Lampião
Lampião ("Oil Lamp" in Portuguese) was the nickname of "Captain" Virgulino Ferreira da Silva, the most famous leader of a Cangaço band (marauders and outlaws who terrorized the Brazilian Northeast in the 1930s).
Biography
Virgulino was born in June 4th 1898 in the village of Serra Talhada, in the semi-arid backlands (sertão) of the state of Pernambuco, as the third child of José Ferreira da Silva and Maria Lopes, a humble family of peasants. Until he was 21 years old he was a hard-working leathercraft artisan (he was also literate and used reading glasses -- both quite unusual features for the rough and poor region where he lived). His family was involved in a deadly feud with other local families. His father was killed by a confrontation with the police in 1919. Virgulino sought vengeance and proved to be extremely violent in doing so. He became an outlaw and was incessantly persecuted by the police (whom he called macacos or monkeys).
In the next 19 years, with his small band of cangaceiros (men of cangaço) which was never larger than about 50 heavily armed men on horses wearing leather outfits including hats, jackets, and trousers to protect them from the thorns of the caatinga (dry shrubs and brushwood typical of the dry hinterland of Brazil's Northeast), sandals, and ammunition belts. His weapons were mostly stolen from the police and paramilitary units and consisted of Mauser military rifles and a variety of smaller firearms including Winchester rifles, revolvers and the prized Mauser semiautomatic pistol. Lampião attacked small cities and farms in seven states, killing people and cattle, torturing, fire-branding, maiming, raping, and ransacking. He was joined in 1930 by his girlfriend, Maria Déa, nicknamed Maria Bonita, who, like other women in the band, dressed like cangaceiros and participated in many of their actions. They had a daughter in 1932.
Death
Finally, in July 28th 1938, Lampião and his band were betrayed by one of his supporters and were ambushed in one of his hiding places, the Angico farm, in the state of Sergipe, by a police troop armed with machine guns. In a rapid battle, he, Maria Bonita and 9 of his troops were killed. Their heads were cut and sent off to Salvador, the capital of Bahia, for examination by specialists at the State Forensic Institute, and, later, for public exhibition. In 1971 the families of Lampião and Maria Bonita were able to reclaim the preserved heads and finally bury the heads of the famous bandits.
In Popular Culture
Thus started the legend of Lampião and Maria Bonita, who became subjects of inummerable folk stories, books, popular pamphlets (cordel literature), songs, movies, and a number of TV soap operas, with all the elements of drama, passion, and violence typical of "Far West" stories. By many, he was considered a folk hero, a kind of Robin Hood and the head of a peasant revolt against the all-dominant, feudal farmers of the region (the so-called colonels). The fact remains that he was the most notorious of the many rural bandits (in his own admission) that infested the poor hinterland of Northeast Brazil.
