Backlands (21 page)

Their days are thus spent in constant motion, but with little result. But rarely does an event—always a welcome change—come along to break the monotony of their life. Cowboys are connected by a common bond of solidarity and they help each other unconditionally whenever a need arises. If an unruly steer bolts from the herd, the cowboy will snatch up his cattle prod, dig his spurs into his horse, and tear after it along the trails in hot pursuit. If he is not able to recover the animal, he asks his brothers to “take to the field,” a catchphrase that is a call to action for this rustic cavalry. Tens of his companions will thunder after him, yelling and crashing through the brush, beating the thickets, until the beast is “deauthorized” and corralled in or taken down by force when the cowboys grab his horns with their strong hands.

This solidarity of effort is best seen in the cow chase, which is work that consists essentially in first rounding up and then separating by owner the cattle of various neighboring ranches. They graze together on huge tracts of pasture that have no walls or trenches as boundary markers. This event takes place from June to July.

The man in charge of the roundup, called the
rodeador
, picks a relatively central location, which most of the time is a flat tract of cleared land. He then assembles all the cowhands from the nearby ranches. They all have a role in the undertaking, and each is given a special task. Then they scatter far and wide across the sandy arena and the leather-bound figures engage in athletic combat with the enveloping brushwood. The scene has all the savage motion and terrifying aspect of a Tartar skirmish. Within minutes, the backlanders have disappeared into the surrounding brush. For a while the scene of the roundup is deserted.

Suddenly the sharp clattering of hooves over rocks, the sound of snapping branches and clashing horns, brings a burst of noise onto the scene. Whirlwinds of dust rise into the air. A knot of cattle, horns trussed with leather straps, thunders into the clearing, followed by the cowboy, standing rigid in his stirrups, pulling short on the reins.

He is delivering only a small part of the lot. He turns the steer over to his companions, who are charged to hold their posts. He wheels around and is off at a wild gallop to continue his search. Meanwhile one can see others following at a distance, in successive waves, along the entire stretch of scrubland. The entire roundup gains in intensity and tumult. Steers lock horns or paw the ground, while horses rear and dance in a wild maelstrom, creating the vibration and prolonged rumble of an earthquake. Back in the brush the less fortunate hands struggle with the recalcitrant members of the herd. The running bull or stray steer usually resists recapture. It disappears deep into the brush. The cowboy follows him. He stays close on his tail. He tracks him to the most remote hideout. He does not lose him and he waits for the moment to act. Then, when the time is right, he catches the runaway with a sudden motion. He slips off his saddle with one foot on a stirrup, holding on to his horse’s mane with one hand and with the other grasping the bull’s tail. With a sudden jerk he throws the animal hard to the ground. He then slips fetters and a leather blindfold on him and leads him, bound and blindfolded, back to the foreman.

He receives a noisy welcome from his companions. He tells them the tale of his deed. They tell him identical tales and exchange heroic feats with a liberal display of adjectives. The tremulous, husky voices rise in a crescendo of raspy exclamations of admiration:
Destalado! Temero!

Later, at the end of the day, there is a final task. They have to count and sort the heads of cattle that have been rounded up. Each man heads off for his own ranch, driving the cattle that belong to him. And the sound of mournful songs, intended to soothe the herd, floats over the deserted plains.

But even as this strenuous task is completed, other more important ones have presented themselves.

The herd slowly winds its way home to the cadence of that sad and lazy song. Slouched awkwardly in the saddle, the cowboy ruminates about his possible profit, dreaming of the calves yet to be born. He calculates what his boss’s share will be, and what will be his own, according to the terms of their contract. He then goes over in his mind the number that he will drive to the fair. He thinks of the old steer that he has had for ten years and never taken to the fair, for the sake of old friendship. There is the lame yearling with a sharp thorn embedded in its side that has to be taken out. In the lead is the rebellious steer that he had to subdue with the “skirt” of fetters—with blinders on and barely held in line by the press of the herd. Over there is the mighty bull, envy of the herd, swaying along with a slow, self-assured gait. He swings his broad neck—thick as a buffalo’s—from side to side, keeping the rest at a respectful distance. His short, tough horns, with dirt clinging to them, are cracked and blunted by his formidable encounters with powerful rivals in the pasturelands. There are many others, all of them known to him. He can tell a story about each one, recalling incidents, small details that make up his primitive, simple existence.

They continue their slow march, to the beat of a melancholy ballad that seems to calm them with the simple refrain that echoes longingly over the empty plains:

Suddenly a shudder convulses the herd, rippling across hundreds of glossy backs. The animals halt abruptly. Thousands of horns suddenly clash and lock, heads rear up, butt, twist, writhe, and intertwine, slicing at the air around them. The ground shakes and the herd bursts forth into a stampede.

The herd takes off. Sometimes nothing can explain this occurrence, which is in fact common and the despair of the cattlemen. The slightest event can trigger it—the sudden oblique flight of a guan or a guinea pig skittering across their path. One steer startles, and the contagion grips the entire herd in a rapid burst of nervous energy. There is a single terrifying spasm that suddenly propels these massive beasts forward in dizzying bursts and a great confusion of banging horns. Usually so slow and phlegmatic, the stampeding cattle are caught in the vise of a maelstrom.

And there they go. It is now impossible to contain them or to reach them. The brush is trampled; trees are snapped in half, their trunks split into shavings and kindling wood. Creeks overflow in a great whirlpool of horns, and there is a rumble of hoofbeats as they crush and scatter rocks in their path. Over the plains echoes the muffled and drawn-out roll of distant thunder.

In minutes plantations that have been carefully tended for ages are demolished. Waterholes, once smooth bowls, are transformed into piles of mud; dwellings are toppled and destroyed. The terrified inhabitants flee, running in a zigzag to avoid the straight line of the oncoming mass—thousands of bodies constituting one monstrous body—a shapeless, indescribably fantastic animal bolting forward on an insane trajectory. And remaining above the chaos, either circling it or driving headlong into the destruction of this living avalanche, the impetuous cowboy confronts all the dangers of this tremendous trail: troughs, walls, hills, the very horns of the crazed herd. Wielding his prod, crouched low in the saddle, reins loose over his horse’s neck, feet free of the stirrups, the cowboy clings to his mount’s mane and gallops, gallops!

His companions, who have heard the thunder of the stampede from a distance, have come to join him by now. The efforts of the roundup are again renewed: redoubled exertions, new tactics, more feats, new risks, and more dangers to be faced and overcome until finally the wild herd is brought in. This is due less to the work of the cowboys in pursuit than because the animals have finally tired and are now ready to stop, from complete exhaustion. The cattle drivers direct them back to the homeward trail, headed for the ranch once again. Once more the sad notes of the cowboy’s song drift over the empty plains.

The cowboys return to their dwellings and, swaying in their hammocks, they relate the escapades of the cow hunt or their notorious adventures at the fair. They kill time in the complete sense of the phrase, while they refresh themselves with sweet nectar of the
umbú
tree or enjoy their incomparable fare of
jerimum
squash with milk.
¹⁶

If the season is good, the crops are doing well, and grazing grasses, the
panasco
and the
mimoso
, are growing well in the far-flung pastures, with no sign of drought ahead, then the cowhands surrender to the sweet arms of leisure.
¹⁷
They go to town for the fairs, horse shows, and pantomimes from the Moorish tradition, ancient forms of entertainment that the backland settlements reproduce, in every detail, as they have been performed for over three centuries. Among them is the exotic reenactment of the “shirts,” one of the most curious examples of preservation of the most archaic traditions. It is a revival of the ancient night raids on Moorish castles on the Iberian Peninsula, and a tradition long forgotten in the old country, where its very name is an archaism. This is an expensive but interesting entertainment, performed by the light of lanterns and torches. There are long processions of men on foot, wearing white or in Arab dress; some are on horseback in strange animal costumes. They move rapidly, engaging in skirmishes and mock battles. This pageant gives the backlander his greatest delight.

Not everyone can enjoy this type of entertainment. Some without the resources to leave the ranch stay at home and pursue more traditional forms of merrymaking. Dressed in their customary leather, they step into the rhythms of the noisy sambas and
cateretês.
¹⁸
The single men perform improvisations of poetic jousts, singing the
choradinho
or the
baiano
and clutching their shiny instruments in a tight embrace.
¹⁹
The married couples dance in sedate pairs. Their modest dwellings are decorated for the season and there they receive guests with loud greetings and raucous shouts. Since the small rooms cannot accommodate many guests, they set up a dance floor outside under the stars—a well-swept terrace decorated with greens and furnished with tree stumps and a few wooden stools. They make the first toasts with a few long swigs of
aguardente
, the cane liquor they call “the stubborn woman,” accompanied by lusty stomping of feet. One of the good-looking young mulatto men thrums forcefully on his guitar and launches a vibrant tune. The lovely young
cabocla
women begin to sway slowly, and the virile young cowboys join in by circling them in a dance.

In the intervals between the dancing, the revelers engage in poetic competitions or challenges. Two adversaries, simple folk singers, start it off, and the rhymes spring forth and intertwine in often very beautiful quatrains.

The adversary promptly retorts, taking up from the last line of the previously sung verse:

The competition begins in this way and ends only when one of the bards stumbles on a difficult rhyme pattern and starts strumming his mandolin nervously, followed by a roar of laughter at his defeat. And so the night slips away in the general festivities until the
sericoias
start to sing in the marshlands, giving the signal for the happy group to disband.
²⁰

When the party is over the cowboys return to their humble tasks or to the lazy hammock. Some of them, every year, will leave their peaceful homes for more remote destinations. They cross the São Francisco River to disappear into the vast eastern plains where the basins of the São Francisco and the Tocantins merge in watersheds where the rivers separate indifferently to the east and to the west. From here, they will travel to Goiás or venture north to the mountains of Piauí.

They go to buy cattle. Those distant places, poor and obscure villages stretching as far as Porto Nacional, suddenly come alive with the annual visit of the Bahians. The visitors are the lords of the markets. Dressed in their leather armor they cut a striking appearance as they ride in on their sprightly horses and brandish their cattle prods. They arrive in the villages with the confidence of conquering heroes. And when they return home, if they do not become hopelessly lost, with no compass to guide them in the dangerous crossing of the endless plains, they again take up their dull and primitive existence.

Then suddenly there is a tragic change—the drought arrives.

The backlander is able to predict its arrival due to the singular cycle of this terrible scourge. He does not, however, immediately flee the land, which is slowly being invaded by the glowing inferno radiating southwestward from Ceará. In a famous passage, Buckle notes the anomaly that man does not learn to adapt to the natural disasters which threaten him. None is more afraid of earthquakes than the Peruvian, and in Peru newborns are rocked in the cradle by tremors. But the
sertanejo
is the exception to this rule. The drought does not terrify him; it merely marks his tormented existence in dramatic episodes. He faces it stoically. In spite of the painful traditions that he knows because of countless terrible episodes, throughout the ordeal he sustains the hope of an impossible resistance.