The War of Canudos

At the end of the XIX century in the Sertão (dry bushland) of Bahia, one of the most bloody popular revolts in Brazilian history took place, the so-called War of Canudos. A movement enacted under the banner of religion, it acquired political undertones, came to be considered subversive by the government, and spread amongst socially deprived and poor areas.

Canudos was a settlement in the interior of Bahia, an isolated area of difficult access. From 1893 onwards, the religious fanatic Antônio Vicente Mendes Maciel, the Antônio Conselheiro (counsellor) installed himself in the region. Previously, the fanatic had travelled the Sertão preaching changes, prophesying the end of the world and provoking the anger of the authorities and the Catholic clergy, who considered him and his followers to be a threat to the establishment. Conselheiro ordered the burning of official Acts for the gathering of taxes and, subsequently, hid away with his followers in Canudos. From then on his army, a large mass of the poor and ragged, grew and grew until it reached thirty thousand in number.

At the same time, Conselheiro carried out one of the first experiments with Socialism in the world: in Canudos, each family contributed half its possessions to the community as a whole, maintained family farms and plantations, earned a living from this work and supported the destitute who kept on arriving. Conselheiro followed the principles of the Catholic church and imposed rigid rules on his followers, forcing them to recite the three parts of the Rosary every night. Persecution of the community increased after reports by Capuchin friars, who pointed to the Conselheiro and his devotees as followers of a sect steeped in superstition and fanaticism.

Gradually the movement took on the character of an opposition to the Republic which had been installed years before in Brazil. The government of the state started to dispatch troops to destroy the settlement, and these were decimated beyond recovery by the band of fanatics. However, the death of an Army colonel changed the course of the battles. In 1897, at the fourth incursion of government troops in the region, the soldiers set fire to Canudos, killed all the population and slit the throats of the prisoners.

The War of Canudos inspired one of the classics of Brazilian literature, "Os Sertões", by Euclides da Cunha, as well as a number of films, such as the recent feature film called Canudos, by Sergio Rezende.