Carcará: romance

Abstract

Carcará is a novel written by Ivan Bichara Sobreira, a writer who years before wrote an essay on the writer José Lins do Rego – which was critically acclaimed. In Carcará, he prepares fertile ground to talk about the northeast during the era of banditry, when the rise of the banditry brought mixed emotions to the people of the northeast at the time. We are taken to the story of a robbery by a band of bandits led by Sabino Gomes in Cajazeiras, Paraíba, in 1926. As the book says, any similarity to real people must have been a mere coincidence. In a description of the urban and rural spaces in that fictional Cajazeiras, the sensation is that one is in a familiar setting, as if one were seeing the landscapes mentioned there in person. The writer and poet Linaldo Guedes made a brief assessment of the work in a very interesting analysis on his blog “Os Guedes” about the book “Carcará” which narrates a reality that existed for a long time in cities in the backlands of the Northeast. They were small cities and communities that always lived in fear of the imminent invasion of Lampião and his bandits. In the case of Cajazeiras, Lampião decided not to invade the city. The legend is that this decision was in response to a request from Father Cícero, who was supposedly a student of Father Rolim and did not want his master’s land to become hostage to the bandits. One of the central characters is Sabino Gomes, who was one of Lampião’s trusted “cabas” and asked the “captain” for permission to invade Cajazeiras. In fact, Sabino had lived in Cajazeiras and wanted to take revenge on some of the city’s inhabitants. The entire narrative of the book is constructed based on the expectation that exists in the city for the invasion of Sabino's gang. It is in this scenario that he creates fascinating characters, such as the former bandit Raimundo Anastácio, Manoel Santana, Cego Alexandre, Raimundo Casimiro, Lieutenant Elino Fernandes, Mariá, Moisés and Chicão, among others, who coexist in the novel with real characters from the history of Cajazeiras and Paraíba, such as Dom Moisés Coelho, Father Gervásio Coelho, professor Hildebrando Leal, Major Epifânio Sobreira, Hygino Rolim, poet Cristiano Cartaxo, Otacílio Jurema and Ivan Bichara's own father, among others.”