Gender and Minor Aesthetics in Northeastern Brazilian Banditry: The Evolution of Cangaceiro Assemblages in Photography,Film, and Oral History

Various accounts and representations of the last generation of active cangaceiros, or Northeastern Brazilian bandits, (ending with the killing of Lampião’s lieutenant, Corisco, in 1940) have emphasised and popularised a unique aesthetic developed by Lampião’s group. This aesthetic was divulged to the public, and documented for subsequent generations, with the help of the photographic and cinematic technology of the time. I analyse this imaginary as a minor aesthetic in the vein of Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of minor literature, focussing on the doubly minor character of the involvement of women in cangaço (banditry) after 1930, and utilising several key photographic/filmic texts, beginning with images of the 1930s and continuing with reimaginings and reframings of those images from the 1950s through the 1980s. Women’s contributions to both the aesthetic and survival of cangaço in its final decade have been denied or not well recognised in contemporary accounts, but their contributions to the imaginary I call the cangaceiro assemblage have received increasing attention since the 1970s, which I demonstrate with important examples of film and television (both documentary and fictional) and related oral history. Beyond their aesthetic creativity, the affective perspectives/experiences of women bandits (cangaceiras) are best understood as outlaw emotions which challenged conventions of gender and sexuality in the backlands.