This chapter follows the column's return path south as it retraced its steps and crossed into exile in Paraguay. As government censorship loosened, newspapers began publishing serialized exposés about the column. This coverage helped to inaugurate what I describe in this chapter as a “cartographic picaresque.” Consciously or not, popularized stories about the Prestes Column created a picaresque with two protagonists: the tenente rebels, and the interior. This duality itself has two layers, given that the picaresque of the backlands related to the landscapes of the interior as well as its populations. Because the column came to represent an origin story of sorts for modern Brazil, the concept of a cartographic picaresque helps us to explore the spatial components of nationhood.