13. The Lantern and Pretty Mary
Virgulino Ferreira da Silva, AKA Lampiao, AKA Senhor (Lord) do Sertão and O Rei (The King) do Cangaço, was Brazil’s most famous – or infamous – cangaceiro. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, he and his bandit group crisscrossed Northeastern Brazil, and he was nicknamed Lampiao (Lantern) because of his speed with a rifle. As described by a contemporary: “He fired so rapidly, that the muzzle flashes of his rifle seemed like a lit lantern in the dark night of Caatinga [outback]“. In the eyes of authority figures and the well-heeled, Lampiao was a mere bandit, and the embodiment of a brutal social cancer that had to be removed. In the eyes of many of the poor and downtrodden in Northeast Brazil, he was a popular hero, and a courageous man of honor who dared to stand up and defy the oppressive and corrupt powers that be.
A layer of romance was added to the legend of Lampiao when he met Maria Gomes de Oliveira, also known as Maria de Déa and better known as Maria Bonita (Pretty Mary). The wife of a shoemaker named Zé de Nenê, whom she abandoned to take up the bandit life at Lampiao’s side, she became his lover and constant companion, and fought at his side to the bitter end. The duo’s bandit career – and the cangaço phenomenon as a whole – came to an end when Brazil’s Old Republic was overthrown, to be replaced by a new regime known as the Estado Novo (New State). The new regime’s leader, President Getúlio Vargas, set out to eliminate all sources of disorder throughout Brazil. Lampiao and his cangaceiros were high on the list of disorderly forces, and word came down from on high to kill all bandits who did not turn themselves in.
