File number: brjc0051

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Brazil: 'Bonnie and Clyde', Lampião and his partner in crime, Maria Bonita, legendary outlaws for almost two decades in the arid, poor northeast known as the sertão. Born Virgolino Ferreira in 1898, Lampãio apparently took to violence when his father was killed by local police in 1919. With Maria Bonita and a group of revolutionaries, he targeted wealthy landowners, distributing some of his gains among the poor to whom he became a Robin Hood figure. He and many of his group were killed in 1938 by government forces, but his name lives on in local folklore, TV programmes, books and on a float in Rio's 2006 Carnival.