O Eidolon do Homem no Cangaço Contemporâneo, de Políbio Alves

Abstract

This text seeks to debate, in the narrative of the paraiban writer Políbio Alves, from the novels A Leste dos Homens and Os Ratos Amestrados Fazem Acrobacias ao Amanhecer, the themes of cangaço and violence in the northeastern hinterland. Of a memoirist character, the quick and vibrant narrative of these two works presents a status quo of the world with a changed sign. Políbio Alves revisits the theme of “cangaço” and “cangaceiro” violence through images reflected in the mirror, whose continuity tends to wear off as the narrative unfolds and rescues a still controversial theme in a contradiction that denies the myth of progress, of cordial man and of social peace, still enshrined in today's society. In this sense, the contemporary author writes not only to prevent this memory from being erased, but also not to “die of silence” in the face of a world that, despite its transformations, still maintains centenary socio-cultural structures of exclusion and power.