Revista Mundos do Trabalho (e-ISSN: 1984-9222) is a digital joint publication of the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC) and Associação Nacional de História do Trabalho (ANAHT) / GT Mundos do Trabalho da Associação Nacional de História (ANPUH) (National Association of Labour History). Its objective is to disseminate Brazilian and international academic production in the area of ​​Labour History. The journal has adopted continuous publication (rolling pass) since 2019. The average time between the start of the submission process and the publication is eight weeks. It has an A1 rating in the History Area of ​​the Brazilian system for evaluating Qualis / CAPES journals. Its content is cataloged in several metadata indexers, search engines, virtual libraries, repositories, and digital content preservation services (check here). The journal receives articles in continuous flow for free section and articles for thematic dossiers, in addition to reviews, interviews, comments on unpublished primary sources, debates, and conferences, in Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish or English. Submissions are examined by the Editorial Team and evaluated by external reviewers. The minimum degree required for the submission of manuscripts is that of a doctor. Exceptionally and at the discretion of the Editorial Team, outstanding manuscripts submitted by authors with lower degrees may be evaluated. The journal does not charge fees and the content is made available on Open Access. Mundos do Trabalho is supported by the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (Federal University of Santa Catarina , UFSC), hosting its services on the Portal de Periódicos UFSC (UFSC Journal Portal). The journal is funded by the Graduate Programs in History of Universidade do Estado da Bahia (UNEB) and Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio).
Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC)
The authors assign to Revista Mundos do Trabalho the exclusive rights of first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) 4.0 International. This license allows third parties to remix, adapt and create from the published work, giving due credit for authorship and initial publication in this journal. Authors are authorized to take additional contracts separately, for the non-exclusive distribution of the version of the work published in this journal (e.g. publish in an institutional repository, personal website, publish a translation, or as a book chapter), with authorship and publication in this journal.
Schooling of Black Poor Women in Post-Abolition Brazil
This article analyzes an educational project offering formal schooling to working women and their children in Brazil during the early decades of the twentieth century. It highlights how these working women – most of whom were Black – organized their lives and labor based on their own conceptions of femininity, domesticity, motherhood, and rights. The study investigates the experiences shaped at the intersections of structural conditions, social relations, and individual choices, as well as the ways in which race, gender, and class influenced their life trajectories. Finally, it emphasizes that the symbolic status associated with the idea of a schooled individual may have served as a political mechanism, combining – albeit with some symmetry – hegemonic notions of domesticity with paid work and public life, thereby redefining how these women could interpret and navigate these social dimensions in different ways, and whenever possible, on their own terms.
Copyright (c) 2025 Revista Mundos do Trabalho
The structural relationship between race and platform capitalism: the implications of social composition for delivery workers’ resistance in Brazil
Despite the notable predominance of the Black population among app delivery workers, there are still few studies that seek to investigate the structural relation of race with platform work. Thus, we aim to advance the research agenda that repositions the racial question as an analytical key beyond the mere descriptive acknowledgement of this workforce. In this article, we analyze the implications of the racial class composition of app-based delivery workers in Brazil for their everyday work experiences and their forms of collective action. We argue that the historical formation of the working class in Brazil is juxtaposed with new modes of exploitation, dispossession, and resistance enacted by these workers in a context of structural capitalist crisis. This article is based on ethnographic research conducted with app-based delivery workers in Niterói over the course of two years, between 2020 and 2022.
Abortive Practices and Solidarity Networks among Workers: The Case of Guilhermina Pereira da Silva Caixeiro (Rio Grande, RS, 1950)
This article investigates abortion practices among workers in the city of Rio Grande (RS), having as its analytical axis the case of Guilhermina Pereira da Silva Caixeiro, midwife and community leader. As president of the União das Mulheres Rio-grandinas (UMRG), a broad front established by the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) in 1946, Guilhermina played a crucial role in organizing female solidarity networks. Between 1950 and 1954, three criminal cases were opened on charges of qualified abortion, with the Public Prosecutor's Office alleging their participation in procedures carried out on four workers. The analysis proposes to understand abortion as a strategy of daily resistance and struggle for survival in a context marked by structural inequalities of gender, class and race, as well as exploring the dynamics of the support networks built among working women during the period. To this end, an analysis of criminal sources, inventories and press sources is used, problematizing the complex power relations and female agency in a scenario of state repression and precarious women's health.
Imperial Works: Towards a Global History of British Labour Management in the Sheep Farming Industry of Southern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego since the nineteenth century
This article argues for the need to study the trajectories and practices of British managers of sheep farming industry in Southern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. While providing comparative evidence and historiographical analysis, the methodological proposal suggested here responds to characteristics such as the incorporation of the South American southernmost region into the British imperial sheep farming circuits, the largely British composition of managers who arrived in Patagonia as part of a context of administrative expansion for labour control, and features of the observable practices of supervision in different British labour regimes. It is argued that estancias and frigoríficos in the Patagonian region were part of an imperial context of British colonial labour regimes. In this manner, it proposes an approach to research on British managers and their experiences, contributing to a deeper understanding of labour relations and conflicts, already studied on a local scale, from a global approach to the fuegian-patagonian labour history.
In the times of “black gold”: the Mebêngôkre-Kayapó and the rubber economy in south of Pará in the first two decades of the 20th century
In the early 20th century, with the discovery of rubber in southern Pará, the religious mission of Nossa Senhora de Conceição do Araguaia, founded in 1897 by French Dominican missionaries, underwent a profound transformation due to the influx of migrants from various regions of Brazil to work in rubber extraction. In this context, indigenous groups in the region, particularly the Mebêngôkre (Kayapó), actively participated in this commercial process by trading their production and also engaging in rubber extraction labor. Research on indigenous experiences during this period is scarce, often relying on the accounts of the Dominican missionaries who portrayed indigenous peoples as helpless victims the interests of rubber barons. Therefore, drawing on travelers' reports and a documentary corpus produced by the Dominican missionaries, this article aims to reflect on the agency of the Mebêngôkre (Kayapó) during the rubber boom in southern Pará starting from 1904.
Critical-descriptive analysis of the washing of gold ore near the Itacolomi Mountain by Rugendas - 1835
The scope of this article is to conduct an analytical-descriptive study ot the litograph entitled A lavagem do minério de ouro perto da montanha Itacolomi (1835) by Johann Moritz Rugendas. The intention is to demonstrate that the image contributes to the advancement of knowledge about the world of labor in the mining and slave cociety of Minas Gerais in the first half of the 19th century due to is verisimilitude with historical reality at the stage of developemental forces of production, in accordance with data collected form contemporaneous sources.
Heritage, Circulation, and Community Fund: Capital Dynamics in Chile's Mutual Societies (1966-1990)
This article analyzes the management and fate of the funds of the Mutual Aid Societies (SSM) in Chile between 1966 and 1990. Despite political and cultural changes, these funds were neither nationalized in 1924 nor privatized during the Military-Civilian Dictatorship. The study highlights how, over these years, mutualist quotas enabled the maintenance of social benefits and the acquisition and upkeep of movable and immovable property, despite economic and cultural adversities. The research reveals that many SSM maintained their assets, facing challenges such as fires and earthquakes, and managed their properties as vital spaces of popular sociability. The appreciation of the land and the threat of liquidation of these assets underline the urgent need for adequate regulation to preserve mutualist heritage. In conclusion, it is proposed that, based on this valuable heritage, mutualism should be redefined in the current context, where common goods are being revalued.
Photographs from 1913 and the world of work at the Casa de Correção de Porto Alegre
This article analyzes a set of 31 photographs about the Casa de Correção de Porto Alegre, produced in the early 1910s, currently under the custody of the Julio de Castilhos Museum (RS), which certainly had as its main objective the provision of accounts and self-promotion of administrator Lieutenant-Colonel Francisco Antonio de Oliveira Moraes. However, through an adjustment of lenses, it will be seen that such images also end up talking about the way in which the Rio-Grandense Party looked at and treated, no less publicly, the penitentiary issues of the establishment which, by then, had reached a considerable industrial performance. Through these and other sources, such as reports from the Secretaries of State for Interior and Foreign Affairs, messages from governors, newspapers, regulations and specialized historiography, an attempt will also be made to reconstruct the world of work of worker-prisoners that was the main prison in Rio Grande do Sul in the first half of the 20th century.
The Rio de Janeiro União dos Operários Estivadores and the stowage work regulation in Brazil
Taking into consideration a long historical period (19th-20th centuries) and choosing stowage as it’s object of investigation, this article reveals the centrality of the port of Rio de Janeiro and of the Union of Stevedores of Rio de Janeiro to the comprehension of the path that led to the preservation, in Brazilian labor legislation, of stevedores’ customs and of their controls over essential aspects of the stowage work process, as Oliveira Vianna, legal advisor to the Vargas government, once made clear. The central analytical axis of the article is the workers' and employers' demands, as well as the intra-class and inter-class struggles around labor recruitment and the labor process.
Rural workers and the Communist Party in Uruguay: perspectives on the sugar cane marches in the early 1960s
This article analyses the relationship between the sugar cane workers’ marches and the Communist Party in Uruguay in the 1960s. It is based on the hypothesis that this relationship has been little explored by Uruguayan historiography, but it is a determining factor in understanding the Communists’ positions on agrarian reform. In this sense, the study explores the Communist Party’s conceptions of agrarian reform between 1959 and 1964, in the light of the experience, accompaniment and tensions with the sugar cane marches. The methodology is based on the analysis of photographs and information from the newspaper El Popular and the Fondo Privado El Popular (FPEP). It also uses interviews conducted by the authors with qualified informants. The most relevant results focus on two aspects. Firstly, in reconstructing some traces and fragments of memories of the 1962 and 1964 sugar cane marches, in particular by identifying scenarios, people and trajectories. Secondly, it is a small contribution to the analysis of the course of ideas about agrarian reform in Uruguay.
A native morality of the land: Experience, resistance and revolt of national workers in the Parish of São Bernardo (1883)
This article examines the actions of national workers in the Freguesia of São Bernardo, part of the ABC region, in 1883, in defense of customary practices related to traditional land use, shaped over centuries through locally transmitted and reinterpreted knowledge. It focuses on two episodes: a January conflict between national and German settlers sparked by an animal trespass, which escalated into violence and arson; and the March occupation and destruction of a mill dam owned by the Italian Palharini Veneri. Although seemingly unrelated, both events are analyzed as part of broader territorial disputes, in which traditional conceptions of land use clashed with emerging notions of private property. We argue that these customary practices – possibly influenced by Indigenous knowledge and rooted in the communal lands of the Amador de Medeiros sesmaria – were gradually appropriated and reconfigured by the local population throughout the 19th century, shaping patterns of occupation and circulation that informed the 1883 events.
Sewing the Legislation: Home Economics in Agricultural Schools in Paraná (20th Century)
In this article, we discuss how the Brazilian rural education, especially through the Home Economics directed to women, reinforced gender inequalities and the sexual division of labor in the countryside in the state of Paraná. We analyze critically federal and state legislations that mention the teaching of Home Economics, such as Federal Decree nº 8.319/1910, which created the "Agricultural Domestic Schools" and the Regulation of Rural Workers Schools of Paraná of 1939, besides state newspapers (Diário do Paraná). We demonstrate, through these sources, that the educational policies directed girls to domestic and reproductive roles, while boys were capacitated for productive activities, reinforcing patriarchal and capitalist structures. The case of Paraná shows us the regional application of these policies, with curricula that naturalized the female subordination, such as that of Colégio Agrícola Augusto Ribas. This highlights education as an instrument of maintenance of power, and it makes itself a crucial theme to understand the dynamics of work and peasant life in the region.
Market-assisted land reform and rural workers in Brazil: resistance, division, support, and accommodation (1995-2003)
This article analyzes the political disputes surrounding the implementation of market-assisted land reform (MALR) in Brazil between 1995 and 2003. It shows how the World Bank (WB) worked in conjunction with the Federal Government to promote land purchase programs negotiated between rural workers and landowners as an alternative to agrarian reform through expropriation, with the aim of weakening land occupations and reducing rural conflicts. The study highlights which social forces supported or opposed MALR and how they organized politically to achieve their goals during the presidency of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and the
The Secret of Argentine Competitiveness: Living and Working Conditions of Rural Workers in the Pampas During the Agro-export period (Argentina, 1880–1914)
Between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Argentina fully integrated into the contemporary global market as a recipient of capital and a supplier of food. During this process, a new productive structure was consolidated, and the country became one of the world’s leading exporters of wheat and corn, with European markets as the main destination. In this paper, we analyze how this extraordinary and rapid agricultural growth was not solely the result of natural advantages or the supposed “virtuousness” of landowners and large entrepreneurs who maximized production factors. Rather, one of the main “secrets” behind the high rents collected by landowners and the substantial pro¿t margins earned by the agrarian bourgeoisie, general store owners, and foreign capital stemmed from the labor and wage conditions of rural workers. This constituted one of the pillars of Argentina’s competitiveness in grain production.
Salary, housing, customs, and Labor Courts at the end of the colonato: Ribeirão Preto and region, 1957-1964
The article analyzes the impact of the rural workers' struggle for the payment of the minimum wage on the breakdown of the colonato system in the city of Ribeirão Preto and region (São Paulo state) between 1957 and 1964. It highlights the disputes over free housing, a customary right that came to be questioned by employers when their employees, in the context of intensifying conflicts in the countryside, resorted en masse to the Labor Courts to demand rights provided for in legislation in the context of intensifying conflicts in the countryside. This text examines the intricate relationships between customs, wage-earning, worker dignity, contracts, laws and justice, especially from the moment that customary rights, with tacit and symbolic norms, began to be mediated and measured by monetary values. Lastly, it revisits the classic issue of the transition from colonato to temporary and casual labor, giving centrality to the role played by the Consolidated Labor Laws.
Os “pequenos trabalhadores agrícolas”: a exploração do trabalho infantil nas lavouras de café no Vale do Paraíba Fluminense entre o final da escravidão e o pós-abolição
The article analyzes the role of “soldadas” and guardianships in the composition of the rural and peasant labor market in the Vale do Paraíba Fluminense between the end of slavery and post-abolition. The presence of children under guardianship and poor young workers was crucial to maintaining the functioning of coffee farming during the slavery crisis and in the period immediately following abolition. The figure of the farmer, adult and head of the family, who established various types of labor agreements, like sharecropping, lease contract and other forms of settlement, cannot erase the existence of these other actors who also worked in rural areas and who were essential in shaping work arrangements in the field. The history of “small agricultural workers” is also part of the history of the peasantry and the social history of work in Brazil.
Tenório and Alaíde: Labor Court, Military Dictatorship, and Sugarcane Workers. Pernambuco, 1967–1968
The objective of this article was to study the labor dispute between Tenório, a sugarcane worker, and Xavier, owner of Engenho Belmonte, in the Labor Court between 1967 and 1968. Based on this conflict, we sought to investigate aspects of the Military Dictatorship in the sugarcane region of Pernambuco. To this end, the main documentary piece was the labor lawsuit filed against Engenho Belmonte, located in the city of Vicência, northern forest area of ​Pernambuco. The newspapers Diario de Pernambuco, Jornal do Commercio, Ultima Hora and Correio da Manhã were also consulted, as well as reports produced by the National Information Service (SNI) and the Regional Electoral Court. As a result, we can state that the struggles for social rights continued in the sugarcane region of Pernambuco, even after the 1964 Coup, and the Labor Court became a stage for these clashes. Access to a small piece of land, or remaining on it by living on the sugar mills, also began to be disputed in the labor sphere, since movements such as the Peasant Leagues, agitators for radical agrarian reform, had been crushed. This article also indicates how the violence of the dictatorial State should be considered beyond that practiced directly by its agents, seeking to understand how the dictatorship updated the position of power of the agrarian elite and created a safe conduct for its violent actions.
Production and reproduction: the history of Contag as an interpretative challenge
Book Review: TEIXEIRA, Marco Antonio. Contag 1963-2023: ações de reprodução social e formas de ações coletivas. Mórula Editorial, 2023.
Book Review: TEIXEIRA, Melissa. A third path. Corporatism in Brazil and Portugal. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2024. 366 p.
Book Review: CANDIDO, Mariana P. Wealth, Land, and Property in Angola: A History of Dispossession, Slavery, and Inequality. Cambridge University Press, 2022.
Maria Célia Paoli's contribution to the Brazilian Social Sciences: a necessary retrieval
Review of the book: PAOLI, Maria Célia Pinheiro Machado; LOPES, José Sergio Leite; CÂNDIDO, João Carlos; et al. Sujeitos políticos na formação social brasileira. 1a edição. São Carlos, SP: EdUFSCar, 2024.
Between Erasure and Overcoming: Disability as a Key to Understanding the Trajectory and Legacy of José Carlos Mariátegui
This is a critical review of the book "José Carlos Mariátegui o el «cojito genial»: Historia y discapacidad en el Perú" ["José Carlos Mariátegui or the 'genius cojito': History and disability in Peru"] by Paulo Drinot. The review summarizes the main arguments of the book, points out its importance for historiography and also some of its possible gaps.
The Workplace and the Construction of the Working-Class: An Analysis of Turkish Industrialization and Nation-Building Processes.
Book review: AKGÖZ, Görkem. In the Shadow of War and Empire. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 14 Dec. 2023. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004687141 Web, 374 p.
The Trade in Settlers: A Profitable Business in the Empire of Brazil
Book review: MELÉNDEZ, José Juan Pérez. Peopling for profit in Imperial Brazil: directed migrations and the business of nineteenth-century colonization. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2024.
Generalizations that help understanding and those that hinder it
Book reiew: MENEZES, Marilda Aparecida de; SANTOS JÚNIOR, Jaime (org.). Tecendo vidas e sonhos: história oral de agricultores (as) do Sertão Paraibano e trabalhadores (as) do ABC Paulista. Jundiaí: Paco Editorial; Campina Grande: EDUEPB, 2023.
Oil workers against the business-military dictatorship
Book review: PRAUN, Luci et al. Petrobras e petroleiros na ditadura: trabalho, repressão e resistência. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2024. 352 p.
Book review: NASCIMENTO, Claudio; RODRIGUES, Iram Jácome; SANTOS, João Marcelo Pereira dos; CASTRO, Maria Silvia Portela de; SILVA, Sandra Oliveira Cordeiro da (org.). A geração que criou a CUT – A história contada por quem a faz. São Paulo: Editora Annablume, 2023.
Between networks and resistances: the trajectory of the CTAL and transnational labor dynamics in Latin America
Book review: HERRERA GONZÁLEZ, Patricio. En favor de una patria de los trabajadores. Historia transnacional de la Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina (1938-1953). Buenos Aires: Ediciones Centro de Estudios Históricos de los Trabajadores y las Izquierdas; Ediciones Imago Mundi; Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 2022.
Extended union action: a further chapter from ABC’s active- propositive road
Book review: RAMALHO, José Ricardo; CONCEIÇÃO, Jefferson José da. Caças supersônicos e o ABC Paulista. Tecnologia e reconversão industrial. São Paulo: Editora Papagaio, 2024, 288 p.
New Currents in the Historiography of Labor in Argentina: Racial Hierarchies and the Myth of Whitening in Santa Fe
Review of Ariel Viola, El blanqueamiento de la fuerza de trabajo en Santa Fe. Transformaciones demográficas y laborales durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX. Rosario: Ediciones Prohistoria. ISHIR, 2023.
Sports, Associativism, and Corporatism in the Vargas Era
Book review: Resenha do livro: OLIVEIRA, Gabriela Marta Marques. Os jogadores que não ficaram apenas no banco: futebol e identidade profissional dos trabalhadores bancários paulistanos na Era Vargas. São Paulo: Intermeios, 2024.
Peronism: assessments, syntheses and new provocations
Book review: ACHA, Omar et. al. História del Peronismo: um manual para su investigación. Omar Acha; Juan Luis Besoky (comp.). Ciudad Autonoma de Buenos Aires: Prometeo 30/10, 2023.
A silenced memory: the struggles of Niterói’s wor
Book review: AMARAL, Luciana Pucu Wollmann do. Niterói operária: trabalhadores (as), política e lutas sociais (1942-1964). Rio de Janeiro: APERJ: IOERJ, 2023
Réquiem for the Good Neighbours: The link between the Argentine Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT) and the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in the aftermath of the Rooseveltian dream
This article aims to review the relationship between the Argentine Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT) and the American Federation of Labor (AFL) from a transnational perspective in a period in which changes in national, regional and international terms altered the horizon of expectations of the actors themselves. The article sets out to review the way in which the Good Neighbour Policy – a policy established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which was based on non-intervention in the domestic aႇairs of Latin American countries – was interpreted and its meaning modi¿ed based on the experience of the actors involved in the international relations of the Argentine and North American trade union movements, and how its de¿nition as a horizon of expectation was diluted as the conditions imposed by World War II gave way to the Cold WarThe proposed time frame covers approximately the period from the end of the 1930s, and specially from 1941 when the United States declared the war to the Axis, to February 1947, a moment which is indicated in the proposal as the end of the usefulness of the good neighbour policy for the objectives of the relationship between the two trade union centres, since, in any case, their interpretation of this policy was, at least, contradictory, if not directly opposed. Through the analysis of sources linked to the AFL itself – The American Federationist, letters, reports and memos –, the press of the time – El Líder, El Laborista, La Vanguardía – it reconstructs the way in which good neighbor inÀuenced inter-union relations. By focusing on a transnational perspective, the article also looks at how changes in the relationship between the actors aႇected not only the relationship itself, but also inÀuenced domestic changes.
Militants, organizations, and the libertarian antifascist press in Brazil: local articulations and transnational connections (1930-1945)
This article aims to examine the actions of the press, anarchist groups, and militants in Brazil between 1930 and 1945. The study seeks to investigate the main networks of activity of these actors, their propaganda strategies, political and union articulations, as well as the creation of spaces of resistance. The analysis considers both the national context and the transnational connections established by anarchists. The research is based on sources such as libertarian and antifascist periodicals, as well as police records from DEOPS-SP. It primarily focuses on how these groups organized themselves in response to the rise of fascism, corporatism, and transformations of the nation-state, in addition to their views and articulations regarding the global conflicts of the period.
After the Return: The Professional and Social Reintegration of Brazilian Expeditionary Force (FEB) Veterans in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais
Between 1944 and 1945, Brazil took part in the Allied war effort by sending the Brazilian Expeditionary Force (FEB) to Italy. Comprising just over 25,000 men, the FEB was deployed to fight Axis troops during World War II. Although politically contradictory within the domestic context, Brazil’s participation was significant from a political-military standpoint, marking a turning point in the modernization of the country’s Armed Forces. Considered a microcosm of Brazilian society, the FEB was largely composed of individuals from working-class backgrounds—a consequence of recruitment challenges and the high rate of evasion among members of the upper classes. This article aims to examine the process of professional reintegration of a segment of FEB veterans in the city of Juiz de Fora (MG), who, upon returning from the war, faced the challenge of reconciling their combat experiences with civilian life in a society unprepared to receive them and in the absence of effective public policies.
"The Festivals of Art and Democracy." Artistic-Political Connections in the Buenos Aires Radio World during the Early Years of World War II (1939-1942)
This study aims to analyze the involvement of male and female artists, renowned for their success in the Argentine mass entertainment market, in the anti-totalitarian and anti-fascist discussions and positions taking place in the city of Buenos Aires. It examines the exchanges and connections that radio artist groups had with other Buenos Aires-based artistic collectives organized around various causes following the outbreak of war in 1939. The analysis focuses on mass media sources such as the newspaper Crítica, the communist publication La Hora, and entertainment magazines like Sintonía, Antena, and Radiolandia. These sources are used to identify who participated in or organized solidarity festivals, the causes they mobilized for, and the meanings these men and women attributed to events in the Old World and their involvement in such activities. In this way, the study seeks to recover the impact of the early years of World War II on the opinions, actions, and positions of mass culture artists, as well as the concepts they used to describe these dynamics.
Citizenship and security from a transnational perspective: World War II and the consolidation of the Brazilian social protection system
The article addresses the transformation of relations between labor and citizenship in Brazil in the early 1940s due to the country's involvement in World War II. Workers were called upon to contribute to the war effort against the Axis powers, on an equal footing with soldiers. Their sacrifices and hardships would be rewarded after victory, ensuring a future of self-determination, development, and social welfare for the people. However, strengthening the legal and institutional apparatus for the protection of workers was combined with ethnic-based exclusions and the relativization of territorial sovereignty and citizenship itself, in the name of national and hemispheric security. Citizenship forged amid total war, therefore, was not regulated solely by professional occupation but also by the tensions that ran through the alliance between Brazilian nationalism and the new global hegemonic power.
Peasant Breach, and resistance gardens: environmental resilience among rural workers in the sugarcane area (Northeast Brazil, XXth century)
Environmental history presents an innovative approach which may adopt a perspective freeing history from the shackles of ancient eurocentrism. It can provide the salvation of natural and human realities in “non-Europe”, as Blaut would say, from subalternity as dictated by axiomatic norms of eurocentrism, and evolutionism that condemn them. Proposed here is such a study based on the example of gardens cultivated by sugar cane cutters in Pernambuco. Peasant traditions of original or transported populations informed, for centuries, rural workers of both sexes on how to produce various subsidies (food, clothing, medicine...) for those submitted to concentrationary circumstances.
Struggles and labor in the inland forests: foresters at the expansion of Brazil’s colonizing frontier in the first half of the 20th century
Despite being a prominent figure in advancing the frontiers of expansion in Brazil, the mateiros have received very little attention from the historiography interested in studies involving society and nature. In addition to a disparaging view of the mateiros, especially in studies that criticize the rusticity of the backlands and the ignorance of the country bumpkins, their role and social function were not well defined, which ended up making it difficult for Brazilian social theory to categorize their work. This study sought to analyze the role of the mateiros, their different activities, and representations, as well as the relationship of their activity with the historical context of the natural environment in Brazil, especially in their function as agents of the frontier. To this end, we sought to identify the different representations of this figure, based on sources that describe their participation in the frontier expeditions, both in North and Central Brazil. Historical records from the first half of the 20th century describe different trades and representations of the mateiros. However, they reinforce the representation of the frontier vanguard, highlighting their pioneering contact with the natural world and differing in their attributes and skills.
The Greening of Underground and Antifrancoist Working Class Movement and the limits of Trade Unionism and Enviromentalism nexus in Spain (1967-1977).
This paper explores the intersection of environmentalism and underground working-class movement in Spain during the final years of Franco’s dictatorship. It also examines how industrialization and the Francoist regime’s developmental policies, which led to severe environmental degradation, fueled opposition among the working class, especially in industrial regions and in Aragon, our regional case. The research highlights the paradox of workers opposing the very industries that provide their livelihood, driven by the deteriorating living conditions due to industrial pollution and poor urban planning. It outlines how environmental protest, often indicated by women and local communities, became a platform for broader anti-Francoist opposition. The paper discusses key events, such as anti-pollution urban working-class campaigns and resistance against large infrastructures projects like dams and nuclear plants in Aragon, which were linked to the regime’s modernization efforts. We develop a regional approach, focusing on Aragon, due to the availability of local archives and detailed data they provide about environmental discourses and actions. This method allows for a nuanced understanding of how environmental conflicts and working-class opposition to Francoism were deeply intertwined and created a Environmentalism-Unionism nexus. The study also examines the role of underground trade unions and political organisations, especially industrial and peasants trade unions, in supporting environmental protests and framing them within a broader struggle against the dictatorship. Finally, the research reconstructs the moment of rupture of the environmentalism-unionism nexus with the entry of democracy (1978).
Struggle for Land in Pernambuco: Tensions Between the Social and the Environmental (1986–1993)
This research approaches the post-dictatorship land conflicts at the Pitanga sugar mill, in Pernambuco Sugarcane Zone. In February 1986 and August 1987, two occupations occurred at that property belonging to the Paulista Textile Company (Companhia de Tecidos Paulista – CTP), detainer of the Casas Pernambucanas retail store chain. Tensions and negotiations dragged on for 8 years permeated by occupants’ actions with the support of rural unions, their Federation (FETAPE) and the church. The struggle of the called “pitangueiros” grasped the capital Recife, promoting the intensification of the dispute for land and the ongoing re-democratization on reassuring civil and political rights. It marked the radicalization of the land reform and it constituted a sociability and mobilization space for social organizations and political parties in the context of the relative political opening. The second occupation, in 1987, emphasized another diverging point and threatened to put in check all the expropriation and creation of settlements: the existence of extensive areas of Atlantic Forest in the location, split by springs and watercourses. The occurrence of this new movement contributed to refresh the argument prone to preservation and to rise the tension and violence of the police and CTP private security forces already existent in the region.
Nature and Labor in the Context of Boundary Demarcations in the Colonial Amazon (1750-1759)
In the second half of the 18th century, administrators, scientists and missionaries selected by the Portuguese Crown landed in the Amazon Valley to carry out the work of the Boundaries Demarcation Commission, which defined the borders between the possessions of the Iberian kingdoms in America. During these expeditions, the demarcators produced various travel reports that described the natural world, enabling the formation of scientific knowledge about the region. Therefore, from the perspective of Environmental History and the Social History of Work, this article analyzes the connections between nature and work at the time of the boundaries demarcations in colonial Amazonia, highlighting the role of indigenous knowledge and interactions with the natural world for the consolidation of the Portuguese colonization project.
Narratives of factory labor: peasants in the industrialization of babassu in Piauí during the 20th century
This article examines peasant narratives within the context of the industrialization of babassu palm in Piauí during the 20th century. These narratives, centered on lived experiences of factory labor, are constructed from recollections of work at the Gecosa factory (Indústrias Reunidas Gervásio Costa S/A), located in the village of Novo Nilo, in the municipality of União (PI), on the banks of the Parnaíba River. As part of an employer-imposed strategy, a village regulation prohibited the construction of brick houses on factory-owned land. This restriction shaped the village as a site of persistent, everyday resistance among peasant tenants. Such resistance manifested, for instance, in the clandestine sale of babassu coconut kernels beyond factory oversight and in the simultaneous engagement of workers in both agricultural and industrial labor. Factory work was defined by an arduous and exhausting routine, yet the peasants skillfully adapted to the production line while maintaining deep-rooted connections to the land and river. This study employs the Oral History methodology, engaging in continuous dialogue with theoretical perspectives from the Social History of Labor. Grounded in an interdisciplinary approach, it draws particularly from Sociology and Anthropology. To this end, interviews were conducted with four men and one woman, each of whom experienced different phases of the historical period under analysis. In addition to oral testimonies, the study incorporates official Gecosa documents alongside other historical sources to examine peasant experiences within the rural world of Piauí in the 20th century, with particular focus on the village of Novo Nilo.
Between the Forest and the Worksite: Accident, Illness, and Fatigue in the Origins of the First Mining Company in the Amazon (Amapá, 1948–1956)
This article explores the inception of the first mining company in the Amazon, Indústria e Comércio de Minérios S/A (Icomi) in Amapá from 1948 to 1956, focusing on workplace accidents, illnesses, and worker fatigue. It situates mineral exploration within the broader context of national integration and varguist regional development efforts, using employment records and accident documents to detail labor conditions during the early mining project phase. It highlights the precarious labor conditions, characterized by frequent accidents, health risks, and intense fatigue due to long working hours, illustrating the daily risks and mortality faced by Icomi workers. The analysis demonstrates how these hazardous conditions reflected social labor relations, impacting local workers’ health and safety. The study concludes that Icomi’s experience underscores the challenges faced by workers in the Amazon’s inaugural mining industry in the mid-twentieth century.
Interview with professor George Reid Andrews at the University of Pittsburgh, november 8th, 2024. George Reid Andrews is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh and a member of CLAS (Centre for Latin American Studies) at the same institution.