"They killed one and left another tied up for tomorrow."

In the 70s, it was common to hear this phrase from older people and residents of the city of Paulo Afonso in Bahia, where I was born. And it was hearing this that I became accustomed to seeing people being killed, almost daily, in those 60 houses. The construction of a street, built by Banco do Brasil, would later become one of the city's main avenues, Contorno, now Hemetério de Carvalho.

My father had built a house, where we came to live around 1973, near those constructions. They remained abandoned, unfinished, for a long period. And it was in some of them that the bodies of men and women were often found.

Paulo Afonso was once a very violent city. Some of the criminals who became famous in Bahia's newspapers passed through its doors. All of them came from other cities. Some were seeking refuge from crimes already committed, others were trying their luck at jobs in the companies that built the hydroelectric plants of the Chesf complex – the São Francisco Hydroelectric Company – but ended up in the underworld.

Since the front of my father's house, Argemiro Roque's, which still stands on the corner of Rua Duque de Caxias, was a grocery store selling alcoholic beverages in a sweet, bodega-style shop, conversations took place at the counter or on the sidewalk, where several people sat on the doorsteps chatting. And that's how, joking or sitting next to those adults, we learned about the daily life of Vila Poty.

Police officers would also show up there to have a drink and mingle with the people. When they appeared, an eerie silence would fall over everyone. Nobody dared to start a conversation. Some would get up and leave, only to return later. There was an air of fear.

Sometimes it was from the police that we learned news of what was happening in the city. And it was on one of these occasions that we heard the story, in a joking tone, from policemen who were accompanying Lieutenant Cariri, that they had found a man in a "donkey cart" with a load of stones, sitting on them. The weight was so great that the animal couldn't climb the hill. And the man hit it hard with his whip until the animal finally stopped.

At this point in the story's narration, Cariri's face froze, showing anger. The soldier said that when the Lieutenant saw the scene, he ordered the Jeep to stop and just stood there watching. When the animal gave way because it couldn't drag the load, and the man got out and started hitting it even harder, the cry was heard, "Stop!"

It was so loud that residents came out of their houses to see what was happening. Cariri then reportedly asked the animal's owner if he thought what he was doing was right. And I heard the reply that the brute was meant for that very purpose, to carry weight.

At that moment, Cariri asked the police officers to help remove the animal from the cart and put the harness on its owner. And it was done as he asked. While the frightened man seemed not to understand what was happening, the lieutenant took the whip, ordered the cart to be released, and watched the human body collapse under the weight. That's when the image that is still recounted by the oldest residents of the city was seen. The policeman struck the man's spine so forcefully as he lay on the ground, while saying, "Get up, drag him...". With each lash the man received, screams echoed through several streets, along with pleas for an end to the torture.

Cariri glanced sideways, and the story was interrupted instantly. He liked listening to Vicente Celestino's music, and he always asked for the record to be played for him when he came over for a Casca de Pau drink with his men.

It's true, they killed one and left another tied up for tomorrow. And the conversation, as it began, ended, and those men left. And those who remained looked at each other until they heard, "Pour some more cachaça to ward off the bad things."

Being a child in a world like this has made me, as an adult, a storyteller. Sometimes I sit with my children and reminisce about some of them. And I remember when my mother, Regina Roque, would put a tarp on the sidewalk in front of our house at night and tell so many more stories. She spoke of Kings and Queens, of dreams she never lived, but wished she had lived.

In the backlands, stories come and go as time passes.