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Virgolino Ferreira da Silva was vain about the reputation and tried to induce the image that they had of him. He said that the murder of his father, an innocent man killed by the police, would have been the motivation for his entry into the cangaço. However, the most reliable sources show that he and the older siblings were already involved in crimes and that the father's death would have even been a reaction to one of the episodes in which the children were involved. Even so, the episode helped to create the myth of crime driven by revenge.
In the construction of mythology about him, he granted an interview on his famous visit to Juazeiro do Norte in 1926. Interrogated by the journalist he was not worried about extorting money from him. Money to the farmers replied that he has never done such a thing. According to his version, he only asked for money from his friends. Virgolino read newspaper and magazine articles about them when he met them.
On February 28, 1931, New York Times went so far as to say that Lampiao was a kind of Robin Hood – he took the rich and gave them to the poor. This version grew in the decades after his death, spread in the literature of cordel, literature, cinema, to movements like the Manguebeat. In these stories, Lampião gains airs of heroes. A bandit hero, justice in a land of injustice.
However, the historical documents do not provide evidence justifying this version. The context of the emergence of cangaço helps to understand the phenomenon. In difficult hinterlands, the institutions were barely working. Justice has almost never reached the perpetrators of crimes. Violence has often become the means to avenge offenses and do what the state was unable to do. Whether it is for a legitimate reason or not, the fact is that, in the eyes of the sertanejos, such grounds differentiate their perpetrators from ordinary criminals. In addition, crime has increased during more intense droughts. Not only her, like religious fanaticism and messianism. They were the symptoms of the crisis in the sertaneja society, according to Billy Jaynes Chandler, American historian, author of Lampião, the king of the cangaceiros.
In the case of Lampião, however, there is no evidence justifying revenge as a reason to enter the cangaço. The beginning of his life of violence and that of his brothers were much more the result of conflicts with neighbors and mutual accusations of property invasion and cattle theft. The divergence quickly degenerated into an armed conflict. So, it is a fact that the murder of the father was an important step to immerse them permanently in the life of the crime. But the revenge has never been realized. Those who were identified as the main culprits of the death of Jose Ferreira survived the brothers cangaceiros for decades
. Nor do the acts justify Lampião's image as motivated by social injustices. It is true that he promoted acts of generosity. In Riacho Seco, a municipality of Curaçá (Bahia), there was an episode where commercial establishments were looted on September 17, 1929. In one case, the property was distributed to the population. In addition, he gave alms to the poor and withdrawn with whom he sympathized – and he did so with great ostentation. Episodes like this reinforce the thesis "Robin Hood sertanejo". Good deeds were also exaggerated. But that was not the rule of his game. The violence episodes committed by Lampião were motivated to get money for the pack.
There were, of course, several episodes of revenge, yes. In the early years, he rarely missed choosing his targets from someone with whom he had the right accounts. This model began to change. In July 1925, when his first brother died in the cangaço – Levino – began to direct his anger indiscriminately. Between August and September 1925, his camp attacked the towns on the border between Pernambuco and Alagoas. At least seven people died. According to witnesses, the targets were poor people with no history of quarrels with the cangaceiros. Among the victims, at least one child and one elderly man, both unarmed.
Lampião was also deeply irritated by the construction of roads. Much of their success depends on the isolation of hinterlands, difficulties of movement and communication. This is why he burned down railway stations, cut off telegraph wires and threatened road workers. In October 1929 he attacked a platform that left Juazeiro in Bahia and killed nine workers. In December of the same year, the group shot and killed seven police officers who surrendered. In October 1935, in retaliation for the death of cangaceiros by a civil militia, the bandoc attacks a farm and kills an old man and a young woman.
There is the image of Lampião respectful of women, but she lives with testimonies of rapes, which the boss himself participated. One of the reports indicates that 25 cangaceiros raped the young woman of a delegate, in front of her husband. Virgolino would have been the first. Also, around the 1930s, there are reports that the Cangaceiro has begun to impose a bizarre code of conduct. Women who wore short hair or short skirts were beaten by him. One of the band members, the terrible José Bahiano, instituted as punishment the practice of marking women with red hot iron.
He was also far from being a critic of power. As Billy Jaynes points out, Chandler, from the point of view of ideas and prejudices, was a clbadic man of wood. He was not opposed to hierarchies and privileges. On the contrary, he was frustrated at not being among them. When he was interviewed in Juazeiro do Norte, he said that he would like to become a merchant when he abandoned the cangaço. On another occasion, he said that he would like to be a farmer. He told a reporter that he admired agriculture, livestock breeding and trade. "They were the conservative clbades that he admired most." (Chandler, 1980. P. 239. Paz and Terra Publishing House)
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