The War of the End of the World

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  For that reason, the townspeople were surprised one day to see Maria Quadrado heading for the cemetery, around which a group of volunteers had begun to build a wall, having been impelled to do so by the exhortations of a dark-skinned, long-haired man dressed in dark purple who, arriving in town that morning with a group of disciples (among whom there was a creature, half human and half animal, that galloped along on all fours), had reproved them for not even taking the trouble to erect a wall around the ground in which their dead had been laid to rest. Was it not fitting and proper that death, which permitted man to see the face of God, should be venerated? Maria Quadrado silently joined the people who were collecting stones and piling them up in a sinuous line enclosing the little crosses scorched by the sun, and began to help. She worked shoulder to shoulder with them till sunset. Then she lingered on in the main square beneath the tamarinds, along with the group that gathered to listen to the dark-skinned man. Although he mentioned God and said that it was important for the salvation of a person’s soul that that person destroy his or her own will—a poison that gave everyone the illusion of being a little god who was superior to the other gods round about him—and put in its place the will of the Third Person, the one that built, the one that labored, the Industrious Ant, and things of that sort, he spoke of these things in clear language, every word of which they understood. His talk, while religious and profound, seemed like one of those pleasant after-dinner chats that families had together outside in the street as they enjoyed the evening breeze. Maria Quadrado stayed on in the square, all curled up in a ball, listening to the Counselor, not asking him anything, not taking her eyes off him. When the hour grew late and the townspeople still there in the square offered the stranger a roof over his head for his night’s rest, she, too, spoke up—everyone turned round to look at her—and timidly offered him her cave. Without hesitating, the gaunt man followed her up the mountainside.

  For as long as the Counselor remained in Monte Santo, giving counsel and working—he cleaned and restored all the chapels on the mountain, built a wall of stones along either side of the Via Sacra—he slept in Maria Quadrado’s cave. Afterward people said that he didn’t sleep, and that she didn’t either, that they spent the night talking of things of the spirit at the foot of the little multicolored altar, while others claimed that he slept on the straw pallet as she watched over his sleep. In any event, the truth was that Maria Quadrado never left his side for a moment, hauling stones with him in the daytime and listening to him with wide-open eyes at night. Nonetheless, the whole town was surprised the morning it discovered that the Counselor had left Monte Santo and that Maria Quadrado had joined his followers and gone off with him.

  In a square in the upper town of Bahia there is an old stone building, decorated with black-and-white seashells and surrounded, as prisons are, by thick yellow walls. As some of my readers may already have surmised, it is a fortress of obscurantism: the Monastery of Our Lady of Mercy. A monastery of Capuchins, one of those orders famous for the subjugation of the spirit that they practice and for their missionary zeal. Why do I speak to you of a place which in the eyes of any libertarian symbolizes what is odious? In order to inform you of what I learned when I spent the entire afternoon inside it two days ago.

  I did not go there to explore the terrain with a view to bringing to it one of those pedagogically violent messages that in the opinion of many comrades it is indispensable that we deliver to military barracks, convents, and all bastions of exploitation and superstition in general in order to break down the taboos with which these institutions are customarily surrounded in the minds of workers and demonstrate to them that they are vulnerable. (Do you remember the groups in Barcelona who advocated attacking convents so as to restore to the nuns, by impregnating them, their status as women that their sequestration had robbed them of?) I went to this monastery to converse with a certain Brother João Evangelista de Monte Marciano, for as fate would have it, I had chanced to read a curious Account of which he was the author.

  A patient of Dr. José Batista de Sá Oliveira, whose book on craniometry I have already spoken to you of, and with whom I collaborate on occasion, he is a relative of the most powerful man in these parts: the Baron de Canabrava. As Dr. Oliveira was purging him for tapeworm, the man to whom I refer, Lélis Piedades, a barrister, recounted how a hacienda belonging to the baron has been occupied for nearly two years now by madmen who have turned it into a no-man’s-land. Lélis Piedades is the one entrusted with the responsibility of pleading before the courts for the return of the hacienda to the baron, in the name of the right of ownership, which the aforementioned baron naturally feels it his duty to defend with fervor. The fact that a group of the exploited has appropriated the property of an aristocrat is always pleasing news to the ears of a revolutionary, even when the poor in question are—as the barrister maintained while seated on the basin, pushing hard to expel the tapeworm already done in by chemistry—religious fanatics. But what made me prick up my ears was hearing all of a sudden that they reject civil marriage and practice something which Lélis Piedades calls “promiscuity,” but which anyone intimately acquainted with the ways of society will recognize as the institution of free love. “With proof of corruption such as that, the authorities will necessarily be obliged to expel the fanatics from the property.” The pettifogger’s proof consisted of the aforementioned Account, which he had obtained through collusion with the Church, to which he also lends his services. Brother João Evangelista de Monte Marciano had been sent to the hacienda by the Archbishop of Bahia, who had received depositions denouncing the heretical practices of its occupiers. The monk went to see what was going on in Canudos and returned very shortly, frightened and incensed by what he had seen.

  His Account indicates as much, and there can be no doubt that for the Capuchin the experience was a bitter one. For a liberated mind what his Account suggests between its turgidly ecclesiastical lines is exciting. The instinct for freedom, which a class society stifles by way of those machines to crush what is inborn—families, schools, religion, and the state—guides the footsteps of these men who give every appearance of having rebelled, among other things, against that institution whose aim is to bridle feelings and desires. Their avowed reason being the refusal to obey the law permitting civil marriages, promulgated in Brazil following the fall of the Empire, the people of Canudos have taken to forming unions freely and to dissolving them freely, so long as both the man and the woman agree to do so, and to disregarding the paternity of offspring conceived in their mothers’ wombs, since their leader or guide—whom they call the Counselor—has taught them that all children are legitimate by the mere fact of having been born. Is there not something in all of this that sounds familiar to you? Is it not as though certain fundamental ideas of our revolution were being put into practice in Canudos? Free love, free paternity, the disappearance of the infamous line that is drawn between legitimate and illegitimate offspring, the conviction that man inherits neither dignity nor ignominy. Overcoming a natural repugnance, was I right or not to go visit this Capuchin friar?

  It was the Baron de Canabrava’s petty lawyer himself who arranged for the interview, in the belief that I have been interested for years in the subject of religious superstition (this, as a matter of fact, is true). It took place in the refectory of the monastery, a room whose walls were covered with paintings of saints and martyrs, adjoining a small tiled cloister, with a cistern to which hooded monks in brown habits girdled with white cords came every so often to draw pails of water. The monk forgave all my questions and turned out to be very talkative on discovering that we were able to converse in Italian, his native tongue. A southerner who is still young, short-statured, plump, thick-bearded, he has a very broad forehead that betrays that he is a day-dreamer, and the hollows at his temples and the thickness of his neck a nature that is spiteful, petty, and touchy. And, in point of fact, in the course of the conversation I noted that he is filled with hatred against Canudos because of
the failure of the mission that took him there and because of the fear that he no doubt experienced there among the “heretics.” But, once allowances are made for the exaggeration and rancor evident in his testimony, the residuum of truth in it is, as you will see, most impressive.

  What I heard from his lips would provide material for many issues of L’Etincelle de la révolte. The heart of the matter is that the interview confirmed my suspicions that in Canudos humble and inexperienced people, by the sheer powers of instinct and imagination, are carrying out in practice many of the things that we European revolutionaries know are necessary in order to institute a reign of justice on this earth. Judge for yourselves. Brother João Evangelista spent just one week in Canudos, accompanied by two men of the cloth: another Capuchin from Bahia and the parish priest of a town neighboring Canudos, a certain Dom Joaquim, whom, let me say in passing, Brother João detests (he accuses him of being a toper, of being unchaste, and of arousing people’s sympathies for outlaws). Before arriving in Canudos—after an arduous journey of eighteen days—they noted “signs of insubordination and anarchy,” since no guide was willing to take them there and when they were three leagues away from the hacienda they met up with a patrol of men with long-barreled muskets and machetes who confronted them in a hostile mood and allowed them to pass thanks only to the intervention of Dom Joaquim, whom they knew. In Canudos they encountered a multitude of emaciated, cadaverous creatures, crowded one on top of the other in huts of mud and straw and armed to the teeth “so as to protect the Counselor, whom the authorities have already tried to kill.” The frightened words of the Capuchin as he recalled his impression on seeing so many weapons are still ringing in my ears. “They put them down neither to eat nor to pray, for they are proud of being armed with blunderbusses, carbines, pistols, knives, and cartridge belts, as though they were about to wage war.” (I was unable to make him see the light, though I explained to him that they had found it necessary to wage this war ever since they had occupied the baron’s land by force.) He assured me that among those men were criminals famous for their outrages, and mentioned one of them in particular, Satan João, “known far and wide for his cruelty,” who had come to live in Canudos with his band of outlaws and was one of the Counselor’s lieutenants. Brother João Evangelista tells of having rebuked the Counselor in these words: “Why are criminals allowed in Canudos if it is true that you are Christians as you claim?” The answer: “To make good men of them. If they have robbed or killed, it was because of the poverty they were living in. They feel that they are part of the human family here and are grateful; they will do anything to redeem themselves. If we refused to take them in, they would commit yet more crimes. Our understanding of charity is that practiced by Christ.” These words, comrades, are in complete accordance with the philosophy of freedom. You know full well that the brigand is a rebel in the natural state, an unwitting revolutionary, and you well remember that in the dramatic days of the Commune many brothers who were looked upon as criminals, who had passed through the jails of the bourgeoisie, were in the vanguard of the fight, shoulder to shoulder with the workers, giving proof of their heroism and of their generosity of spirit.

  A significant fact: the people of Canudos call themselves jagunços, a word that means rebels. Despite his travels as a missionary in the backlands, the monk did not recognize these barefoot women or these men, once so circumspect and humble, as being people with a mission from the Church and God. “They are irreconcilable enemies of society. They are agitated, all excited. They shout, they interrupt each other in order to utter what strikes the ears of a Christian as the most egregious nonsense, doctrines that subvert law and order, morality, and faith. They maintain, for instance, that anyone who wishes to save his soul must go to Canudos, since the rest of the world has fallen into the hands of the Antichrist.” And do you know what these jagunços mean by the Antichrist? The Republic! Yes, comrades, the Republic. They regard it as responsible for every evil that exists, some of which are no doubt abstract, but also for real and concrete ones such as hunger and income taxes. Brother João Evangelista de Monte Marciano could not believe the things he heard. I doubt that he or his order or the Church in general is very enthusiastic about the new regime in Brazil, since, as I wrote you in a previous letter, the Republic, which is aswarm with Freemasons, has meant a weakening of the Church. But that is a far cry from regarding it as the Antichrist! Thinking that he would frighten me or arouse my indignation, the Capuchin went on to say things that were music to my ears: “They’re a politico-religious sect that is up in arms against the constitutional government of the country; they have set themselves up as a state within a state, since they do not accept the laws of the Republic or recognize its authorities or allow its money to circulate there.” His intellectual blindness kept him from understanding that these brothers, with an infallible instinct, have chosen to rebel against the born enemy of freedom: power. And what is the power that oppresses them, that denies them the right to land, to culture, to equality? Isn’t it the Republic? And the fact that they are armed to fight against it is proof that they have also hit upon the right method, the sole method the exploited have to break their chains: violence.

  But this is not all. Prepare yourselves for something even more surprising. Brother João Evangelista assures me that, along with communal sex, Canudos has instituted the regime of communal property: everything belongs to everyone. The Counselor is said to have convinced the jagunços that it is a sin—mark my words well—to consider any movables or semimovables as belonging to any one individual. The dwellings, the crop lands, the domestic animals belong to the community: they are everyone’s and no one’s. The Counselor has persuaded them that the more possessions a person has, the fewer possibilities he has of being among those who will find favor on Judgment Day. It is as though he were putting our ideas into practice, hiding them behind the facade of religion for a tactical reason, namely the need to take into account the cultural level of his humble followers. Is it not remarkable that in the remote reaches of Brazil a group of insurgents is forming a society in which marriage and money have been done away with, in which collective ownership has replaced private ownership?

  This idea was whirling round and round in my brain as Brother João Evangelista de Monte Marciano was telling me that, after preaching for seven days in Canudos, amid an atmosphere of silent hostility, he found himself being called a Freemason and a Protestant for urging the jagunços to return to their villages, and that as he pleaded with them to submit to the Republic, their passions became so inflamed that he was obliged to flee for his life from Canudos. “The Church has lost its authority there on account of a crazy man who spends his time making the whole mob work all day long building a stone temple.” I was unable to share his consternation and instead felt only happiness and sympathy for those men, thanks to whom, it would appear, there is being reborn from its ashes, in the backlands of Brazil, the Idea that the forces of reaction believe they have drowned in the blood of revolutions defeated in Europe. Till my next letter or never.

  [IV]

  When Lélis Piedades, the Baron de Canabrava’s barrister, officially notified the Tribunal of Salvador that the hacienda of Canudos had been invaded by thugs, the Counselor had been there for three months. The news soon spread throughout the sertão: the saint who had wandered the length and breadth of the land for a quarter of a century had put down roots in that place surrounded by stony hills called Canudos, after the pipes made of canudos—segments of sugarcane stalk—that the people who lived there used to smoke. The place was known to cowhands, for they often stopped with their cattle for the night on the banks of the Vaza-Barris. In the following weeks and months groups of the curious, of sinners, of the sick, of vagrants, of fugitives from justice, come from the North, the South, the East, and the West, were seen heading for Canudos with the presentiment or the hope that they would there find forgiveness, refuge, health, happiness.

  On the morning after he and his fo
llowers arrived, the Counselor began to build a Temple, which, he said, would be made all of stone, with two very tall towers, and would be dedicated to the Blessed Jesus. He decided that it would be erected opposite the old Church of Santo Antônio, the chapel of the hacienda. “Let the rich raise their hands,” he said, preaching by the light of a bonfire in the town going up. “I raise mine. Because I am a son of God, who has given me an immortal soul that can earn heaven, the only true wealth, for itself. I raise them because the Father has made me poor in this life so that I may be rich in the next. Let the rich raise their hands!” In the shadows full of sparks a forest of upraised arms emerged then from amid the rags and the leather and the threadbare cotton blouses. They prayed before and after he gave his counsel and held processions amid the half-finished dwellings and the shelters made of bits of cloth and planks where they slept, and in the back-country night they could be heard shouting, Long live the Virgin and the Blessed Jesus and death to the Can and the Antichrist. A man from Mirandela, who made fireworks and set them off at fairs—Antônio the Pyrotechnist—was one of the first pilgrims to arrive, and from that time on, whenever there were processions in Canudos, set pieces were ignited and skyrockets burst overhead.

  The Counselor directed the work on the Temple, with the advice and assistance of a master mason who had helped him restore many chapels and build the Church of the Blessed Jesus in Crisópolis from the ground up, and designated the penitents who would go out to quarry stones, sift sand, and haul timber. In the early evening, after a frugal meal—if he was not fasting—consisting of a crust of bread, a piece of fruit, a mouthful of boiled manioc, and a few sips of water, the Counselor welcomed the newcomers, exhorted the others to be hospitable, and after the Credo, the Our Father, and the Ave Marias, his eloquent voice preached austerity, mortification, abstinence to all of them and shared visions with them that resembled the stories recounted by the cantadores who wandered over the countryside reciting their traditional tales. The end was near—it could be seen as clearly as Canudos from the heights of A Favela. The Republic would keep on sending hordes with uniforms and rifles to try to capture him, in order to keep him from talking to the needy, but no matter how much blood he might cause to flow, the Dog would not bite Jesus. There would be a flood and then an earthquake. An eclipse would plunge the world into such total darkness that everything would have to be done by touch, as blind people do, while in the distance the battle resounded. Thousands would die of panic. But when the mists dispersed, one bright clear dawn, the men and women would see the army of Dom Sebastião all round them on the hills and slopes of Canudos. The great King would have defeated the Can’s bands, would have cleansed the world for the Lord. They would see Dom Sebastião, with his shining armor and his sword; they would see his kindly, adolescent face, he would smile at them from astride his mount with diamond-studded gold trappings, and they would see him ride off, his mission of redemption fulfilled, to return with his army to the bottom of the sea.