Antônio Conselheiro and the Arraial De Canudos: A Socio-Anthropological Analysis

Abstract

The writing in question was built from the TCC - Course Conclusion Paper by one of the authors, entitled “The prophet and the politician: an analysis based on Antônio Conselheiro and Arraial de Canudos”. Therefore, we intend to use the fragments of the work in question to reorganize the analysis that proposed to put in dialogue the ideas of Antônio Conselheiro, the prophet, with the materiality of the praxis achieved with the Arraial de Belo Monte, Canudos. In relation to the latter, we think of the environment from the concept of communitas proposed by the English anthropologist Victor Turner (1969), contextualizing from Canudos, a “communitarian society” created in the Brazilian hinterland. With this perspective, we will reflect on Canudos as a place where it is possible to glimpse traces of a sertanejo prophetism. Thus, thinking about how that 'main prophet' was able, from his place of speech, to lead and seduce those people to faithfully follow their spiritual advice, defending his ideals of an anti-structure society, not refraining from even taking up arms to face the military forces of the Republic structure; we will consider, therefore, about the resistance of Canudos as a practical result of the socio-political-religious discourse of that prophet.