Brazil, 1978,
BW, 29 minutes.
by Lauro Escorel Filho
In Portuguese.

When we showed this film in 1980 at the First International Symposium on Anarchism at Lewis and Clark College, we raised great interest among social historians specialized in Latin America. They were surprised to discover how important both the anarchists and Italian immigrants were in the creation and development of working class organizations. This had been already pointed out by the research conducted by the late Professor Carlos M. Rama, in his fundamental work in the field of Social History: Mouvements ouvriers et socialistes, chronologie et bibliographie: L’Amérique Latine, 1492-1936 (Paris, Les Editions Ouvrières, 1959). In it he revealed that in all but one country of Latin America, the beginning of unions was due to the anarchists. In a private conversation, years after the book came out, Dr. Rama told me he had found evidence proving, even in that one country he thought was an exception, the anarchist presence had been determinant. For some reason (one could say for too obvious reasons) marxist historians — predominant in Latin America — were deliberately suppressing or, when they could not, at least minimizing the role of the anarchist primacy. Lauro Escorel (and his co-researchers) while not adopting an anarchist point of view, tries to be objective and at least two of the books he consulted for his research are by Edgar Rodrigues who has been systematically collecting all kinds of materials on the social history of Brazil and reproducing or quoting them in scores of monographies or anthologies.
Escorel was clever to obtain from the Matarazzo and the Crespi’s families rare footage on the industrialization of Brazil, that, in a way, would not reflect positively on their ancestors: pioneers, yes, but also systematic exploiters. Brazilian landowners, indeed, to transform their extra land invested their added value in order to industrialize Brazil. To do so, they recruited specialized workers abroad (in Italy, Spain, and Portugal) and among these there were politically committed activists.
In 1901, 50,000 people were engaged in the industrialization of São Paulo, working 16 hours a day, with no protection of any kind. Minors and women were also part of the working force, performing their tasks 11 hours a day and earning less.
Anarchists organized strikes, before and after founding the Brazilian Workers Congress (the first met in 1906). After a 1907 strike the working day was reduced to 8 hours.
The film continues, showing us the succession of strikes and the conquests of the working class as well as the deportation of foreign anarchists, police and military repression, the death of Antonio Martínez, an anarchist shoemaker, the founding of anarchist daily newspapers, and so on.
In summary, this film is a very important contribution to the story of Brazilian working class struggles.
Pietro Ferrua