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Euclides da Cunha
Euclides da Cunha (1866–1909) was a military engineer and journalist who accepted the invitation of O Estado de São Paulo to accompany the fourth expedition of the Canudos Campaign (1897) as a war journalist embedded with the São Paulo Battalion. His field notes became the basis for his great work, Os sertões (1906; Backlands: The Canudos Campaign, New York: Penguin, 2010). The book has become known as the “Brazilian National Bible” for its dramatic portrayal of the bloodiest civil war in Brazil's history and the implications of this event for the emerging Brazilian nation.
This excerpt from Part I of the epic book Os sertões offers a paradoxical perspective on the figure of the sertanejo or backlander that permeates da Cunha's depiction of Brazil's land and people. Portraying them as both backward and weak, yet impressively strong and at one with the land and nature, da Cunha romanticizes and reviles mixed races. His arguments are shaped by Darwinist philosophy as he narrates the struggles between “civilization” and an untamed indigenous society.