“Mud-Hut Jerusalem”: Canudos Revisited
HE rise and fall of the holy city of Belo Monte, at Canudos in the northeastern Brazilian backlands (1893-97), traumatized the new republic and shattered its facade of harmonious national progress. The settlement was founded on the site of an abandoned ranch in the remote Bahian sertao as a holy refuge by Antonio Conselheiro, a charismatic lay preacher and rebuilder of churches and cemeteries. It grew virtually overnight to num-ber more than five thousand clay-roofed huts scattered below a ring of hills and low mountains. By 1896, its swollen population made it the largest urban nucleus in the state after Salvador, the capital, seven hundred kilometers distant. In late 1897, Canudos was crushed after a year-long war waged by the Brazilian government to destroy the settlement and its fearsome leader.' Popular movements are often seen as collective expressions demanding social change, or as collective struggles to resist change which has already taken place. In some ways both modes of analysis are useful in Canudos's case. I propose, however, that understanding of the events at Canudos is best accomplished by situating Canudos within the cultural context of the rural population.2 Such an approach emphasizes the composition of the lower-class actors at Canudos and the role of its leader, seen less as