Violence and the sacred: what in the criminal announces the saint?

Abstract

This article presents a preliminary study of two popular saint devotional practices that take place currently in the Northeast of Brazil. There, around their gravestones, Jararaca, a cangaceiro, and Baracho, a kind of serial killer and thief, are both believed to be, if not real saints, saint-like persons. The faith in their miracles is mixed with the memory of their criminal lives. The traditional model of the social bandit, who becomes a robber to help the poorest people, makes possible their believers to establish a continuum between their criminal past and their “sanctified” present. The most important elements in their conversion into “saints” seem to be the violent death and the physical and moral suffering associated with it. The picture just drawn here shows that both are really a very special kind of saints; they are precarious saints, not completely established ones. The controversial aspects of their sainthood seem to explain why they are so interesting, even from the believers’ point of view.