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Beatriz Ana Loner (1952–2018)

2019; Duke University Press; Volume: 99; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-7287995

1527-1900

Benito Bisso Schmidt,

Urban Development and Societal Issues

The Brazilian historian Beatriz Ana Loner, known for her studies of the histories of labor, slavery, and the postabolition period and for her efforts to connect these areas of historiography, died at the age of 66 on March 29, 2018. Beatriz was a professor highly esteemed by her students, providing several generations of historians with vocational education. She also worked to preserve archives related to the world of labor. In this short text, I address Beatriz's activities in these three areas: as a researcher, a professor, and the creator and director of the Núcleo de Documentação Histórica (NDH) of the Universidade Federal de Pelotas (UFPel), a significant documentation center for workers' history and the history of social movements in Brazil.Beatriz completed the undergraduate course in history between 1972 and 1975 at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). These were times of intense political repression in Brazil, promoted by the military dictatorship that began with the 1964 coup d'état and lasted for more than 20 years. At that time, Beatriz met her lifelong companion, José Bernardo, with whom she had three daughters: Mariana, Lúcia, and Eleonora. Both Beatriz and José Bernardo participated in movements opposed to the dictatorship, especially the group Democracia Socialista, which became one of the founding currents of the Workers' Party in 1980. Like many labor historians, Beatriz always tried to combine intellectual production with militancy in left-wing organizations and parties.From 1977 to 1985, she pursued her master's degree in history at São Paulo's Universidade Estadual de Campinas, then the most important center for studies of labor and workers in Brazil. Her dissertation analyzed the 1950 August Manifesto by the Communist Party of Brazil, which broke with the policy of alliance with the national bourgeoisie, radicalized the attack on foreign capital, and identified the large latifundium as the great obstacle to the country's development. During the 1980s, she taught in the public elementary school system. In 1990, she joined UFPel as a professor, where she remained until her death.From 1994 to 1999, she pursued her PhD in sociology at UFRGS, this time focusing on workers from the municipalities of Rio Grande do Sul and Pelotas, in far-southern Brazil, between 1888, the date of slavery's abolition, and 1937, the year that the so-called Estado Novo was established, a fascist-like dictatorship. In this study, Beatriz sought workers not only in their traditional places of work and political action (factories, trade unions, and parties) but also in spaces for socializing, such as football clubs and carnival clubs. In this way she managed to reconstitute life stories and relationship networks that were much broader and more complex than those delimited only by ideological belongings. She could also focus on a subject hitherto little examined by labor historians: the black worker, either former slaves or descendants of slaves. Labor historians usually focused on the so-called radical immigrant—in other words, a worker of European origin who might have brought to Brazil ideologies such as socialism or anarchism. Beatriz, along with other researchers, has questioned the separation between the history of slavery and labor history by finding a much more multifaceted working class delineated on an ethnic and racial basis as well as previous experiences. Several of the labor militants whom she studied, for instance, were not of European origin (many of them were Afro-descendants) and pursued their ideological training in Brazil. Her dissertation gave rise to the book Construção de classe: Operários de Pelotas e Rio Grande (1888–1930) (first edition published in 2001; second edition released in 2017), a landmark for the study of labor in Brazil. Afterward she continued to develop many research projects, addressing themes such as black carnival clubs in Pelotas (from 2003 to 2005), life stories of Afro-descendant women in Brazil and Uruguay (from 2007 to 2008), and the categories, ethnicities, associativism, and social movements of urban workers (from 2012 until her death). These have resulted in several publications, which can be tracked down in her curriculum vitae, available online.1 It is also noteworthy that Beatriz was one of the founders of two significant working groups for Brazil's Associação Nacional de História, on labor worlds (created in 2000) and on emancipations and postabolition (established in 2013).Beatriz was also an outstanding professor esteemed by her students, standing out, on the one hand, for her seriousness and rigor and, on the other hand, for the affection and attention that she devoted to students. She was known as a serious person, and smiles did not come easily to her face. However, once one knew her a little more one realized her extreme generosity toward her colleagues and students who asked for her help. She taught undergraduate history classes in the history of Brazil, methodology and history theory, and the organization of archives, among other themes. She also participated in the creation of the sociology and history graduate programs at UFPel. She supervised 59 undergraduate course conclusion monographs, 12 specialization course monographs, and 11 master's dissertations. She especially worked to foster the careers of black students, something uncommon in a strongly racist country like Brazil, where the ideology of meritocracy is still deeply rooted in universities. Many of her former students stand out today as professors and researchers in public and private universities as well as elementary schoolteachers. Many people recall, with laughter, the fear that they felt for Professor Beatriz at first and then her major influence on their careers.In 1990, along with other professors from UFPel, Beatriz created the NDH, a center of documentation and research in history. She was a great fighter for the preservation of collections related to labor history, both locally and nationally. In the NDH there are documents by trade unions, companies, social movements, and parties in Pelotas but also archives of state- and national-level institutions, such as the files of workers registered in the Regional Labor and Employment Office of Rio Grande do Sul and the proceedings in the Pelotas district's labor justice system, both created during the corporatist project of Getúlio Vargas (which spanned from 1937 to 1945) with a view to guaranteeing rights to workers and at the same time disciplining them.2Before she died, Beatriz, or Bia, as she was known by her friends, spent more than two years in the hospital. During her periods of consciousness, she continued to advise students and plan projects. Her legacy will remain through her works and those by the historians to whom she has provided education.