CANGAÇO – MILLENARIAN REBELS: PROPHETS AND OUTLAWS - Parte X

Para os países que falam Inglês

In 1938 ended the career of Lampião, his wife Maria Bonita and his band – http://www.fabiobelo.com.br

After Lampião’s death, Corisco continued to scour the countryside with his men for nearly two years. In March of 1940, in a small village of the caatinga of Bahia, surrounded together with his partner Dadá by the macacos (who also had a machine gun), he refused to surrender. He died almost an hour later.

That was the end.

The cangaceiro gave evidence in himself of the possibility of shaking off the yoke of oppression, which is neither invincible nor eternal. Judgment can always fall, unexpected, upon the rich and powerful. The cangaceiro only caused the pieces to be put back in play, also showing that the struggle is pitiless and that freedom must be conquered. The cangaceiro was energy directed toward a new form of life. All things considered, the cangaceiro was the revolution.

This epic poem has been sung at fairs and feasts where poems are improvised. This one tells of the Arrival of Lampião in Hell:

There was great damage
In hell that day.
All the money that Satan
Possessed was burned.
The registry of control and more than six hundred million cruzeiros
Of merchandise alone
Were burned.

Starting in 1940, the northeast territory was completely pacified. Order was maintained through terror. The northeast was under armed occupation, even if it wasn’t under ideological occupation.

It was not always this way. This omnipresence of the state generated the sleep of the Mind, a true nightmare for the poor. It prohibited any discussion about the world. The idea of the state was beyond any critique; the world had become a fatality.

The Brazilian messianic movements, on the other hand, had developed at a time when discussion was still possible. For nearly century in that distant region, the poor had debated about the world.

The anthropologist Lanternari

The historical or human dimension seem to be absent both in Vittorio Lanternari’s interpretation[46], which sees in them a reaction of oppressed people that “attempts to escape an oppressive situation that holds the entire society in subjection”, and in Pereira de Queiroz’s interpretation[47], that, contrarily, notes an aspiration to order in a society in which “a freedom that is much too great reigns, a freedom that degenerates into licentiousness.”

The historical conditions that controlled the development of these movements are comparable to those that we encountered at the end of the Middle Ages in the west: a social organization that has become archaic is decomposing while a new social order is progressively established. The world debates about the world: the mercantile spirit versus the feudal spirit. The poor participated in their own way in the debate. They didn’t want to hear about either one, especially not the mercantile spirit, of the world that will be. For them it wasn’t a question of choosing between the past and the future; they weren’t paid by the state like sociologists or historians. Much more simply, it’s a matter of implacably resisting the bourgeois spirit, not because this overturns their customs, but because it is completely opposed to the idea that they developed of a human society. This is an excellent reason! They really struggled against progress, progress in the world of capitalist thought.

Thus they initiated in practice a debate of ideas between their social project and the social project of capital; between the idea they have of a human social practice and money as social practice.

The millenarian movements of the medieval era were at the center of a historical mutation from feudal to mercantile society. This mutation was already completed almost everywhere in the world when the Brazilian movements appeared. It was as if they found themselves at the historical edge of the mutation, a situation that explains their purely messianic character. They were expecting a cosmic upheaval, the hour of god’s vengeance was supposed to arrive at any moment. For the most radical medieval millenarians, the hour had come to accomplish that upheaval; with god’s help, they participated actively in the earthly realization of the Millennium, whereas the Brazilian messianic movements could only prepare for it.

Typical housing in Northeast Brazil – http://www.infoescola.com

The millenarian insurrections of medieval Europe had to confront an old and new principle. They were immediately critical in the face of the Church and Money. The fact is that the Church was a historical tradition and Money was a historical novelty. The society of northeast Brazil was religious in essence, but the Church had few roots there. As to the bourgeoisie, they were nonexistent. The poor wouldn’t have entered into direct conflict with the Church or merchants. They would have risen up against a mentality that insinuated itself into society, transforming minds. When conflict broke out, it was immediately against the state.

The messianic movements developed in a region that still did not know modern conditions of exploitation; an arid, often desert-like region that didn’t interest either the big merchants or industrialists. The wageworker was practically unknown there. But this area was surrounded by the modern world and modern mentality. To the south, the capitalist point of view had been imposed since the beginning of the previous century with the great coffee plantations. This monoculture addressed itself solely to exportation; it was completely dependent on the laws of competition, from the international market and stock market speculation. It required a modern organization of work, an industrial discipline. It constituted this social control by itself. It was its essence, because it created the conditions of an absolute dependence on money in practice. To the east, the seacoast, which had been employed in mercantile exchange with the metropolis from the start, very quickly found itself in a process of modernization of this activity. The “senhores de engenho”, the masters of the primitive sugar refineries, could no longer bear foreign competition. Slavery itself, which cost much too much, had been abolished by the republic and replaced with a more rational form of exploitation, wage labor, that made the worker directly dependent on money. With the aid of foreign capital, new factories were built, leading to a growing demand for sugar cane. The masters launched themselves into the acquisition of land: a devouring eagerness, no problem of fertility, it was enough to plant more and more there. And where one could not plant, one raised livestock.

This is how the capitalist mentality penetrated bit by bit into the sertão, deeply disrupting customary relationship; it was necessary to make money, and as quickly as possible. Furthermore, the conditions of exploitation became draconian; many found themselves without land or work, in the darkest, most desperate misery. They fled in mass from the coast where it was impossible to survive, taking refuge in the interior. Since this disoriented population was not integrated in force into the system, they went to swell the ranks of those who followed the millenarian prophets. In the end the exchanges between the interior and the coast (leather for saddler-making or for packaging rolls of tobacco, oxen for sugar mills and plantations) that balanced social life in the sertão, was to be brutally compromised by capitalist industrialization. This rupture in the exchanges would have tragic consequences for small farmers, cowhands and sharecroppers; it would call the relationship that linked the cowhand or the sharecropper to the owners of the land back into question. All this was reflected in local disputes, exacerbating them.

It is still common in the Northeast of Brazil the use of animals for transportation – http://portaldoprofessor.mec.gov.br

It is necessary to understand the origins of the millenarian movements. They developed in a region of relative freedom, where neither the state nor the church was omnipresent. But this region suffered the repercussions of the capitalist offensive from within this process due to the force of circumstance. Little by little, the traditional “client” relationships were replaced with indifferent, impersonal relationships, money relationships. From that moment on, betrayal was in the air. Respect for giving one’s word was replaced with the value of money that respects no one’s word. Deprived of all dignity by the allurements of profit, the large property holders betrayed customary rights without scruples and did their best to make the existence of the poor abominable. There was now something rotten in the sertão.

Once the animal breeders, property owners, cowhands and sharecroppers generally led the same life. The family formed the basic cell of society, not the conjugal family, but a great family, an “extended family”. The ties were formed from a familial nucleus (brothers and sisters, cousins, godchildren) and from one’s clientele (bastard branches, sharecroppers and old slaves). But these lineages had a leader. Within the family group, all those who had the same preeminent position received the title of colonel, but there was also a “colonel of colonels”.

An unspoken contract of exchange of services existed that insured the cohesion of the group and reinforced the position of the colonel, who had the duty of helping relatives and his faithful men: transfer of land, respect for sharecropping contracts (the cowhand possessed a part of the herd just like the sharecropper had a part of the harvest, a part fixed by custom), loans, guarantees of judiciary defense… this entailed a moral obligation that put those involved at the colonel’s service. Repayment in money was rare if not nonexistent.

Political power always formed the biggest stake in the struggles that opposed clans to each other in the interior of Brazil. The colonel was born to command; he had inherited the land and derived his power from this. The state only reinforced him with its safeguards, with its legal aid. The colonel was determined to jealously defend his social position. He enjoyed absolute impunity. It was said that the activity of a colonel who was respected was envisaged by every page of the penal code. He protected and conserved his power and prestige, by maintaining genuine bands of armed men, into which the men that depended upon his jurisdiction were conscripted during times of conflict between families. He was the real authority of the region.

Long periods of drought affecting the economy of Northeast Brazil – http://vereadorgilsondejesus.blogspot.com.br

No limits were imposed on the colonel, except respect of his word and tradition; all were at the mercy of his will. Greed could make him a terrible man. Thus, treachery was the immediate danger; everything was in danger of falling into the most arbitrary abuse. This led to a susceptibility to edginess capable of provoking, at the least sign, a series of conflicts within and among the clans.[48]

Millenarians and cangaceiros rose up in a society where relationships were still personal, where solidarity still had a meaning, but where latent unrest existed due to the progressive disintegration of these relationships. They originated in a crumbling society, undermined a bit at a time by capitalist ideology that made traditional relationships fall away. This ideology would aggravate society, exacerbate touchiness, arouse appetites. The large property owners would get involved in an implacable competition that would lead to the elimination of the weakest and the increase of the power of the strongest.

Continuaremos na próxima semana...

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/