Backlands (7 page)

Let us cross through it.

In front of us, as we leave Monte Alto, the natural conformations divide. Straight to the north, a sandstone grouping can be seen all the way up to the sandy plateau of the Açuaruá, where it joins with the limestone formations that give life to the view along the bank of the great São Francisco River. . . . It follows the lines of the hills carved out by fissures, with the fantastic profile of Bom Jesus da Lapa standing out so clearly. To the northeast, because of intense decay (the Geral Range continues along like a rampart against the trade winds, condensing them into cloudbursts and deluges), a rise of ancient formations is revealed.

The mountains have been disinterred.

The diamond region of Bahia stands there as a complete replica of the one in Minas Gerais, like a revelation or, perhaps, a prolongation, with the same formation as in Minas splitting up finally into sheets of sandstone and rising up with the same rough Alpine configurations. Precipices fan out from Tromba or to the north surge up in the Huronian schists of the parallel Sincorá chain.

From here on, however, the axis of the Serra Geral is broken in a vague way. It becomes undone. The mountain range rises up with its foothills and outcroppings where, toward the east, waterfalls flow off the cliffs, the headwaters of the Paraguaçú. There is a labyrinth of a great many low and tortuous hills that randomly extends over the whole spread of the
gerais
. The topographical character is transformed, with a weakened onslaught of the elements. This goes back over thousands of years as mountains were worn away and collapsed, ending with the gradual leveling off into plateaus. The São Francisco comes into view with its twists and turns as it heads eastward, revealing at the same time the general transformation of the region.

Here it is at its most placid and its most turbulent.

It drops down across the terraces amidst a tumult of randomly scattered hills. The last spur of the main mountain range, the Itiúba, includes a few vague branches, combining the southern expansion of the Furna, the Cocais, and the Sincorá ranges. It rises up for a moment but right away drops off in all directions: to the north the start of 240 miles of rapids downstream in the Sobradinho, to the south in scattered segments that reach beyond Monte Santo, and to the east passing along the Jeremoabo flatlands until it comes out in the magnificent falls of Paulo Afonso.

An observer who has been following this route is now leaving a landscape where there is an alteration, a most beautiful contrast, between the breadth of the
gerais
and the height of the mountains. When he comes to that point he will stop short in surprise. . . .

He is standing on a ridge of the northern part of the continental massif.

Marking it off on one side, taking in two quadrants in a semicircle, is the São Francisco River. And on the other side, also curving to the southeast in a line perpendicular to its original direction, is the winding course of the Itapicurúaçú. Along a median line, running almost parallel to these, with the same inclination toward the coast, is the Vaza-Barris, called Irapiranga by the Tapuia Indians, whose course from Jeremoabo is a cartographic fantasy. As a matter of fact, on the stupendous ledge over which they descend to the sea, or downstream to Paulo Afonso along the sloping stages of the plateau, there is no place for any normal, balanced hydrographic network. What dominates is a chaotic drainage of torrents that imprint an exceptional and savage face on that corner of Bahia.

As we approach we must understand that even today there is no exact or detailed information about such a large piece of territory, which could almost take in all of Holland (9° II’ to 10º 20’ in latitude and 4º to 3º in longitude). Our best maps, based on scanty reports, have a blank there, a hiatus. Terra incognita, where there is an imaginative sketch of a dubious river or the idealization of a string of mountains.

What we know is that, having crossed the Itapicurú from the south, most settlers gathered in tiny villages—Maçacará, Cumbe, Bom Conselho—among which the ramshackle Monte Santo takes on the look of a real town. As one crosses the Itiúba Range from the south, he will come up scattered settlements on its flanks, along minor streams, or will catch sight of an occasional cattle ranch. All the settlements have the look of dismal, run-down hamlets. To the north and west there is an end to these along the banks of the São Francisco, between Capim Grosso and Santo Antônio da Glória.

Only in that last direction does a long-standing village appear: Jeremoabo, evidence of the maximum effort at the penetration of such places, always shunned by the human waves that come from the coast of Bahia in search of the interior.

One after the other they would come to a halt and flee, leaving no trace.

Not a single person remained there. It was impossible to stay. This strange territory, at least 160 miles from the old colonial capital, was destined to be completely forgotten during the passage of four hundred years of our history. While the
bandeiras
, the pioneering bands from the South, stopped at the edge, they would take a look and then head off along the flanks of Itiúba toward Pernambuco and Piauí, going as far as Maranhão. Those coming from the east, held back by the insurmountable barrier of Paulo Afonso, went looking for more practicable paths of entry along the Paraguaçú and the rivers that join it to the south. They left the region in between impassable and unknown.

The fact is, even if they followed the above-mentioned directions, choosing a shorter route, they would be struck by the strange aspect of the land and its unexpected transitions.

As they left the seacoast and continued on directly toward the west, after covering a few miles the adventurous expeditions called
entradas
lost their initial attraction as the mirages they envisioned back on the opulent coast dissolved. Immediately after Camaçarí the ancient formations are covered with scattered Tertiary flaws, alternating with small chalk gullies covered with the sandy terrain of Alagoinhas, slowly petering out to the east with the limestone outcroppings of Inhambupe. The vegetation all about is transformed as it follows these alterations with the precision of a tracing. Plant growth becomes rare or poor. It finally disappears after putting out a few sprouts along the crests of the ridges. Here and there, getting rarer and rarer, these form isolated clumps or extend out like promontories onto the naked flats of the landscape. Here a characteristic flora—twisted, interlaced bushes of red bromeliads—takes over exclusively, covering wide areas, only slightly dominated by the vigorous vegetation that irradiates out from Pojuca over the wild
massapé
topsoil from decomposed layers of chalk.
⁴

From here forward sterile Tertiary terrains reappear on top of older ones, which, nevertheless, will be dominant later on in the entire zone centering around Serrinha. The heights of Lopes and Lajedo stand erect like misshapen pyramids of smooth blocks, and after them, along one side or the other of the flanks of the Saúde and the Itiúba ranges, all the way to Vila Nova da Rainha and Juazeiro, there are copies of these same outlines of broken hillsides, revealing the split skeleton of the mountains.

An observer will have the impression that he is now passing by the crumbling edge of a plateau.

As a matter of fact he is treading upon the ancient trail over which the rude backlands pioneers went off on their expeditions into the interior.

In no way did they change it.

Nor did civilization, later on, as it put down railway tracks over the path of the
bandeirantes
.
⁵

The road in the stretch of a hundred leagues from Bahia to Juazeiro is joined by ever so many byroads going west and south; starting at its midpoint, and with little difference, they head north and east.

Going along it on the way to Piauí, Pernambuco, Maranhão, and Pará, the settlers, depending on their various destinations, would split up at Serrinha, and they would proceed to Juazeiro or, turning right, to the main road from Bom Conselho, which ever since the seventeenth century has taken them to Santo Antônio da Glória and Pernambuco. They would always turn away here and there to avoid the sinister and desolate landscape and escape the torture of its crossing.

So these two lines of penetration, touching the São Francisco at distant points—Juazeiro and Santo Antônio da Glória—have been the boundaries of a desert ever since.

Nevertheless, one who is in a hurry to cross it, going from Queimadas to the northeast, will find no surprises at first. The Itapicurú, moving along in meandering bends, supports some brilliant vegetation, and the rocky ravines of the Jacurici are trimmed with small forests. The sandy and level terrain allows a quick and unobstructed passage. Undulating flatlands lie alongside the road. The stone base, as it levels off into horizontal slabs, only scarcely pierces the soil and the thin cap of sand that covers it.

Coming into view after this, however, are places that become increasingly arid.

After crossing the narrow band of ridges that follow along the river mentioned above, one is faced by a full-fledged wilderness, as the rustics say: Low and practically rootless bushes in this poor terrain, netted together by their branches, burst forth solitary, stiff, silent, and waxy, giving the whole area the look of the edge of a desert. And the face of that inhospitable backlands emerges, slow and impressive.

Ignoring any waviness, one will see it revealed or imagined, off in the distance, as a poor landscape going on to a monotonous horizon where the burned brown of the
caatinga
brushwoods stand: thorny, stunted vegetation in uniform relief with no trace of any differing coloration.
⁶

There are still some less sterile vistas here, and there and along stretches where the decomposition of granite has taken place in situ there are some patches of clay encircled by the flourishing crowns of
uricuri
palms—a brief open parenthesis in the general aridity—on the edges of
ipueiras
, or flood ponds.
⁷
According to the beautiful indigenous etymology, these dead lakes designate an obligatory stopping point for travelers. Along with the waterholes and pools, the only recourse on such a difficult journey is where there is an opening in the rocks. Real boons and yet they often have a dismal look, located in depressions between naked hills, enwrapped by naked, sad
mandacarús
with the look of ghost trees, or on a stretch of land where they stand out strongly against the dusty gray ground because of the dark green unicellular algae that coat them.
⁸

Some places have evidence of the efforts of sons of the backlands. Crude walls of dry stone can be found skirting them and standing there like dikes among the hillsides. They bring to mind the monuments of lost peoples. They are the common heritage of those who opened up that fierce region. Their origins have generally been left in the remote past. For those of us who have ventured into these parts they are a mark of those who made an entry with all the difficulties it entailed. There they stand, indestructible, because the
sertanejo
, the backlander, no matter how unburdened he might be traveling, always carries a stone to help shore up that precarious structure.

But once these points are passed—an imperfect copy of those stockades the Romans left behind in Tunisia—one enters the dry sands once more. Moving along quickly, especially on stretches where small rolling formations come one after the other, all of a similar shape and appearance, the speediest of travelers will get the feeling that he is not moving. These shapes, so uniform, present him with the same picture of an unchanging horizon that keeps on getting farther away as he advances. On some rare occasions, as at the tiny settlement of Cansanção, there is a broad spread of fertile ground crowned with bright green vegetation.

Poor dwellings stand, some deserted by the withdrawal of cattle herders, frightened off by drought. Others are in ruins, and all of them add to the look of extreme poverty and the melancholy aspect of the whole countryside. . . .

In the area of Quirinquinquá, however, the soil begins to change. The small settlement built there rises up over a high granitic expanse, and to the north a different region can be seen, one sprinkled with hills and valleys, disappearing in the distance into hazy summits. The Monte Santo ridge, with an outline completely the opposite of the rounded contours sketched by the illustrious Martius, rises vertically in a mighty wall of white quartzite with a bluish tone. It stands out over the gneissic mass that has all soil at its base.
⁹
Dominating the flatlands that extend southeastward in an almost rectilinear line of crests, its enormous wall, furrowed by lines of strata and exposed by the erosion of the wind, has the look of a monumental battlement. It ends in a very high peak, and as it spreads out in the direction of thirteen degrees northeast it serves as a bastion for the village that stands at its feet. It is the center point of a broad horizon. One can see then, as it stretches out south and east, the predominant unevenness of the terrain across the northern quadrants.

The site of Caldeirão appears twelve miles ahead on the edge of that metamorphic elevation, and when one reaches it and passes through, he has entered, at long last, the scorched backlands.

It is an impressive landscape.

The structural makeup of the land has been coupled with a great upheaval of external agents in the design of stupendous reliefs. A torrential period of excessive weather will suddenly appear after long infusions of sun, and as it hits the slopes it leaves exposed parts that decay over a long time. This is the most ancient series of that last burgeoning of mountains: all varieties of crystal, with rough quartzites, and phyllades and calcites alternating or interconnecting, reappearing at every step and covered by a dwarfed flora—standing out and dominating the tortured-looking landscape.