Backlands (19 page)

Here we must make some parenthetical remarks. The mixing of highly diverse races is in most cases harmful. Evolutionary theory concludes that even when a superior race has influenced the issue of the union, the offspring carry a sharp racial stigma. Miscegenation taken to the extreme signifies regression. The Indo-European, the Negro, the Brazilian-Guarani, and the Tapuia are racial groups in different stages of evolution that have come into contact with one another. Intermarriage not only erases the better qualities of the superior race but also is the catalyst to the reappearance of the primitive characteristics of the inferior one. Thus the mestizo, a hyphenated product of two races whose brief individual existence encapsulates centennial forces, is almost always unbalanced. Fovel likens their condition in a general way to hysteria, but the nervous imbalance in this case has no cure. There is no therapy for the rage brought about by the clash of races suddenly fused into a single organism. After an evolutionary process of many thousands of years, in which our recent history is but a moment in time, diverse peoples have come together and obliterated in a very short time the differences that had emerged from a long and laborious process of selection. It is difficult to understand how these people can suddenly combine their very different mental constitutions. As in algebraic calculations, the qualities of juxtaposed elements are not increased, subtracted, or canceled out by the positive and negative signs in the formula. The mestizo—whether a mulatto, a
mameluco,
or a
cafuzo—
is not an intermediate type but a lesser being who lacks the physical energy of his savage forebears and the higher intellect of his superior ancestors. On the one hand he is highly fertile, but there are times when he shows extraordinary moral weakness. He can be at times brilliant, but he is also fragile, restless, and inconsistent. He shines one moment and at the next he is invisible, a victim of biological laws that drag him down to the lower plane of the less-favored race. Incapable of uniting the opposing races from which he sprang forth, he can only mirror their predominant traits in a permanent game of opposites. And when he does show himself capable of higher thinking, as often happens, this intellectual energy rests but on a weak moral fiber that underlies the obsessivecompulsiveness of the inferior races. There are a few exceptions to this, which merely prove the rule.

The mestizo is an intruder in the marvelous process of evolution, that endless competition between peoples, a struggle without truce in which selection refines attributes that are preserved by heredity. The mestizo has not struggled; he does not represent the integration of efforts; he is a disruptive and destructive element who appears without any characteristics of his own, caught between the opposing influences of his conflictive ancestry. The mestizo’s instability is marked by his tendency to regress to his primitive origins. This is the instinct to preserve equilibrium. The action of natural laws gradually extinguishes anomalies, sending them back to their source. The mulatto thus has an irresistible contempt for the Negro and tenaciously seeks intermarriages that will erase the stigma of a dark brow on his children. The
mameluco
becomes the incorrigible adventurer who fiercely attacks terrified native villages.

This is a significant pattern. In a sense it reverses the direction of evolution that the mestizo interrupted. The superior race becomes a distant objective for the depressed mestizos, and they seek it out of self-preservation and self-defense. The laws of evolution of the species are ones that cannot be broken. All the subtle efforts of the missionaries to train the mind of the savage to grasp the simplest concepts of higher thought have failed. The African cannot come close to the intellectual average of the Indo-European, even with the best tutors. Every man is above all the sum of his racial heritage, and his brain is a trust. How, then, can a new anthropological type who combines opposed tendencies, be called normal?

Meanwhile, careful observation of the backlander of the North reveals that this emergent type has more stable physiological characteristics and is less prone to the tension of opposite traits. This fact, which may appear to contradict what has just been said in the previous passage, is, in fact, the most convincing counterproof of those assertions.

It is undeniable that mestizos who are born from the union of very diverse races are abnormal because their attempts to live up to the superior civilized standards of their dominant ancestor create a difficult and painful moral and intellectual tension that throws them off balance. The incoherent, uneven, and rebellious character of the mestizo may be interpreted as his intensive effort to rid himself of the impediments to adapting to a more complex and advanced environment. He reflects in microcosm the silent, terrible struggle that is the will to survive. It is moving and eternal and has been described brilliantly by Gumplowicz as the motive force of history. The great professor from Graz does not apply his axiom to our current context. It is true, however, that if the stronger ethnic element “tends to gradually subordinate and eliminate the weaker element with which it comes in contact,” then it must find miscegenation to be disturbing. The inevitable expansion of the synergetic circle between strong and weak, while evaded in this fashion, is merely postponed. It is not stopped. The struggle shifts, and becomes more serious. It ranges from the crude extermination of the inferior race through war to its slow elimination, gradual absorption, and dilution through intermarriage. During the course of this reductive process, the mestizos who emerge are all shades of color and have every nuance of form and character. They lack a well-defined appearance; they have no vigor and are in most cases not viable human beings. In sum, they have been mutilated by the invisible conflict that continues on through the ages. In this instance, the stronger race does not destroy the weak one with arms; it crushes it with civilization.

This very process formed our rough compatriots from the North. The isolation in which they lived had a beneficial effect. It freed them from a very painful adaptation to a higher social status and simultaneously prevented them from falling into the aberrations and vices of a more developed culture. The racial fusion that created them occurred in circumstances that were more compatible with their nature. While their mixed origin bestowed civilizing tendencies on them, it did not make them civilized.

This is the defining difference between miscegenation in the backlands and on the coast. The mix of races is the same but the environmental conditions are different. The contrasts between the two can be reduced to simple parallels. The backlander took from the savage his intimacy with his environment, which instead of weakening him has fortified his powerful physique. He has borrowed only those attributes from his ancestors that are most appropriate to his early social development.

He is backward, not degenerate. For this very reason, historical circumstances freed him, in this very fragile phase of his formation, from the unreasonable demands of a borrowed culture and prepared him to conquer that culture one day. His intellectual growth, even if delayed, is supported by his strong, well-formed physique. This crossed race will become autonomous and original, transcending all its inherited traits, so that, when finally unchained from a primitive existence, he may aspire to civilized life because of the very factors that prevent him from having it immediately. This is a logical conclusion.

The situation in the backlands is the reverse of that in the coastal cities, where a dramatic inversion occurs. A highly complex society imposes itself on weakened beings, oppressing them and atrophying them before they have a chance to fully develop. In the backlands, however, the mestizo is immune to foreign influences because of his robust constitution. He is able to evolve, differentiate, and adapt himself to a higher destiny because of his solid physical foundation, which is the basis for his future moral development.

Let us leave this unpleasant digression. We will proceed to describe in a straightforward fashion the original features of our backward countryman. We shall do so without pretension or method, being careful to avoid the elegant terminology that ethnologists hold so dear. We lack the time and competence to engage in psycho-geometric fantasies, which these days have become inflated into an almost philosophical materialism. We will not bother with measuring the facial angle or outlining the
norma verticalis
of the
jagunço
. If we were to become entangled in the imaginary lines of this type of psychic topography, which has been so overrated, we should not make ourselves any clearer; in fact we would just be copyists.

Rather, we will reproduce, intact, all the impressions, whether real or illusory, which we have formed while accompanying a fast-moving military expedition. While on this tour of the backlands, we have found ourselves suddenly face-to-face with these unique beings that are so little known. They have been abandoned—for three centuries.

The backlander is above all a strong person. He does not have the rickets-riddled feebleness of the chronically fatigued mestizos of the coast. At first glance he appears to be just the contrary. He does not have the good looks, the bearing, and the perfect build of an athlete. Instead he is unsightly, awkward, and hunched. A Hercules-Quasimodo, he expresses in his posture the typical ugliness of the weak. His shaky, indecisive, swaying, and slightly weaving gait makes him look loose jointed. His poor posture is aggravated by a dogged look that gives the impression of a depressing humility. When standing, he is usually found leaning against the first doorframe or wall that he finds; when on horseback, if he meets up with an acquaintance and wants to stop to chat, he will brace himself on one stirrup and lean against the saddle. When he is walking, even if at a brisk pace, he does not move forward in a straight line. He advances in a characteristic reeling, meandering way, as if following the twisted trails of the backlands. And if along the way he stops for the most trivial reason, to roll a cigarette or to strike a light, or to exchange a few words with a friend, he immediately drops—
drops
is the word—into a squat. He will stay for a long time in this unstable position, in which the entire weight of his body is suspended on his toes, while he sits there on his heels with a lack of self-consciousness that is both ridiculous and charming.

This is a man who is always fatigued. This is manifested by his relentless laziness, his muscular degeneration, and in all else: his slow speech, feeble gestures, his unsteady pace, and the languid cadence of his songs. He has a constant tendency to want to remain still and to rest.

In fact, all this appearance of tiredness is but a camouflage. There is nothing more surprising than to see it disappear without warning. That ravaged body takes just a few seconds to transform entirely. All it takes is an incident that demands he release his dormant energies. The man is transfigured. He stands erect; he realigns his posture and his stance. His head is held high now; he squares his powerful shoulders and looks ahead with a clear gaze. With a flash of nervous energy he immediately corrects the habitual relaxation of his body. The awkward bumpkin suddenly takes on the dominating stance of a bronzed and potent Titan, in an astonishing show of strength and agility.

This contrast stands up to even the most casual observation. It is revealed at every moment, in all the details of backlands life, always characterized by impressive swings between extreme impulsivity and long periods of apathy. It’s impossible to imagine a more inelegant and awkward horseman. He slouches in the saddle, legs hugging his steed, his trunk leaning forward and bobbing to the gait of the small horses of the backlands, unshod and badly cared for, but tough and quick as few others. With this casual attitude, the lazy cowboy morosely follows his herd as it moves slowly through the plains. He almost succeeds in transferring the swinging motion of his stunted steed to the cradle of the hammock in which he spends two-thirds of his life. But the moment a startled steer bolts or becomes entangled in the thorny brush, he is instantly transformed. Digging the big wheels of his spurs into the belly of his mount and shooting off like a dart, he crashes at full speed into the labyrinthine snare of the
jurema
thickets.

Observe him in this wild steeplechase. There is no way to hold him back as he catapults forward. Ravines, riverbeds, brambles, rock piles—nothing can get in the way of his pursuit of the stray steer, because wherever the bull goes the cowboy on his horse follows close behind. Hugging the horse and pressing his knees tightly against its flanks, he becomes one with the animal, looking like a bizarre centaur. He emerges abruptly into clearings, disappears again into the tall weeds; he leaps over streams and gullies, rushes up hillsides and crashes through brambles, clearing vast expanses of the table lands at full tilt.

His robust constitution comes through in all its vitality at this moment. It is as if the robust horseman gives life to his small, fragile steed, holding it upright with the thin reins made of caroa fiber and propelling the beast forward with his spurs. He suspends himself in the stirrups, legs drawn up and forward, hugging the horse tightly, dashing hot on the trail of the wayward steer. In an agile motion, he ducks to avoid a low hanging branch that can throw him off his saddle. Like an acrobat, he leaps off his mount, holding on to the horse’s mane, to avoid imminent collision with a stump. Then he jumps back onto the saddle, all the while galloping, galloping across this obstacle course, never losing his grip on the long iron-tipped, leather-bound prod in his right hand. Not once does he drop it into the brush, this object that in any other hands would constitute a serious deterrent to this mission.

But once the crisis is over, and the errant steer is returned to the herd, the cowboy settles back into his saddle and reverts to his lazy slouch and to the slow pace of his horse. Again he looks despondent and diminished, much like an invalid.