Benjamin Abrahão Botto

Benjamin Abrahão Botto ( – May 10, 1938) was a Lebanese-born Brazilian photographer. He is best known for filming the Cangaço and its leader Virgulino Ferreira da Silva. He was murdered during the Estado Novo period in Brazil.

Early life

Benjamin Abrahão Botto was born in Lebanon. To avoid becoming a conscript of the Ottoman Empire that fought in the First World War, Abrahão migrated to Brazil in 1915. In Recife, he worked as a traveling salesman, selling cloth and small goods. Attracted by the frequency of pilgrims in the city of Juazeiro do Norte, he moved his business there. Abahão was the secretary of Padre Cícero and met the cangaceiro Lampião in 1926 when he went to Juazeiro do Norte to ask for the priest's blessing and seek the rank of Captain, for helping the government in the pursuit of the Coluna Prestes.

Career In 1929, Abrahão photographed the cangaceiro leader with the priest, two of the most important figures of the northeast region of Brazil. After the death of Padre Cícero, Abrahão asked and received permission from the infamous Lampião to follow his group in the Caatinga and take the photos that in the future would immortalize them. For that he had the help of cearense Ademar Bezerra de Albuquerque, owner of ABAFILM, lent him the equipment and taught him to use it. The Getúlio Vargas government, which saw Abrahão as an enemy of the regime, seized his work. He was murdered at Serra Talhada (with 42 stab wounds) without either the killer or the motivation for the crime ever surfacing. In 2000, his work was presented in many expositions in Paris, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.