Cleansing Honor with Blood

This critical reinterpretation of male violence, patriarchy, and machismo in rural Latin America focusses on the lives of lower-class men and women, known as sertanejo/as, in the hinterlands of the northeastern Brazilian province of Ceará between 1845 and 1889. Challenging the widely accepted depiction of sertanejos as conditioned to violence by nature, culture, and climate, the book argues that their concern with maintaining an honourable manly reputation and the use of violence were historically contingent strategies employed to resolve conflicts over scant resources and to establish power over women and other men.