The “two-thirds” rule reserves most contracted positions for Brazilian-born workers

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...

During a confrontation near the Mariângela factory in Brás, police shot and killed young shoemaker José I. Martinez. His death intensified an already developing labor conflict. It should be understood...

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 19,770 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...

Founded in São Paulo on 16 September 1931, the Frente Negra Brasileira built a wide network of Black social and political organizing, with branches in several states. It offered education, community...

The 1934 Constitution set out labor protections and capped immigration from each country at two percent of nationals of that country who had settled in Brazil over the previous fifty years. It also...

Decree-Law 25 established federal heritage listing (tombamento), defining national heritage through historical, archaeological, ethnographic, bibliographic, and artistic value. In practice, early...

Decree-Law 37 of 2 December 1937 dissolved Brazil’s political parties under the Estado Novo dictatorship. The Frente Negra Brasileira had converted itself into a political party in 1936; it could no...