Bandit of Toribio

Mamed Casanova, the Bandit of Toribio, has been depicted in numerous images resembling the icons of the saints in which no element appears to exist by random chance. There is extreme attention to detail in order to transmit and construct the essence of the figure’s character.

Toribio is presented as if watching us from the top of an altar, clothed in a suit robbed from a deceased indiano with a hat mimicking a halo, accentuating the figure’s divine light.

In contrast, his profession and social status are represented in his face, which is not that of a wealthy indiano, but rather that of an outlaw, with a defeated yet disobedient gaze, hand raised as if begging and face looking towards the Chapel of Carmen, where it is said that he was seen during the last years of his life and also on the many occasions he escaped from prison and begged for money throughout the rural parishes. Apart from his fancy clothing, his condition is similar to that of most Galicians at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries: his poverty as well as his profession as bandit and thief, which is demonstrated by a gun hidden beneath a jacket in his other hand. This can be interpreted as stating that his condition derives from his chosen profession, and that poverty will always sit above crime and that the hand that begs is always above the hand which shoots.