In the early hours of the morning of July 28, 1938Virgulino Ferreira da Silva, the Lampand Maria Gomes de Oliveira, Maria Beautifulthey were ambushed by the police forces commanded by Colonel João Bezerra da Silva amid Sergipe Sertão, near the border with Alagoas. 87 years ago, the murder of the band of bandal brings together put an end to the most popular banditry movement in our history.
Recently, the skeletal remains of the “King and Queen of Cangaço” – that in the last three years have been dominated by the FMUSP laboratories (Faculty of Medicine of the University of São Paulo)- have been submitted to a thorough process of reconstruction and are today in the collection of São Paulo Sacred Art Museum.
The teacher of), Mercedes Okumura, explained how the work of reconstitution of defined by it as a very slow and careful procedure. “It was necessary to sanitize the remains, then try to reassemble the present parts of the skull, joining these fragments with glue.”
The historian and museologist of the Pathology Department of FMUSP, José Closs, reflects that, in addition to the detail and expertise during the reassembly of the fragments, it is necessary to understand the history of violations suffered by remains over the last decade.
“Anatomical approaches to the fragments fitted because of the trajectory of guard and guard situations to skulls, but especially to that of .”
Post-mortem trajectory
Shortly after the couple’s death in the Sergipe Sertãothe fragments were on display at the IML (Legal Medical Institute) of Salvador (BA) for a period; Then they were sent to Maceió (AL) where they remained until 1944. Back in the Bahian capital, the skulls were on display at the Nina Rodrigues Museum until 1969, the year the family finally obtained the right to bury the remains in Quinta dos Lazaros Cemetery, also in Salvador.
There the bone was maintained until 2000when the cemetery administration communicated the family about changes that would endanger the whereabouts of the fragments. Since then, the skulls have been under the care of Expedita and Vera Ferreira, daughter and granddaughter of the couple, respectively, in Aracaju (SE). Keeping for two decades at the family home, the skulls were sent to the Pathology Department of FMUSP.
Questioned about any damage, Closs points out that the conservation process adopted by the family It was, in fact, the least harmful in material and ethical terms over the last few years.
“A certain morbid curiosity of the It forgets that the legacy treatment to the dead, both morally and legally, goes through the zeal and curatorship of family members. The guard at home, far from diagenetic processes such as solar radiation, chemical oxidations – not to mention damage to human dignity as in exhibitions that deal with people as merely objects – was the process that least damaged the matter and memory of Lampião and Maria Bonita. ”
Reconstitution of remains
Mercedes, who led the work of reconstruction of the heads, reveals that although Maria Bonita’s skull showed a righteous aspect, that of Lampião was quite damaged.
Therefore, in addition to the hygiene of the fragments, it was necessary a process of curatorship, that is, to find which fragments could be fitted and glued to reconstruct that skull.
The reconstitution process showed, according to the expert, a great loss of bone material in the right part of the skull, which meets what is observed in the photos taken shortly after the beheading (the famous photo of the heads on the staircase).
“In addition to these missing bone parts, the skull has many fractures called ‘perimortem’, that is, which occur in the immediately preceding period or after the death process.”
For the researcher, the observed fractures can be associated with both impact gives Projetil’s bullet as about the possibility that the head was the target of blows during execution.
She also highlights the damage caused by the demapitation process suffered by Virgulino. “We have evidence of it from the damage observed in some bones that are usually damaged in this process: cervical vertebrae and hioid bone (located in the throat region), as well as some regions of the skull base.”
Cangaço Memory, Rights and Memorial
Eight decades after the final episode that eternalized the saga do In national historiography, Closs emphasizes that returning morphological integrity to the biography of Lampião and Maria Bonita It is to return dignity to them as people.
“Much is said about the couple’s fame, but little is thought about being human beings like any of us. The maintenance of the matter that makes up the subjects of a historical process of great relevance to the history of Brazil is the same as that can be used for any other semioporus that gives materiality to Brazilian national history.”
The museologist also adds that if any subject in the history of Brazil is preserved, why not conserve the memory of this part of it? So it argues that Creation of the Cangaço Museum and its relevance to the preservation of history as well as other spaces dedicated to memory.
The forecast is that the Memorial is inaugurated in up to three years And it will bring together, besides the skulls, a collection kept by the family, with personal effects and other goods that belonged to Lampião and Maria Bonita.
“We have museums that show our fauna and flora, saints and emperors, the ancestral material culture of colonial pre-invasion. There is no scale of values for memory, as much as we know as hegemonic discourses recurrently promote the Memoricide [apagamento da memória e identidade cultural]. The Cangaço Museum is, above all, a museum focused on the memory of human rights. An attempt to conserve the memory of what cannot be normalized: violence and disrespect. ”
Mercedes concludes by noting that the extensive work of reonstitution of skulls of, over three years, fulfills an important role to reflect on the treatment given to them in the following decades to deaths and respect for memory.
“In addition to the knowledge generated on a historical figure of figure, I consider it particularly important to return the family the skull of Virgulino reconstituted simply because no one would like to see an ancestor or a relative having the treatment after the death this individual had. In this sense, a study that aims to reconstitute and study human remnants can be very important to try to return dignity to the deceased person and to rethink our relationship with the dead and the dead. We treat. ”
