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Black Political Protest in São Paulo, 1888–1988*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

George Reid Andrews
George Reid Andrews
Affiliation:
George Reid Andrews is Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh.
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Extract

Beginning with Brazil's origins as a nation, and continuing to the present, the relationship between race and politics in that country has been a close and integral one. Portuguese state policy made black slavery the very foundation of Brazil's social and economic order during three centuries of colonial rule. That foundation remained in place even after independence, with the paradoxical result that Brazil became ‘the last Christian country to abolish slavery, and the first to declare itself a racial democracy’. Indeed, perhaps nowhere is the connection between race and politics in Brazil more evident than in the concept of ‘racial democracy’, which characterises race relations in that country in explicitly political terminology.

This article explores some of the connections between race and politics in Brazil by examining four moments in the history of black political mobilisation in that country. Geographically, it focuses on the south-eastern state of São Paulo, which by the time of emancipation, in 1888, housed the third-largest slave population in Brazil (after neighbouring Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro), and which has formed a centre of black political action from the 1880s through to the present. Chronologically, it focuses on: the struggle for the final abolition of slavery in the 1880s; the rise and fall of the Frente Negra Brasileira in the 1930s; the black organisations of the Second Republic; and the most recent wave of black protest, from the mid-1970s to 1988.

The purpose of such an exercise is twofold. First, placing these moments of black mobilisation in a century-long time-frame makes it possible for us to see them not as isolated episodes, but as chapters in a long-term, ongoing history of black protest and struggle in Brazil.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , February 1992 , pp. 147 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

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9 Female slaves born prior to 28 Sept. 1871 would still have been of childbearing age in the early 1910s. Under the 1871 law, their children would not have acquired full freedom until reaching the age of majority, in the late 1920s – at which time their mothers would have been in their late 50s, and still slaves.

10 The reform and its effects are discussed in Graham, Patronage and Politics, pp. 182–206.

11 See works cited in note 8.

12 On slaves appealing to royal justice during this period, see De Azevedo, Maria Célia Marinho, Onda negra, medo branco: O negro no imaginário das elites – século XIX (São Paulo, 1987), pp. 180–199Google Scholar; Machado, Maria Helena P. T., Crime e escravidão: Trabalbo, luta, resistência nas lavouras paulistas, 1830–1888 (São Paulo, 1987), pp. 114–123Google Scholar; De Queiroz, Suely Robles Reis, Escravidão negra em São Paulo: Um estudo das tensõei provocades pelo escravismo no século XIX (Rio de Janeiro, 1977), pp. 144–162Google Scholar; Chalhoub, Sidney, ‘Slaves, Freedmen, and the Politics of Freedom in Brazil: The Experience of Blacks in the City of Rio’, unpubl. paper presented at the Conference on the Meaning of Freedom, Greensburg, Penn., Aug. 1988.Google Scholar

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14 Relatório apresentado ao Exm. Sr. Presidente da Província de São Paulo pela Comissão Central da Estatistica (São Paulo, 1888), p. 245.Google Scholar

15 Denis, Pierre, Brazil (London, 1911), p. 183.Google Scholar

16 Rebate (3 June 1898), p. 1.

17 Costa, Abolição, p. 94.

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19 See, for example, Toplin, Abolition, pp. 239 and 245.

20 Hahner, June, Poverty and Politics: The Urban Poor in Brazil, 1870–1920 (Albuquerque, 1986), pp. 71–72.Google Scholar For alarmed reports in the São Paulo press on the Black Guard, see ‘Santos 13’, A Provincia de São Paulo (15 Jan. 1889)Google Scholar; ‘Guarda Negra’, A Província de São Paulo (13 Jan. 1889)Google Scholar; ‘Contra a Guarda Negra’, A Província de São Paulo (30 Jan. 1889)Google Scholar; ‘Os defensores da rainha’, A Provincia de São Paulo (25 April 1889)Google Scholar; ‘Loucos ou ineptos’, A Provincia de São Paulo (9 May 1889)Google Scholar; ‘Cartas do Rio’, Diário Popular (13 May 1889)Google Scholar; ‘Cartas do interior’, Diãrio Popular (22 May 1889).Google Scholar

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22 Quoted in Stein, Stanley J., Vassouras: A Brazilian Coffee County, 1850–1900 (2nd edn., Princeton, 1985), p. 275.Google Scholar See also Graham, Richard, ‘Landowners and the Overthrow of the Empire’, Luso-Brazilian Review, vol. 7, no. 2 (1970), pp. 44–56Google Scholar; Carvalho, , Teatro, pp. 78–79.Google Scholar

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24 Drescher, Seymour, ‘Brazilian Abolition in Comparative Perspective’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 68, no. 3 (1988), p. 460.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Quoted in Carvalho, Teatro de sombras, p. 21.

26 Denis, Brazil, pp. 21–2. See also Joseph Love's description of the Republic as a highly effective ‘arrangement for the mutual support of incumbent elites at all levels of government… From 1889 through 1930, interparty competition was almost meaningless and usually nonexistent’: Love, Joseph L., São Paulo in the Brazilian Federation, 1889–1937 (Stanford, 1980), pp. XV and 139.Google Scholar See also Fausto, Boris, ‘Society and Politics’, in Bethell, Brazil, pp. 265–279.Google Scholar On the extremely low levels of voter turn-out in the Republic, usually between one and three per cent of the population, see Love, Joseph L., ‘Political Participation in Brazil, 1881–1969’, Luso-Brazilian Review, vol. 7, no. 22 (1970), pp. 3–24Google Scholar; Carvalho, Bestializados, pp. 66–90.

27 On the rural uprisings, see Da Cunha, Euclides, Rebellion in the Backlands (Chicago, 1944)Google Scholar: Levine, Robert M., ‘“Mud-Hut Jerusalem”: Canudos Revisited’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 68, no. 3 (1988), pp. 525–572CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Diacon, Todd Alan, ‘Capitalists and Fanatics: Brazil's Contestado Rebellion, 1912–1916’, unpubl. PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1987.Google Scholar On the 1904 Revolta da Vacina in Rio de Janeiro, see Carvalho, Beslializados, pp. 91–139; Jeffrey D. Needell, ‘The Revolta Contra Vacina of 1904: The Revolt Against “Modernization” in Belle Epoque Rio de Janeiro’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 67, no. 2(1987), pp. 223–70; Meade, Teresa, ‘“Civilizing Rio de Janeiro”: The Public Health Campaign and the Riot of 1904’, Journal of Social History, vol. 20, no. 2 (1986), pp. 301–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the 1910 Revolta da Chibata, in which black sailors in Rio de Janeiro rebelled to protest against brutal punishments by their white officers see Bomilcar, Alvaro, O preconceito de raça no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1916)Google Scholar; Freyre, Order and Progress, pp. 400–2; Hahner, Poverty and Politics, pp. 171–2.

28 On the labour movement during this period, see Fausto, Boris, Trabalho urbano e conflito social (1890–1920) (São Paulo, 1977)Google Scholar; Maram, Sheldon Leslie, Anarquistas, imigrantes e o movimento operário no Brasil, 1889–1930 (Rio de Janeiro, 1979)Google Scholar; and Pinheiro, Paulo Sérgio and Hall, Michael M. (eds.), A classe operária no Brasil, 1889–1930: Documentos, vol. I, O movimento operário (São Paulo, 1979).Google Scholar

29 On the Revolution of 1930, see Fausto, Boris, A reuolução de 1930 (São Paulo, 1970)Google Scholar; and Baretta, Silvio Duncan and Markoff, John, ‘The Limits of the Brazilian Revolution of 1930’, Review, vol. 9, no. 3 (1986), pp. 413–452.Google Scholar

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31 On the economic position of black workers during this period, see Andrews, George Reid, ‘Black and White Workers: São Paulo, Brazil, 1888–1928’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 68, no. 3 (1988), pp. 491–524CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Adamo, Sam C., ‘The Broken Promise: Race, Health, and Justice in Rio de Janeiro, 1890–1940’, unpubl. PhD diss., University of New Mexico, 1983.Google Scholar

32 Andrews, ‘Black and White Workers,’ pp. 497–502. The situation was different in Rio de Janeiro, where the smaller size of the immigrant population and the larger number of non-whites made it possible for Afro-Brazilians to assume leadership roles in the labour movement there. See Hahner, Poverty and Politics, pp. 98–102 and 282–3; Fausto, Trabalho urbano, p. 55; Hardman, Francisco Foot, ‘Trabalhadores e negros no Brasil’, Folha de São Paulo (16 May 1982).Google Scholar

33 On the black press, see Ferrara, Miriam Nicolau, A imprensa negra paulista, 1915–1963 (São Paulo, 1986)Google Scholar; Imprensa negra (São Paulo, 1984).Google Scholar

34 ‘A esmola’, O Clarim da Alvorada (15 Nov. 1925); ‘O negro deve ser politico?’, O Clarim da Alvorada (27 Oct. 1929).

35 The definitive history of the Frente Negra remains to be written. For accounts of its activities, see Fermandes, Integração do negro, vol. 2, pp. 29–87; Moura, ‘Organizações negras’, pp. 154–7; Mitchell, ‘Racial Consciousness’, pp. 131–9; Ferrara, Imprensa negra, pp. 62–77.

36 ‘Movimento de arregimentaçõo da raça negra no Brasil’, Diário de São Paulo (17 Sept. 1931), p. 5Google Scholar; ‘Depoimentos’, Cadernos Brasileiros, no. 47 (1968), p. 21.Google Scholar

37 ‘Frente Unica’, Progresso (15 Nov. 1951), p. 3.

38 Fernandes, Integração do negro, vol. 2, p. 19; ‘Frente Negra Brasileira’ (unpubl. collaborative trabalho de pesquisa, Pontifícia Universidade Católica – São Paulo, 1985), anexo 3 (unpag.); ‘A Frente Negra Brasilieira trabalha pela victória do seu candidate’, Correio de São Paulo (1 May 1933), p. 7.

39 Despite the provisional government's rhetoric of expanded political participation, voter turn-out as a percentage of the total population actually declined between the elections of 1930 (under the Republic) and 1934, from 5.7% of the adult population to 5.5%. Love, ‘Political Participation’, p. 16.

40 The political history of this period is covered in Levine, Robert M., The Vargas Regime: The Crucial Years, 1934–1938 (New York, 1970).Google Scholar

41 The Frente's founder, Arlindo Veiga dos Santos, had been active in several of the proto-Fascist organisations in São Paulo which preceded the establishment of Integralism. Hélgio Trindade, Integralismo: O fascismo brasileiro na década de 30 (2nd edn., São Paulo, 1979), pp. 114 n. 72, 118 n. 85.

42 Quotes from ‘Apelo à economia’, A Voz da Raça (28 Oct. 1933), p. 1Google Scholar; ‘A afirmação da raça’, A Voz da Raça (10 June 1933), p. 1.Google Scholar As Fernandes correctly notes, the Frente's paper, A Voz da Raça, offers ‘abundant material’ along these lines. Fernandes, Integração do negro, vol. 2, p. 49 n. 40.

43 ‘Afirmação da raça’; ‘Apreciando’, A Voz da Raça (Oct. 1936), p. I; for essays by Pedro Paulo Barbosa, see ‘Apreciando’ and ‘O perigo vermelho’, A Voz da Raça (Nov. 1936), p. 1.

44 On middle-class nativism and support for Fascism during the 1920s and 1930s, see Topik, Steven, ‘Middle-Class Nationalism, 1889–1930’, Social Science Quarterly, vol. 59, no. 1 (1978), pp. 93–103Google Scholar; Trindade, Integralismo, pp. 130–49.

45 All members of the Frente leadership for whom professions could be ascertained were professionals or white-collar office workers. These include Arlindo Veiga dos Santos (clerk-secretary), Raul Joviano Amaral (accountant), António Martins dos Santos (engineer), Francisco Lucrécio (dentist), and others.

46 On the organisation's difficulties in retaining both working- and middle-class support, see ‘Por acaso’, A Voz da Raça (31 Aug. 1935), p. 4; ‘Alvorada da “Frente Negra”’, A Voz da Raça (July 1936), p. 2.

47 On these splits within the movement, see Mitchell, ‘Racial Consciousness’, pp. 135–7. On the Socialist Party, ‘É o cúmulo’, A Voz da Raça (20 Jan. 1934), p. 1Google Scholar; on the attacks on the anti-Frente newspaper Chibata, ‘Foi empastellado o jornal “Chibata”’, Diário Nacional (20 March 1932), p. 8Google Scholar; ‘O empastellamento d'A Chibata’, Diário Nacional (22 March 1932).Google Scholar

48 ‘O negro na face da situação atual’, A Voz da Raça (Nov. 1937), p. 1.Google Scholar

49 Fernandes, Integraçãe do negro, vol. 2, pp. 88–115.Google Scholar

50 See, for example, ‘Advertência’, Senzala (Jan. 1946), pp. 14, 28Google Scholar; ‘Problemas e aspirações’, Diário Trabalhista (12 July 1946), p. 4Google Scholar; ‘Nem tudo que reluz é ouro’, Alvorada (April 1946), p. 4.Google Scholar

51 The Vargas system of labour relations is discussed in Kenneth Paul Erickson, The Brazilian Corporative State and Working-Class Politics (Berkeley, 1977). On how that system functioned in practice in São Paulo, see French, ‘Industrial Workers…’.

52 By 1950 Afro-Brazilians comprised 11.3% of São Paulo's industrial labour force, a figure virtually identical to their 11.2% representation in the population as a whole. Institute Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatistica (hereafter IBGE), Censo demográfico: Estado de São Paulo, 1950 (Rio de Janeiro, 1954), p. 30.Google Scholar

53 The PSP, for example, maintained close ties with the black newspaper O Nova Horizonte; see ‘Mensagem aos negros’ (Sept. 1954), p. 5Google Scholar, and numerous other articles in the issues prior to the elections of 1954. The smaller Partido Socialista Brasileiro had a similar relationship with Mundo Novo. On black support for Getúlio Vargas and the PTB during this period, see Souza, ‘Raça e política’.

54 On the association's activities, see its monthly newspaper, O Mutirão, which began publication on the seventieth anniversary of abolition, in May 1958. See also Moura, ‘Organizações negras’, pp. 157–9; and ‘Embora perto (e às vezes junto), o negro está muito longe do branco’, Ultima Hora (17 Oct. 1973).Google Scholar

55 Kurian, George Thomas, The New Book of World Rankings (New York, 1984), p. 199.Google Scholar

56 Keck, Margaret, ‘The New Unionism in the Brazilian Transition’, in Stepan, Alfred (ed.), Democratizing Brazil: Problems of Transition and Consolidation (New York, 1987), table 3, p. 270.Google Scholar On the ‘wage-squeeze’ of the 1970s, see also Wood, Charles H. and De Carvalho, José Alberto Magno, The Demography of Inequality in Brazil (Cambridge and New York, 1988), pp. 104–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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58 Dos Santos, Joel Rufino, ‘O movimento negro e a crise brasileira’, unpubl. ms., 1985Google Scholar; Mitchell, ‘Blacks and the Abertura Democrática’. On the Movimento Negro Unificado in particular, see Lélia Gonzalez, ‘The Unified Black Movement: A New Stage in Black Political Mobilization’, in Fontaine, Race, Class and Power, pp. 120–34; ‘Negro: A luta continua’, Cadernos do CEAS, no. 72 (March–April 1981), pp. 18–28Google Scholar; Movimento Unificado, Negro, Programa de ação (Campinas, 1984).Google Scholar For examples of literature and analysis produced by activists and intellectuals associated with the black movement, see Do Nascimento, Abdias, O genocídio do negro brasileiro: Processo de um racismo mascarado (Rio de Janeiro, 1978)Google Scholar, and Quilombismo (Petrópolis, 1980)Google Scholar; Moura, O negro, and Sociologia do negro brasileiro; Dos Santos, Joel Rufino, O que é racismo (São Paulo, 1980)Google Scholar; Carneiro, Sueli and Santos, Thereza, Mulher negra (São Paulo, 1985)Google Scholar; Quilombhoje, , Reflexões (São Paulo, 1985)Google Scholar; Colina, Paulo (ed.), Axe: Antologia contemporânea da poesia negra brasileira (São Paulo, 1982)Google Scholar; and the literary annual Cadernos Negros (São Paulo, 1978–).

59 For a discussion of the problems middle-class activists experienced in working with poor and working-class blacks, see ‘Avaliando nosso movimento’, in Grupo Negro da PUC, Boletim 3, A luta continua (São Paulo, 1984), pp. 16–26.Google Scholar For survey data on the attitudes of black voters, by education and income level, toward the black movement, see Valente, Ana Lúcia E. F., Politico e relações raciais: Os negros e as eleições paalistas de 1982 (São Paulo, 1986), pp. 125–143.Google Scholar

60 Two separate estimates suggest that 200–250 such organisations were in existence in Brazil by 1984. Santos, ‘Movimento negro’, p. 1; Cándido Mendes, ‘O quilombo urbano pede passagem’, Folha de São Paulo (6 Aug. 1984), p. 3. A study carried out during 1986 and 1987 found 343 such organisations in Brazil as a whole: 138 in São Paulo, 76 in Rio de Janeiro, 33 in Minas Gerais, 27 in Bahia, and the rest scattered throughout the country. Caetana Damasceno et al., Catálogo de entidades de movimento negro no Brasil, Comimicações do ISER [Institute de Estudos da Religião], no. 29 (1988).Google Scholar

61 Pereira, João Baptista Borges, ‘Aspectos do comportamento político do negro em São Paulo’, Ciência e Cultura, vol. 34, no. 10 (1982), pp. 1, 286–294Google Scholar; Pereira, João Baptista Borges, ‘Parámetros ideológicos do projeto político de negros em São Paulo’, Revista do Institute de Estudos Brasileiros, no. 24 (1982), pp. 53–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Valente, Politica e relações raciais.

62 Diário Oficial. Estado de São Paulo (12 May 1984).Google Scholar

63 Similar developments took place in Rio de Janeiro, where Governor Leonel Brizola, who had campaigned on a platform of ‘socialismo moreno’ (literally, ‘brown socialism’), appointed three Afro-Brazilians to his cabinet (the Secretaries of Labour and Housing, Military Police, and Social Affairs – all areas of particular interest to his Afro-Brazilian constituency) and undertook a number of policy initiatives aimed at benefiting the city's poor population, which is heavily black. On Afro-Brazilian support for Brizola and his party, the Partido Democrático Trabalhista, see Scares and Silva, ‘Urbanization, Race, and Class’.

64 See, for example, the criticisms reported in ‘Conselho busca adesões e apoio’, Caderno C, Diário do Grande ABC (24 Nov. 1985).Google Scholar

65 On the activities of the Conselho and the other black agencies, see the Jornal do Conselho da Comunidade Negra.

66 Interviews, Grupo de Orientação e Interferência em Situações de Discriminação Racial no Trabalho, Secretária de Relações do Trabalho, May-June 1988; Salve o 13 de maio? (São Paulo, 1988).

67 Comissão dos Religiosos, Seminaristas e Padres Negros – Rio de Janeiro, ‘Ouvi o clamor deste povo’…negro! (Petrópolis, 1988).

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71 ‘Movimento negro avalia sua importância’, Folha de São Paulo (15 April 1984)Google Scholar; see also ‘Avaliando nosso movimento’, p. 16. Even a sympathetic observer describes the MNU's ideological orientation as ‘notoriously rigid’. Rufino, Joel [dos Santos], ‘IPCN e Cacique de Ramos: Dois exemplos de movimento negro na cidade do Rio de Janeiro’, Comunicações do ISER, vol. 7, no. 28 (1988), p. 6.Google Scholar

72 ‘No rastro de Zumbi’, Istoé (20 April 1988), p. 42.Google Scholar

73 ‘O pais muda e os movimentos sociais perdem muitos adeptos’, Folha de São Paulo (25 Sept. 1984)Google Scholar; Waring, Scott Main, ‘Grassroots Popular Movements and the Struggle for Democracy: Nova Iguaçu’, in Stepan, , Democratizing Brazil, pp. 168–204.Google Scholar

74 De Barros Fontes, Alice Aguiar, ‘A práctica abolicionista em São Paulo: Os caifazes, 1882–1888’, unpubl. tese de mestrado, University of São Paulo, 1976.Google Scholar

75 On São Paulo's ‘black bourgeoisie’ during the earlys 1900s, see Andrews, , Blacks and Whites, pp. 129–143.Google Scholar

76 This generalisation applies to the southern United States and South Africa as well, where a combination of highly visible racial injustice, in the form of segregation, and exclusionary political regimes, eventually produced massive racial mobilisations in opposition to the status quo.

77 Though it is to borrow a characterisation from the (in some ways) analogous case of Brazilian feminism, ‘dispersion rather than disappearance would be a more accurate way to describe the state of the movement in the late 1980s’. Alvarez, Sonia E., Engendering Democracy in Brazil: Women's Movements in Transition Politics (Princeton, 1990), p. 228.Google Scholar Numerous organisations continued to exist (see note 60), and some new ones were being created, such as SOS Racismo in Rio de Janeiro.