jagunço

plural jagunços

1. A hired gunman in backland Brazil; a militiaman or bodyguard; a bandit or outlaw.

   Maria Quadrado, Alexandrinha Correa, and Gertrudes […] went around placing the dead bodies of jagunços in hammock litters so that they could be carried back to Canudos to be buried.

   1984, Mario Vargas Llosa, translated by Helen R. Lane, The War of the End of the World, Folio Society, published 2012, page 85

   1 more example

   Though the government forces carried modern rifles against their one-shot muskets and scraping knives, the jagunços repelled first a detachment of a hundred men and then a detachment of five hundred.

   2016, Alex Cuadros, Brazillionaires