The War of the End of the World

Vargas Llosa’s famous eschatological novel, "The war of the end of the world”, recounts the bloody uprising of the poor that took place in the Brazilian badlands in the northern state of Bahia at the end of the 19th century.

It would have been a barely noticed hiccup in Brazilian history had this uprising not evolved into a full scale civil war featuring a rebellious community of 30.000 souls fighting back successfully the multiple attacks of the regular Brazilian army. This two year - conflict, known as the Guerra de Canudos, came to a bloody end in October 1897 when the Brazilian soldiers, despite suffering heavy losses, finally overran the rebellion’s stronghold and exterminated the insurgents, men, women and children to the show more last.

It remains an intriguing story, worth telling and certainly worth reading.

In the hostile Brazilian backlands known as the Sertao, a poor region plagued by drought, violence and political corruption, an enigmatic messianic figure known as the Conseilheiro ( the counselor), attracts followers through simple actions of faith : repairing decrepit churches, weeding bad herbs in abandoned cemeteries and enduring long praying sessions.

The people who join him in the early days of the crusade are those that have nothing to lose, the very poor, the excluded, the abused. Their motivation is fueled by an Apocalyptic mood that has appeared in the wake of a great drought that has decimated man and faun alike and a period of great national turmoil caused by the abolishment of slavery and the transition from Monarchy to a young and hesitating Republic.

In the following months, more and more believers inspired by the actions and sayings of the charismatic leader join the army of the destitute. Repentant criminals, people in need of a vision and religious searchers strengthen the ever-growing army.

The expanding group moves from village to village, camping in the open, living from the land and the gifts from sympathizing villagers. But soon enough the erring tribe has grown too large and a need for a permanent settlement is urgently felt. The counselor and his flock establish their own village on top of a hill. Their community is build on their own rules and organizations. They reject property, the use of money and they decide not to pay any taxes.

This of course attracts attention and the Bahia government sends a first small army detachment to quench this kernel of insurgence…

Llosa’s book is dedicated to the Brazilian writer Euclides da Cunha, the writer of Os Sertoes, an early account of the military expeditions against the rebellious village of the Canudos.

This is more than a detail. Da Cunha was a Brazilian journalist and sociologist whose book Os Sertoes, written a few years after the war, was the main source of information of what happened in the desert available to a larger public. It was also the inspiration and contemporary source for the writing of "The war of the end of the world”. Book and the persona of the writer might partly explain the two strange characters in Vargas Llosa’s book : the revolutionary Scot and the near-sighted journalist.

I haven’t read Os Sertoes, but according to the available information, da Cunha, although sympathizing with the rebellion tried to explain the insurgents’ backwardness, their racial degeneration and their ”objectified insanity" with outdated and debunked racial and psychiatric theories.

In the “War of the end of the World”, we follow two characters, two witnesses who, they too, try to make sense of the weird pilgrims and strange development of this pauper - revolution.

The first one is a foreigner, a devilish Scottish revolutionist and phrenologist ( an outdated physiological theory too ), complete with red curly hair and a red goatee, follower of Proudhon and Bakunin who is trying to join the revolutionaries in order to present them, we assume ,his blueprint of a new communist state. He claims to understand the revolutionary movement better than anyone else but his attempt to reach Canudos is hampered by the harshness of the backlands and the people. He will disappear in the desert, murdered or not, after having transgressed all his own social, moral and ethical standards.

The second character, who comes more to the foreground in the second part of the book, when the fall of Canudos needs to be recorded and explained, is an unnamed cynic reporter, traveling with the army. But this journalist is (oh irony ) very nearsighted and prone to sneezing fits when stressed or scared. As he is constantly stressed and scared, he is at the most a very unreliable narrator. When he gets into a fighting melee, before being captured by the revolting peasants, he brakes and looses his glasses and witnesses the last stand of the revolutionary village through a blurred image and through the information he gets from others.

The undoing of both characters seem to indicate that Vargas Llosa’s conclusions are that no theory, scientific or pseudo-scientific can satisfactorily explain what has happened at Canudos and second that no one really witnessed how the peasant revolt resisted so long to an adversary so outnumbered and extremely more powerful and finally that all historical interpretation and explanations in the aftermath are spoiled by political near-sightedness, unreliable information sources and biased mental blur.

So if we cannot explain Canudos, what is it then ?

Canudos is simply a miracle.

"The war of the end of the world” is a long and demanding read. It is a complex story, following many characters with a lot of developments happening at the same moment and crisscrossed by political and religious digressions. But Vargas Llosa is a master storyteller, he holds the narrative reins firm in hand, the novel is impeccably structured and organized. This for the benefit of the leisurely reader, who needs but a shortlist of characters to help him through the 600 or so pages.

It is also a gruesome read, the pages bulk of countless horrors men inflict on fellow men. It is a feast of self flagellation, of primitive religious extremes in sync with the bleakness of the Sertao. The reader is spared nothing.

The fighting chapters in the last part of the book however, come over at times as tedious, especially since we know the outcome of the war. But again Vargas Llosa, deploying all the tricks of the trade…analepses, prolepses, anecdotes keeps the reader with his eyes on the page.

The most intriguing and fascinating chapters are ( at least for me ) those that introduce the most loyal disciples of the Conseilheiro by telling their miserable life stories. It is a series of hagiographic cameos, not unlike those written by Athanasius of Alexandria in the early days of Christianity, often containing scenes of extreme religiosity and abject suffering : Pajeu the cangaceiro with the slashed face, the most evil man of the sertao, Pedrao the enormous brute , the nameless “little blessed one” who tortures himself to express his love for the Conseilheiro, A dwarf terrified of dying, big Jaoa, a runaway slave, Maria Quadrado, devoted Maria Magdalena to the Conseilheiro, the Lion of Natuba, a creature half man half animal saved in extremis from the stake…

There is all along the reading of the War, a sense of familiarity, a strange déjà - vu.

The last centuries have seen dozen of similar insurrections of the desperate, set in movement by a charismatic religious or social leader. All of them leaving an immense trail of blood and terror in their wake. They are the histories of the poor, easily forgotten or overlooked in our history books.

I think it is not too far fetched, if we even recognize in some elements of the Taliban, Isis and the new caliphates, other Canudos. Here too, a backward and violent movement fueled by the frustration and hopelessness of a whole army of poor, encourages lost individuals to sacrifice themselves for an ill-directed cause. Our fogged and damage Tv - glasses do not always let us see things that clearly.

The War of the end of the world is basically an alternative history of the world. In the development of the War of Canudos, a model appears that has been played out numerous times in the history of our civilizations. The fact that these insurrections keep repeating themselves, also in our Modern times, is proof enough that many states have grossly failed to care of their armies of poor and disadvantaged.

If you want to visit Canudos today, say for an innocent pilgrimage or a remembrance of those who suffered, you won’t find it. The ruins of the town are covered by a water reservoir of the Cocorobó Dam, built by the military regime in the 1960s.

What needs to be forgotten must disappear. show less

Un livre magnifique, un récit riche: par ses personnages, par son écriture, par le déroulement de l'histoire. Un récit long, aussi, mais je n'y ai pas vu de longueur, au contraire.
Même si on connaît presque dès le début le dénouement, on est pris dans le récit, et on se prend à rêver.
Les personnages sont attachants, même les 'pires', mais qui sont les pires, finalement?
Ma note est un peu dans n'importe quel sens, difficile d'exprimer comme ça en quelques lignes ce que ce 'pavé', cette véritable saga peut m'inspirer, mais dans une première approche: j'aime!

Un peu de l'histoire quand même, car c'est d'histoire qu'il s'agit: une histoire vraie, au Brésil au XIXème, une guerre qui n'en est pas une, opposant un groupe show more d'illuminés(?) de pacifistes(?) de croyants, en tout cas, dont la foi pourrait presque déplacer des montagnes, et des militaires, ayant définitivement le mauvais rôle dans ce livre. Je n'ose donc pas donner le nom de guerre à cet évènement, les forces sont trop disproportionnées, c'est bien plutôt une bataille de répression... difficile cependant de prendre fait et cause pour le groupe "réprimé", dont je ne partage pas les opinions, et pourtant, leur bataille est belle, leur foi est impressionnante... j'ai encore du mal à croire que cette guerre a réellement eu lieu: c'est trop fort trop riche pour être vrai ; mais parallèlement, j'ai aussi du mal à penser que toute cette histoire sort de l'imagination d'un seul être: c'est trop complet, trop riche pour cela... trop beau peut-être aussi... show less

This is one of the best, if not the best, books I've read this year. Based on real life events that occurred in the late 19th century, it is a tragedy of epic proportions, and I will not soon forget it.

A charismatic holy man, the Counselor, wanders among the poor, dusty villages of Bahia. Wherever he stops, he repairs the chapel, weeds the cemetery, or makes similar improvements, and in return the villagers feed him. Along the way, he picks up followers: the rag-tag poor, the homeless, the orphaned, the deformed, as well as some of the worst dregs of society--the murderers and bandits. After years of wandering, he and his followers settle and begin to build their own society at Canudos. The town is based on Utopian principles--everyone show more has a home and food, and everyone works and worships communally. New followers continually flow in, and the society is constantly growing.

The people of Canudos do not view themselves as accountable to the outside world, including the government. The town becomes endangered when the machinations of two opposing political movements create an incident which make it appear as though Canudos is arming itself (with help from the British government) for a revolution. The Brazilian government feels it must assert control over Canudos, and when the initial group of soldiers it sends is soundly repelled, increasingly larger waves of soldiers are sent to quell the people of Canudos, with catastrophic results.

The plot of this book is non-linear, and not told in strict chronological order. The narration frequently and abruptly shifts points of view among various characters. The writing is compelling and vivid. Vargas Llosa has created dozens of rich characters, intricate subplots, and a panoramic background against which to tell the story. While we see the people of Canudos as the tragic victims of these events, Vargas Llosa does not sugar coat their religious fanaticism. He also ably, and sometimes sympathetically, portrays the other factions: the aristocratic landowners, the military, the government officials. The result is a morally complex and challenging read. Highly recommended. show less

When Mario Vargas Llosa was announced as this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, I decided I should read another of his books in honor of his selection. I’ve read a few, but none of the ones he is best known for. The War at the End of the World has been in my “to be read” queue ever since finding it’s way into my library from the shelves a used bookstore. That’s the quirky way of it for me; an author’s books usually find their way onto my shelf and into my queue in the order I find them in a hardback edition.

What a book to be reading right now. My own country is fighting two wars at what seems to be at the end of the world, geographically at least. As in Vargas Llosa’s book, we’re not sure we can trust show more our leaders about the reasons they say we are fighting or what is happening over there or whether the people being killed are good or evil. And the perceptions are manipulated through the media to keep the real story from the patriotic public. As the dust jacket says, “In Canudos, history and civilization are turned on their ears. There is no money, property, marriage, no income tax, decimal system, or census. Canudos is the revolutionary spirit in its purest and most apocalyptic form—a state which promises to be a libertarian paradise but which the forces of the modern world and of the nation-state cannot tolerate”.

Vargas Llosa’s fictional book is based on Euclides de Cunha’s earlier non-fiction book Rebellion in the Backlands that documented the story of real Canudos. An academician, Alvim Horcades, would thus describe the massacre that ended the dream of Canudos: "I saw and witnessed the sacrifice of all those poor people (...) and I say with all sincerity: in Canudos almost all the prisoners were beheaded (...) To take the life of a little child (...) is the greatest of cruelties and crimes man can commit." Heavy stuff…but masterfully handled by Vargas Llosa. show less

In late 19th century Brazil, a fanatical religious group take control of part of the remote inlands of the newly inaugurated Brazilian Republic. The Republic, wary of its survival, paints them as monarchist traitors and sends the army in to destroy them.

This is a brilliant book, a real epic. As well as the clash between the believers and the Republic, the group have seized the land of the real monarchists whose world is being washed away by modernity, and act as a magnet for all sorts of fanatics and lost souls, drawing a whole world into the carnage. Big ideas, great characters, grisly battles...all present and correct.

Sometimes a really long book only elicits a very short summary from me, either because I don't have much to say, or because I don't think my reaction would fit well in a review. This book is one of the latter cases. First of all, it's huge, and not merely in size but in all the other aspects too - cast, range, and its scope. That epic quality is probably why it's been analogized to Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, but I think the plot is also somewhat similar to Victor Hugo's Ninety-Three. It's a novelistic take on the War of Canudos, a small attempt to quiet a small rebellious village that grew into the deadliest civil war in Brazilian history. In Llosa's hands, the town's dedication to an obscure charismatic religious figure becomes a show more stand-in for the massive changes Brazil was experiencing at the time: abolition of slavery, transition from monarchy to a republic, and attempts to secularize a deeply religious people in the name of Brazil's new motto: Order and Progress. Some of the scenes with jungle warfare also reminded me of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (or at least Apocalypse Now).

One thing that helped keep it readable was that Llosa is a master of tempo, interspersing the epic battles with the stories of these people whose lives are entwined with the ideals of the age. If ever a book deserved the adjective "apocalyptic", it would be this one. I've never read "Rebellion in the Backlands" by Euclides da Cunha, which is supposedly the primary source material, but the exact fidelity to events is almost besides the point here - the increasing attempts by the central government to conquer the rebels in the town build to a fever pitch amid the kind of hysterical millennialism that feels as real as anything. The constant doom-laden tension is only enhanced by the scenes of analepsis and prolepsis, as characters reflect on their past actions and what they meant, if mere mortals could ever attempt to understand the true magnitude of the action. I don't usually pay a lot of attention to introductions, but I wish my copy of the book had discussed the contrast in the view of politics as presented here and Llosa's real-life, somewhat neoliberal political career. It seems like quite a contrast.

Anyway, it was a remarkable book with some truly indelible scenes of faith, war, and death. Many of the book's brief scenes are as well-drawn as anything you'll read in those more famous books it's compared to. This short extract only begins to hint at its qualities:

"It's easier to imagine the death of one person than those of a hundred or a thousand," the baron murmured. "When multiplied, suffering becomes abstract. It is not easy to be moved by abstract things."
"Unless one has seen first one, then ten, a hundred, a thousand, thousands suffer," the nearsighted journalist answered. "If the death of Gentil de Castro was absurd, many of those in Canudos died for reasons no less absurd."
"How many?" the baron said in a low voice. He knew that the number would never be known, that, as with all the rest of history, the figure would be one that historians and politicians would increase and decrease in accordance with their doctrines and the advantage they could extract from it. show less

The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa is an amazing, epic tale of war, but not in any sense is this a "war novel." Set in the final years of the 19th Century in Brazil, it's the story of at least three "causes" in the fight for political power in the state of Bahia. The novel involves the battles (literal and figurative) between political philosophies, religious convictions, and the desperate effort to control precious natural resources. The charismatic Counselor teaches that the end of the world is near and that the political chaos (and perhaps the drought) is the result of the fall of the Brazilian Empire and the installation of a Republic. He earns a steadily-growing group of followers who apparently frightens the new show more government, who send the military to oust the followers from Canudos, where they have occupied a hacienda. Against all odds, the ragtag band of religious faithful manage to thwart the military's assaults, until finally an entire army is sent in. With each side becoming steadily more violent, one hardly expects a happy ending. And as the nearsighted journalist reflects with the baron whose hacienda was hijacked by the religious "cult" on how the war will be remembered and understood, we consider that such understanding is impossible. "'They were dying and killing on both sides,' the baron murmured, gazing at him with pity. 'Are impassivity and objectivity possible in a war?'" Um, no.

The War of the End of the World is peopled with characters whom I know I'll never forget, including "the nearsighted journalist," who is never named and is yet one of the primary storytellers through the novel, and who is as complex and interesting as any character I've encountered in literature. We experience the terrifying and horrifying war from different perspectives: Mario Vargas Llosa does a masterful job of allowing us into each character's personal investment in the war ---- into their deep conviction that their stance is right, and that the righteousness of their reason for fighting (or just trying to survive) is self-evident and deeply true.

There were times when my heart literally raced as I read this novel, so anxious was I to know what would happen next. At other times I could hardly "look" because Vargas Llosa is unflinching in describing the brutalities of war. His narrative is not prurient, but neither is it timid. show less