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Rebellion in the Backlands (Os Sertoes )

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This book is familiar to every educated Brazilian, but is not widely known in the USA; it should be.

It recounts a historical episode of 1896 and 1897. The government of the Republic of Brazil decided to suppress a religious sect of perhaps 7000 members, some of them violent and lawless, living in a remote rural area; the sect denied the legitimacy of the Brazilian Republic. The ensuing campaign lasted ten months, involved the deaths of hundreds of Brazilian army soldiers, and culminated in the extermination of the sect; these days it might be considered genocide.

The book's author, a formal professional Brazilian army officer, covered the campaign for `O Estado do Sao Paulo', Brazil's equivalent to the New York Times. He was horrified. So he wrote this book, which has beeen compared to everything from Lawrence's `Seven Pillars of Wisdom' to Dickens, Carlyle, and the prophet Ezekiel. Originally published in 1902, it has been in print in Brazil ever since.

The book is tough reading (and is no easier in Portuguese than in English; Samuel Putnam, the translator, did a superb job.) So why should one read it?

For one thing, it poses in the starkest possible terms a dilemma we still face from time to time. Under what circumstances, and to what extent, is it ethical for an elected representative government to coerce an organized group of its citizens who sincerely deny the legitimacy of the government and the laws?

And, it forces the reader to ask: What is history? How should it be written? How do the facts of history depend on cultural assumptions? Euclides da Cunha, like Thucydides, could find no suitable model for what he wanted to write, so, like Thucydides, he invented his own. I think this book could serve as fertile ground for a productive discussion among social constructionists and their adversaries.

The thoughtful reader will also ponder on what central message da Cunha was trying to convey; in later life da Cunha declined to clarify this. One possible answer is implied in `The War of the End of the World', a novel drawn from da Cunha's book by the Peruvian writer and politician Mario Vargas Llosa. But I have seen other possible answers in thoughtful commentaries on da Cunha's book, so the reader may wish to decide for himself or herself.

Finally, despite its difficulty, the book is great literature. It accelerates steadily from a seemingly interminable prolog in which nothing much seems to be happening to a climactic ending so gripping and fast paced that it's hard to stop reading. The only other author I'm familiar with who employs this technique as effectively is Thomas Mann.

Euclides da Cunha was a journalist who witnessed the aftermath of the Canudos war. The book tells the story of the creation of the Canudos community by Antonio Conselheiro, a mystic figure whose family was killed by landowners in one of the poorest quarters of Brazil, and its destruction by the Brazilian army.

Da Cunha's prose is addictive. Once you start reading you won't be able to put the book down. I advise you, however, to skip the first part, a boring description of the region's geography. I know more than one person that dropped this wonderful book because of this introduction.

For those of you interested in Brazilian literature I would also a suggest reading Machado de Assis (Memorias Postumas de Bras Cubas is a fine example of his work), Erico Verissimo (Incidente em Antares, Ana Terra, o Tempo e o Vento) and Clarice Lispector.

Da Cunhas 1902 book has been justifiably called the Bible of Brazilian Nationality. This is a challenging book, over 500 pages in this edition, dense and probably unsuitable to those who need the stimulation of a pop novel. Da Cunha was present at the 1896-97 military assaults on the rebellious village of Canudos in the arid Brazilian interior. A gifted writer with a background as a military engineer, Da Cunha brings a precise experts eye to the military campaigns, never failing at such details as order of battle, casualties, supply lines, and tactics. The campaigns themselves were stirring and bloody affairs: four separate military campaigns, each larger than the last that met increasingly stiff resistance from the Canudos villagers. In the end, 10,000 souls may have perished on both sides. The end, of course, is well known to all Brazilians. Canudos did not surrender. The only case of its kind in history, it held out to the last man. Conquered inch by inch, in the literal meaning of the words, it fell on October 5, toward dusk  when the last defenders fell, dying every man of them. There were only four of them left: an old man, two other grown men, and a child, facing a furiously raging army of five thousand soldiers.

If the book were merely a military history, it would be successful. But it is far more, for Da Cunha is more than just a military observer. He is geologist, geographer, anthropologist, sociologist, and historian. This book literally defines the still-nascent nation of Brazil. The backwoods villagers of Canudos were inspired by a religious fervor cultivated by a heretical evangelist named Antonio the Counselor. Their story is part Masada and part Waco. Da Cunha places Antonio in the context of his own life and the development of Brazils interior. While sometimes indulging in unfortunate racial generalities, Da Cunha takes an incredible interest in the geography of the region, describing how it shapes people. How the society that emerges in such a poor and desiccated land can yield the lawlessness and anomie suitable for the development of an Antonio. Da Cunha both despises and respects the villagers, jaguncos, in Canudos. He hates their illiteracy, superstition and backwardness while grudgingly praising their bravery, loyalty, and cunning.

Canudos, in his view, is a time warp, Brazilian society spun back to a primitive time, and for that all Brazilians share guilt. He blames urbanites and elites, the generals and craven politicians, the recently deposed monarchy and the addiction to European styles for the evolution of a Canudos. Two Brazils have developed, he writes, one is built on the European and Portuguese model and necessarily fails to address the second Brazil, the one populated by millions of rural souls in the impoverished interior, for Portugal was never faced with such a community.

Da Cunhas genius is demonstrating that Canudos is a consequence of the failure to develop a unified national identity that incorporates all Brazilians. It is a battle between old poor Brazil and progressive modern Brazil. Thus his book was the first step to defining the true Brazilian nationality, one that survives to today  a nationality that blends European, African, and native traditions. A nationality to which all Brazilians now belong. Canudos was a wrenching experience in many ways. There was immediate and widespread shock over the year of military disasters and thousands of casualties inflicted by a ragtag band of backlanders. Then there was the deeper self-analysis that accompanied the publication of this book. Like other American states, Brazil could never survive until it stopped looking to the Old World and developed its own identity, one shaped by its own people and circumstances, and one that acknowledged the existence and worth of every citizen.

The enduring testament to Da Cunha is that he was among the first to recognize the need for such a national self-criticism, and his work is one of the efforts that launched it. Brazil is what it is today in part because of the clarity of Da Cunhas vision of Brazil as set out in this monumental work. Canudos was a Brazilian failure, and this book went a long way to finding the solution. It really is as great as they say.

"Rebellion in the Backlands" is one of the best books ever written in the Brazilian literature and one of the most poorly known, given the intrincacies of the Euclidian vocabulary. The centennial of the first publication of the book was commemorated in 2002 not only in Brazil but also abroad, where there are many intellectuals who are keen of everything related to the book, the so-called euclidians. "Os Sertões", the Brazilian Portuguese name of the book, is an epic and was inspirational to many ancient and modern films run in Brazil about the conflict, and also to a book by the Peruvian celebrated author Mario Vargas Llosa ("The War at the End of the World"), who had Euclides da Cunha as idol since his childhood.

Euclides da Cunha, then a war correspondent of the very famous southern Brazilian newspaper O Estado de S.Paulo, wrote the book with a view to the conflicts ocurring in Bahia, after the so-called Proclamation of Republic, in 1889, thus ending 72 years of monarchical rule, something which upset many powerful landowners tied to imperial interest to raise arms against the new republican order. The revolt, known as the War of Canudos, as a historic fact, was eventually lost and the insurrects had to put down their arms, and the battle was won by government troops, but the War of Canudos was to enter Brazilian history as one of the cruelest ever fought in Brazil, and the government had to spend much more money than at first foreseen, losing its face in the end: how come a so strong army had so much difficulty to conquer a bunch of illiterate misers?. All this to kill the dozens of thousands of insurrected who amassed themselves in the poor village of Canudos, in the northeastern region of Brazil, the poorest region of a poor country.

From the side of the mutinees, the revolt had (almost unwittingly in the beginnin) a leader, Antonio Conselheiro, a mystical man who wandered for years in the hinterlands of Brazilian Northeast, followed by growing multitudes of disposessed, who saw in him a religious man to rescue Catholic fundamental religious values of medieval importance, and to whom they follow as sheeps follow their sheperd.

To sum it up, the book has all the ingredients of a good historic novel, despite its characters being non-conventional. I hope you enjoy it as I did.

This is not an easy book. Don't pick it up if you like pop novels and sci-fi. It's for the serious reader of history, military tactics, and social upheaval. Da Cunha is a brilliant observer of the 1896-97 Brazilian military's crushing of an ostensibly revolutionary movement in the dry interior. Brutal, honest, clear, incisive. An amazing and challenging book.

In addition to the reviews previously posted, my advice to the non-intellectual reader is to first read Errol Lincoln Uys's Brazil, which is an easy to read historical Michener-type novel that will frame the events of the eye witness account of the "rebellion" of Canudos documented in d Cunda's book. After reading Rebellion in the Backlands, I recommend Mario Varges Llosa's The War at the End of the World, again a novel but featuring a fictionlized Euclides da Cunha that makes The Rebellion in the Backlands even more understandable. Both Llosa's and Cunha's books are required reading in Brazilian schools and I believe it would be a waste of time to try to gain insights into today's Brazil without giving yourself this very unique experience.

It's easiest to read Euclides da Cunha's Os Sertoes in English than in Portuguese.Mr Putnam's translation maybe regarded a truly remarkable feat.Very few,by way,are those who have read the work in Brazil-and almost none recently.The author's style is unique through all world's literatures.Is it good or bad?

Literally, this is the work of a genius. the author was the very definition of genius, a journalist, anthropologist, geologist, engineer, etc. But most important, he was an eyewitness of Canudos, the village in the backlands of Brazil that resisted four army expeditions until the very last survivor, commanded by their religious leader, Antônio Conselheiro. A sociological treaty crucial to understand Brazil beyond samba, soccer and Carnaval.

MAYBE "OS SERTOES", THE TITLE IN PORTUGUESE ,IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT BOOKS EVER WRITEN BY A BRAZILIAN AUTHOR.THE AMAZINGLY POWERFUL HISTORY OF " THE WAR AT THE WORLD'S END" MUST BE READ . AFTER 100 YEARS , CUNHA HAS BEEN RECOGNIZED IN SEVERAL EUROPEAN CENTERS AS A GENIUS AND HIS UNIQUE BOOK CONSIDERED A MASTER PIECE, AFTER DECADES OF PREJUDICE AND INJUSTICE EVEN IN HIS OWN COUNTRY.

The book tells the history of a battle in the the driest Brazilian backlands. A whole army fighting against a small settlement of religious fanatics, who resisted until the death of its very last surviver. But the book is not only the war: is a very good account of the brazilian geography and human aspect of Brazil in the turn of the XIX century. Very well written.