Breaking down the enemy

the media construction of the “Canudenses Fanatics” during the Canudos War (1896-1897)

Abstract

The War of Canudos (1896-1897), one of the biggest conflicts ever to break out in Brazilian territory, was fought between the followers of the pilgrim Antônio Vicente Mendes Maciel, known as Antônio Conselheiro, and the government battalions sent by the Republic. In the midst of a socio-political situation that was still in its infancy, given the heritage of centuries of a slave system followed by the institutional rupture promoted by the military that proclaimed the Republic in 1889, the conflict that took place in the premises of the locality of Belo Monte devastated the usual life of Brazilians that, using mainly the news conveyed by the printed media, accompanied the “emergence” of what would be, until then, the worst of the enemies of the Republic, the “fanatic”, or rather, the “monarchist fanatic”. The presente work intends to be a study on the publications that led to the production and dissemination of representations of the “Canudense fanatic”, the one who would inhabit Arraial de Canudos. In this article, I intend to make an analysis of the articles, headlines and caricatures published by the newspapers O PAIZ and Gazeta da Tarde, both periodicals from Rio de Janeiro, Where it is expected to answer questions about the characteristics of the supposed “fanatics”, as well as their relations with the revanchista royalist remnants.