Jagunço and jaguncismo

history and myth in the Brazilian backlands

Abstract

"Jagunço is the sertão" (GSV, p.236), says the narrator of Grande sertão veredas. The history of the jagunço Riobaldo is paradigmatic in the discussion of jagunçagem and sertão in Brazilian literature; the figure of jagunço and the institution of jagunçagem make possible to understand the question of power in the hinterland.The purpose of the article is, starting from Guimarães Rosa's work, to examine the myth of jagunço and its symbolic reconfigurations in the literature produced in Goiás, in which the jagunçagem system is essential for the construction. prestige of chiefs and the maintenance of power.