The Wikipedia article that addresses the War of Canudos portrays the small villagers of the Canudos settlement as fanatics who were blindly following some sort of Messiah in hopes of a better future. That is, while the article does touch on the economic depression of the Canudos area and alludes that this might have made the people of Canudos susceptible to promises of a better world, it fails to provide any concrete evidence that would explain why the people of Canudos chose to follow Counselheiro. Later on, the article touches on how the government of Brazil labeled the settlement of Canudos’ people as ideological fanatics who antagonized the current government and blindly followed  “one of the many mystic spiritual preachers of the time.” While the editors do not necessarily make blatant, personal statements on their thoughts on the people of Canudos’ arguable fanaticism, their failure to address whether the same people pursued more concrete goals by allying with Counselheiro gives support to the government’s trope. This underlies a systemic bias in that the point of view of the government dominates the article, whereas the ideology and motives of the Canudos peasants are boiled down to delusional aspirations.

On the other hand, the article talks extensively about the War of Canudos’ military history and provides multiple statistics to describe the battles that opposed the settlement and the government without referencing any credible sources. In fact, the sources that are directly referenced in the article seem far from credible and unbiased–one of them being a blog post while the other happens to be a government news website. Even worse, the talks section alludes to the fact that the article may be heavily inspired by a work of fiction by Vargas Llosa about the War of Canudos as the statistics that are presented in the article seem to be too similar to Vargas Llosa’s piece. This casts doubt on the entirety of the article and makes it an unreliable source of information.

I would improve the article by addressing the ideology and the motives of the people of Canudos more extensively in an attempt to give the peasants, which happen to be the underrepresented group, in this case, a voice against that of the Brazilian government. Additionally, I would double-check the numbers that are provided in the article and reference a credible source every time any of those statistics are provided. Finally, I would make sure to incorporate more credible, peer-reviewed, and accessible sources and cite them explicitly in the body of the article.