Para os países que falam Inglês
Euclydes da
Cunha – http://www.estadao.com.br
However, as
the submissive university student, Euclydes da Cunha wrote with a certain
objectivity, but in the offensive jargon of his masters: “He drew the people of
the backlands after him, not because he dominated them, but because their
aberrations (sic!) dominated him.”[18]
Of course, he
announced Christ’s thousand year kingdom on earth after the end of the world,
but around him, under his stimulus,jagunços[19],
rebels, insurgents, organized themselves, occupied land, shared labor and
goods, received gifts, not always voluntary.
The
constituted order could not remain indifferent much longer to the expansion of
a community that gave so little consideration to the idea of property, that so
proudly ignored the foundations of authority, religion and the state, as the
apostolic archbishop said. Therefore, in 1889, the advent of the Republic, this
democracy of property owners, acted to speed up the conflict by making
hostilities emerge. The millenarians considered the Republic precisely for what
it meant: more state. It was mortal sin, the power of selfishness, of cupidity,
the supreme heresy that indicated the ephemeral triumph of the antichrist.
“There are
unlucky beings
Who don’t know how to do good
They degrade God’s law
And represent the jackal’s law
Who don’t know how to do good
They degrade God’s law
And represent the jackal’s law
Protected by
laws
You are so, people of nothing
We have God’s law
You have the jackal’s law”[20]
You are so, people of nothing
We have God’s law
You have the jackal’s law”[20]
Conselheiro
preached insurrection against the Republic and began to burn government decrees
posted in the villages:
“In truth, I
say unto you, when nation falls out with nation, Brazil with Brazil, England
with England, Prussia with Prussia, then shall Dom Sabastião[21] with
all his army arise from the waves of the sea.
King of
Portugal Dom Sebastião I (1554-1578) – http://www.hirondino.com
“From the
beginning of the world a spell was laid upon him and his army, and restitution
shall be made in war.
“And when the
spell was laid upon him, then did he stick his sword in the rock, up to the hilt,
saying: Farewell, world!
“For a
thousand and many, for two thousand, thou shalt not come.
“And on that
day, when he and his army shall arise, then shall he with the edge of the sword
free all from the yoke of this Republic.
“The end of
this war shall take place in the Holy House of Rome, and the blood shalt flow
even in the great assembly.”[22]
As the
university student Euclydes da Cunha remarked with a valet’s conceit:
“your jagunço is quite as inapt at understanding the republican form
of government as he is the constitutional monarchy. Both to him are
abstractions, beyond the reach of his intelligence. He is instinctively opposed
to both of them… there was very little political significance to be found… such
as might have lent itself to the messianic tendencies revealed. If the rebel
attacked the established order, it was because he believed that the promised
kingdom of bliss was near at hand.”[23]
Drawing done
in the late nineteenth century, representing a Jagunço, fighter who
followed Antônio Conselheiro – http://www.coceducacao.com.br
Up to now, the
order established by monarchists or republicans has never led to the reign of
delights for the poor, quite the contrary. Rather, we could witness with the
Republic a clear-cut worsening of the fate reserved to those who do not possess
anything. What the Conselheiro and his followers fight against was the
progressive arrangement of a new order. They don’t rebel in the name of an old
order, but for the idea they have of a human society. Their eye is not turned
toward the past, but toward the future. They are carriers of a social project.
Rising up against the constituted order, or the one that was beginning to be
constituted, they rise up against the essence of a world that created private
property, forced labor, the wage worker, police, money; they rise up against a
social practice and its essence. For them the future is not a return to the
past, but rather the end of a world, an overturning of society from top to
bottom, a revolution for which the humanity that was there from the
start finally returns as realized humanity.
The autonomy
of the villages having been decreed, the local councils of the interior of
Bahia had tacked up edicts meant to raise taxes on notice boards, traditional
boards that took the place of the press.
When the news
spread, Conselheiro was at Bom Conselho. The taxes enraged him, and he
immediately organized a protest. On market day, the population assembled and
set fire to the notice boards amid seditious shouts and firecracker explosions.
After this auto-da-fé that the authorities could not prevent, he
raised his voice and, wise and cool-headed as always, openly incited rebellion
against the laws. Aware of the danger that threatened him and his own, he left
the city and headed north on the road of Monte-Santo, toward a remote,
abandoned region surrounded by steep mountains and insurmountable caatinga,
a temporary refuge for bandits.
Photo of 1890,
showing a beach in the city of Salvador, capital of Bahia state –
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1503629&page=5
The events had
a certain echo in the capital, city of Salvador, from which a police force
departed to stop the rebels, at the time, no more than two hundred people. The
squad tracked them down to Massète, a bare, sterile place between Tucano and
Cumbe. The thirty well-armed police attacked them violently, certain they’d be
victorious in the first assault. But they were facing bold jagunços. The
police were beaten and had to hastily get out of there on foot. The commander
was the first to give the fine example.
After
accomplishing this endeavor, the millenarians were back on the road,
accompanying the prophet’s Hegira. No longer looking for populous places, they
headed toward the desert. Passing through mountain chains, bare plateaus and sterile
plains, they reached Canudos.
It was an
old fazenda, a holding situated on the temporary Vaza-Barris river. By
1890, it was abandoned and was used as a resting place. It included about fifty
huts made of clay rock and straw.
In 1893, when
the apostle arrived, Canudos was in total decay. Everywhere there were
abandoned shelters and empty cabins. And at the summit of the spur of Mount
Favella, the old residence of the owner was sighted, without a roof and with
the walls reduced to ruins.
The community
occupied the wastelands, rapidly making them bear fruit. The village developed
at an accelerated pace while the disciples coming from the most widespread
places settled there in order to live. In the eyes of the inhabitants, it was a
sacred place, surrounded by mountains, untarnished by the operations
government. Canudos came to know a dizzying growth. Here is what one witness
said: “Certain places in this district and others round about, as far away even
as the state of Sergipe, became depopulated, so great was the influx of
families to Canudos, the site selected by Antonio Conselheiro as the center of
his operations. As a result,
there was seen offered for sale at the fairs an extraordinary number of horses,
cattle, goats, etc., as well as other things such as plots of ground, houses
and the like, all to be had for next to nothing, the one burning desire being
to sell and lay hold of a little money, and then go share it with the
Counselor.”[24]
Source
of information – http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/os-cangaceiros-millenarian-rebels-prophets-and-outlaws
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