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Title: Anarchism in Brazil
Author: Jesse Cohn
Date: 2009
Language: en
Topics: Brazil, history
Source: Retrieved on 22nd November 2021 from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp0044
Notes: Published in The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest.

Jesse Cohn

Anarchism in Brazil

The anarchist movement had a substantial presence in Brazil in the early

twentieth century. Eclipsed by the ascension of the communist left and

crushed by anti-communist military regimes, it still survives, and its

traces can be seen in some contemporary political and cultural

movements.

FROM COLONIZATION TO THE INDUSTRIAL ERA

During the colonial era some aspects of the numerous slave rebellions

had an anti-authoritarian character, notably the quilombos – independent

agrarian settlements formed by escaped slaves in the Brazilian

hinterlands. The inception of Brazil’s anarchist movement per se,

however, is generally dated to the arrival of European immigrants,

particularly Italians, in the late nineteenth century. It was a number

of Italian anarchists, led by Giovanni Rossi (1856–1943) and Gigi

Damiani (1876–1953), who founded the Colônia Cecília (1890–3), a notable

Utopian experiment in the rural province of Paraná on land purchased

from the liberal emperor. Experimenting with free love, libertarian

education, and collective land tenure, the colony was blighted by a

croup epidemic in its fourth year, then undone by new arrivals who

betrayed the trust of the founding families. Unlike Rossi’s pioneers,

however, the bulk of the Italian immigrants, imported by employers as a

factory workforce, were only radicalized after their arrival in the new

country; hence, Brazilian anarchism can be considered a domestic

product, and not only a foreign import (Gordon 1978: 18–19).

It was in the labor unions of the urban centers that Brazilian anarchism

was to reach its greatest strength. In the favelas (slums) of cities

such as Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Porto Alegre, and Santos, immigrants

from Italy, Spain, and Portugal, but also from Greece, the Ukraine,

Russia, and even Canada and England, mingled with “a local working class

composed largely of former black slaves, but also a high proportion of

women and children (particularly in the textile industry),” producing

one of the most diverse anarchist communities in the world (Colson 2004,

trans, mine). Thus, while Afro-Brazilians were “much less visible” than

their white counterparts in the labor movement, Brazil’s

anarchosyndicalist movement was unique in its inclusion of black and

mestizo leaders such as Lima Barreto (1881–1922), a prominent journalist

and writer, and Domingos Passes, general secretary of the União Geral da

Construcção Civil (General Union of Civil Construction Workers) (UGCC),

who came to be called “the Brazilian Bakunin” (McIntyre 2002: 171; Ramos

& Samis 2004). Similarly, despite the “masculine tone” of early

Brazilian anarchism, the movement “increasingly embraced ...women’s

syndicalist tactics and traditions” (Wolfe 1993: 136). The anarchist

militants who emerged from this class fermentation, such as Neno Vasco

(1878–1920), Edgard Leuenroth (1881–1968), and José Oiticica

(1882–1957), were instrumental in the formation of a national labor

movement, and their ideas predominated in the Brazilian Workers’

Congresses of 1906 and 1912 (Gordon 1978: 37). Female activists such as

Maria Lacerda de Moura (1887–1945) and Maria Angelina Soares (1901–85)

also made key contributions, particularly in the construction of an

anarchist counterculture.

Historian Francisco Foot Hardman speaks of a “strategy of exile” enacted

by Brazilian anarchists, one that “had a solid basis in the actual

conditions of the Brazilian proletariat”: namely, the experience of mass

immigration and the sequestration of factory laborers in company towns

(“Vilas Operárias”). Embracing their “exile” from national identity,

anarchist workers attempted to construct a self-affirming, cosmopolitan

counter-culture centered on working-class values and priorities, fully

equipped with its own cultural institutions. A prolific anarchist press

developed, workers’ theater companies staged performances, and in São

Paulo, the Modern Schools of Brás and Belenzinho (1913–19) implemented

the libertarian pedagogy of Francisco Ferrer y Guardia, enrolling some

150 students before they were shut down by the government. Workers’

festivals featuring poetry, song, dance, and sport raised money for

anarchosyndicalist organizations and reinforced a sense of solidarity

(Hardman 1983: 59–60, 70–1, 36–43).

PERIOD OF STRIKES

At the peak of their strength in the labor movement, anarchists led

general strikes in 1906 in Porto Alegre, 1907 and 1917 in São Paulo,

1918 in Rio de Janeiro, and 1919 in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. In

response, government forces employed all the measures of brute force,

sending police, troops, and even naval warships to crush resistance.

They also attempted to exploit racial divisions between workers,

appealing to Afro-Brazilians to reject the “foreign” influence of

radical immigrants and take their jobs during the time of the general

strikes, then reversing course and reaffirming the privilege of “white”

labor over its black and “Indian” counterparts (Butler 1998: 39–40).

Finally, the government pushed proprietors to make some wage concessions

to workers. Together with police and military infiltration of the unions

and the mass imprisonment and deportation of anarchists, this strategy

of co-optation steered reformist unions toward replacing the

revolutionary syndicalist federations as representatives of the working

classes. In the 1920s the anarchists ceased to be able to persuade

workers to engage in general strikes.

DECLINE OF THE MOVEMENT

Some explain the decline of the Brazilian anarchist movement in terms

parallel to the history of anarchism in most other countries: after the

Russian Revolution, the anarchists’ working-class constituency defected

to the seemingly successful Bolsheviks, adopting their model and

entering their organizations. After the collapse of the Partido

Comunista Anarquista (PCA) formed in 1919 and led by José Oiticica, the

Partido Comunista Brasileiro (PCB), founded in 1922, absorbed a number

of anarchists into its ranks, such as Edgard Leuenroth, who co-authored

its charter, and Astrogildo Pereira, who served as its secretary-general

for nearly a decade before he was expelled (Dulles 1973: xvi). Indeed,

the PCB retained enough of an anarchist character that it was denied

recognition by the Comintern, and sizeable anarchist protests and

resistance to “integralist” fascism continued well into the 1930s. This

persistence of anarchist influence has led other historians to argue

that the real agents of anarchism’s decline were a series of repressive

governments, employing a combination of co-optative, populist tactics –

e.g., establishing paternalistic, state-run unions to supplant

independent workers’ organizations – and brute force. The Bernardes

regime of 1922–6 sent thousands of political prisoners into the remote

penal colony of Clevelândia, where harsh conditions killed hundreds. The

military regimes of 1930–85 continued this campaign with even more

aggressive fervor.

SURVIVAL AND REAPPEARANCE

During the military dictatorship of 1964–85 the anarchist movement

survived clandestinely in the form of the Centre de Estudos Professor

José Oiticica in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo’s Centre de Cultura

Social, which continued propaganda activity and maintained links to

movements in other countries. In the 1970s the newspaper O Inimigo do

Rei (The King’s Enemy) was published in Bahia, fostering the formation

of new anarchist groups. Radical initiative, however, had largely passed

to populist and libertarian Marxist currents, such as Paulo Freire’s

educational projects among the peasants of the northeast (1962–4). After

1984 the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Landless Workers

Movement) (MST) evolved into a mass movement with decidedly

anarchocommunist characteristics – a decentralized, non-hierarchical

organization constituted for autonomous direct action – but has resisted

being identified (or stigmatized) as “anarchist” (Fontes & Paget-Clarke

2005). While maintaining its political independence, the MST has

accepted alliances with parties including the Partido dos Trabalhadores

(the Workers Party) (PT), which became the governing party in 2002.

Contemporary Brazilian anarchism, like its counterparts elsewhere,

reflects the influence of the “New Social Movements” of the 1960s and

after, such as ecology and feminism. Thus, whereas the overwhelming

majority of Brazilian anarchists’ discourse on sexuality in the heyday

of the movement, despite their defense of free love, had been

“condemnatory” of homosexuality (Gordon 1978: 269–70), the anarchism of

the 1980s reflected the presence of pro-homosexual activists such as

Argentinian-born Néstor Perlongher (1949–92). At present, a number of

Brazilian anarchist federations have embraced the strategy of

“especifismo” in their organizing work, establishing common cause with

groups such as the MST while maintaining their own distinct ideology and

institutional identity. Other Brazilian anarchists, such as educator

Silvio Gallo, have embraced “philosophies of difference,” linking

anarchism to the poststructuralist and post-Marxist theories of Gilles

Deleuze, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Rancière.

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Alexander, R. J. & Parker, E. M. (2003) A History of Organized Labor in

Brazil. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Alves de Seixas, J. (1992) Mémoire et oubli: anarchisme et syndicalisme

révolutionnaire au Brésil: mythe et histoire. Paris: Editions de la

Maison des sciences de l’homme.

Butler, K. D. (1998) Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won: Afro-Brazilians in

Post-Abolition, São Paulo and Salvador. New Brunswick: Rutgers

University Press.

Colson, D. (2004) L’Anarchisme et le syndicalisme révolutionnaire au

Brésil. Le Monde libertaire 1367. Available online at

www.ml.federation-anarchiste.org

Dulles, J. W. F. (1973) Anarchists and Communists in Brazil, 1900–1935.

Austin: University of Texas Press.

Fontes, G. & Paget-Clarke, N. (2005) Interview with Geraldo Fontes. In

Motion Magazine. Available online at

www.inmotionmagazine.com

Gallo, S. (2004) Anarquismo e filosofias da diferença. Movimiento 10:

81–93.

Gordon, E. A. (1978) Anarchism in Brazil: Theory and Practice,

1890–1920. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International.

Hardman, F. F. (1983) Nem Pátria, nem Patrão! Vida operãria e cultura

anarquista no Brasil. São Paulo: Brasiliense.

McIntyre, M. (2002) The Coproduction of Race and Class in Brazil and the

United States. Antipode 34, 2: 168–75.

Rago, M. & Fabbri, L. (2007) Anarquismo e feminismo no Brasil; Audácia

de sonhar: memória e subjetividade em Luce Fabbri. Rio de Janeiro:

Achiamé.

Ramos, R. & Samis, A. (2004) Domingos Passos: O ‘Bakunin Brasileiro.’

Available online at

www.nodo50.org

Rodrigues, E. (2005) Santos, the Barcelona of Brazil: Anarchism and

Class Struggle in a Port City. London: Kate Sharpley Library.

Rodrigues, E., Ramos, R., & Samis, A. (2003) Against All Tyranny! Essays

on Anarchism in Brazil. London: Kate Sharpley Library.

Wolfe, J. (1993) Working Women, Working Men: São Paulo and the Rise of

Brazil’s Industrial Working Class, 1900–1955. Durham, NC: Duke

University Press.