Backlands (38 page)

A retreat saved them. If they had risked everything and attacked, they might have won.

Let us look at the archives. Witnesses related one of the more unusual incidents of the campaign. A while after the engagement at Tabuleirinhos, the Little Tablelands, the citizens of Canudos became alarmed at the intensity of the battle. Anticipating what would happen to the town if the soldiers attacked, João Abade gathered the six hundred able-bodied men left and set out to provide reinforcements for their comrades. About halfway there, his men suddenly found themselves under fire. What had happened was that the government soldiers at the original battleground were not very good marksmen. Most of them shot too high and the bullets went over the heads of their targets and as far as their range permitted. All of these spent bullets fell on João Abade’s men. The
jagunços
were confused at seeing their comrades fall from bullet wounds. They heard the whistle of bullets but could not see the enemy. The thin vegetation around them was not suitable for ambushes. The nearest hills, as far as they could see, were barren, without a man in sight. The bullets kept coming from all sides, pouring down on the astonished men like a silent shower of lightning. A superstitious fear gripped these hardy men as they saw their companions falling dead around them. They turned their gaze skyward, where the bullets were descending in invisible parabolas. At this point, they could not be contained. They turned heel back to Canudos, where they struck terror with the terrible news.

There was no doubt: The enemy would soon be there on the heels of its last defenders, carrying weapons of terrible destruction. The Counselor’s spell was broken. Dizzy with fear, the ingenuous population suddenly lost all the beliefs that had taken hold of them. Bands of refugees carrying hastily gathered possessions now fled as quickly as they could, across the square and down the streets, heading for the
caatingas
. Not even their most respected leaders could stop their flight. Meanwhile disheveled women were screaming, sobbing and shouting, making an incredible noise, waving their holy relics, and praying. Still under the Counselor’s influence, they crowded around the door of the Sanctuary, begging the evangelist to come out and speak to them.

But Antônio Conselheiro, who even in normal times refused to look a woman in the face, even now kept his distance. He climbed to the heights of the new church, followed by about six of his inner circle, and then had the ladder pulled up.

The distressed crowd stayed below, cursing, weeping, and praying. The aloof apostle did not even glance at them as he strode impassively over the wobbling, creaking boards. Looking out over the rebel stronghold, where deserters of his community of faithful were making haste to escape, he prepared himself for martyrdom.

At this moment news arrived that the government force was retreating. It was a miracle. Chaos turned into a homecoming celebration.

It was true—the retreat had begun.

Their hopes of success dashed, the only choice for the unhappy troops was to hold their position and to continue to fight a battle that held no victory. They would have hovered between losing and winning as, ironically, the vanquished won with every step forward. The backlanders turned every skirmish into a victory simply by standing on their own ground.

Major Febrônio de Brito’s retreat, because of the circumstances in which it occurred, is one of the most dramatic episodes in our military history. The men had fought for two entire days with no rations at all. The two days were separated by the deceptive truce of a night filled with alarms. Their ranks were weakened with about seventy wounded. A great number of others were hardly able to bear arms. The strongest had to leave the firing line to drag the cannons or to carry the staggering weight of stacks of rifles and the wounded and dying on their stretchers. Behind them was a rebel mob and in front of them sixty miles through the backlands desert, mined with ambushes.

When they saw the troops moving, the
jagunços
gave chase.

Their leader was now a mestizo of unmatched bravery and ferocity. He was known as Pajehú. He was a full-blooded
cafuzo
and his impulsive temper revealed the traits of the lesser races from which he came. He was the consummate primitive fighter—simpleminded, fierce, and fearless. He was evil and childlike, instinctively chivalrous, a hero without knowing it. He was an excellent example of recessive atavism, stalking his prey upright on two feet with the same drive with which he defended his cave with a stone hatchet.

This sly barbarian assigned his comrades to positions on either side of the road where the army column would have to pass.

The troops were forced to fight on the march.

They fired a last round and started to climb single file up the terraces along the side of the mountain. As they ascended, in one of the most vulnerable maneuvers known in warfare, they abandoned the last pretense of military tactics, which prescribe a staircase formation so the fighting corps can take turns in repelling the enemy.

The expedition had lost its military discipline completely. Officers and men were on equal footing and facing the same dangers. The commanding officer, whose courage never flagged, took the greatest risks. Captains and subalterns joined the privates in firing their rifles, with no one giving commands. A sergeant led the column, against all common practice.

This is how they once again walked into the jaws of Mount Cambaio. There was the same fearsome landscape, with its narrow gorges and harrowing precipices hanging over deep abysses. The path would narrow between the cliffs and then open up again along the slopes. The enemy bunkers, high up on the mountain, hovered over them the whole way. The scene was marked by one difference: The bodies of the
jagunços
they had slaughtered the day before lay facedown or on their backs among the rocks, at the openings of their bunkers or flung about the slopes. Their surviving companions swarmed over them like an avenging horde of demons over a multitude of ghosts.

The rebel gunmen did not respond to the last round of fire with lead. They flanked the column from the heights, letting their most powerful weapon, the earth, do their work. And the earth responded. The man who had lost his rifle or his cattle prong in the earlier fray had only to look around—the mountain was an armory. All about were huge boulders, either single blocks or in piles, ready to be released in deadly rockfalls. He took advantage of them. His trusty rifle became a lever. The boulders swayed, and then fell, rolling at first in an uncertain direction along the folds of the earth and then faster down the steepest slopes, free-falling at last in great bounds, crashing against the others and splitting into splinters, to fall like monstrous cannonballs on the heads of the horrified troops.

Under the avalanche of stone, the men sought shelter by pressing themselves under the overhangs covering the road halfway up the mountain. The fatigue of the march was more effective than the enemy in undoing them. The searing sun shed a crude tropical light on this region of bare rock and it was as if the mountain range had caught fire. Nature stood still in the blaze of summer heat. The few shots that were fired barely disturbed the silence because sound did not echo in this still, unbreathable air. The dry thump of the cannon had no resonance. Human brutality moved unhearing through the universal stillness.

They made slow progress through the trenches.

The truth was that the
sertanejos
did not exactly attack them.

Like a band of mutinous monkeys, the backlanders had turned the battle into the sorry sport of pelting the soldiers with stones. Shouting riotously, they tore back and forth over the highlands. The troops below continued on their way, sad actors at the end of a badly staged play. The excitement of the last two days of battles and deprivation had suddenly ended in a sinister brawl. Worse than the gunfire were the loud catcalls and taunts, punctuated by long whistles and strident laughter, as if they were being pursued by a gang of thugs.

At long last, after a three-hour march, they reached Bendegó de Baixo. The excellent location of this place, a small plateau where the highway flattened out, gave them a better means of defense. Here is where the last engagement occurred, at nightfall, in the half-light of the backlands sunset.

It was brief but terrible. The
jagunços
attacked the artillery with the intention of taking it away from the troops. The machine guns pumped fire on them and drove them off. Leaving twenty dead behind them, they moved off for the lowlands, disappearing in the night.

The hours of trial were over.

A providential incident closed the event. Frightened by the bullets, a herd of wild goats ran into the camp at the same time that the
sertanejos
fell back. This was a happy diversion. The completely exhausted men chased crazily after the swift animals, overjoyed at the promise of a feast after two days of enforced fast. An hour later these pathetic heroes, ragged, filthy, and stinking, were squatting around the campfire, tearing at half-cooked meat as the embers lit up their faces. They were like a band of starving cannibals at a primitive banquet.

The expedition left for Monte Santo early the next day. There was not one able-bodied man left. Even those who carried their wounded comrades limped at every step with bleeding feet that had been slashed by thorns and gashed by the rocks. Some looked sadly ridiculous. They wore crude straw hats, their uniforms were in tatters, and their naked bodies were barely covered by their ragged capes. Trying to line up in a semblance of military formation, they entered the village like a band of refugees, beaten down by the terrible sun and fleeing desolation and misery.

The people greeted them in silence.

On the afternoon of that same day the slopes of Mount Cambaio were full of movement once again. This time the sound of mournful chants, not the roar of battle, filled the air. Slowly a long procession headed for Canudos came down the mountain.

These were not fighters, but the faithful, carrying their dead in crude litters made of wooden poles tied with liana stalks. They were honoring the martyrs of the faith. They had spent the day searching for the bodies, a sad task that occupied the entire settlement. They had searched every crevice, the tangled underbrush, the caverns and crevasses.

Many of the fighters, in falling down the mountainside, had landed in caves and canyons. Others were hanging by their clothing over deep chasms. By searching the heights and the depths, the
jagunços
had begun to round up the bodies of their lost companions. Night had fallen before they completed their task of devotion. Only a few bodies were missing, those that had been burned by the troops. The funeral procession made its way to Canudos.

The sun was setting low on the horizon, casting a reddish gold glow on the vast plains. Its dying rays, hovering above the dark that had already fallen on the lowlands, now passed over the mountain, illuminating it for a few moments. The fleeting light also lit up the procession as it marched to the cadence of the prayers. They moved quietly upward as the shadows followed them, until they reached the top, where the last light gleamed on the high summit, flickering like huge tapers, soon to be extinguished by the dusk.

The first stars were twinkling, and visible now in the heavens was Orion’s gleaming sword as it rose over the backlands.

CHAPTER V

THE MOREIRA CÉSAR EXPEDITION

The totally unexpected recent failure of legitimate arms coincided with a critical phase in our history.

In the aftermath of the bloody civil war, which had spawned a steady stream of seditions and revolts since the first days of the new regime, Brazilian society in 1897 was highly vulnerable to disruption by diverse agents. And when history would later shed light on the interesting psychology of that time, it would show how poorly adaptable the people were to the recently inaugurated political system. It was as if the regime, by speeding up a process of change in an environment that was still languishing from the wasting disease of the monarchy, had triggered intense disorder. The republic was spiraling downward, with disaster occurring at regular intervals, like the stages of a recurring disease.

The civil government formed in 1894 did not have the essential base of organized public opinion. The country was divided between the winners and the losers. It was unable to correct a situation that was neither a state of revolution nor of normalcy and that did not respond either to extreme force or to normal legal means. The government was faced with a society that was changing rapidly from a state of extreme lassitude to one of high discipline. From incessant conspiracies to repeated states of siege, the situation mirrored the dilemma of a weak intellectual framework within a misunderstood political structure. Since it was not possible to accelerate the political education of the populace, the result was a debasement of democratic principles, which in that environment were diluted to mere rhetoric.