Neighborhood Associations, Social Movements, and Populism in Brazil, 1945–1953
2009; Duke University Press; Volume: 89; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1215/00182168-2008-046
ISSN1527-1900
Autores Tópico(s)Politics and Society in Latin America
ResumoThe years 1945 – 1947 were a period of intense political debate concerning the living conditions of Brazil’s urban working class, the public services and urban facilities available to workers, and the countless expectations resulting from the sacrifices working-class families had made during the war. For over a decade, Brazil had experienced a dictatorship in which popular demands were silenced with violence. The new political relationships that accompanied the legalization of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB); the activities of the Brazilian Socialist Party; and the intense disputes among the Social Progressive Party (PSP), the Brazilian Labor Party (Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro or PTB), the Social Democratic Party, and the National Democratic Union (UDN), not to mention smaller parties, reconfigured the political scenario. The intense climate of electoral dispute and the agitation caused by popular demands broadened the debate on pressing urban issues and moved it out of the realm of Parliament and the political parties and into the realm of the labor unions and neighborhood associations such as the Comitês Democráticos e Populares (CDPs) and the Sociedades Amigos de Bairro (SABs).In each urban neighborhood a committee or a society formed, and under the influence of various political parties, these organizations became the channels for communicating demands for urban services and infrastructure. Societies and committees believed that they had the right to voice those demands. From the perspective of the popular classes, the idea of democracy and re-democratization was directly linked to issues of housing, transportation, labor, sanitation, education, health care, leisure, freedom to organize, affordable cost of living, and so on, which came to be known as the “struggle for the right to the city” (luta pelo direito à cidade). The popular classes sought to define the terms on which the discussion of such rights would take place. Who would speak in the name of workers? It was in this delicate political scenario of popular will and representation that the “populist phenomenon” consolidated itself as a defining feature of Brazilian political life.In the last decade, discussions about populism have resurfaced in political and academic circles in Brazil and in Latin America. This seems to have been a recurring phenomenon of the last 60 years, at least in Brazil. From time to time, populism returns to haunt our political relationships and perturb academic debates. In this vein, this article has a double objective: On the one hand, it argues that no matter how harshly one may critique the concept of populism (for its tendencies toward co-optation, or for the resulting incapacity of popular classes to act autonomously), there seems to be a certain inconsistency in trying to replace the concept of populism with the (supposedly more accurate) concept of trabalhismo. On the other hand, the concept of populism, especially when used as an adjective to describe a particular historical period (e.g., the “populist Republic” of 1945 – 1964), has obscured our understanding of the connections between the so-called old and new social movements. Furthermore, the concept of populism has led to an excessively optimistic perception of the new social movements of the 1970s, and the complete neglect of associative traditions in Brazilian neighborhoods during the 40 years prior to the 1970s. When we use the term “populism,” it needs to be accompanied by a careful description of exactly what that term means. Let us see what such a description entails, based on the case of the city of São Paulo.In April 1945, President Getúlio Vargas signed a decree that extended amnesty for all political crimes committed since July 16, 1934. A month later, the first legal rally of the PCB took place in Rio de Janeiro. The speech of the secretary-general, Luis Carlos Prestes, presented a diagnosis of the difficulties facing the population while outlining the party’s plan of action. Its immediate objective was to bring the PCB closer to the concrete situation of Brazil’s population. Consequently, the party proposed the creation of commissions in workplaces and neighborhoods, Comitês Democráticos e Populares, which would bring together all social forces and political ideologies, creating a broad national alliance.1 The goal was to create ties between the PCB and potential voters. The CDPs were not part of a long-term organization strategy. Rather, their purpose was to provide comprehensive knowledge of the population’s living conditions and, from there, develop an electoral platform focused on the specific living conditions of the working class.It has been argued that the rapid growth of the PCB during the postwar period can be attributed to the prestige enjoyed by the USSR and sympathy for Prestes and other communist prisoners, which grew in direct proportion to the growth of pro-USSR sentiment after Germany’s invasion, and to the absence of any other leftist organization that could compete with communism.2 The metallurgical worker Alfredo Castanha, who was never a member of the party even though he was a loyal voter and member of the CDP in Mooca, a neighborhood in São Paulo, added another reason for the party’s success: “Because the PCB fought for the worker. Everything that was good for the worker was good for the party.” For metallurgical worker and Lithuanian immigrant Julius Meksenas, “it was the actions of the democratic commissions that enabled the party to have such electoral support.”3From this perspective, the PCB’s success during the postwar years was due, perhaps primarily, to its insertion, via CDPs, in the poor suburban neighborhoods. In October 1945, 31 CDPs existed in São Paulo, 28 in Santos, and many others were in the process of formation. The activities of the committees varied from neighborhood to neighborhood, as did their strategies, which changed over time. According to journalist Noé Gertel, the CDP “was a form of mass organizing [because] as a political party the PCB had a difficult time connecting to the people. Thus the CDP was created and became a front — a way to unite neighborhoods, to bring people together around specific neighborhood demands, and also a way of politicizing the residents of the neighborhoods?4 A CDP pamphlet that included the neighborhoods of Jardim Paulista, Itaim, and Vila Nova Conceição provides an idea of the methods and breadth of their activity: “The friends of Jardim Paulista and adjacent neighborhoods call a meeting in order to democratically deal with neighborhood issues and popular needs more generally, such as water, electricity, sewage disposal, street planning, sanitation, education and adult literacy, health centers, etc.”5Generally, CDPs organized around issues of neighborhood development; the struggle against economic exploitation, hoarding, the black market, and inflated prices of basic necessities; and the creation of health centers, public libraries, pharmacies, and so on. CDPs became a “peaceful instrument for resolving countless neighborhood problems.”6 The committees spread throughout the country and initially served as a means to coordinate forces opposing the Estado Novo.7For example, the neighborhood of Casa Verde, which was accessed through a narrow road and an old bridge over the Tietê River that only allowed one vehicle to pass at a time, had no sewage or water system, only backyard wells. Public transportation was also inadequate, since there were not enough trams to transport the neighborhood’s 20,000 inhabitants. In the face of such problems and after several meetings, the CDP prioritized the most pressing issues for residents: the return of tramline 41; a free health clinic with a day care and milk dispensary; a nighttime literacy class for adults; piped water and a sewage disposal system; the creation of gardens and electric lighting in Praça Centenário; the paving and maintenance of the main streets that connected Casa Verde to adjacent neighborhoods; a bus route that would connect nearby neighborhoods; and public lighting in all main streets.8 Residents drafted a document and sent signed copies to the municipal government, the sewage and water services, the electric company, and the newspaper Hoje. Such mobilization resulted in the creation of an adult literacy class at the committee’s headquarters, which at the beginning of 1946 had 50 students enrolled.Another example of popular mobilization was the group of residents that traveled from Ipiranga to the headquarters of the newspaper Hoje in March 1946. Initially, they complained about public transportation and proposed that the tram company, São Paulo Light, assign additional cars to relieve overcrowding. They called for a neighborhood health and dental clinic, as well as day care centers in factories, and protested the 100-gram limit on bread rations, which “was not even enough to fill the cavities in our teeth.”9The newspaper Hoje, the official organ of the PCB in the city of São Paulo, reveals the ambiguities of the party’s activities. Clearly there was a self-promoting aspect to its reporting of CDP-related activities, which may have been described as having more force, power, and coherency than in fact they did. Certainly Hoje’s voicing of neighborhood concerns was a way of attracting supporters to the PCB. Thus, the issues raised by the committees were presented in stories that were both accusatory and propagandistic.10 For this reason, the newspaper must be read with caution. Nevertheless, Hoje was the first newspaper to create a space for the discussion of living conditions in poor suburban neighborhoods during the postwar years. Other newspapers followed Hoje’s example; the Correio Paulistano and the Diário de São Paulo also created daily columns that discussed living conditions in working-class neighborhoods.Even though elections were the initial impulse behind the creation of the CDPs, living conditions in poor neighborhoods became their main concern, to the point that neighborhood committees outnumbered and were more active than those located in workplaces. The expansion of CDPs was directly linked to their ability to express and bring to light neighborhood anxieties and demands. This did not mean that general political preoccupations were less important, but concerns of daily life definitely mobilized residents. Consequently, CDPs seem to have oscillated between general political actions, in accord with the PCB’s directives, and denunciations of the truly calamitous conditions confronted by the outlying neighborhoods. This double agenda did not escape the party’s leadership: “We have not always understood the nature of these organizations, which is why more than a few of them only mobilize members and sympathizers of the party, underestimating the [potential for] mobilizing local residents. . . . Those that raise general complaints and debate high politics have little popular support. But those who struggle for basic needs, felt by all, grow rapidly.”11The committees’ presence in working-class neighborhoods caught the attention of public security forces, which from the start monitored their activities. The manner in which CDPs were perceived reveals the dilemmas faced by popular organizations in the postwar era: “Created in almost all the neighbor-hoods of the capital and the interior of the state, they [CDPs] are nothing more than entities masked as democratic and charitable whose principal goal is to attract more sympathizers for the Muscovite creed.” The report of an agent from the Delegacia de Ordem Política e Social (DOPS) suggested that the committees represented a “new and interesting phenomenon” that revealed “the intelligence of the communist modus operandi.” Their novelty, according to the report, was to promote meetings “of general interest and with goals that will benefit the neighborhood and the people.” This is why CDPs attracted “all social classes; however, the proletariat was dominant and allowed itself to be seduced by legal and social pseudo-assistance, proletarian demands, paternal advice, and other less important services, including promises of a much softer and happier life.” The report ended with the observation that many “progressive bourgeois individuals” were attracted to CDPs. They not only contributed financially but were also active participants who were “convinced they were practicing acts of humanity, when in truth they were working for Soviet Russia.”12 Thus one of the dangers the CDPs presented was their heterogeneous social composition, which made more difficult the clear identification of the traditionally perceived “dangerous classes.”According to Sílvio Alem, because of the PCB’s constant efforts to build cadres, over the course of 1946 the committees were transformed into para-party organizations. First, the Organizing Commission of Democratization and Popular Demands was created to regulate and discipline the CDPs. In late 1945, the commission tried to organize a “national congress” of CDPs.13 The PCB’s goal was to direct the CDPs toward the “right” agenda. Perhaps the party felt the need to do this because, in practice, the committees tended to focus on pressing neighborhood problems while topics of interest to the party were ignored. This explains the frequent calls printed in Hoje during 1946 and 1947 emphasizing the committees’ party roles and PCB attempts to discipline their activities. Apparently the CDPs inadvertently articulated the ambiguity of the Communist Party. On the one hand, the PCB was a party of “order and tranquility,” an expression invoked by its leaders to describe its political strategy. On the other hand, it was a “party of the streets, the plazas, popular festivities, working-class neighborhoods, factories, and practically the only party to strongly seduce the working class and the young.”14 The party leadership saw the CDPs mainly as instruments of popular mobilization and not as social movements capable of establishing innovative practices of grassroots democracy. Paradoxically, the short life of CDPs was due to the leaders of the Communist Party.Still, the electoral success of PCB candidates, especially during the municipal elections of 1947, was closely tied to their relationship with CDPs and, primarily, to their active role in discussing working-class living conditions. For example, in November 1947, a journalist from Hoje described the candidacy of communist Luiz João in the working-class neighborhood of Mooca.The construction worker Luiz João was elected to the city council because he clearly expressed his concern with the problems suffered by the residents of Mooca. In that first municipal election, which occurred after the end of the war, Mooca’s Communist Party presented four candidates: Alfonso Liguori, Faustina Bonimani, Antônio Donoso Vidal, and Luiz João. Of the four, only Faustina Bonimani, whose campaign was centered on textile industry workers rather than CDPs, was not elected. The nearby neighborhood of Belém elected two other council members who were connected to CDPs: Armando Pastrelli and Benedito Jofre, in addition to Orlando Piazotto, who was elected to the state legislature.The rapid and chaotic growth of the city, as well as the indifference of public policy, exacerbated the deterioration of urban living conditions. In confronting these issues, CDPs decided to publicize the living conditions of neighborhoods and, moreover, to pursue whatever solutions were within their reach. For example, Vila Matilde, a neighborhood of 18,000 inhabitants located next to the Central do Brasil train station, was comprised of industrial and commercial workers who lived with poor electricity, potholed streets, and inadequate transportation and schooling (each year 50 percent of the neighborhood children were unable to enroll in schools). The activities of the CDP were not limited to the simple denunciation of the abandonment and scarcity suffered by working-class neighborhoods. At the committee’s urging, residents decided to begin the construction of a stairway that would lead to the train station. The first section had 26 steps, leading to a landing eight meters long; the second section had 24 steps leading to a second landing. All the construction material (cement, sand, iron, wood, and so on) was collected during a public collection drive (a campanha das tábuas).16Simply publicizing neighborhood deficiencies and difficulties became a powerful resource for mobilizing people “in a world habituated to silent exploitation.”17 Neighborhood issues were communicated to the public through the relationship of CDPs with newspapers (Hoje had a daily column, titled “Life in the Committees,” that provided the latest news on the activities of groups dispersed throughout the city) and the energetic “Hoje commandos,” groups of journalists who visited neighborhoods. According to a journalist who participated, these eventsThe presence of Hoje commandos became quite an event in outlying neighborhoods. Journalists got off the trucks and circulated through the streets, interviewing inhabitants about various topics. The interviews usually began with the question: “What are the problems in your neighborhood?” The most frequent complaint was the absence of basic urban services such as electricity in homes and on the streets, hospitals, day care centers, kindergartens, public telephones, and playgrounds. Journalists were taken through “dusty streets without sidewalks and electricity.” While showing their neighborhood, people would emphasize the lack of transportation, electricity, water, schools, and medical centers. In the neighborhood of Freguesia do Ó, a resident argued: “All this needs to be done urgently for life here is intolerable. Moreover, the neighbor-hood’s residents have the right to demand all this since with our labor and our taxes we contribute to the enrichment of the public coffers.”19 In Vila Independência, a commando reporter walked down Rua 2 de Junho, the only way to access the neighborhood. At the end of the street he found a small bridge made out of wood, built by the residents, and, after crossing it, he found Manoel Hernandes, a resident who sharply expressed feelings shared by other neighbors: “This neighborhood is cut off from the world.”The demands for social inclusion and for the “right to the city” (direito à cidade) were directly linked to the issue of improving general conditions in peripheral neighborhoods. From the perspective of the popular classes, these were the themes that summarized the process of re-democratization, progress, and development in Brazil. This combination of demands, complaints, and collective mobilization expressed poor people’s quest for “a place in the world,” which was based on the right to benefit from Brazil’s process of re-democratization. The starting point in that quest was the general observation that outlying neighborhoods and their inhabitants “were not part of the city,” and by being excluded from the city’s limits (real or symbolic), they were also excluded from the world. Raimundo Guimarães, a resident of Vila Prudente, declared to a journalist from Hoje, “We are completely removed from civilization.”20The most unusual aspect of CDP-related activities was their outreach service. In 1946, most CDPs in São Paulo offered some kind of general education course. The most common were adult literacy and sewing classes. Other courses were also offered: industrial chemistry, accounting, office management, business English, practical English, typing, Portuguese, home economics, and Brazilian history, among others. Some CDPs offered courses for cabinet makers, builders, electricians, and mechanics. Frequent lectures and meetings addressed a variety of issues from sanitation to the engineering of traffic and from rural electrification to anti-flooding programs. In addition, the youth departments of CDPs developed diverse athletic and artistic activities: soccer, boxing, dances, and choirs. During the Christmas festivities of 1945 and 1946, committee members went through the streets collecting everything possible: toys, clothing, shoes, furniture, domestic utensils, tools, sporting goods, and food. A street or a plaza would be closed off to traffic and the event would last all day long with athletic tournaments and live performances from musicians and circus performers. Sandwiches, ice cream, and sweets were also distributed. Mooca’s CDP members entered in contact with storekeepers of the region, and during the festivities they distributed coupons for toys, shoes, and clothing at those stores. They also prepared a table with drinks and sweets for the more than three hundred who attended. Outreach activities could go even further. In the Avenida do Estado, on the Tamanduateí River, newspaper vendor Antônio Lima Santana lived in one room with his wife and six children. The room contained five beds, a small table, a closet, and a stove. Enduring a “period of bad luck,” Antônio was forced to stay in bed for some months. The landlord pressured daily for overdue rent and threatened the family with eviction. The news of Antônio’s situation reached the CDP, which responded by providing medical assistance and a lawyer.21In Vila Anastácio, the CDP created a free clinic and pharmacy. Though small and poorly equipped, the clinic received patients for two hours every day. In August, responding to the high demand for medical consultations, it started operating from 10:00 a.m. to noon and from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m. Three doctors shared the work and all medical services were free. Even functioning precariously, the clinic and the pharmacy had a huge impact on the neighborhood.22In response to the high prices and shortages of the war years, another outreach service was the organization of consumer cooperatives. In Vila Deodoro, for example, the leaders of the local CDP negotiated with the Cooperativa dos Trabalhadores Sindicalizados de São Paulo to create a food distribution center in the neighborhood. Along with this initiative, the committee also organized a series of lectures by Edgar Leuenroth, a well-known anarchist activist, on the topic of “Force and Popular Solidarity.”23 Consumer cooperatives tried to help residents obtain foodstuffs that were in short supply at the officially mandated prices.The CDPs’ outreach activities were more than mere propaganda. An important aspect of these services was the resulting daily contact with the troubles of working-class neighborhoods, which in turn introduced CDP members and methods to the broader public. The language of rights was discussed in CDPs and became part of the popular class’s everyday vocabulary. Neighborhood residents, it was said, “have the right to demand all that.” The realities of working-class neighborhoods called into question the type of city that was being constructed and revealed the meanings of re-democratization for these “forgotten citizens at the end of the world.” CDPs gave public visibility to a complex situation, which placed the simple and urgent needs of the working class on the agenda of high politics. Thus, they considerably transcended the electoral goals first imagined by the PCB leadership. As they struggled to win the minds and hearts of working-class neighborhoods, the CDPs attained a certain independence from the party’s leadership and acquired a life of their own. The intense mobilization that occurred in poor neighborhoods was not an invention of the Communist Party; as stated earlier, neighborhood organizations preceded the existence of the party. But the PCB was the first party to use the committees in a systematic way to organize neighborhoods and to give these organizations, dispersed throughout the city, a common public voice through the newspaper Hoje. It is not surprising, therefore, that the strategy of CDPs, which acquired great visibility, was later utilized by politicians and parties of diverse ideologies. Its mobilizing potential — or, in other words, its electoral potential — had been tested and confirmed. What now remained to be done was to cut the CDPs’ ties to the PCB and to empty them of political and ideological content. Beginning in 1947, this objective was attained through the Sociedades Amigos de Bairro.SABs appeared in the political scenario before 1945, at least in the city of São Paulo, but they grew considerably after the outlawing of the PCB in May 1947. In many instances, both types of organizations (societies and committees) worked together. Moreover, there are signs of a continuous movement of members between societies and committees, though CDPs — through their links with Hoje and the Communist Party — displayed greater politicization and public visibility than SABs.The emergence of SABs during the Estado Novo intrigued and disquieted public security forces. In February 1945, the head of DOPS’s political section ordered the investigation of all neighborhood organizations in the city of São Paulo. The investigation recorded the existence of ten SABs, most of which had been created between 1942 and 1944. According to the investigator who infiltrated these organizations, “the societies did not have political or religious objectives; they limited themselves to cultural and artistic activities.”24 The main concern of public security forces at that time was to determine the SABs’ party affiliations, since they suspected an ongoing connection with the then-illegal Communist Party. After some time and effort, the agent submitted his final report with a small note: “The individuals that comprise the board of directors of the SAB located in Tucuruvi and Vila Maria belong to the Paulista Republican Party; those in the neighborhood of Casa Verde are pecepistas [members of the PSP].”The investigator concluded his report expressing his surprise at the “complete absence of members, and even sympathizers, of the Communist Party in those societies.”25 He also included a table indicating the profession of each director. In Tucuruvi, the president was a lawyer; the vice president, a doctor; the secretary general, a court clerk; the first secretary, a railway worker; the second secretary and the first treasurer were described as “property owners” (which in this case probably meant “small businessmen”); and the second treasurer was a dentist. The advisory council was composed of four colonels, a major, and a doctor. In Casa Verde and in Vila Maria, one finds the same pattern as in Tucuruvi: dentists, doctors, real estate agents, pharmacists, and a few workers. It seems clear that while the CDPs were in existence, SABs brought together what can be called the “middle class” of the poor suburban neighborhoods.The greatest difficulty in understanding the history of SABs stems from the fact that, with rare exceptions, most of them led a fragmented and episodic life, being constantly created and recreated.26 Only an individual case study of each society can reveal the multiple and diverse relationships between committees and societies. Everything indicates that the outlawing of the PCB in May 1947 led many members of the old committees to take refuge in societies in order to avoid persecution and continue neighborhood political activism.27 Undoubtedly, the history of both organizations is intertwined. What the committees certainly accomplished was to provide the SABs with an organizational structure and a popular, politicized character. It is reasonable to assume that SABs and CDPs influenced each other, and with the illegalization of the Communist Party, SABs inherited the benefits of the huge visibility of neighborhood issues, which the party had helped develop.28 As a result, from their inception, SABs, as well as CDPs, overlapped with party-line politics. Party configurations, and the disputes and conflicts among them, illuminate not only the emergence but also the trajectory of societies and committees. Party politics, and their multiple implications, are crucial for understanding the history of neighborhood associations.The creation of SABs in Quarta Parada and Belém in July 1946, a period when local CDPs were at their peak, exemplifies the above. The catalyst for their emergence was the demand for paving, sidewalks, electricity, transportation, a children’s hospital, a day care center, and a consumers’ cooperative; the same needs that had been expressed by CDPs in earlier years. Father Arnaldo de Morais Arruda, who was the main force behind the creation of Belém’s SAB, described the society as follows: “The SAB brings together citizens who desire to provide services to their neighborhoods, thus providing an example to other neighborhoods that need similar organizations to serve as guardians of the people’s interests. [The societies] do not consider, however, political or religious issues, since the best political activism and the greatest way to serve God is by bringing well-being, comfort, and tranquility to working-class homes.”29Apparently the SAB was created to bypass the party-line politics of the local CDP. Nevertheless, the following year at least two SAB members were elected to the city council: Father Arnaldo (PSP) and Armando Pastrelli (Partido Social Trabalhista, Social Labor Party). Out of the nine SAB directors, three were also CDP members and had been identified by DOPS as “well-known communists,” including Councilman Pastrelli.30 At least in this case, there is no doubt: the creation of the SAB aimed to widen the social composition of the CDP by attracting middle-class residents and emptying local activism of leftist connotations. The broadening of the social profile of SAB members was illustrated in its public inauguration a month later. From the pulpit of the local church, Father Arnaldo appealed to residents, arguing that the present difficult moment required the unity of all. “When the ship is going down, we don’t ask i
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