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populate the remote backlands. Da Cunha pointedly denounces the Canudos campaign as a crime. He breaks the sharers of responsibility into four: the Catholic Church, the Brazilian republican government, the government of the state of Bahia, and the Brazilian Army.
    Da Cunha tried to combine foreign and autochthonous elements in his work. He celebrated European culture. He was equally fascinated with the flora and fauna of Brazil, its folklore, its religious practices, etc. On one occasion he referred to himself as a Tapuia—a member of the Tapuia Indian nation—with Greek and Celtic elements. Yet Os sertões is undoubtedly a racist, xenophobic book, in which da Cunha describes the sertanejos , the dwellers of the backlands, in derogatory terms. In the second chapter of the book, “Man,” he depicts them thus: “The backlander is above all a strong person. He does not have the rickets-riddled feebleness of the chronically fatigued mestizos of the coast. At first glance he appears to be just the contrary. He does not have the good looks, the bearing, and the perfect build of an athlete. Instead he is unsightly, awkward, and hunched.” Da Cunha continues:
    A Hercules-Quasimodo, he expresses in his posture the typical ugliness of the weak. His shaky, indecisive, swaying and slightly weaving gait makes him look loose jointed. His poor posture is aggravated by a dogged look that gives the impression of a depressing humility. When standing, he is usually found leaning against the first doorframe or wall that he finds; when on horseback, if he meets up with an acquaintance and wants to stop to chat, he will brace himself on one stirrup and lean against the saddle. When he is walking, even if at a brisk pace, he does not move forward in a straight line. He advances in a characteristic reeling, meandering way, as if following the twisted trails of the backlands. And if along the way he stops for the most trivial reason, to roll a cigarette or to strike a light, or to exchange a few words with a friend, he immediately drops—drops is the word—into a squat. He will stay for a long time in this unstable position, in which the entire weight of his body is suspended on his toes, while he sits there on his heels with a lack of self-consciousness that is both ridiculous and charming.
    Such rhetorical tools, to contemporary readers, are decidedly passé. They belong to a period in history in which, regardless of how sympathetic an author was to the underclass, the language he used was nothing short of dehumanizing. However, they not only need to be seen in the context of the time but their approach must be understood in relation to the way da Cunha’s understanding of the jagunços changes. They might be unwieldy, graceless, and outright delinquent, but they are an essential component of the Brazilian nation.
    Human affairs, in da Cunha’s view, are all “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Reframing the debates on the intimate relationship between Brazil’s physical landscape, its people, and culture, Os sertões is a handsome example of da Cunha’s encyclopedic knowledge. He makes numerous references to travel literature and the work of geologists, botanists, ethnologists, and social scientists in Brazil at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. His training as a military engineer and his personal ties with the scientific establishment provide him with the intellectual framework he needs. Still, he argues that a social melting pot is the foundation of a nation’s strength and creativity. And he reasons that good stewardship of the land is essential to human survival.
    The title Os sertões , plural of the term o sertão , refers to the drought-plagued scrublands of the Northeast, particularly the interior of the state of Bahia. The backlands are much more than the stage on which the epic drama of Canudos plays itself out. The land is a character in the book, and it is passionately portrayed as