Insurgents set fire to the city of Bahia. The tramway riot and the October Revolution of 1930

Abstract

Based on the analysis of a streetcar riot that took place on October 4, 1930 against the Companhia Linha Circular ande Energia Elétrica, both firms in charge of trams, elevators, inclined planes, electricity and telephony in Salvador, the article examines the usual representation of the Bahian elite of social placidity or control over the population during the October Revolution of 1930. Our strategic intention is to integrate the research on Bahia into macro historical account in terms that differ from the perspectives that frame it as a backward or marginal place in the Brazilian political process. For us, Bahia appears a lot and since the beginning of the revolution. Legalist in the beginning, the state has joined the victorial rebels without resisting. In this article, Bahia, however, is not a turncoat: it is rather a place fractured by the possibility of direct popular action, by the presence of men armed by their bosses, by the civil and military conspiracy and, finally, by the oligarchic forces allied to São Paulo. In particular, the article points to the popular force facing real obstacles, either the social hierarchies or the existing distances between the areas the city where the insurgents acted. It examines how the riot was perceived in racial terms and why its authorship was not claimed by any operating force in the revolutionary movement.

Keywords:
October Revolution; Bahia; Riot; Workers; Racism