The Estado Novo tightly regulates union association

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...

Decree-Law 406 reorganized rules for foreign entry and residence, including the operation of national immigration quotas and requirements for visas. It extended a restrictive framework that had been...

Decree-Law 2,162 instituted a statutory minimum wage and set regional schedules. A wage floor recognized workers as people with claims on employers, but protections depended on which sectors and...

Decree-Law 5,452 approved the Consolidation of Labor Laws (CLT), organizing many existing labor rules. Its exclusions left domestic service and much rural work outside key protections. Since...

Abdias do Nascimento founded the Teatro Experimental do Negro (TEN) in Rio de Janeiro on 13 October 1944. The organization challenged the exclusion and stereotyped casting of Black performers while...

Decree-Law 7,967 established immigration rules and stated that policy should preserve and develop in Brazil’s ethnic composition the “most convenient” characteristics of European ancestry. Its...

Decree-Law 8,079 revised Article 7 of the CLT, listing domestic workers and rural workers among those to whom most provisions did not apply. The legal split was not written as a race clause, but it...