Political Structure and Social Banditry in Northeast Brazil
In his pioneering works on Primitive Rebels and Bandits,l Eric Hobsbawm analyzed certain forms of rural banditry as primitive social protest. Such ' social banditry' was distinguished from ordinary banditry primarily by virtue of its continued incorporation into the traditional peasant society,2 its attacks against landlords and other authorities and its 'affinity for revolution, being a phenomenon of social protest, if not a precursor or potential incubator of revolt'.3 Social banditry was analyzed by Hobsbawm as a reaction of peasants to alien authorities, injustices and major social upheavals such as war, conquest, or industrialization. In the idealizations and myths of popular folklore, the great bandits were often seen as champions of the common people who stole from the rich, gave to the poor and killed only in self-defence or just revenge. In actuality the bandits approached this ideal to varying degrees, and in many cases the images were more myth than reality. But Hobsbawm pointed out that the element of rebellion in social bandits lay in their defiance of repressive authorities, their often demonstrated respect for the peasant populations and in the type of injustices which characteristically forced individuals into banditry. In a recent critique, Blok has suggested that Hobsbawm ' over-emphasizes the element of social protest and obscures the significance of the links which bandits maintain with established power-holders '. He argued that bandits