Backlands (65 page)

A more serious operation was under way, perhaps the most strategic action of the campaign. It was the work of Lieutenant Colonel Siqueira de Menezes. This officer had come to understand the strategic advantage of another supply route, the Calumbi road, based on information he had gathered from loyal cowboys. It ran through the terrain between the Rosário and Cambaio roads in a straight north-south line. It was shorter than both of those roads and would improve communications with Monte Santo. He decided to explore this route even though it was very risky to undertake.

He did it in three days. The lieutenant colonel left Canudos on September 4 with fifteen hundred men. He had the Twenty-second, Ninth, and Thirty-fourth battalions under Major Lydio Porto. They traveled the road and returned on the seventh via the Cambaio road. It was a daring, fast operation with very good results.

The newly discovered road was opened for army troops and supplies and closed to the
jagunços
, for whom it had been a preferred southern route. It shortened the trip to Monte Santo by a day. It was the best suited of all the roads to resist attack. It was similar to the Rosário highway, forking to the left of the Juá road to the north. It followed the winding Caraíbas River for miles, sometimes crossing it, but always heading in the same direction. Small farms bordered the route until it reached the Caxomongó, another seasonal river. From this point it became a road of great strategic importance.

The Calumbi highlands ran to the southeast and flanked the road at about three hundred yards to the right. Any army heading down the road would have to expose itself to the enemy positioned on the slopes. After this dangerous point, they would head into an even more dangerous situation. After climbing a long slope, the road enters a short, narrow gulley that is completely hidden by the dense
umburana
stalks that grow in the area. A natural trench of siliceous marble runs just above the ground, a rough wall with a thin, wicket-shaped fracture in the center. There was no need for any other cover here. Rifles perched on the top of this ledge would be able to mow down the enemy as he came through. In case the enemy got any farther, which would be unlikely with well-positioned troops showering them with bullets, he would discover very shortly that he was entering impassable terrain.

The geology of the northern backlands has a number of common features. The land is rugged and full of obstacles. Immediately beyond the gorge, it runs down to Várzea Farm in what seems to be an easy passage, but is really very difficult for troops under fire. A layer of limestone stretches for miles in a state of decomposition due to the dry atmosphere. It is pockmarked with depressions and riddled with razor-sharp edges, deep chasms, and long, sharp spurs that are like knife blades. Occasionally the surface is broken by a wide pit. The terrain is evidence of the erosive effect of the extreme climate over a period of centuries. After seasons of prolonged drought, acidic rain corrodes, punctures, and breaks up the land. The corrupted earth reflects the turbulence of the storms that have swept over it.

The sturdiest boots would be ripped apart on this jagged steppe. There would be no protection from sudden falls into the sharp-edged gullies. It was impossible to do battle here. Even those traveling in peace could only pass through one at a time on a side trail leading to the Várzea basin below. It was a broad bowl littered with fragments of flint and surrounded by thick brushwoods. Whoever reached this point would be the target of fire from all directions. Even if they did get this far, after a thousand yards they would face certain death. Here the road disappears into the deep winding bed of the Sargento River. Along its banks the deep blue folds of a talc schist formation are streaked with white quartz veins. At points these layers are horizontal, running from one bank to the other, so that it creates the impression of an enormous old aqueduct, with the remains of its ancient vault still visible here and there. The huge ditch substitutes for the road for about a mile. Like the others in the area, it is not a river but a drain that occasionally fills with floodwaters, which are the channel to the Vaza-Barris. On either side of the banks were
jagunço
trenches, spaced a short distance apart, and providing either direct or cross fire on the riverbed road at every bend.

The three thousand men of the Arthur Oscar de Andrade Guimarães column would never have made it through here. They had traveled on the Rosário road, which had saved their lives. The expeditions that preceded them had taken the Uauá, Cambaio, and Maçacará roads, always varying the route. This had made the
sertanejos
think that the last expedition would come on the Calumbi. If it had, not a single man would have made it. Our troops would have traveled in blind ignorance of the terrible terrain and what it had in store for them.

Now the
jagunços
had left these positions and were hiding in the settlement. Lieutenant Colonel Siqueira de Menezes’s strategy was well thought through and highly advantageous. After leaving guards at key points along the way as far as Juá, he then took the Cambaio. He stationed a wing of the Twenty-second at the empty trenches there and then went on to Lake Cipó, where heaps of white bones served as reminders of the Febrônio expedition. He found a few enemy scouts there and captured thirteen pack animals from them. He continued on to the Mucuim, and took two enemy trenches by surprise.

The line of siege was expanding. A quick, safe route was found to mobilize the forces. The main segment of this road, from the Sargento River to Sussuarana Farm, passing through Várzea and Caxomongó, was held by the Thirty-third, Sixteenth, and Twenty-eighth battalions of the Second Brigade and a wing of the São Paulo Battalion.

Canudos was surrounded by a huge semicircle, which stretched from the north to the Old Ranch House on the south and then eastward to the Cambaio road. The only ways open to the
jagunços
were the Uauá and the Várzea da Ema trails to the northeast.

The end of the campaign was drawing near.

The new troops heading to Monte Santo on the recently opened road had an unusual preoccupation. They were afraid there would not be a single
jagunço
left for them to fight. They were sure that they would find that the conflict was over and they felt scandalously cheated.

The first unit to leave on September 13 was the North Police Corps Brigade. This was for administrative reasons but it upset those in the line brigade, which would follow a few days later under the command of General Carlos Eugenio de Andrade Guimarães.

So many rebels were falling every day and there were so many reverses for the enemy, which was being squeezed into an ever-tightening circle by the invading troops, that it seemed to the new reinforcements that each passing hour reduced their chances of participating in the victory. This is why the Northeast Brigade moved at a dizzying pace, stumbling along the roads from the first light of dawn and stopping only when the burning sun had exhausted it completely. The line brigade was close behind, also moving fast, traveling light and motivated by the crazy urge to arm-wrestle the enemy, even if in a small skirmish.

The champions marched along, well nourished, healthy, and full of bluster—making haste to the mud fortress that for the last three months had been razed by cannon fire, broken by assaults, and consumed by fires while being defended by a handful of men.

When they reached Sussuarana Farm, fifteen miles from Canudos, their spirits lifted because they could hear the dull thunder of the artillery. In Caxomongó, when the wind blew in the right direction, they could hear the crackling of rifle shots.

Meanwhile, in this atmosphere of warmongering enthusiasm, there were still unexpected incidents that startled the men. The backlands battle had not completely lost its mysterious nature, which it would have until the end. As they advanced deep into the backlands, entering the highlands and passing the deserted farmhouses in ruins in the open desert, the war-lusting soldiers could hardly repress a shudder of fear. I was witness to this on one occasion.

Colonel Sotero de Menezes’s brigade had arrived on the third day of its journey, September 15, at Caxomongó Farm, which was on the border of the battle zone. Those who travel from Boa Esperança have crossed a plain surrounded by beautiful highlands. If they come from Sussuarana Farm, they have passed an
ipueira
well full of water. Once the traveler has arrived, he encounters a sterile and forbidding landscape. The sandstone terrain is rough, reddish in color, with strata inclined at a forty-five-degree angle. This is what causes the rapid evaporation of the rare rains that fall here and turns the area into a harsh desert.

The ranch house, a miserable hovel, is on the riverbank. The river is nothing but a trough with straight walls nine feet high. It is filled with rocks of all sizes and shapes and is completely dry. The riverbed soon disappears into the bare hills.

The troops reached this place at midmorning. There were two well-disciplined corps from Pará and the one from Amazonas. All wore the uniform that had been issued in Bahia. Officers and men alike wore broad-brimmed hats of carnauba straw with the brims turned down, making them look like a band of woodsmen. In spite of the early hour, they set up camp. They had found water in a nearby pit that was deep and dark as a mine shaft. This was their last stop. The next day they would reach the settlement. The dead landscape suddenly came alive as it filled up with tents, munitions, and the noise and activity of 968 soldiers. Along the riverbanks tall
ingaranas
grew and their boughs stretched over the stream.
^1
2
Dozens of hammocks were tied up between the branches, and the men took their rest there.

The day went by peacefully.

There was nothing to fear.

Night came. From a distance, they heard the roll of distant thunder to the north. It was the bombardment of Canudos.

The enemy, contained by the siege lines, would have no energy for night raids. The night would pass without incident. Even if the
jagunços
showed up, they would find an opponent eager to greet them.

The men fell asleep early only to wake up with a start at ten o’clock. A shot had gone off on their left flank. One of the sentries on the security cordon that had been set up around the camp had seen or thought he saw a suspicious figure in the shadows and had fired his rifle. It was surely the enemy they were anxious to meet. As in previous expeditions, he had snuck up on them for a quick, bold attack.

Suddenly the men who had been so impatient to pit their strength against that of the enemy had a brief, mysterious vision of what this battle was really like. They now saw it for themselves, at close range. A strange panic gripped the battalions. The bugles sounded, commands were shouted, and the men cried out in alarm, everyone was asking anxious questions. The men leaped out of their hammocks and into the riverbed below; they scrambled about in great confusion, bumping into each other, slipping and falling. Pulling out their swords and revolvers, the officers rushed down the ranks as the men got into formation and adjusted their weapons. The scene was bedlam. Platoons and companies formed into improvised squares as if they were expecting a cavalry charge. Whole detachments pointed their bayonets at nothing. Throughout the companies, platoons, and detachments individual soldiers ran wildly about, trying to find their place in the confusing assembly.

These fighting men were in the vise of an emotion that they never thought they would experience as they waited for the enemy to attack. The brigade was like a long ship’s wake in the serene moonlight that lay over the entire sleeping landscape.

It was a false alarm.

The next morning their fears had dissipated and once again they were impatient heroes. Marching at a quick pace and without further trepidation, they headed for the Sargento River, which suddenly overflowed with uniforms. They climbed the bare hill that descends abruptly to the Umburanas valley. There they were surprised by the direct view of Canudos, just a mile and a quarter away.

This was a relief. There were the two ruined churches, facing each other across the famous square. The new church, without its towers, the main walls in ruins, split from top to bottom, was a pile of garbage. The old one was also blackened and in ruins, its facade was missing. Just a part of the belfry was still standing, the same bell tower where the persistent sexton had so often called the faithful to prayer and to battle. Around the ruins was the stunted mass of huts. They had arrived in time. They would not be denied their half ration of glory. So they made their triumphant entrance to the camp as if they were going down in history, but in reality they were there for a bloody and easy victory.

The camp had changed. It was no longer as chaotic as in the early days. It was like another village next to Canudos. After crossing the dry bed of the Vaza-Barris, the new arrivals walked through a winding gully. Halfway through the ravine, in a wide concave opening to the right, was a huge shed covered in leather hides. This was the field hospital. A short distance away, they came upon the commander in chief’s tent.

They had the impression of arriving in a newly constructed town. The occupied section of the settlement had been completely reconstructed. All around the slopes on either side of the road or in small valleys were unique houses that had a festive appearance. They were completely constructed of foliage from the
juazeiro
tree. The green branches stood out from the gray hue of the tents. The dwellings did not seem adequate to their inhabitants, but in fact they were the only ones that were appropriate for the climate of the region. The burning heat that transformed the tents into ovens had inspired this bucolic architecture.