Geography of cangaço: conceptual ideasfor thinking the backcountry banditry

Abstract

This article starts from some proposals raised during the master’s research aiming to discuss ideas about the concept of social banditry developed by Eric Hobsbawm and the usual application of this concept in some works to characterize the movement of the cangaço, standardizing places, landscapes and subjects, without considering the implications of homogenizing the cangaço movement as social banditry, thus transferring the theory to conceptualize different social and cultural movements. Thinking about this discussion, historical-cultural observations are considered for the existence of bands of cangaceiros in the northeastern hinterland, punctuating the relationships that permeated the backcountry society of the time, correlating with the issues of honor, bravery and “cabra-macho”, added to the connection of experience in the caatinga environment, which constituted a geography of cangaço, present in the cultural context of the subjects from the northeastern hinterland with the environment based on popular knowledge that guaranteed cangaceiros the experience and survival as nomads. The cultural base of northeastern hinterland living, constituted through the relation of the hinterland moral code of non-demoralization, culminated, in the view of the hinterland northeastern subjects, the recognition of a geography of cangaço developed by the performance of the bands of cangaceiros that ensure, until today, narratives, whether of admiration or aversion to bandits/cangaceiros, attributing, above all, a prominent place after episodes of tragic deaths suffered by some cangaceiros.