Workers, populism and communists: The textile workers of Maceió / AL during governor Muniz Falcão's tenure(1956-1961)

• Grant number: 12/11606-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: October 01, 2012
• End date: May 31, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of Brazil
• Principal Investigator: Fernando Teixeira da Silva
• Grantee: Anderson Vieira Moura
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Analysing especificaly the sindical minutes, The Voice of the People's newspaper (official journal of the Communist Party of Brazil in Alagoas) and interviews with remaining workers, this project proposes to study the relationship of textile workers in three factories located in Maceió (capital of Alagoas), with their bosses and the governor Muniz Falcão (1956-1961), labeled by local populist historiography like manipulator of the masses. Equal in importance, the involviment of textile unions at this juncture and the relationship established between the workers and alagoanos's Communists deserve the same attention. The ultimate goal is to discuss and question all these relationships, focusing the analysis on struggles and forged by workers in search of his citizenship and political space in society Alagoas. The historiography produced in the state - at least that made up until mid-1980s - has ignored urban workers to manufacture the image of a purely agricultural state, based on the monoculture of sugar cane. By reducing the urban industries to a minor role of relevancy, this same historiography characterized Alagoas as a rural state without a significant and active contingent of worker - idea questioned by us, based on Industrial Census and election results published in the Official Gazette. Thus, by giving voice and prominence to these urban workers, we are also reviewing the historiography local and crystallized concepts still widely played in society and Alagoas. Moreover, our research falls in a recent wave of research devoted to the so called democratic period (1945-1964) in Alagoas, in line with several studies already produced in Brazil.

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

MOURA, Anderson Vieira. Workers, populism and communists: The textile workers of Maceió/AL during the Muniz Falcão government (1956-1961). 2017. Doctoral Thesis - Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas Campinas, SP.