Photo from the
1920s, showing the center of Juazeiro in the state of Ceará –
http://www.cidadejua.com
In 1889, when
the Republic was proclaimed, Padre Cicero reacted in his way by carrying out
his first miracles, which consolidated his position and prestige. The
republican state didn’t dare to provoke hostilities and tolerated this movement
that criticized the bourgeois spirit without criticizing the state. Pilgrims
became increasingly numerous. Many settled in the holy city of Juazeiro where
they found protection with the “little father”. The Church was disturbed by
this and tried to put an end to the turbulence which it considered dangerous.
It ordered Padre Cicero not to say mass or preach anymore, but it could not
force him to leave Juazeiro. It was afraid that his followers would mobilize to
defend him, something that must be avoided at all costs.
Padre Cicero
had allies among local political leaders. His prestige, his influence, the
progressive electoral force he had available to him, pushed him to strengthen
his growing political authority by getting himself elected as municipal
prefect.
Here we see an
elderly priest Cicero among its followers – http://www.terra.com.br
In 1914, the
victory of enemies made his relations with the provincial government difficult.
The “little father” then called his followers to holy war against the
provincial government that represented the Antichrist. God wanted it to be
overthrown so that perfect happiness without shadow could reign on earth. These
incitements to struggle caused troops to be sent against the New Jerusalem. But
unlike the Counselor, Father Cicero enjoyed important political support in the
capital of Brazil; and besides, above all, this insurrection was limited to
political goals and didn’t have the ambition of overthrowing the constituted
order. The prophet’s followers, with federal complicity, triumphed over the
forces deployed against them and placed the provincial capital under siege,
putting the governor to flight. The victorious Padre Cicero officially became
the vice-governor of the state of Ceara.
In the picture
we see men who fought the forces of Father Cicero, against the troops of the
governor of the state of Ceará in 1914 – http://pt.wikipedia.org
In a world
shattered by the continuous warfare that raged among the great families and for
which the poor unfailingly paid the price, Father Cicero could institute a more
peaceful society, thus improving the tragic situation of those who had nothing.
He was able to do so, because he spoke in the name of the highest authority,
divine authority. In this way, he put himself above the fray, beyond the local
quarrels, the only way to be heard by all. In a world increasingly dominated by
selfish interests, only religion could unite, at least in appearance, what was
separated in deed. In sermons, Father Cicero reproached the “small” and the
“great”, because they did not live according to the divine laws of charity, mutual
aid and the forgiveness of offenses. He was thus able to put an end, at least
temporarily, to the hostilities between families, to blot out discord, to renew
alliances, to become the arbitrator of disputes, the indisputable and
undisputed master of the region, the “little father”.
His movement
had a conscious function of social reform. The followers made donations to the
messiah that served to form a common fund to provide for the needs of the sick,
widows and orphans, to buy land, to finance enterprises (Juazeiro, a small
hamlet in 1870, would become the second city of the province under the stimulus
of the prophet, with 70,000 in habitants). But it also had a guardian ship
function for the existing system: the ideal of fraternity and equality was
rigorously understood as fraternity and equality in faith and before god.
When Canudos
defended its freedom with arms in 1896–1897, some men left Juazeiro to go to
the aid of the commune of Monte-Santo, but the entire city didn’t rise up. And
yet, at that time, an insurrection in Juazeiro would have absolutely meant the
greatest danger for the Republic, which furthermore was very careful not to
challenge it. The state would have found itself forced to conduct a war on two
fronts. Considering the tremendous difficulty that it encountered in getting
the best of the rebels of Canudos, one could legitimately ask what it would
have been able to do in the face of an insurrection of the entire northeast, a
thing that would certainly have happened if the movement in Juazeiro had
committed itself to that struggle.
In the final
analysis, in a period disturbed by increasingly bitter rivalry between
particular interests, Father Cicero brought social peace. This allowed the poor
of the region, along with those who came from the coast, to breathe, to relax
and to rediscover with him, if not the hope of a new life, at least that of a
better life.
1934 – Funeral
of Father Cícero – http://oberronet.blogspot.com.br
After his
death in 1934, various messianic movements developed in the sertão. Most
of them were immediately stopped by the action of the local authorities, unless
they learned to follow the example of Father Cicero and come to terms with the
politicians of the region. This was the case of Pedro Batista de Silva’s
movement in Bahia. He succeeded in making the Santa Brígida precinct, where he
established his messianic community and over which he ruled with uncontested
authority, rise in the ranks of city hall.
This was not
the case of the blessed Lourenço’s movement, which lasted from 1934 to 1938 and
ended tragically.
In the image
of the “warrior saint” Antonio Conselheiro, the blessed Lourenço founded a
colony similar to Canudos in the plain of Araripe, also fully within the sertão.
Here again, the poor who no longer wanted to submit to being slaves occupied
the land, establishing a kind of primitive communism, a phalanstery. Everything
produced was held in common. This scandalous practice that openly challenged
the big property owners by violating or, worse, ignoring the laws of private
property (sacred laws that established the social authority of the possessors)
would rouse the almost immediate reaction of the united forces of the
constituted order. Thesertanejos took up arms, scythes against cannons as
in Canudos, resisting to the death. They were all slaughtered after a fierce
and relentless battle, but it was too unequal. After a short time, the law of
the Republic again ruled over the sertão.
Virgulino
Ferreira da Silva, the “Lampião”, the most important bandit of Brazil –
http://blogdomendesemendes.blogspot.com.br/
In 1938, the
blessed Lourenço’s movement ended in a bloodbath. It was the last revolutionary
messianic movement. On July 28 of the same year, Lampião was killed with
some compadres at Angico. His death would be the death-blow inflicted
on cangaceirismo. The police would easily manage to get the better of the
last scattered, unsettled little groups that lacked protection or complicity.
The slaughter would be brutal.
The cangaceiro was
the social bandit of the northeast of Brazil and the cangaço was his
band. The cangaceiro avenged himself for a humiliation, an injustice,
for the blackmail imposed by a “colonel” or the police, for the murder of a
relative. He then decided to exclude himself from society and go into hiding by
uniting with an already existing band, a band that would allow him to survive
through organized theft and escape the police forces that were hunting for him.
An avenger
more than a righter of wrongs, the cangaceiro embodied generalized
rebellion against the whole social order.
Drawing a
typical cangaceiro and his characteristic outfit –
http://www.eunapolis.ifba.edu.br
The cangaceiro bands
that traveled around the northeast at the end of the 19th and the
beginning of the 20th century stood side by side with the millenarian
movements. In both equally, we find the same contempt for property and thus for
the law, the same taste for wealth, the same generosity, the same challenge
launched against the state and its cops, the same fierce determination, the
same fighting spirit, the same fury. The boundary between the two was faint
when not non-existent, and the passage in either direction was easy. We know of
famous bandits, seduced by the prophecies of the Conselheiro, who participated
in the founding of Canudos or rushed to defend it, bringing their skills and
experience. Lampião thought so highly of Father Cicero’s movement that he
always avoided the province of Ceará in the course of the raids.
In both cases,
the same people were involved.
“From a very
early age,” the university student Euclydes da Cunha wrote, “the inhabitant of
the sertão regarded life from his turbulent viewpoint and understood
that he was destined for a struggle without respite that urgently demanded the
convergence of all his energies… always ready for a conflict where he wouldn’t
be victorious, but he wouldn’t be conquered.” It probably wasn’t the nature of
the northeast that molded the fierce character of these people; but they were
truly indomitable people who preferred death to slavery. They were always quick
to defend their freedom, the idea they had of man, a certain vision of wealth,
with the greatest vigor and boldness. They stood against the entire world; and
from all sides, they were destined to a struggle without respite that urgently
demanded the convergence of all their energies, to a war in which they would
not allow themselves to be conquered.
Cangaceiros –
http://www.grupoimagem.org.br
Millenarians
or cangaceiros, they were cowhands, sharecroppers, mule drivers. They were
part of the rural society that was continually threatened in its existence and
substantially in its freedom. They had been produced by it. They not only found
a real complicity in this society, but they also expressed its deepest aspirations.
All in all,
very little differentiates the two groups. The millenarians were carriers of a
positive social project, but it had a religious essence, while the cangaceiros were
carriers of a purely negative social project that was not religious in its
essence.
United around
a prophet through faith in the imminent arrival of the Millennium, through the
same aspiration for a new life, the Brazilian millenarians formed a spiritual
community that intended to organize itself in expectation of the final event,
preparing for it. This messianic community did not have the ambition of
realizing the Millennium itself, but it did already oppose the spirit of the
existing world in a radical way by recognizing itself in the community of a
future world. It carried within itself a positive social project that
essentially remained religious; it formed the idea of a society not yet
realized and whose realization did not belong to it. It was the premonition of
this new society.
Extraído do blog: "Tok de
História" do historiógrafo e pesquisador do cangaço Rostand Medeiros
http://tokdehistoria.wordpress.com/2012/09/22/cangaco-millenarian-rebels-prophets-and-outlaws/
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