Despite the repressive military dictatorship in Brazil from 1964 to 1985, rural workers' trade unions flourished. During that period, 2,800 trade unions, representing 8 million laborers, were founded. Biorn Maybury-Lewis examines how union leaders carved out a place for themselves in the political order of the country, and how other progressive movements can succeed in comparable situation. Maybury-Lewis analyzes the institutional and political tools used by rural laborers, and what unionization meant for them. Though ...
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Despite the repressive military dictatorship in Brazil from 1964 to 1985, rural workers' trade unions flourished. During that period, 2,800 trade unions, representing 8 million laborers, were founded. Biorn Maybury-Lewis examines how union leaders carved out a place for themselves in the political order of the country, and how other progressive movements can succeed in comparable situation. Maybury-Lewis analyzes the institutional and political tools used by rural laborers, and what unionization meant for them. Though traditionally viewed as among the weakest member of society, rural workers proved able to confront, and even use to their benefit, the government's stifling corporatist legislation. They succeeded in asserting themselves as a powerful minority for the first time in Brazilian history, in spite of the military regime's suppressive Institutional Acts that suspended numerous civil and political rights and shut down Congress. In a period when similar authoritarian regimes in Chile and Argentina crushed social movements, Brazil's rural workers mobilized on behalf of land, salary, and workplace disputes. While facing the potential threat of murder, rape, illegal arrest, kidnapping, slave labor, and other human rights violations, they succeeded by employing what Maybury-Lewis terms "the politics of the possible" the capacity to evaluate and dodge repressive measures, to keep alive the grassroots struggle, and to turn to their advantage institutional rules designed to suppress labor initiatives. Their story contributes to our knowledge of Latin America's contemporary agrarian struggles as well as offering a case study of how social movements can withstand political repression in the most unlikely circumstances.
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Add this copy of The Politics of the Possible: the Brazilian Rural to cart. $2.92, fair condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Dallas rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 1994 by Temple University Press.
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Textual tables. Minor rubbing, light cover soil, VG. 23x15cm, xiv, 297 pp. Contents: Historical & Theoretical Framework: Rural Union Development Under Dictatorship, 1964-1985; Solving the Problem: Explaining Progressive Rural Unionization in the 1964-1985 Period; Six Case Studies: Nazaré da Mata, Pernambuco: Birthplace of the CONTAG Line; Capivarí, São Paulo: Conservative Unionism of the José Rotta Line; Porto Nacional, Goiás: Frontier Development, Posseiros, & Grileiros; Cangucú, Rio Grande do Sul: Assistencialismo in Theory & Practice; Magé, Rio de Janeiro: Posseiros of the Urban Periphery; Santa Cruz Cabrália, Bahia: Union Radicalism on Brazil's First and Last Frontier; Conclusion: Grassroots Movements Confronting State Apparatus: Possibilities & Constraints in Comparative Perspective; Appendices: Statistical Summary of the Development of the Rural Trade Union Movement in Brazil, 1960-1986; Interview with Francisco "Chico" Mendes, Xapurí, Acre, Brazil, November 1988.
