18. Origins of the Brazilian Rural Bandit Phenomenon
The first proto-cangaçeiro was Jose Gomes, nicknamed Cabeleira. Born in 1751 in Glória do Goitá, in the hinterland of Pernambuco state, he terrorized the region for years. However, it was not until the nineteenth century that the cangaço banditry phenomenon exploded, propelled by powerful leaders such as Antonio Silvino, Lampiao and Corisco. From the mid-nineteenth through the early twentieth century, Northeast Brazil was terrorized by cangaçeiro bandit groups that spread violence wherever they went. They embraced the nomadic and irregular life of criminals for a variety of reasons, from poverty, the lack of opportunity, or the desire to avenge themselves upon powerful people who had wronged them. In 1877, as the region suffered a severe drought, a cangaceiro named João Calangro led a formidable gang that in the south of Ceará state. He was part of a loose bandit confederation that had the support and protection of a local judge.
Calangro, who bragged that he had killed 32 people, frequently clashed with authorities. He finally fled to the state of Piauí, after which he disappears from the documentary record. In the 1910s, female bandit Anésia Cauaçu led a cangaceiro group in the backlands of Bahia that bore her name as Bando dos Cauaçus. The group included more than 100 armed men and women who fought under her command. Well-armed and well-dressed in leather clothes and hats, the typical attire of the region’s cowboys and country folk, and with intimate knowledge of the local terrain, they proved formidable foes to the authorities. The Cauaçus gang mostly consisted of farmers and country folk outraged by the murder of a local by a bandit known as Zezinho dos Laços. When the government failed to deliver justice, Anésia Cauaçu took justice into her own hands, and formed her own cangaceiro group.
