The War of the End of the World

The War of the End of the World (La Guerra del Fin del Mundo) was published originally in Spanish in 1981 and translated into English in 1984. It is based both on the true events of the War of Canudos, which took place in Brazil between 1896 and 1897, and on Os Sertões (literally “the backlands,” published in English as Rebellion in the Backlands in 1957), an account of the war by Euclides da Cunha, a journalist who accompanied the military campaign. The author, Mario Vargas Llosa, is a Peruvian writer and a key player in the Latin American Boom, a literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s that revolutionized South and Central American literature. Vargas Llosa’s work is politically charged, concerned with questions of power and violence. Like many of his novels, The War of the End of the World has a wide scope and a large cast of characters, reminiscent of the sweeping historical novels of the 19th century, while its complex interweaving of chronologies and points of view is distinctly modern.

Content Warning: The book is graphic throughout, with explicit depictions of warfare and sexual violence.

This guide uses Helen R. Lane’s translation for Picador.

Plot Summary

Toward the end of the 19th century, in the impoverished backlands of the Brazilian state of Bahia, a charismatic preacher known as the Counselor travels from town to town predicting that the world will end in 1900. Wherever he visits, he amasses followers, many of whom acquire new names on joining him. They come from among the most wretched classes of society: former slaves, bandits, Indians, mixed race peasants. A young orphan becomes his right-hand man, known as the Little Blessed One; a brutal bandit, Satan João, becomes Abbot João; a penitent who murdered her baby becomes the Mother of Men. At the same time, the Brazilian emperor is deposed and a republic established. Its constitution separates church and state and imposes new taxes, the census, and the metric system. When the Counselor hears about these changes, he declares that the Republic of Brazil is the Antichrist. After clashing with police forces for tearing down government posters, the Counselor decides that he and his followers will settle in one place, the abandoned hacienda of Canudos, owned by the Baron de Canabrava.

Flashing forward over a decade, a Scottish anarchist and phrenologist, Galileo Gall, attempts to place an ad supporting Canudos in the newspaper owned by republican politician Epaminondas Gonçalves. Canudos is now a secessionist community within Bahia, with a population in the tens of thousands. Gonçalves, spotting an opportunity to increase his faction’s power and weaken the rival monarchists, led by the baron, invites Gall to a secret meeting, where he proposes smuggling arms to Canudos to help it resist the military forces marching to suppress it. The rebels have already defeated one army detachment, an embarrassment for the government, which is determined to crush them. Though Gall detests religion, he believes that the community of Canudos embodies the revolutionary spirit of the people against the state. He is determined to travel there, having witnessed only defeat through the years of his revolutionary struggles in Europe, so he agrees to Gonçalves’s proposal.

While Gall is waiting with the weapons for Rufino, the guide he has hired to take him to Canudos, he is attacked by armed men. One escapes with the rifles, but Gall kills the others after a struggle. He then rapes Rufino’s wife, Jurema. The social code of machismo dictates that Jurema is now “his,” and she accompanies the wounded anarchist into the jungle.

Meanwhile Gonçalves’s party accuses the monarchist faction of conspiring with the English to manipulate the impoverished inhabitants of Canudos in order to overthrow the republic. Trying to shape public opinion in his favor, the politician publishes an article supporting these claims in his newspaper, written by an anonymous nearsighted journalist.

After the defeat of the second military expedition, and fanned by pressure from the republican faction, the federal government sends an entire regiment commanded by the war hero Colonel Moreira César to crush the rebels once and for all. Armed with heavy artillery and modern rifles, they have a fearsome reputation. Meanwhile, the Baron de Canabrava arrives back from Europe with his wife, Estela, to find his conservative allies in chaos. To avoid the impression that he is colluding with the rebels, the baron plans to put on a lavish welcome for the colonel, even though he has traditionally stood against federal intervention.

While Galileo Gall is weak from his injuries, another guide, a friend of Rufino, arrives and shaves his head of its distinctive red hair. When Jurema asks why he doesn’t kill Gall, he replies that it is Rufino’s duty to take revenge for the insult to his honor. Along with an anonymous burned corpse and the stolen rifles, this patch of hair is used by Epaminondas Gonçalves to cobble up “proof” that Gall was an agent smuggling weapons to Canudos on behalf of the British crown, thus whipping up more support for the republican cause.

The nearsighted journalist is assigned to report on Moreira César’s attack, and personally accompanies the commander. During the rapid march, the colonel falls ill and is forced against his will to recover at the baron’s estate of Calumbi. A few days earlier, Rufino turned up at Calumbi to ask his former master’s permission to separate from Jurema and pursue his vengeance against Gall. He let slip to the baron’s surprise that Gall was alive, leading the baron to work out Gonçalves’s plan. When he confronts Moreira César with this information, the colonel reveals he is a party to Gonçalves’s conspiracy. His aim is to establish a dictatorial republic and modernize Brazil, and he detests landowners like the baron for holding the country back for their own profit.

In Canudos, preparations are made for the assault. Abbot João and other former bandits lead raiding parties, which harass the advancing troops. Meanwhile, Jurema and Gall continue toward Canudos, joining a group of travelling circus performers: the Dwarf, the Bearded Lady, and the Idiot. As they stop off to perform in towns along the route, Gall keeps trying to convert local peasants to his revolutionary credo, but is misunderstood or mocked. Rufino is on their trail and finally catches up to them, but discovers that a group of men working for the baron have kidnapped Gall and taken him back to Calumbi.

As with Moreira César, the baron tries to persuade Galileo Gall to help him politically. He wants to reveal that he is alive, and for Gall to expose how Epaminondas Gonçalves has manipulated him as part of a conspiracy. Gall rejects the baron’s requests, explaining that as an aristocrat, the baron will always be his enemy, and he would lie rather than tell the truth if it risks helping him. Despite their political animus, the two men seem to share a mutual respect, and the baron lets Gall go, even giving him a guide so he can reach Canudos. Rufino is stopped from entering the estate by the baron’s men, so he decides instead to pursue Jurema and kill her. After both men have left, a detachment from Canudos, led by former bandit Pajeú, commands the baron and Estela to abandon the hacienda. They gather as many supplies as they can before witnessing the rebels take the remaining supplies then burn the hacienda to the ground.

The nearsighted journalist witnesses the bombardment of Canudos from the hilltops overlooking the densely built community. Bells ring continuously from the tower of the Temple. As Galileo Gall approaches, his guide keeps asking about Jurema, calling her his “wife.” Gall angrily explains that she is not his wife, and, thinking him dishonorable, the guide slips away, meeting Rufino and guiding him to Gall’s location. Rufino has captured Jurema and the Dwarf after finding them hiding in a shelter while rebels and soldiers fought. He drags them to Gall, and the two men fight. Gall tries to explain the idiocy of the honor-based ethic of machismo, but Rufino doesn’t listen. Eventually, the two men kill each other.

Jurema and the Dwarf are left in the middle of the army’s assault. Despite the devastating bombardment, the attack goes disastrously for the army. Moreira César is killed, and the camp overrun. The nearsighted journalist is caught up in the chaos and finds himself hiding with Jurema and the Dwarf. After the rebels have recaptured the surrounding area, the three of them find their way to Canudos proper. During the chaos, the journalist’s glasses break, leaving him practically blind and reliant on Jurema to guide him.

Back in Salvador, the state capital, Epaminondas Gonçalves and the Baron de Canabrava meet. The government in Rio is sending another army to avenge Moreira César’s defeat, and the baron believes that Bahia’s independence will be reduced hugely unless their two factions unite. Gonçalves is amazed by this proposal from his bitter enemy, but the baron explains that he intends to retire from politics: He is the last of his generation, and to preserve what little they have left, old guard aristocrats like himself must manage the transition rather than cling desperately to their doomed power. Gonçalves agrees to replace the monarchist governor.

Flashing forward several months, the baron has retired to look after Estela, who has been driven mad by the burning of Calumbi. The nearsighted journalist visits to ask for a job on his newspaper. The baron is surprised he is alive: Canudos was destroyed with almost no survivors, so both he and Gonçalves assumed the journalist was dead. The journalist has been deeply affected by his time in Canudos and says he intends to write a book analyzing how it took place, since he still does not understand. Through flashbacks, the reader learns what happened in these final stages.

As the rebels prepare for the next assault, the journalist clings to the Dwarf and Jurema, who helps the women cook, repair defenses and transport supplies. Jurema starts calling him her “son,” and they fall in love. However, Pajeú, who burned down Calumbi, wants to marry Jurema, and they have to turn to a priest to help delay it, since both are terrified to deny him outright. Meanwhile, the Counselor is getting thinner and thinner and eating less, yet pilgrims continue to arrive.

The army approaches from several directions, and despite guerilla raids proving highly effective, they are unable to turn away the massive assault. During the fighting, the Counselor dies, and his right-hand man, the Little Blessed One, decides to keep it a secret so as not to demoralize everyone. One of his final wishes was to make a route for Jurema, the Dwarf, and the journalist to escape along with a chosen few pilgrims, who he hopes will spread the word after Canudos’s destruction. Pajeú sacrifices himself to help them. As the troops overrun Canudos, the Little Blessed One proposes a truce; noncombatants, like children, the sick, and the elderly will give themselves up to the army and be spared. But Abbot João, afraid that the soldiers will cut their throats, thus preventing them from being allowed entry to heaven, shoots everyone as they cross to the other side. The pilgrims who escaped after the journalist are tortured by doubt over whether this was the right thing to do.

Once the Baron de Canabrava has heard the end of the journalist’s account, he goes to his wife’s room where she is asleep next to her maidservant. Depressed, but seized by a burst of lust, he rapes the maidservant as his wife watches impassively.

The novel ends with the army dynamiting the last standing buildings in Canudos. A former bandit-hunter searches for Abbot João, his old nemesis, and is informed by an old lady that she saw him ascend to heaven, carried by angels.