The Role of Women in Working Class Activity in the City of Santos, Brazil

From the late 19th century until the third decade of the 20th, the city of Santos - known as the Brazilian Barcelona on account of the vigour of the working class struggle there - was the scene of lots of strikes and proletarian demonstrations. Much of the work-force was foreign-born and had come to Brazil lured there by a misleading campaign mounted by the Brazilian authorities to the effect that they were coming to a “Brazilian El Dorado” where they would find yearned for economic freedom. Meanwhile, the real aim was to recruit easily exploited immigrant labour. These workers later woke up to the fact that the working conditions with which they had to contend were utterly inhuman. Hours were excessive and they toiled for upwards of 12 hours a day. To get some idea of this, take the Docks Company - the city’s largest employer which handled cargo, warehousing of goods and port maintenance: the working day started at 4.00 am. and finished at 8.00 pm; there was no weekly day of rest; no holidays; no help in the event of an accident at work; no compensation for incapacity or old age; no set pay-day; no hygiene regulations of any sort governing work site, leading to sickness. And in addition to working long hours, under-age workers were still liable to corporal punishment.

It could be argued that it was anarchism through its trade union activity that guided the workers’ movement on its struggle for improved living conditions in that, besides bringing their trade union background with them, some militants also brought their libertarian ideals. Those ideals helped spark revolt in the workplace. Workers embarked upon an all-out struggle against the bosses. Not disposed to allow the social question to be overlooked, the workers organised themselves into unions because that was the best way of standing up to the exploitation of labour, since state legislation stood four-square behind the bullying of the bosses by deploying the police in the eventuality of a strike. One good example of this was the Adolfo Gordo Law, designed to prevent the formation of labour organisations and campaign movements, making any immigrant workers  involved in strikes, whether directly or otherwise, liable to deportation. This law was implemented even with regard to native Brazilian workers, practical evidence that its real targets were anarchist workers.

Even after that law was passed, workers’ resistance organisations were formed. Such organisations and unions were run by the workers themselves.

In Santos the very first labour organisation was the 1st of May Society launched by civil construction workers in 1904. Later came the International Workers’ Union Society launched on 7 August that year by several categories of workers and which had swollen within a few months of its foundation to a membership of upwards of 10,000. 

For the most part, both were anarchist in outlook. In all trade union organised activities, women were always directly or indirectly involved, addressing meetings, writing newspaper articles, making financial contributions, taking part in social theatre groups, distributing pamphlets at demonstrations, participating in solidarity campaigns allowing their homes to be used for trade union activity and even carrying out the courageous and dangerous task of priming home-made bombs. Remember that at the time society looked upon female trade unionists as real sluts. 

At worker-mounted events there were always talks accompanied by dancing, plays and poetry recitals. On 19 October 1907, the Santos Local Workers’ Federation laid on an event featuring the anarchist militants Eládio Cezar Antunha and Luiz La Scala, and on the same day the young Maria Pilar de Moura, a working man’s daughter, gave a recitation of Guerra Junqueiro’s poem “The Village”. The poem was taken from an anti-clerical anthology called The Dotage of the Eternal Father: The Making of a Monster. Such events were evidence of the workers’ profound interest in involving their families in trade union activities.

Social dramatic groups were formed, involving the likes of Elza Costa and Sofia Krup (daughter of the long-time anarchist Krup), who would afterwards be known simply as Sofia when she became identified with a character of the same name in the play Fertile Blood. Sofia was always centre stage in any plays staged by the Amor à Arte troupe.

According to the memoirs of anarchist militant João Perdigão Gutierrez, in July 1920 Santos-based seamstress Aurora Nôvoa Lozano, an anarchist and trade unionist, joined Benito Nôvoa on stage at the “Arts and Crafts” Hall in Perdigâo’s own play In Prison. Aurora played the part of a mother visiting her son (Benito) in prison. The hall was located at 1, Avenida Ana Costa and part of it still stands to this day.

Aurora’s sisters Luiza and Maria Rodrigues were also prominent players in drama productions. Maria staged anti-clerical, revolutionary, women’s liberation and pro-birth control plays. At a different time, another contributor to theatre groups was Isaura Santa Cruz Puyssegur who came to her anarchism through her theatre work. For many years Isaura was the partner of the anarchist fighter José Puyssegeur, better known in labour circles simply as Francês (Frenchie). She died in Santos in 1996, but had dropped out of libertarian activities after the death of her partner back in 1948.  Be that as it may the idealistic young Isaura’s contribution has gone down in history all the same.

Among the plays staged by these militants were: Tomorrow, The Modern Christ, 1st of May, Infanticide, Gaspar The Locksmith, Fertile Blood and The Sin of Simony.

In terms of direct action, women were also of crucial significance. In the unpublished memoirs of Luiz da Silva, he recalls the general strike of 1911: “As general secretary of the committee I ran the strike by means of a daily flyer with the help of a weaver (working at Tecelagem in the Rua Luiza Macuco) who would pose as a housewife and carry the originals to be printed on presses in the Praca Maua by one Sampaio.

Members of the committee were subject to great harassment, some of them being forced to go on the run and others jailed. The local press - A Tribuna, O Diario e Cidade de Santos - gave the strikers no respite. We had to resort to all manner of jiggery-pokery just to get bulletins printed and raise the money to cover printing costs. Our closest ally was that weaver woman who would hide them under her shopping basket and drop them off at strategic points, thereby keeping the strike coordinated.”

Another great battler was the working class anarchist Sofia Garrido who arrived in Santos in 1915 during the First World War. She was consistently active in the unions and always spoke at meetings.

In 1917 she took part in a massive workers’ rally at the Quarrymen’s Union, organised by - among others - the militant Manoel Perdigão Saavedra, when she addressed hundreds and in the course of her speech declared a strike in sympathy with the workers of São Paulo who were on general strike. For this she was placed on a police blacklist. On 1 May 1919, her partner Miguel Garrido and others spoke at a monster rally in the Praça Iguatemy Martins and the upshot was that the following day there was a strike by the Docks workers and others to press for the eight hour day.

In 1919 her partner was jailed and after 100 days in prison in 350-353 Avenida Conselheiro Nébias, Sofia marched to the police station and delivered a speech briefing all who passed through. She engaged police chief Ibrahim Nobre in conversation and he arrested her and held her for 25 days after she told him: “Release the libertarians or take me along with them.” Nobre decided to deport the couple but lawyer Heitor de Moraes managed to overturn that decision by suggesting that the couple be deported to Paranaguá, Porto Alegre. The Arts and Crafts Union saw to it that the couple boarded the steamship Ítaituba for deportation and later they were able to resume their activities in southern Brazil.

In March 1920, Maria Rodrigues carried arms in a basket on behalf of João Perdigão Gutierrez’s efforts to effect a rising by the São Paulo Revolutionary Committee organised by Manoel Campos, Leopoldo Adamo, Zanellas, Cristovao, Indalecio Iglesias and João Perdigão himself. That same year, during the big strike by the Docks Company workers, in which 2,100 workers downed tools, Maria Rodrigues and Aurora Nôvoa joined in. Aurora turned her workshop into a meeting point where further development of the strike was decided upon. They both transported home-made bombs. The bomb-makers were forced to flee the city. But the Santos police never found out about Aurora and Maria. Three bomb attacks were mounted during the strike and they proved crucial in determining the course of the dispute. No one was injured.

Some women suffered for their indirect support of the anarchist movement too. Alexandrina Pires, with her 4 year old daughter, spent 24 days in jail for refusing to answer questions from the police about the whereabouts of her partner.

There was also the case of Adolfo Garcia’s partner. She was deported to Spain in 1928 for arguing with police chief Ibrahim Nobre and insisting that her brother Vitor Garcia be freed.

And we cannot le the Soares family go without a mention. The family lived in Santos from 1910 to 1914 in the Rua Bras Cubas in Macuco. They were the family of Florentino de Carvalho (the pseudonym of Primitivo Raymundo Soares). Except for the father, they were all anarchists. The family comprised of sisters Maria Antonia, Maria Angelina, Matilde, Pilar and their mother Paula Soares. Their family home was a headquarters for the anarchists of the area. The family moved to Sao Paulo and later settled in Rio de Janeiro. The women remained active within the anarchist movement and were involved with the libertarian press, as teachers in Modern Schools, as managers of anarchist newspapers and in theatre circles. Every one of Paula Soares’s daughters married anarchists. 

We would be very well advised also to mention the name of Maria Lacerda de Moura who, although not a resident of Santos, made a great contribution to the bolstering of anarchist ideas and women’s liberation, operating in the cultural field as a real campaigner. In the 1920s, she wrote articles for the regional press and spoke openly from the pages of A Tribuna (which enjoyed a wide circulation and normally attacked libertarians) about libertarian education thereby helping to publicise a topic dear to anarchists. In Santos, with some women living in the city, she also set up the International Women’s Federation on 30 September 1921; it was based at 168 Avenida Ana Costa. Interestingly, earlier that year, Maria Lacerda de Moura had outlined the following programme for the as yet unfounded women’s association: “Organise campaigns in favour of education which in this country is failing on every count. As I see it, the vote is of no importance, universal suffrage being a joke. I contend, however, that women must enjoy the same rights as men, for since this world belongs to us all, no one should be excluded from the running of it […] We mean to open up branches in every state and we will pursue our programme through newspapers that are willing to help us and we will set up an information office in this city […] Resources will be raised without entering into commitments, from among those who are sympathetic towards the association’s ideals.” The International Women’s Federation survived until 1 July 1922 when it vanished for good.

In the labour press, women were also centrally involved, supporting newspapers financially, helping to compose them, distribute them and even serving on the editorial boards or writing articles. 

In this respect the earliest labour newspapers in Santos, which were unmistakably anarchist in their leanings, recorded consistent support from one female militant who simply signed herself Iris. Iris went on to pen splendid articles for the following: Tribuna Operária (in 1909), Aurora Social (1910), and O Proletário (in 1911 and 1912).

The newspaper Tribuna Operária, at that time the organ of the International Workers’ Union Society, with editorial offices at 112 Rua Bitencourt, noted a contribution from Iris, an article entitled “Organisation”, a subject of relevance even today and concerning which that illustrious Santos militant concluded almost a hundred years ago: “The workers, reduced almost to nothing, are subjected to all sorts of ill-paid and time-consuming working conditions, frustrations and insult, in short, all sorts of things, which they bear and put up with out of a desire not to perish of starvation; unemployment and lack of work are an awful thing for they entail a lack of bread with which to feed one’s children; the lack of a roof over the head of one’s family, whose existence is fraught with privations and suffering […]

If this goes on, it will not be long before the day when the working family, reduced to the status of a beast of burden, bereft even of the right to work, will thereby lose even the right to life as well […]

There is one way, one mighty weapon by which this ghastly prospect can be averted: that way and that weapon is organisation.

By organising, by marshalling their strength, the workers can stand up to all the injustices perpetrated against them; by organising, they will be able to secure all the improvements that their living conditions require […]

Finally, by organising, the workers will obtain the most beneficial and advantageous results, for through organisation one gains in vigour and confidence, combative spirit and solidarity […] We must therefore do all in our power for the sake of organisation; we need to propagate the necessity for it,  and stir up the organisational instinct lurking inside the soul of blinkered, passive, resigned workers.”

Despite the repressive circumstances and measures of those in government during the period in question, it is plain that women took part in the labour movement in Santos right from the outset, contributing in every conceivable manner to the expansion of their organisations and ideas. Notwithstanding the absence of historical data regarding the activity of other Santos women militants, who will unfortunately remain forever anonymous, we still have some documentation regarding the militants named in this piece, showing that they were active in their own way and raised issues of direct bearing to whoever was sensible of injustices in the struggle, thereby making a difference to the workers’ movement and helping after their fashion to bring about a new social order.

From: Utopia, Lisbon No 20, 2005 http://utopia.pt/edicoes/Binder20.pdf

Translated by: Paul Sharkey.