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By Root 2069 0

of a strategy that the Counselor is using to launch the humble on the path of rebellion, a strategy which, in the realm of facts—unlike that of words—is a most effective one, since it has impelled them to rise up in arms against the economic, social, and military foundation of class society? Are religious, mythical, dynastic symbols the only ones capable of rousing from their inertia masses subjected for centuries to the superstitious tyranny of the Church, and is this the reason why the Counselor makes use of them? Or is all this sheer happenstance? We know, comrades, that there is no such thing as chance in history, that however fortuitous its course may seem, there is always a rationality lying hidden behind even the most puzzling outward appearances. Does the Counselor have any idea of the historical upheaval he is provoking? Is he an intuitive type or a clever one? No hypothesis is to be rejected, and, even less than others, that of a spontaneous, unpremeditated, popular movement. Rationality is engraved within the head of every man, however uncultured he may be, and given certain circumstances, it can guide him, amid the clouds of dogma that veil his eyes or the prejudices that limit his vocabulary, to act in the direction of the march of history. A man who was not one of us, Montesquieu, wrote that fortune or misfortune is simply a certain inborn tendency of our organs. Revolutionary action, too, can be born of this same propensity of the organs that govern us, even before science educates the minds of the poor. Is this what is happening in the backlands of Bahia? The answer can only be come by in Canudos itself. Till my next letter or never.

[VI]

The victory of Uauá was celebrated in Canudos with two days of festivities. There were skyrockets and fireworks displays prepared by Antônio the Pyrotechnist and the Little Blessed One organized processions that wound in and out amid the labyrinth of huts that had sprung up on the hacienda. The Counselor preached every evening from a scaffolding of the Temple. Worse trials still awaited them in Canudos; they must not allow fear to overcome them, the Blessed Jesus would aid those who had faith. The end of the world continued to be a subject he very often spoke of. The earth, worn out after so many centuries of giving forth plants and animals and sheltering man, would ask the Father if it might rest. God would give His consent, and the acts of destruction would commence. That was what was meant by the words of the Bible: “I bring not peace, but a sword!”

Hence, while in Bahia the authorities, mercilessly pilloried by the Jornal de Notícias and the Progressivist Republican Party for what had happened in Uauá, organized a second expedition with seven times as many troops as the first and equipped it with two Krupp 7.5 caliber cannons and two Nordenfelt machine guns and sent it off by train, under the command of Major Febrônio de Brito, to Queimadas, with orders to proceed immediately on foot from there to punish the jagunços, the latter were readying themselves in Canudos for Judgment Day. A number of the more impatient of them, eager to hasten that day or to give the earth the rest it deserved, went out to sow desolation. In a furious excess of love they set fire to buildings on the mountain plateaus and in the scrub forests that isolated Canudos from the world. To save their lands, many owners of haciendas and peasants presented them with gifts, but they nonetheless burned down a goodly number of farmhouses, animal pens, abandoned dwellings, shepherds’ huts, and hideouts of outlaws. It was necessary for José Venâncio, Pajeú, Abbot João, Big João, the Macambiras to go out and stop these zealous visionaries eager to bring rest to nature by reducing it to ashes, and for the Little Blessed One, the Mother of Men, the Lion of Natuba to explain to them that they had misunderstood the saint’s sermons.

Not even in these days, despite the many new pilgrims who arrived, did Canudos suffer from hunger. Maria Quadrado took a group of women—which the Little Blessed One named the