Sentencing Canudos: Subalternity in the Backlands of Brazil

Chapter Two: A Prose of Counterinsurgency

45 The various biographical accounts of Antônio Conselheiro—also known as Antônio dos Mares, Santo Antônio Aparecido, Santo Conselheiro, and Bom Jesus—differ as to details of his early life (e.g., date of birth, his relationship with his wife, and the date he left Ceará for Bahia). Most stories concur, however , on the following points. The Conselheiro was born Antônio Vicente Mendes Maciel in Quixeramobim , Ceará, in 1828 (or 1830, the year of his baptism). His father, Vicente Mendes Maciel, was a smalltime merchant who owned a few houses. His first wifehavingdied, Vicenteremarried when Antônio was six. Tradition has itthat Antônio’sstepmotherwasmentallyunstableandmistreatedtheboy.Hisfather apparently hoped he would become a priest and sent him to study at a school where he not only acquired literacy in his native language but also learned arithmetic, Latin, and French (which, given the levels of literacy then common in Brazil, placed him among a privileged minority). Antônio soon abandoned his studies and went to work in his father’s commercial establishment, taking control of it on his father’s death. He was unsuccessful commercially, however, Chapter two a prose oF CounterInsurgenCy There in that corner, he [Antônio Conselheiro] . . . spoke to the people. He was a dry and bearded old man and prayed in such a manner that it was wonderful to listen to him. —Antonio Carola, 1955 johnson text-3.indd 45 9/27/10 10:54 AM 46 a prose oF CounterInsurgenCy and closed his father’s business in 1857, the same year he married his cousin Brasilina Laurentina de Lima.1 From 1857 until 1871 he tried his hand at several jobs, from primary school teacher to wandering merchant to a legal advocate for the poor. At this time he also separated from his wife, who is said to have cheated on him. According to these stories, Antônio’s mother told him about the affair and advised him that he should hide in the bushes and watch to see for himself. To convince her son, she decided to play the part, dressing up as a man and creeping out of his wife’s room. In this account, the enraged Antônio shot her only to discover that it was his own mother when he removed the clothes. Antônio was indeed jailed in 1874 in Bahia, charged with his mother’s murder, but after he was sent back to Ceará, the accusation was deemed false.2 (His acquiescence to the arrest is often cited to show his acceptance of governmental authority under the monarchy.) The story has continued to circulate, however. Antônio is supposed to have had two (and according to oral culture, perhaps even three) sons—oneby his wifeand oneby Joana Imaginária, a mystic artist who carved wooden statues of saints. In 1871 he was brought to court for a debt that he paid off by selling all that he had. Soon thereafter, apparently, he turned to a wandering religious life. The first record of him from this era occurred in November 22, 1874, in a note published in O Rabudo, a newspaper from Sergipe, announcing that a certain Antônio dos Mares, with bare feet and long hair and wearing a blue robe, was preaching about morality and customs. He did not accept alms, ate little, and constructed churches and cemeteries. The tone of the piece is nonchalant, butbytheendoftheCanudosconflict,theConselheirowouldbedescribedasa madmanandafanatic,athrowbacktobarbarism.Everythingabouthimwould connote excess and rupture, reducing and finally eliminating any possibility of understanding the man as an ordinary figure, as did this note in ORabudo. Within the space between the note in O Rabudo and da Cunha’s text, published over twenty years later, emerged a prose of counterinsurgency. I borrow this term from Ranajit Guha, who used it to underscore the way accounts of peasant insurgencies found in colonial India’s governmental letters and dispatches were not neutral, factual accounts; rather, they were organized explicitly by a code of pacification through which the state sought to put down insurgency in words and actions. To say that government memoranda are interested in combating insurgency may seem obvious enough; Guha’s main point, however, is that the governmental optics in these sources is preserved in johnson text-3.indd 46 9/27/10 10:54 AM 47 a prose oF CounterInsurgenCy secondary and tertiary accounts of the events. In other words, even seemingly neutral historical accounts...