The Logic of Extermination

The War of Canudos and Necropolitics Against Indigenous Peoples During the Military Dictatorship

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the persistent Brazilian's state violence against groups that defies the hegemonic order, using Backlands: The Canudos Campaing, by Euclides da Cunha, as a reference to understand the mechanism of repression's legitimacy. By means of the critical reading of Euclides work, we can discuss how the ideas of "progress" and "order" were used to justify the extermination of popular communities, including in the Canudos Campaing and military dictatorship's indigenous politics. In both instances, the cultural and political differences were seen as a sign of underdevelopment or subversion, legitimating the exclusion, deterritorialization and annihilation. The text makes clear the continuation of colonial logics that build the Brazilian State, as well as the necessity of a decolonial perspective that recognizes other ways of life legitimacy and prizes human, land and cultural rights as grounds for social justice and pluralist democracy.