Explore Bahia
The Bahian sertão is immense: an area considerably larger than any European country and constituting most of the land area of Bahia state. Much of it is semi-desert, with endless expanses of rock and cactus broiling in the sun. But it can be spectacular, with ranges of hills to the north and broken highlands to the west, rearing up into the tableland of the great Planalto Central, the plateau extending over most of the state of Goiás and parts of Minas Gerais. No part of the Bahian sertão is thickly populated, and most of it is positively hostile to human habitation; in some places, no rain falls for years at a stretch. Its inhabitants suffer more from drought than anywhere else in the region and in parts of the sertão there’s still desperate poverty.
Despite its reputation, not all the sertão is desert. Snaking through it is the Rio São Francisco, which spills out into the huge hydroelectric reservoir of Sobradinho. River and lake support a string of towns, notably Paulo Afonso and Juazeiro. Other possible destinations to the north are Jacobina, in the midst of spectacular hill country, where gold and emeralds have been mined for nearly three centuries, and Canudos, site of a mini–civil war a hundred years ago, and a good place to get a feel for sertão life. By far the most popular route into the sertão, though, is westwards along the BR-242, which eventually hits the Belém–Brasília highway in Goiás: en route you’ll pass the old mining town of Lençóis, gateway to the breathtaking natural wonders of the Chapada Diamantina – one of Brazil’s best and most accessible trekking areas.
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Jacobina
Jacobina
Nestled on the slopes of several hills with panoramic views over the Serra da Jacobina, the old mining town of JACOBINA was one of the first parts of the sertão the Portuguese settled in strength. The clue to what attracted them is the name of one of the two fast-flowing rivers that bisect the town – the Rio de Ouro, or “Gold River”. Gold was first found here in the early seventeenth century, and several bandeirante (Brazilian conquistador) expeditions made the trip north from São Paulo to settle.
The town itself is notably friendly – they don’t see many tourists and people are curious – while the altitude takes the edge off the temperature most days, which makes it a good place to walk. It’s a typical example of an interior town, quiet at night save for the squares and the riverbanks, where the young congregate, especially around the Zululândia bar in the centre, while their parents pull chairs into the streets and gossip until the TV soaps start. Paths lead out of town into the surrounding hills – where there are spectacular views – in all directions, but it still gets hot during the day and some of the slopes are steep, so it’s best to take water along.
Although cattle and farming are now more important than the gold that originally brought the Portuguese, mining continues: there are emerald mines at nearby Pindobaçu, two large gold mines at Canavieiras and Itapicuru, and the diamonds that gave the Chapada Diamantina its name. The last big rush was in 1948, but miners still come down from the hills every now and then to sell gold and precious stones to traders in the town – you’ll notice many of them have precision scales on their counters. The Hotel Serra do Ouro runs trips (around R$50 per person) out to the mines of Pindobaçu, around 60km to the north, and to the mines of Canavieiras and Itapicuru. These trips can be a bit disappointing though – to the untrained eye uncut emeralds look like bits of gravel.
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Lençóis
Lençóis
Five hours’ ride down the BR-242, LENÇÓIS is another ex-mining town and the main tourist centre in the Chapada Diamantina region. The name of the town, meaning “sheets”, derives from the camp that grew up around a diamond strike in 1844. The miners, too poor to afford tents, made do with sheets draped over branches. Lençóis is a pretty little town, set in the midst of the spectacular Parque Nacional da Chapada Diamantina. Most of its fine old buildings date back to the second half of the nineteenth century, when the town was a prosperous mining community, attracting diamond buyers from as far afield as Europe. The Mercado Municipal, next to the bridge over the Rio Lençóis that runs through the centre, is where most of the diamonds were sold – it has Italian- and French-style trimmings tacked on to make the buyers feel at home. The centre of the town, between two lovely squares, Praça Otaviano Alves and Praça Horácio de Matos, is made up of cobbled streets, lined with well-proportioned two-storey nineteenth-century houses with high, arched windows. On Praça Horácio, the Subconsulado Francês, once the French consulate, was built with the money of the European diamond-buyers, who wanted an office to take care of export certificates.
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Antônio Conselheiro’s rebellion
Antônio Conselheiro’s rebellion
The Bahian sertão provided the backdrop for one of the most remarkable events in Brazilian history: the 1895 rebellion of the messianic religious leader Antônio Conselheiro. Conselheiro gathered thousands of followers, built a city called Canudos, and declared war on the young republic for imposing new taxes on an already starving population. The rebels – or sertanistas – proved to be great guerrilla fighters with an intimate knowledge of the harsh country, and twice mauled military forces sent confidently north from Salvador; the city troops found the sertão as intimidating as their human enemies. A third force of over one thousand, commanded by a national hero, a general in the Paraguayan war, was sent against the rebels. In the worst shock the young republic had suffered to that point, the force was completely annihilated; the next expedition discovered the bleached skulls of the general and his staff laid out in a neat row in front of a thorn tree. A fourth expedition was sent in 1897 and Canudos finally fell, with almost all of its defenders killed. Conselheiro himself had died of fever only a few weeks before the end. One member of the force, Euclides da Cunha, immortalized the war in his book Os Sertões, generally recognized as the greatest Portuguese prose ever written by a Brazilian. It was translated into English as “Rebellion in the Backlands” and is a good introduction to the sertão. A more entertaining read is The War of the End of the World by Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa (see “Books”), which gives a haunting, fictionalized account of the incredible events in Canudos.
