In assessing the situation around him, this false apostle was in a sense observing the process of his own mental decline. He was by nature disposed to revolt against the natural order. He was not a misfit. The people chose him as the natural representative of their highest aspirations. They had no concerns about his mental state. What saved him from the complete obfuscation of his reason was the action of the environment upon him. It offered him protection and contained his aberrant behavior to some degree, forcing him into a type of logic, a certain show of order and consistency in everything he did. He exhibited a rare discipline in controlling his passions, and thus the impressionable backlanders saw in his every word and deed the serenity, moral authority, and humility of the ancient apostles of the faith.
He was, in fact, a very sick man, who would fit the profile of Tanzi and Riva’s concept of paranoia. His ideational hallucinations always focused on ethic concerns. He was a rare case of atavism. His morbid personality led him to whimsical interpretations of objective reality, thereby altering his relationship to the external world. This appeared as a regression to the mental state of ancestral forms of the human species.
A Primitive Gnostic
Without a medical diagnosis, the anthropologist would find him to be a normal example of a remote phase of human evolution. What the psychiatrist would describe as a case of persistent delirium with episodes of persecution mania or delusions of grandeur would be for the anthropologist a case of incompatibility with modern civilization—a clear case of regressive human behavior with manifestations of long-extinct human behaviors. His strange mysticism seemed natural to us because it was practiced on a daily basis by the people. Even if we disregard the influence of inferior races, we find a fairly recent example of it in a critical period of Portuguese life.
We can also find examples on a larger scale, but all we have to do is look back to the early days of the church when a universal gnosticism was arising as a necessary transition from paganism to Christianity. This was in the last phase of the Roman world when, before the invasion of the barbarians, Latin letters had entered into sudden decline and was being substituted by the sophists and petty men of letters of Byzantium. In fact, many of the numerous sects that arose from the nascent religion, with their hysterical scholars and hyperbolical excesses, could be seen as disgusting cases of insanity. These include the Phrygian Montanists, the infamous Adamites, the ophiolaters, the duplicitous Manichaeans (who held a middle ground between an emergent Christianity and an ancient Buddhist tradition) along with the disciples of Marcus, the celibate Encratites, and the flagellants. Yet in fact they were normal. They assimilated well into an age in which the followers of Alexander of Abnoticus were shaking the foundations of Marcus Aurelius’s Rome with their excesses, their bizarre processions, their mysteries, and their terrible sacrifices of living lions that were hurled into the Danube with elaborate ceremonies led by the emperor-philosopher.
History repeats itself.
Antônio Conselheiro was a primitive gnostic.
We shall soon see how appropriate this simile is.
A Great Man Is Torn Apart
The label “indifferent paranoiac” probably does not apply to him. He was most certainly intellectually degenerate, with his insane temperament and obvious ideational retrogression. But the environment in which he lived did not isolate or reject him; on the contrary it reinforced and strengthened him. He viewed himself as a prophet and an emissary from heaven, sent to lead sinners to salvation. He was a servant tethered to his arduous task, and so we watch him year after year dragging his weakened carcass through the savage backlands, driven by his obsession. Yet he appears lucid and firm in his resolve as he pursues his objective with irresistible finality.
His fragile consciousness wavered about that middle line that Maudsley laments he is unable to draw between good sense and insanity. He stayed there on the frontier of madness, the mental state where criminals and heroes, brilliant reformers and moral cripples meet, and where genius rubs elbows with degenerates. If he had been restrained by the discipline of cultivated society, he would have burst the bonds of reason. But here he was in tune with the environment, and the effect was to give him the appearance of normalcy as his mystical teachings touched the souls around him.
A Natural Product of His Environment
The sociological environment that encouraged mystical psychosis also set boundaries for it without repressing it completely and thus created a balance that saved the victim. The mind that was predisposed to open rebellion was redirected by the circumstances of the place to an alternative state of superstition and mistaken ways.
Background: The Maciel Family
The Counselor’s biography is a compendium and summary of
sertanejo
society. His life illustrates the etiology of the disease that consumed him. Let us take a look at the words of biographer Colonel João Brígido dos Santos from his brief notes about the genealogy of Antônio Conselheiro:
The Maciel family lived in the backlands between Quixeramobim and Tamboril. It was a numerous tribe of strong, agile, brave, and intelligent men who lived by cattle ranching and small-scale cattle breeding. Following the outlaw code of the times, they became engaged in a family feud and became principal actors in the great crimes of the state of Ceará. Their rivals were the wealthy Araújo family, who were related to some of the oldest families in the northern part of the state. They all lived in the same region, the seat of which was the city of Boa Viagem, about fifteen kilometers from Quixeramobim.
It was one of the bloodiest feuds of the Ceará backlands, waged by these unevenly matched opponents, unequal in fortune as well as official position, yet both sides emboldened and hardened in the practice of unrestrained violence.
The criminal acts referenced are but an episode in the raids that almost continuously defined the turbulent life of the
sertão
. They are but copies of thousands of others that might serve as a reminder of the unbridled power of the village leaders and their sinful exploitation of the naturally fierce instincts of the backlander. The family feud is merely a variation of so many other conflicts that arise interminably, compromising the descendents who take up the grievances of their grandfathers, creating an almost physiological predisposition to anger and vengeance, making them hereditary states of mind.
The feud between the two families arose from a minor incident: an alleged robbery committed by the Maciéis on the large Araújo estate. Everything indicated that the accusations against the Maciéis were false. They were “strong, likeable, good humored, authentic, and helpful men,” who had an enviable reputation in the region.
Araújo da Costa and one of his relatives, Silvestre Rodrigues Veras, did not take kindly to the poor family competing with theirs for influence, particularly since they were not large landowners or cattle ranchers. They were used to taking the law into their own hands, and they were determined to use their wealth and influence to teach a lesson to the upstarts. The Araújos knew their opponents were brave to the point of recklessness, and they called upon a band of hired assassins to embark on the criminal expedition to Quixeramobim.
Before long, and contrary to general expectations, they came back in defeat. The Maciel clan confronted the mercenary band and repelled them forcefully, dealing them a frightening defeat. This occurred in 1833.
Humiliated and hardly able to bear their frustration and anger, these strongmen, whose arrogant stupidity had been given a blunt rebuff, resorted to more aggressive measures. In those days, as in the present, there was no lack of mercenaries for hire. The Araújos managed to find a couple of the more notorious of them: José Joaquim de Menezes, a closed-mouthed Pernambucan, well known for his bloody rivalry with the famous Mourão family; and a terrible outlaw by the name of Vicente Lopes, from Aracatiaçú. Once their motley band was assembled, with reinforcements from Silvestre’s sons and sons-in-law, they immediately set forth on their criminal mission.
As they neared the Maciéis’ homestead, the murderous gang had second thoughts in spite of the fact that they outnumbered their opponents, and they proposed a deal—sworn on their honor—to spare their victims’ lives in exchange for their surrender. The Maciéis agreed, sure that they could not hold out for long. The Araújos’ word was worth what one would expect. Handcuffed and under guard, the captive Maciéis were taken to a jail at Sobral and then slaughtered on the first day of their journey. Among the dead was Antônio Maciel, the grandfather of Antônio Conselheiro.
One of his uncles, Miguel Carlos, was able to escape. How he managed to do this is inexplicable since he was manacled and his legs were bound under his horse’s belly. But we have this information from the faithful historian Manuel Ximenes.
The Araújos had let their worst enemy get away and they began to pursue him at once. Heavily armed and on strong mounts, they set off on a barbarous chase, as if they were hunting a mountain lion. The fugitive was, however, a master tracker, and followed in flight by a sister, he managed to evade the posse headed by Pedro Martins Veras. He found a hiding place on the ranch known as Passage, in the Quixeramobim district. There he hid, exhausted, in an abandoned shack grown over by oiticica branches.
24
The pursuers followed his trail to this place and they found him at nine o’clock in the morning. A terrible, unequal battle ensued. The tenacious backlander, crippled by a dislocated ankle, bravely faced the horde and knocked one down, a brute named Theotonio who had gone in ahead of his companions. He fell across the threshold, making it impossible to shut the door. When Miguel Carlos’s sister intervened to drag the body away, she was struck by a bullet. Pedro Veras himself had fired the shot and he was rewarded by a point-blank charge. With their leader dead, the rest fell back, giving the fugitive time to barricade the door.
The shack had now become a fort, and gunfire showered through the cracks in the walls. Made bold by their fear, the assailants set fire to the place with instantaneous results. Unable to breathe in the flames, Miguel Carlos decided to abandon the shelter. He threw a jug of water on one side of the hut and succeeded in briefly quelling the flames. Jumping over his dead sister’s body, a rifle under one arm and his
parnaíba
knife in the other hand, he threw himself into the circle of his aggressors and managed to break through their ranks, disappearing into the
caatinga
.
25
A while later, one of the Araújo clan was to be married to the daughter of a wealthy cattle rancher in Tapaiara. As they were approaching the chapel on their wedding day, he was felled by a bullet, to the horror and alarm of the guests and the unfortunate bride. The avenging spirit of the
sertanejo
never rests.
Miguel Carlos had a partner in his deep and justified rancor against the Araújos, his sister Helena Maciel, known as the family “nemesis” according to the chronicler we have just quoted. His own life was beset by many dangers, some certainly the product of the backlander’s active imagination. He managed to escape all the traps that were laid for him and more than one of his unwary trackers fell under his knife.
Our chronicler’s narrative continues:
It appeared that Miguel Carlos had protectors who guaranteed his safety and it was not unusual to see him in the town.
One night, as he stood in the doorway of Manoel Procopio de Freitas’s shop, a man came in to buy brandy. Miguel Carlos was convinced he was a spy and would have killed him instantly had he not been dissuaded by the shop owner. However, he did follow the man and knifed him to death as the fellow left town via Palha Creek.
One morning he left the house of a man married to a relative, Antônio Caetano de Oliveira, to bathe in a stream behind the house. The house was on the far side of the main square of the town, near a gully leading to Cotovello Square. Behind the house, Palha Creek flowed around the square in an almost perfect circle, forming a lovely pool of standing water. Miguel and a few of his companions were there and had stripped down when they were ambushed by men hiding in the brush around them. Miguel and his companions grabbed their clothes and ran. Miguel Carlos, wearing only his shorts, brandishing a knife, headed for the rear of the house, which faced the creek and which had been occupied since 1845 by Manoel Francisco da Costa. He had opened the wooden gate leading to the garden, and was about to close it, when he was hit in the back by a bullet. Others say it happened when he was running through a patch of woods near the creek. He had fallen, knife in hand, when Manoel de Araújo, leader of the attacking band, and brother of the dead bridegroom, pinned him down and finished him off with a knife thrust. Even as he lay dying, he responded with a jab of his dagger to the jugular vein of his opponent and the two expired, one on top of the other. Helena Maciel came running onto the scene and kicked her brother’s assailant in the face. She was content to lose her brother, she stated, since he had avenged the family by killing their arch enemy.
The story continues that the murderers had spent the night at the home of the town postmaster, Ignacio Mendes Guerreiro, a member of the Araújo family. They had come on the pretext of arresting the Maciéis but their real intent was to murder them.
Helena was not discouraged by these events. She went about eliminating her enemies in memory of her brother. She confessed years later to the brutal beating of André Jacinto de Sousa Pimentel, a boy from a prominent family related to the Araújos. She associated him with the betrayal of Miguel Carlos. The beating resulted in a cardiac lesion and an agonizing death for the young man, who was justly blamed for this last act of aggression by the Araújos. The crime was committed on Helena’s orders by foot soldiers in a detachment under the command of Sublieutenant Francisco Gregorio Pinto, a man of low birth and little education, who Pimentel had managed to offend. This led to the belief that the army officer was responsible for the crime. Helena, meanwhile, kept silent.
The feud claimed countless victims and decimated two entire families, the last of the Maciel line being Antônio Maciel, Miguel Carlos’s brother, who died in Boa Viagem. Miguel Carlos became a legend and he and his family gained the respect of their contemporaries for having sustained a feud with the powerful people of Boa Viagem and Tamboril.