Maria Bonita (bandit)
Maria Bonita was the nickname of Maria Déia, a member of a Cangaço band, marauders and outlaws active in the Brazilian Northeast in the 1920s and 1930s. Maria Bonita means "Beautiful Maria". She has the status of a 'folk heroine' in Brazil. There is some inconsistency over her original name, with Maria Alia da Silva and Maria Gomes de Oliveira also attributed.
Life
She was the girlfriend of "Captain" Virgulino Ferreira da Silva, better known as Lampião, the outlaw bandit leader. She was raised in the Jeremoabo area of the State of Bahia.Virgulino's father was killed in a confrontation with the police in 1919. Virgulino sought vengeance and proved to be extremely violent in doing so. He became an outlaw and was incessantly pursued by the police. The cangaceiro bandit's weapons were mostly stolen or obtained by bribery from the police and paramilitary units and consisted of Mauser military rifles and a variety of smaller firearms including Winchester rifles, revolvers and the prized Luger semi-automatic pistol. The band, whose numbers varied between about a dozen up to a hundred, attacked small towns and farms in seven Brazilian states, fought pitched battles with paramilitary police, killed people and cattle, extorted money, kidnapped hostages for ransom, tortured, fire-branded, maimed, raped, and ransacked.
Maria Bonita joined Lampião and his bandits in 1930, aged in her early twenties. Like other women in the band, she dressed like the cangaceiros and participated in many of their actions. At the time she joined the bandits she was semi-estranged from her husband, José Nenem, a cobbler. The band travelled on horseback wearing leather outfits including hats, jackets, sandals, ammunition belts, and trousers to protect them from the thorns of the caatinga. The women who joined bandit groups were often termed cangaceiras. The cangaceiras were as hardy as the male bandits, they were also well-armed and were trained in the use of weapons. They were often involved in battles with the military police; Maria Bonita and a second female bandit were killed in a shoot out, and another woman in the band, Dadá, was wounded in a later battle with the police and had to have her leg amputated.
Maria and Lampião had a daughter, named Expedita, in 1932. A number of cangaceiras joined the band over the many years of its existence, and it was usual for Lampião to personally attend any births. Such children, including Lampião's own, were fostered out to settled relatives or friends of the cangaceiros, or left with priests. Expedita, after the deaths of her parents, was raised by her uncle, João Ferreira. Of the 5 Ferreira brothers, he was the only one who did not become an outlaw. A number of recorded anecdotes indicate that Maria and the other women in the band sometimes moderated excesses of cruelty by intervening on behalf of victims threatened by Lampião and the other ''cangaceiros.''