Canudos, memories of a soldier: the war as a small story

ABSTRACT

At the age of 76, the ex-soldier Marcos Evangelista da Costa Villela Júnior wrote a “short story” in which he recalls, as an eyewitness, the war of Canudos (which took place in the state of Bahia between 1896 and 1897). The rereading of this document allows us to understand a central event in the formation of Brazil as a republic and reveals the formation of a field of subaltern knowledge that challenges the hegemonic versions of the war. The comparative reading of relevant works on Canudos war proposes a rethink of the connection between orality and writing, where testimony is combined with narrative structures based on notions such as “rhetoric of sincerity”. From this analysis, it can be deduced that this is a small story that produces great effects, where the legitimation strategies end up subverting the order of official historiography and converting the republican soldier into a sertanejo hero.

KEYWORDS
Canudos; memories; testimony.