The story of Canudos was told by war correspondent Euclides da Cunha in the book Os Sertões (1901; translated into English as Rebellion in the Backlands, 1944) and also, in fictional form, in the novel The War of the End of the World by Nobel Prize Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa (1981) and described at length by Peter Robb in "A Death in Brazil" (2004).
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In 1893, following a protest over taxation and a violent melee with the police forces in Masseté, Conselheiro and his band settled on an abandoned farm called Canudos, so called because a plant, canudo-de-pita (scientific name Ipomoea carnea, its popular name referring to its hollow tubes, used for manufacturing smoking pipes) was common in the region.
With the victory of the rebels of Antônio Conselheiro in the War of Canudos, the political situation further deteriorated.