre[1] tells
the story of two movements of revolt in northeastern Brazil whose activities
often intertwined. On the one hand, there were several millenarian movements
involving dispossessed peasants, rural migrant workers, and urban poor. On the
other hand, there were the cangaceiros, individuals whose acts of revenge
against a very visible ruling class and its lackeys had driven them to live as
outlaws and who joined together in bands called cangaços to wage
their battle against a social order to which they were neither willing nor able
to belong.
Map of the Empire of Brazil in the
nineteenth century – http://blogdoestado.blogspot.com.br
For me, the most interesting aspect
of this historical tale lies in the comparisons and contrasts that can be made
between these two very different ways of rebelling that manifested themselves
in Brazil as the 19th century moved into the 20th century.
Though Georges Lapierre’s account
mentions several millenarian movements in Brazil during that period, he only
goes into any detail about two of them: the one that gathered around
Antonio Conselheiro (Antonio the Counselor)[2] and the one that gathered around Father
Cicero. In my opinion, the former is far more interesting, because it was truly
a movement of millenarian revolt, whereas Father Cicero’s movement, regardless
of any apocalyptic or millenarian language it may have used, was essentially
just a movement of social reform[3]. The very fact that its leader was able to
maintain a possession in the church hierarchy and gain a significant in the
state hierarchy shows that neither revolt nor the bringing of the millennium
had any real significance in his activities. He was merely seeking to bring his
concept of a christian social morality into the existing social order.
Conselheiro, on the other hand, had
a true hatred of the existing social order, and firmly believed that its end
was at hand. Being a true believer, he was convinced that god was about to rain
his wrath down upon the ruling order and bring a holy kingdom of real equality
to the earth, one with neither state nor property, where the entire world would
be equally accessible to all. Such a vision was bound to attract many of the
dispossessed. Conselheiro’s vision was apocalyptic, but also a vision of
action. If the movement that gathered around him ended up forming a “holy city”
(Canudos), a commune in which to begin the new way of living, it was also
prepared to fight the ruling powers. That battle, however, took a form quite
typical of a particular sort of millenarianism. It was a defense of
the holy city that was based on trust in a supernatural intervention.
Cangaceiros –
Ronald Guimarães – http://www.ronald.com.br/
The cangaceiros,
on the other hand, were not religious. They were simply outlaws, driven to
leave society behind after taking revenge on someone from the ruling class or
one of its lackeys for some humiliation. Like the millenarian rebels, they were
from the poor, dispossessed classes. But the path they chose for their revolt
was different, reflecting a personal humiliation they pushed them to attack,
rather than a more general humiliation. Lacking the faith of the millenarians,
they built no utopian communal “cities”, choosing rather to roam the
countryside, attacking the rich and raiding cities. When their raids on cities
were successful, they often expressed a type of utopian vision as well,
throwing huge drunken feasts with music and dancing, often giving away some of
what they had stolen. But they sought no permanence and faded back into the
countryside to wander.
I find the
sympathy of the cangaceiros for the millenarian movements of their
time interesting because their way of life in their world seems to parallel
that of the Free Spirit movement of the middle ages. The Free Spirits are often
described as millenarians, but their millenarianism was distinctly different
from that of Conselheiro, Thomas Münzer, the Münster millenarians and most
other millenarian movements. The distinction lies in the fact that the Free
Spirits did not see the millennium as something that was going to come soon,
but as something that already existed within them. Their perspective was not
apocalyptic — aiming toward a future end of the world — but rather based in the
immediate present. This is why the Free Spirit, while still using religious
language, actually attacked the foundations of religion: dependence on an
external supernatural power, hope in a heavenly future, faith in an external
source of salvation. Quite rightly, the Free Spirits declared themselves to be
greater than god, and apparently lived as vagabond outlaws… much like the cangaceiros.
Their perspective left no room for passivity, because they had chosen to be the
creators of their own lives.
Drawing
depicting Antonio Conselheiro and disseminated via newspapers and books in
southern Brazil in the late nineteenth century –
http://culturapauferrense.blogspot.com.br
The
millenarians of Canudos and Münster, and the followers of Thomas Münzer
certainly expressed a more active — and downright fierce — form of apocalyptism.
They were ready to fight to the death for their future millenarian
dream. But this willingness was based on the delusions of faith and hope —
faith in a supernatural savior; hope in divine intervention. Thus, they are not
so different from groups like the Branch Davidians in Texas — groups made up
largely of the poor, waiting for the apocalypse and ready to defend themselves
to the death if necessary. But the fact is that apocalyptism is far more often
passive, precisely because it hopes in an external intervention. This is true
whether or not it is religious in nature. We are currently living in a period
in which apocalyptic thinking is rampant even among people with no religious
belief. Whether it takes the form of paralyzing fears of massive plagues and
disasters or idealized dreams of a collapse that will do away with the
technological and bureaucratic horrors of the present, it doesn’t ever seem to
lead to active revolt. The fears, when they manage to get past their paralysis,
tend toward the desperate grasping at any action the might “give us more time”,
and such desperation sees any sort of anarchist revolutionary and utopian
practice — especially one that is live here and now — as a hindrance to this
acceptance of any action that works — because such a practice rejects all
litigation, all legislation, every form of working through the ruling order…
And the apocalyptic hopes for a collapse have always tended to move people
toward a mere survivalism, a “practice” that is nothing more than an
accumulation of skills in the hopes of being the most fit to survive in the
post-collapse world. In my opinion, a small and shabby vision.
Millenarian
revolt is interesting mostly because when millenarian perspectives actually led
to revolt, to one extent or another, those involved had begun to recognize that
they themselves had to act to realize their own liberation. Its limits lie
precisely in the continued reliance on a supernatural force to guarantee this.
As long as this faith remained, millenarians tended to paint themselves into
corners, creating small utopian settlements that they defended with courage and
ferocity, but that ended up as their graveyards. But a few, like the Free
Spirits, seem to have gotten beyond faith and hope, beyond dependence on a
supernatural power to uphold them. And it is interesting that their practice
becomes much more that of the outlaw who doesn’t settle down, but remains on
the move, thecangaceiro, who may perhaps develop a revolutionary perspective,
and thus learn to aim all the more clearly.
Continuaremos quarta-feira
Source
of information
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/os-cangaceiros-millenarian-rebels-prophets-and-outlaws
Extraído do blog "Tok de História" do historiógrafo e pesquisador do cangaço:
Rostand Medeiros
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