Advising Antonio and the War of Canudos

Antonio Vicente Mendes Maciel was born in Quixeramobim in the central hinterland of the Ceará, in the year of 1828. Son of Vicente Mendes Maciel and Maria Joaquina de Jesus, known for the friends for China Maria even so of modest origin, the Maciéis had had to face the power of the Araújos, who made use of many lands between the ribeiras of the Banabuiu and the Quixeramobim.


Here it is the house where Advising Antonio was born, it is in the Street Cônego Aureliano Mota, 210
The fight had beginning when the Maciéis had been accused by the Araújos of roberies in its properties. In 1833 the Arújos had planned a slaughter, where the paternal grandfather of Advising Antonio, Miguel Carlos Maciel, was total estraçalhado for the bullets of the enemies. The question if still became more violent in 1935, when Dr. judge Jose Antonio Pereira Ibiapina, assumed the judicial district of Quixeramobim for little time. At that time the sertanejos were massacreed by the great land owners and Ibiapina judge if it located strong in favor of the Maciéis victims of an injustice. Antonio Vicente Mendes Maciel and its two sisters had been mother orphans. In February of 1837, the widower Vicente Maciel was married Francisca Maria of the Conceição and had had two children. When concluding the alfabetização, Council member started to study Portuguese grammar, French and Latin in the school of the professor " Antonio Noble Ferreira " in Quixeramobim. With the death of its father in 1855, Advising Antonio assumed the guardianship of its two sisters and the small commerce of its father, who if found ruined, having that to sell the house to pay the debts. In 1856 the sisters of Council member if marry, and in January of 1857 the Council member contracts marriage with Brasilina Laurentina de Lima in the Array of Saint Antonio in Quixeramobim. In this year they had exactly left the city of Quixeramobim and they had started to live in the farm Tiger, exerting professor paper. In 1860, with Brasilina and the two children they had together covered Tamboril Campo Grande, fixing itself in Ipu where it assumed the function of petitioner of the Fórum. In the year of 1861, Advising one she was victim of the treason of Brasilina that started to live in Ipu with the soldier João of Mata. Being sufficiently difficult to continue to live in Ipu, therefore beyond the conjugal splitting it was very difficult to continue fighting against the local authorities since a time that its work was to defend the needed ones, the pursued ones, the victims of the great power of the powerful ones. It learns, since early, with the fight between the Maciéis and the Araújos, to distrust of the authorities that spoke in justice, while they calmed the crime. It understood that she was necessary to modify the social order. the experiences acquired in the Fórum the ideas fortified more that appeared in its brain, that soon, later had given a " mission to it to apostolar ".
Of 1861 the 1863, remained in Tamboril as primary professor later starts to live in Quitéria Saint, where per 2 years he coexisted Joana Imaginária(escultora in ceramics and wood), of this union a son was born, Joaquin Aprígio. Council member discloses to the Joana the dream to abandon everything and to leave for the world measures guiding the sertanejos northeasterns for a free place of the dominação of the powerful ones. Not accepted Joana the invitation, remains in Quitéria Saint with the advising son if she fires to the 2 and she follows a new life: the life of " travelling northeastern ".
Advising Antonio acted as Council member and guide of the northeasterns of 1865 in ahead, makes releases enters the dispossuidores of the Ceará, dislocating it for region of the Cariri. Probably in 1865, when the Pe. Ibiapina visited Mission Old the Council member met with the priest.
Segundo Edmundo Muniz - the Council member at this time found chance to change ideas with Ibiapina, and to hear its " audacious " pregações, becoming it as example for the life that would go to adopt. For the bahian writer: " he can yourself be said that the Pe. Ibiapina was the precursor of Advising Antonio ".
Leaving definitively in 1871, the trails of Quixeramobim, leave the seek social justice, evangelizando badly-ventured sertanejos, sustentáculos economic of the powerful large estate owners, constructing cemetaries and churches.
Of 1871 the 1874 its peregrination serves to divulge its objective of life that was of equality and the fraternidade for all, without race or sex distinction.
With 47 years of Advising age he was imprisoned in the sertões of the Bahia, fact that much inquietou the population. The bahian authorities had ordered the " council member " for the Ceará recommending that they did not leave it to come back to the Bahia, therefore the priests did not see it with good eyes.
Arriving tortured $fortaleza sufficiently, if it found lean, damaged. In July of 1876 they had freed, of everything it took off a teaching, continuing its mission that was to attend the abandoned populations.
The Council member together with its adepts followed the same pacings of the catolicismo, fulfilled the same obligations. Although not to possess deep knowledge on theology, he dominated the Holy Writs upper-class. In Advising general mode he spoke of the teachings of Christ and its designos, without giving to importance to that the priests said, always " favorable " to the powerful ones.
The expansion of the movement led for Council member caused fort apprehension in clero of the Bahia. The bishop determined that the vicar forbade express that the fidiciary offices if congregated to hear the pregações. Before such attitude the number of adepts magnified more, passing with Dom Luis to act with bigger severity sends correspondence to the president of the Bahia, demanding energetic steps against Council member, the prelate insinuated to the state the use of the police repression to the movement. At this time the notice appeared to intern the Council member in the asylum of insane people in Rio De Janeiro.

The first shock with the policy was in 1893, when Advising Antonio burnt the proclamations of collection of municipal taxes, determined for the federal government.
The implantation of the republican regimen did not modify the situation of the families of the workers of the field, that represented more than at that time 2/3 of the Brazilian population. the great properties in such a way continued reigning in the coast as in the inward.
In the Northeast, estagnado economically, the situation aggravated consequences of the terrible droughts that if had occurred in the end of the last century. Pursued for the policy, Advising Antonio and its followers they were refugiram in canudos, in the North of the Bahia. There of 1893 the 1897, about 30,000 sertanejos, led for the council member, they had lived in community, planting and creating flocks, until being massacreed for the soldiers of the government.
In the hinterland northeastern, in the end of the passed century, what he saw himself were hundreds of thousand of workers needing to work and they did not find work. The great farms gave job to little people and, when they needed more arms for the harvests, they went the calls fairs of workers and chose strongest. The wages were baixíssimos, before such Canudos situation were a paradise: the flocks, the pastures and the harvests belonged to all, did not have masters nor employees, nor rich and nor poor. the fairs of workers had started to disappear, all went for Canudos in fetching of better days. How it is that the government could accept such reality?
One another serious problem transformed the destruction of canudos into an honor question, as much for state leaderships how much for the federal government, the side of the religious ideas the council member attacked the federal government and still the Council member assumed total leadership between its innumerable adepts, that they obeyed to it blindly, also in the hour to vote. It seemed necessary to finish, with the absolute power them colonels.
They had been 4 dispatchings to defeat and to destroy Canudos, being 2 state and 2 federal ones.
The bahian press started to order alarming notice for the River, said that the Advising one was monarquista and the sertanejos were barbarous. In the truth, the Advising age against the Republic, therefore did not see improvement for the suffered people.
Based in such the government it sent the first dispatching, did not have success. the second dispatching left triumphant counting on the victory, finds the thing most easy to defeat Canudos, hidden between the shrubs in grottos and into the rocks, the sertanejos transformed into weakness the force of the repression. The powerful cannons had been abandoned there.
For the federal government it was a shame, needed finally in this. The canudenses had defended its community with nails and teeth without weapons faced the soldiers of the government with machetes, scythes, hoes. By three times the troops of the government had been defeated. She mobilized seven a thousand men, with the proper minister of the war directing and three generals in the command, she was necessary to save the Republic and in day 24 of September of 1897, canudos she was surrounded. Had been ten days of encarniçadas fights, man the man. In day 5 of October the last defenders of the city in flames had only fallen.
Canudos did not surrender, resisted until the o full esgotamento. The movement of Canudos was the only one in the history of Brazil that did not have participation of the " elites ".