Canudos: Organization, Power and the Institutionalization Process of a Communitarian Governance Model

• Autor(a) principal: Martins, Paulo Emílio Matos
• Data de Publicação: 2007
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Cadernos EBAPE.BR
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.fgv.br/cadernosebape/article/view/5047

Antônio Conselheiro and its followers had perform in the Brazilian backlands (1893-1897) a curious communitarian experience that reached 10,335% growth in its population, in only four years, and resisted, during ten months, to the onslaughts of almost the half of the Brazilian army. It is not reasonable to imagine that it has done without an efficient governance and organization, despite its tragic end. In this assay we analyze this organization based on a institutionalization model of three dimensions: the economic, the politic and the religious ones, and in its governance and local organization. Based on a semiotic reading of the descendants of the Canudos survivors discourse; the reports of the witness-chroniclers of the episode and the historiography of the fact, my conclusions points out that Canudos (the Bello Monte of Antônio Conselheiro) would have been a great "mutirão" (mutual aid), whose its leadership assumed a form which I identify as the symmetric of the "coronelismo" (colonel style, in the Victor Nunes Leal meaning) or "um coronel pelo avesso" (a contrary colonel), making a parody with the Euclidean image of Antonio Conselheiro.