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Manuel Nunes Viana: Paragon or Parasite of Empire?

“Let pass Manuel Nunes Viana, a man of medium build, round of face, with brown eyes and black hair”. Made by the official at the register on the Rio Grande in the interior of Brazil on May 14, 1717, this is the only physical description of a charismatic figure whose word was law in the backlands of Brazil in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. A native of Viana do Castelo in northern Portugal, Nunes Viana migrated to Brazil around the 1680's. Salvador was his point of entry but, after killing an assailant he lay low until pardoned by the governor; subsequently, he left for the sertão where he was to establish residence for some 40 years near to the bar of the Rio das Velhas. He sired at least six daughters and four sons. During his lifetime he returned to Portugal on two occasions, and was a minor literary Maecenas although in 1717 his signature is that of a barely literate man. He was financially successful as a result of ventures in cattle ranching, commerce in foodstuffs to the developing mining areas, and investments in alluvial mining. Alone, and in league with his cousin Manuel Rodrigues Soares, he ruled the sertão of the captaincies of Bahia, Minas Gerais, and Pernambuco for two decades, before dying in the mid-1730's. He cocked a snook at governors and viceroys, although his loyalty to the crown was never called into question. If one viceroy in 1715 could report to the crown that Nunes Viana was not only the “most capable” of the inhabitants of the sertão and the best suited to carry out the royal will, the following year the Overseas Council in Lisbon was to refer to him as “guilty of many crimes.” Not surprisingly the king was at a loss to know whether he had a saint or a sinner on his hands. Governors ran the full gamut from regarding him as the only possible instrument to maintain a royal presence in the Brazilian west to considering him a cancer to be eliminated before infecting the loyalty and wellbeing of the colonial flock. To some settlers, he may have been a Robin Hood of the backlands, but for others he was a cruel and despotic figure who meted out arbitrary justice with excessive cruelty. Whatever the divergence of views, one fact was certain: Manuel Nunes Viana was not a man to whom anybody could remain indifferent.