Police kill shoemaker José I. Martinez during strike unrest

The Constitution promulgated on 24 February 1891 created the republican framework but excluded illiterate people and beggars from voting. The text did not name race as a voting criterion, yet the...

O Exemplo began publication in Porto Alegre on 11 December 1892. Produced by Black journalists and community members, it challenged racist representations and reported on the interests,...

Decree 1,637 provided a legal framework for professional unions and associations of workers and employers. It opened one route for collective organization, but legal recognition did not erase state...

On the night of 22 November 1910, sailors seized major warships in Guanabara Bay and demanded an end to corporal punishment, improved conditions, and amnesty. João Cândido Felisberto became a...

About 400 workers at the Cotonifício Crespi textile works in São Paulo stopped work in a dispute over wages, working time, and wartime conditions. Women were central to textile labor and to organizing...

Two days after Martinez was killed, a crowd gathered outside his home and carried his body across São Paulo toward the Araçá cemetery. Historian Joel Wolfe reports that about 2,000 people, mostly...

The strike movement broadened across workplaces and neighborhoods in São Paulo in mid-July. Contemporary labor organization, neighborhood associations, and anarchist newspapers helped circulate...

Decree 19,433 created the Ministry of Labor, Industry and Commerce, centralizing federal oversight of labor relations and social insurance. The new ministry could recognize and regulate worker...

Decree 19,482 required certain employers and public contractors to show that at least two-thirds of their employees were Brazilian-born. The measure responded to unemployment and shaped the balance...

Decree 19,770 defined how workers’ and employers’ associations could defend interests through the Ministry of Labor. It conditioned recognition on rules that included limits on foreign participation...