The Brazilian Workers' ABC: Class Conflict and Alliances in Modern Sao Paulo

by John D. French

• ISBN13: 9780807843680
• ISBN10: 0807843687
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1992-05-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

John French analyzes the emergence of the Brazilian system of politics and labor relations between 1900 and 1953 in the industrial municipalities of Santo Andre, Sao Bernardo do Campo, and Sao Caetano do Sul. These municipalities, which constitute the so-called ABC region of greater Sao Paolo, were made famous in the late 1970s as a result of a series of strikes by militant autoworkers. French challenges a scholarly consensus that has portrayed Brazilian populism as a "demobilizing" experience in which workers and their leaders were seduced and co-opted by charismatic politicians while being subjected to pervasive domination by the state.This revisionist, grass-roots view of Brazil's corporatist system of state-linked trade unionism in the 1930s examines the tumultuous political transition after World War II, when workers entered into electoral politics on an unprecedented scale. In examining the interplay between the industrial working class, its leaders, and politicians such as Getulio Vargas, Luis Carlos Prestes, and Adhemar de Barroas, French shows that workers were active and resourceful political political actors whose participation propelled Brazilian politics in a new, more democratic direction.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction Workers and Populism
Past and Present in the Brazilian Labor Movement	p. 1
Industrialization and the Crisis of the Old Order, 1900-1945
The Rise and Decline of Revolutionary Unionism, 1906-1933	p. 19
Workers and the Search for Allies, 1917-1935: Union Legalization and the Politics of Labor	p. 41
Workers, Industrialists, and the State	p. 68
Industrial Workers and the Birth of the Populist Republic, 1945-1946
The Populist Gamble of Getulio Vargas	p. 103
Popular Getulismo and Working-Class Organization	p. 132
Reading a Strike: Direct Action in Early 1946	p. 152
We Have Reached the Age of Consent: Labor and the State	p. 180
The Promise and Pitfalls of Democracy, 1947-1953
Workers and the Rise of Adhemarista Populism in Sao Paulo	p. 199
A Free Workers' Movement in a Constitutional Democracy	p. 225
The Election of 1950 and the Consolidation of the Populist Republic	p. 247
Conclusion Workers and Populists: The Terms of Alliance	p. 268
Notes	p. 285
Index	p. 365
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.