War of Canudos

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Captured Canudos residents
Soldiers of the 40th Infantry Battalion

The Canudos War was a military conflict in Brazil during 1896 and 1897. The residents of Canudos in the state of Bahia faced each other under the leadership of the preacher Antônio Conselheiro and troops of the Brazilian government. After three unsuccessful campaigns, a fourth force was finally victorious and captured Canudos. The city was destroyed, almost all of the residents were killed.

prehistory

Canudos lies in the barren landscape of the Sertão , which was marked by great poverty at the end of the 19th century. Since the 1870s, Antônio Conselheiro traveled through Bahia as an itinerant preacher, took care of the churches and cemeteries there and gathered a growing number of followers. These came from all walks of life and ethnic groups. Merchants as well as impoverished peasants, reformed criminals, ex-slaves and mestizos were among them. In 1893 the community settled in the Fazenda Canudos and named the settlement "Belo Monte" ( Portuguese: Beautiful Mountain ). With the constant influx of new followers, the settlement grew to a city of 20,000 to 30,000 people. Conselheiro had messianic status with the people of Canudos and they led a simple and faithful life. An essential common denominator of the residents was the rejection of many measures of the Brazilian republic, which was only founded in 1889 . The civil marriage , new tax laws, compulsory education and a large-scale census were considered un-Christian and oppressive. The Brazilian government therefore viewed the sect as a monarchist threat, and preparations were made to dissolve it by force.

The ruins of the Church of Canudos

Defeats of government troops

The first attack took place in November 1896 under Pires Ferreira. There were only a few dozen men available to him. They were beaten by the outnumbered Jagunços (rebels) and forced to retreat. Thereupon a second expedition went in January 1897 under the leadership of Major Febrônio de Brito with about 600 soldiers and artillery pieces to Canudos, which was also defeated. In March 1897 the 7th Infantry Regiment attacked under the experienced officer Antônio Moreira César with 1200 men. Despite far superior equipment, this unit was also defeated and its commander killed.

Destruction of Canudos

The government was surprised by the defeats and saw Canudos as likely a serious threat. General Arthur Oscar de Andrade was sent out with several thousand men to destroy the city. A four-month siege ensued, during which the supply situation for the residents deteriorated dramatically. Conselheiro refused to surrender and died of dysentery on September 22, 1897 . A few days later, Canudos was finally captured by government troops, and many of the remaining residents were massacred. A total of fifteen to twenty thousand residents and about five thousand soldiers died. The city was completely destroyed.

reception

In historical research, the events are interpreted both as an example of fatal religious fanaticism and as an early attempt to build a communist society. The writer Euclides da Cunha , who witnessed the last weeks of the campaign himself, reports on the events in Canudos in his 1902 book Os Sertões (War in the Sertão) . In his novel The War at the End of the World , published in 1981, the Peruvian Nobel Prize for Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa, largely refers to da Cunha's account, but adds some fictional characters. Two films about the Canudos War were made in the 1990s.

literature

Movies

Web links

Commons : War of Canudos  - collection of images