Agripino Nazareth and the workers' movement in the First Republic

Abstracts

Agripino Nazareth (1886-1961) stood out as a socialist leader in the Brazilian workers movement during the First Republic. After 1930 he started working in the Ministry of Labor and the Labor Court. He retired as a Labor Prosecutor in the beginning of 1960 and died on 1 August 1961. In this article, we will analyze the first part of his trajectory, in which he joined with other militants from various political and ideological groups, and became involved in several types of movements and made a variety of commitments.

trade unionism; socialism; communism

Agripino Nazareth (1886-1961) se destacou como liderança socialista do movimento operário brasileiro ao longo da Primeira República. Depois de 1930, passou a integrar os quadros do Ministério do Trabalho e da Justiça do Trabalho, aposentando-se como Procurador do Trabalho no início de 1960 e falecendo no dia 1º de agosto de 1961. Neste artigo, analisaremos o primeiro momento de sua trajetória, quando se associou a outros militantes das mais variadas correntes político-ideológicas, envolvendo-se em movimentos de diversos matizes e assumindo diferentes compromissos.

sindicalismo; socialismo; comunismo

Agripino Nazareth and the workers' movement in the First Republic

Aldrin Armstrong Silva Castellucci

Universidade do Estado da Bahia. Colegiado de História, Departamento de Educação. Campus II. Rodovia Alagoinhas-Salvador, BR 110, km 3. 48040-210 Alagoinhas - BA - Brasil. [e-mail]

ABSTRACT

Agripino Nazareth (1886-1961) was a prominent socialist leader in the Brazilian workers movement during the First Republic. After 1930 he worked in the Ministry of Labor and the Labor Court. He retired as a Labor Prosecutor at the beginning of the 1960s and died on 1 August 1961. In this article, we will analyze the first part of his trajectory, in which he allied himself with other militants from various political and ideological groups, and became involved in several types of movements and assumed various political commitments.

Keywords: trade unionism; socialism; communism.

The education of an engaged intellectual

Agripino Nazareth was born in Salvador on 24 February 1886, but began his university education in the then Faculty of Law of Recife, a city where he lived with relatives from 1902 to 1907. In the Pernambuco capital Agripino had his first contact with social ideas as a student and began his involvement with politics. Between May 1905 and May 1906 he was part of a commission from the Faculty of Law, formed with the aim of convincing his colleagues from the School of Pharmacy to support the candidacy of Senator Lauro Sodré for Brazilian president. It was in the Pernambuco capital that he began his political activism in the press, writing for A Província newspaper. The old organ of the Liberal Party had begun to circulate in 1872. Joaquim Nabuco had published his articles in defense of the abolition of slavery in it at the end of the Empire, while Dantas Barreto had used it to fight the oligarchy led by Rosa e Silva during the Republic. In 1907 Agripino matriculated in the Free Faculty of Law of Rio de Janeiro, an institution in which he finished the fourth year of his course in March 1908. However, he graduated from the Faculty of Law of São Paulo, in Largo de São Francisco, where he was awarded the degree of Bachelor of Law in Social and Legal Sciences on 11 December 1909.¹

His family, however, continued to live in Pernambuco. He was the son of Maria Bernardina Nazareth and Antonio Agripino Nazareth, a career officer in the Brazilian army who served in military units in Paraíba, Pernambuco, Rio Grande do Norte and Amazonas between 1894 and 1906. Antonio Agripino Nazareth was promoted from lieutenant to captain, being decorated in 1906 with a gold medal for more than 30 years of good service to the country. Perhaps this explains the facility with which his son transited through certain military environments years later. Moreover, even after the death of her husband, Maria Bernardina Nazareth remained in Recife, where Agripino would visit her and his old political contacts in Correio do Norte and General Dantas Barreto (1850-1931).²

Agripino Nazareth seems to have got his first professional experience through the journalist Pedro Avelino in 1910, after he was appointed mayor of Alto Juruá in Acre. The Potiguar [from Rio Grande do Norte] politician nominated Agripino police chief in Tarauacá, a region which had not yet been removed from Juruá. Agripino, then 23 years old, had received "full powers" from his "illustrious and dear friend" not only to "resolve subjects related to the police, but for everything of the sole jurisdiction of the mayor."³

In 1912 political journalism returned to the center of his life, when he assumed the position of editor-in-chief of A Época, a daily newspaper published in Rio de Janeiro under the initial direction of the monarchist lawyer Vicente de Ouro Preto, J. B. da Câmara Canto and Vicente Piragibe. In was in this periodical that he became involved in a campaign in support of Vicente Piragibe's candidacy for federal deputy in the second district of the city of Rio de Janeiro. He also became involved in a vigorous fight with the dominant oligarchies in the northeast of Brazil, with attacks against the Gaúcho senator Pinheiro Machado and President Wenceslau Braz. There was much praise for the senator from Pará, Lauro Sodré, the army captain José da Penha, elected state deputy for Ceará in 1913, and Pedro Avelino, leader of the campaign against the governor of Rio Grande do Norte, Alberto Maranhão, candidate for federal deputy in that state in 1914. In Ceará the conflict were bloody, ending with the assassination of Captain José da Penhaby "unthinking jagunços (gunmen), armed and incited by the federal government to serve the thieving and cynical politics of the Acciolys." This occurred after Deputy José da Penha had "shattered the fanatics of Padre Cícero," seen by Agripino as "a bunch of scoundrels," represented by Pinheiro Machado and the PRC (Partido Republicano Conservador) in Ceará. At this time, in addition to his journalism, Agripino worked as a professor in the Free School of Law, Pharmacy and Dentistry of Rio de Janeiro, located on Rua da Alfândega.⁴

Worker agitation in Rio de Janeiro in the 1910s

It was in the context of the conflict-ridden state and federal elections of July 1914 and December 1915 that there occurred one of the first important public appearances of Agripino Nazareth, as he took part in the attempted uprising of enlisted men and sergeants of the army, the navy, the constabulary (Brigada Policial) and the firemen (Corpo de Bombeiros) in the then federal capital with the declared aim of deposing President Wenceslau Braz (1868-1966) and establishing a parliamentary republic in Brazil. The new government was to be led by Dantas Barreto, then president of the state of Pernambuco. Among those involved in the movement were a number of individuals engaged in the political scenario of the First Republic, such as the retired coronel Barbosa Lima, the Carioca lawyers and deputies Maurício de Lacerda (1888-1959) and Vicente Piragibe (1879-1959), the doctor and parliamentarian from Rio de Janeiro Maurício de Medeiros (1885-1966) and the Gaucho federalist deputies Pedro Moacyr and Raphael Cabeda (1857-1922). Finally, among the conspirators were also the journalist José Georgino Avelino (1888-1959), editor of Rio-Jornal and son of the Potiguar publicist Pedro Avelino, and Caio Monteiro de Barros, a founding member of the Partido Socialista Radical in 1911, and in 1920 one of the lawyers - alongside Evaristo de Moraes and Jerônimo de Carvalho - of João Cândido and the others involved in the 1910 Sailors Revolt.⁵

Important working class sectors were mobilized, including stevedores and the workers of Light (the electricity company). Numerous preparatory meetings were held in various locations, such as Irajá, Penha, Morro da Pena, Jacarepaguá and Botafogo, in the boats of Companhia Cantareira, in Estação Madureira and in barracks. The conspirators also used the newsroom of A Época, of which Agripino Nazareth was editor-in-chief, his own house, in São Cristóvão, and the residence of Sebastião de Lacerda, a judge on the Federal Supreme Court (STF - Supremo Tribunal Federal) and father of Maurício de Lacerda, who lived in Vassouras.

Initially intended for 24 December 1915, the revolt had to be anticipated to 18 December, since news was received that generals and corps commanders were preparing military maneuvers, which created a suspicion among the leaders of the coup that the government had discovered the conspiracy. Agripino Nazareth defended the anticipation of the plan, advising the troops of the Vila Militar to head to the city at midnight of the intended day. Furthermore, each military fortress was to fire three salvos as the agreed signal to start the movement. At the same time the 56^th Rifle Battalion (Caçadores) was to march to Catete Palace and arrest the president of the Republic, while the 52^nd Rifle Battalion would go to the army GHQ to proclaim Maurício de Lacerda president of the Parliamentary Republic until the arrival of General Dantas Barreto. Next, the 3^rd Infantry Regiment was to take control of the Navy Arsenal and the Telegraphs. If there was any resistance in the old arsenal, it would be broken by the dispatch of other troops and its bombardment by the fortresses.

Finally, the military commands were to be handed over to sergeants Severino da Costa Villar, Octaviano José Cardoso, Arthur Leite de Castro and Celso Silva. Wenceslau Braz would be obliged to telegraph state governors telling them of his deposition and the proclamation of the Parliamentary Republic of Brazil. However, the conspiracy was discovered and suffocated before the intended actions could be put into practice, and the soldiers involved were expelled from the armed forces.⁶

The civilians who took part in the conspiracy seem to have continued to hold the same offices and carry out the same activities linked to political journalism as beforehand. So much so that in 1917, the agitated year of general strikes which exploded from the north to the south of Brazil, Agripino Nazareth allied himself with the libertarian journalists Adolpho Porto and Astrojildo Pereira (1890-1965), future founder of the PCB, the Bahian doctor, Fábio Luz (1864-1938), who moved from abolitionist and republican propaganda in his native land to anarchism in Rio, the writer Lima Barreto (1881-1922) and once again Deputy Maurício de Lacerda in the Carioca newspaper O Debate to defend the Russian Revolution from the slanders being published about it in the mainstream press.⁷

In November 1918, Agripino was involved in another conspiracy in Rio de Janeiro, joining with various libertarian leaders, such as Professor José Oiticica (1882-1957) and the journalist Astrojildo Pereira, as well as the Spaniard Manuel Campos, the printer Carlos Dias, the printer Álvaro Palmeira (1889-1992), José Elias da Silva and João da Costa Pimenta, with the purpose of creating a Workers' and Soldiers' Republic in Brazil. The so-called Anarchist Insurrection of 1918 counted on the support of textile workers, and metal and construction workers, who triggered a wave of strikes, but the movement had been infiltrated by Lieutenant Jorge Elias and was destroyed by governmental forces at its birth. The police made hundreds of arrests and deportations, as well as closing the Trade Union of Textile Workers, the General Union of Metal Workers and the General Civil Construction Union.⁸

Agripino Nazareth stated that due to "police incompetence," he remained in Rio de Janeiro, writing for the A.B.C. newspaper until January 1919, when he was pronunciado (indicted). Looking at the collection of this weekly publication it can be seen that he wrote at least ten articles, published under his own name, between 30 November 1918 and 8 February 1919.⁹

In this period when Agripino Nazareth appeared to have flirted with anarchism, other libertarian activists or sympathizers with the anarchist ideal collaborated with the same weekly publication, such as the journalist Astrojildo Pereira and the writer Lima Barreto, who published reports about his internment in Hospital Central at the end of November 1918 and satires on the corruption and ignorance of the Brazilian elites. Others who wrote for A.B.C. were very distant from anarchism, such as the lawyer and deputy Nicanor do Nascimento (1871-1948) and the diplomat-writer Manuel de Oliveira Lima (1867-1928), known for his opinions against Japanese immigration due to supposed Japanese racial inferiority, and for his Germanophilia and defense of Brazilian neutrality in the First World War. Oliveira Lima wrote at least four articles about the Russian Revolution.

After January or February 1919, to avoid being engulfed by the increased repression which followed the November 1918 uprising, Agripino took refuge in the countryside and afterwards in the capital of Espírito Santo using a false name. Following this he went to Salvador, willing he said to take exile in Europe if circumstances required. In the middle of 1919, in his native land Agripino described the events of November 1918 in Rio de Janeiro as a 'strike movement' and not as a failed insurrection. According to his version, the Carioca workers were holding a 'rally' in Campo de São Cristóvão when they were surprised by violent police action. The police had received orders from the police chief Aurelino Leal, known as Trepoff, to disperse the workers with bullets. In response the workers made "full use of their right to defense" against the repression undertaken against "the free demonstration of their ideas and the free struggle for their rights," counting on the "moral and material solidarity" of our character.¹⁰

Working class successes in Bahia

In Bahia Agripino Nazareth exercised a prominent leadership over the working class between 1919 and 1921. In June 1919 when he proclaimed himself a collectivist socialist,¹¹ Agripino led thousands of workers in the first general strike in Bahia. To a considerable extent, he victorious movements benefitted extent from the cycle of economic prosperity which began after the First World War, from the historic division between the political elites in Bahia during the First Republic, which reached its ague in the federal and state government succession of 1919, and from the strong trade union and political organization process among the working class in the 1910s. The general strike began on Monday 2 June, after a talk given by Agripino Nazareth the previous day in the offices of the Trade Union of Bricklayers, Carpenters and Other Classes (SPCDC). The stoppage started among construction workers, but within two days it had spread and reached all the workshops, manufacturers and factories, the port, urban, railway and marine transport, power mills, and the public lighting and the telephones of Salvador. Commerce was obliged to close, supposedly due to the threats of sacks exaggerated by the state government. A Central Strike Committee (Comitê Central de Greve - CCG) was created with the advice of Agripino, who also wrote and delivered to the government and employers a Memorial containing the reasons for the general strike and strikers' aims, which included the traditional demand for an eight hour working day, wage increases, the abolition of child labor, pay equality between men and women who exercised the same functions, and the right to strike and to unionize. Dozens of trade unions took part in the movement, most founded during the 1910s, though others were created during and after the general strike. As a result, on 9 June the Cotton Industrial Center, the organization of textile industries, the most important manufacturing sector at that time, capitulated and released a bulletin in which it stated that it had ceded to all of the demands of the thousands of workers employed in its factories. New agreements followed, so that on 10 June 1919 the city began to return to normal with the victory of the workers, and the subsequent the numeric expansion and the political strengthening of new worker leaders. In July and September 1919, new strikes with the same agenda broke out in the Recôncavo region and in the textile factories of the Bahian capital with the aim of extending and preserving the conquests of June.¹²

Agripino Nazareth was also the director of the first Congress of Bahian Workers, held between 14-20 July 1919, with 26 delegates from ten trade unions. The founding of the Federation of Bahian Workers (FTB) on 13 February 1920 was its most significant outcome. By July 1920 the FTB had already gained the adherence of 16 trade unions and more than 25,000 workers. Furthermore, Germinal magazine, edited by Agripino between March and May 1920, echoed the actions of the FTB among workers. Its columns were full of mentions of the victories the working class had achieved after the foundation of SPCDC and the general strike, with that entity being the vanguard of the working class. The Bahian proletariat appeared imbued with the new mentality and class consciousness, willing to fight for the foundation of new trade unions and to resist the exploitation of employers. Furthermore, the newspaper was helped by activists in other states, such as Adolpho Porto and Astrojildo Pereira, old acquaintances of Agripino from his time in Rio de Janeiro in the 1910s. These activists provided information about the workers' movement in other regions of the country, stimulating and encouraging the struggle of the Bahian workers. Finally, Germinal sought to analyze the battles of the Bahian working class at that time. Undoubtedly this is powerful evidence of the strength of socialists in the Bahian workers' movement. However, in September 1919, SPCDC, which had led the June 1919 general strike and which was the principal organization in the FTB, broke with it and with reformist trade unionism, adhering to revolutionary trade unionism, and began to publish the combative newspaper A Voz do Trabalhador, which circulated until the middle of December 1922 at least.¹³ Significantly, the weekly Bahian libertarian publication was homonymous with the one published by the Brazilian Workers' Confederation (Confederação Operária Brasileira - COB) in Rio de Janeiro between 1908-1915.¹⁴

However, the split on the left flank did not signify the disappearance of reformism in the molds of the Second International. In August 1920, Agripino founded the Bahian Socialist Party (Partido Socialista Baiano - PSB) which attracted solid working class support. The PSB even unsuccessfully ran Maurício de Lacerda for the Senate and Agripino Nazareth for the Federal Chamber of Deputies. The insertion of the PSB in the worker milieu can also be perceived by the penetration and the prestige which its members enjoyed in the most militant trade unions of the time. This was the case of José dos Santos Gomes, Guilherme Francisco Nery and José Domiense da Silva, founders and activists of SPCDC since 1919. Also deserving of mention is the Portuguese activist Annibal Lopes Pinho, who represented FTB and its 14 member unions at the Third Brazilian Workers Congress in Rio de Janeiro in April 1920. The head office of the PSB was set up in the Carpenters Trade Union, and its political program, relatively advanced for the time, included the following points: socialization of commerce, large industries and all the means of transport; establishment of a minimum wage; all municipal, state and federal workers to have equivalence with public employees; abolition of all indirect taxes and transformation of direct taxes into a progressive tax on any income above 6 contos de réis per annum; the right to vote for women and soldiers, and the reform of tenancy and eviction laws. Moreover motions of sympathy were approved with workers from all countries, and a motion of protest was approved against the government of France for its hostile posture in relation to revolutionary Russia.¹⁵

Worker agitation in Bahia suffered a setback in January 1921, after the failure of the strikes of textile workers in the Paraguaçu Factory, belonging to Companhia Progresso Industrial da Bahia, and of dockworkers. On 27 January 1921, using the argument that various dynamite bombs had been discovered spread throughout the city and that attempts to burn trams had been frustrated, the police unleashed a wave of repression against the workers' movement. News of the textile strike disappeared from the newspapers and the socialist leader Agripino Nazareth was arrested under the accusation that he had defied the authority of the police chief Pedro Gordilho, who sent him under strong police escort to the Casa de Correção (prison) where he was kept incommunicado. Following this the then socialist candidate for federal deputy was transported in an 'armored car' to the "leper hospital of São Lázaro," "where he remained for two days in an infected cubicle, without air or light, and with two sentries stuck to the door." The stevedores and stokers declared solidarity with the movement of the dockworkers and the textile workers. Some newspapers published reports that workers feared for the life of Agripino Nazareth in the custody of the police and planned to unleash a new general strike, unless the "workers' lawyer" was liberated. The carpenter José Domiense da Silva, General Secretary of the FTB, tried to get a hearing with the governor José Joaquim Seabra to try to convince him to release Agripino Nazareth, but Seabra ordered him arrested as well. At the same time the struggle between the dockworkers union and the Companhia das Docas was continuing, and the latter began to announce that it would hire scab labor to replace the workers who have gone on strike.

On 28 January 1921, in a clandestine manner and in perfect harmony with this moment of reflux for the workers' movement and the expansion of the repression by the state at the national level, Agripino Nazareth was deported by the Bahian police. Put on to the packet Manaus by the port police, it was intended to send him to Amazonas or Mato Grosso, with the police authorities in various states having been warned not to let him disembark in any other port. At the same time, using warehouse porters as scabs, the employers managed to weaken and defeat the dock workers, with the strike ending in failure.

Agripino Nazareth's route was altered and he landed in Rio de Janeiro, accusing Seabra of corruption and declaring that he would return to Bahia to run for election for federal deputy for the PSB. At the beginning of February 1921, the Bahian libertarian newspaper A Voz do Trabalhador announced that Agripino had said that he had asked for an order of habeas corpus from the Federal Supreme Court (STF), but we did not manage to find the result of this initiative.¹⁶

Conflicts between communists and socialists in the 1920s

Back in the capital of the Republic, Agripino Nazareth joined with figures such as Evaristo de Moraes, Nicanor do Nascimento, Maurício de Lacerda, Everardo Dias, Joaquim Pimenta and Afonso Schmidt to found in the middle of 1921 the Brazilian Clarté Group, the so-called International of Thought, created to defend the Russian Revolution from the slanders made against it in the mainstream press.¹⁷ In a letter dated March 1921, published in the weekly newspaper A.B.C., Agripino Nazareth had associated himself with another five activists and sent a declaration of political support from "Brazilian students and working class intellectuals to their French comrades." The Brazilian Clarté was born with the veto of Astrojildo Pereira, one of the most important intellectuals of the left at that time. After being invited to the enterprise by Luiz Palmeira, he refused the invitation and alleged that the Brazilian initiative was in breach of the statutes of the Paris based organization, which required prior authorization to found sections in a different country. Moreover, some of the founders of the "intended Brazilian Clarté" did not have "the moral and political suitability for this commitment." Among the members challenged in the pages of the weekly publication Hoje was the lawyer Nicanor do Nascimento, said to be 'a bourgeois politician' and an opportunist.¹⁸

The international connections of Brazilian socialists can also be seen in the contacts which Agripino Nazareth established, in the name of the Bahian Socialist Party, with Dr. Alfredo Spenetto, president of the Deliberative Council of Buenos Aires and "prestigious member of the Argentinean Socialist Party." In a meeting held in the Palace Hotel of Rio de Janeiro with the support of Rio-Jornal, Agripino declared to the Argentinean socialist leader and the member of his party Antonio Montecón, that the PSB was influenced by a "strong Marxist influence," while his comrade from the neighboring republic showed himself to be satisfied and sent greetings to the workers of Bahia. Questioned about the communist split in his party, Alfredo Spenettosaid he was one of those who believed that his party should affiliate itself to the Third International, but classified the attitude of the dissidents as "precipitated and counter-productive." He recognized the importance and the "beneficial influence" of the Russian Revolution, but considered that the international workers movement could not be subordinated to the tyranny "of twenty-one conditions from Moscow, incompatible with the current regimes in most European countries, and principally unobservable in South America," where there existed an extreme "bourgeois reaction" parallel to the efforts for "emancipation and at the cost of what we have been achieving."¹⁹

Until the beginning of the 1920s Agripino wrote a large number of articles for various periodicals, especially in Rio de Janeiro, collaborating without much tension with other militants and different currents of thought. This changed in the middle of the 1920s, in direct relation with the international conjuncture. On 1 May 1925, Agripino and Evaristo de Moraes founded a new Socialist Party, enjoying some influence on the working class in Bahia and the in Federal Capital, even running in the 1926 and 1927 elections. Although the PSB used the pages of Vanguarda to defend a socializing program and the recognition of the Soviet Union by Brazil, its leaders suffered harsh criticisms from Octavio Brandão and the PCB in the newspaper Voz Cosmopolita, organ of the Centro Cosmopolita, the trade union of employees in hotels, restaurants, cafes and bars in Rio de Janeiro.

On 14 December 1925, Agripino Nazareth published in the For the Proletarian World section in Vanguarda, a manifesto aimed at "workers in the tobacco industry in Bahia," through the intermediation of the activist Rufino José Gonçalves, in which he demanded the recognition of the coherence of his political trajectory. Agripino said that he was still the same militant of the socialist cause as before the Russian Revolution, which he had always defended, and that he fought for the rights of Bahian workers between 1919 and 1921.²⁰

Disputing space and influence over the working class, the Central Executive Commission of the Communist Party of Brazil (Partido Comunista do Brasil - PCB) published a note for the workers of Bahia, dated 15 December 1925 and republished in the newspaper Voz Cosmopolita on 1 January 1926, in which it recognized "the personal qualities and good intentions" of Agripino Nazareth, but stated that these did not have the "slightest importance," since what was in play was a "political question, objective." Having made the exceptions, the leaders of the PCB made harsh criticisms of Agripino Nazareth, the Brazilian Socialist Party (Partido Socialista Brasileiro - PSB) and the Vanguarda. The PSB was described as a "slipslop petite bourgeois party" and Vanguarda was labeled a "horseradish paper: red in the title, white in the text," i.e., linked to the bourgeoisie and to MacDonald, the "leader of the Second International (reformist socialist) and agent of imperialism." The long manifesto ended with the thesis that if Agripino wanted to serve the proletariat, he should follow another path, since the PSB, despite all the good intentions it might have, would only lead to treason again the proletariat.²¹

Agripino Nazareth's reply came in a series of articles entitled "Comic Opera Bolsheviks," published in Vanguarda. In the issue of 11 January 1926, he declared that he only sporadically acted as a lawyer and solely for those who could not pay, and that his connection with Vanguarda was that of a "modest intellectual workers and wage-earner," making with his professional labor "what was indispensible in order not to drown in the struggle for life." In his "Response to the Communist Party of Brazil," Agripino stated that his being a journalist in Vanguarda, as well as in the other organs of the press in which he had worked, never resulted in his renouncing his political convictions, an opinion shared by Astrojildo Pereira when he was an anarchist and his colleague in the newsroom of A Época. Agripino said that the fact that Vanguarda published articles by people with different social conditions and political and ideological outlooks demonstrated that its director and majority shareholder, Ozéas Motta, had been correct in being guided by liberalism and tolerance, accepting collaborations from anarchists, such as Fábio Luz, and socialists, such as himself. For Agripino, he had two objectives in working for Vanguarda: that of "making honest money" and "propaganda" for his "socialist ideas."²²

In a second article, published with the same title in Vanguarda on 18 January 1926, Agripino Nazareth responded to his adversaries in a much more forceful manner. According to this line of argument, the PCB was a party of 'comic opera communists' because its leaders were incapable of producing an analysis of the concrete reality of Brazil. Brazilian communists were ignorant of the material riches, the mentality of their people in general, and of the proletariat in particular. They were also ignorant of the 'social and political phenomenon' and the 'ethnic and moral factors' which shaped the Brazilian reality. This ignorance derived from a posture little accustomed to the adaption of Marxism brought from Russia to the objective reality of Brazil, as can be seen in this passage:

The Brazilian Bolshevik does not examine: he accepts, without studying; he does not reason: he blindly believes. Communism is the salvation and Lenin his prophet. It is not a philosophy, what they profess is a religion, which they serve with a Pharisaical zeal, not rarely prejudicial to the creed they claim to universalize. They want to apply in Brazil the Muscovite processes, without even asking if the facts there correspond exactly to those here, and if they have, in relation to what happens in other countries, the same conditions of relativity. And they want to conquer the world. They remind us of that neophyte conqueror of the Vienna opera, who used in his attempts on the fragile sex, not the methods suitable to the temperament, education and age of the desired object, but the prescriptions of a manual whose pages he flicks through at the critical moments, commonly coming out with true rubbish, which instead of helping destroys his plan of attack on the besieged citadel.

In this second article, in addition to defending the thesis that Brazil still did not possess the historic conditions necessary for unleashing a victorious social revolution, Agripino countered with equal vehemence the attempt of the communists to construct a direct association between him, the PSB and the leaders and socialist parties in Europe which had broken with the principle of proletarian internationalism by voting in favor of the release of war credit for the conflict which began in 1914. In his testimony, Agripino declared that he had been since the beginning opposed to the breaking of Brazilian neutrality in relation to the First World War. When President Nilo Peçanha showed signs of aligning with the allies against the central empires, Agripino wrote an article entitled "Serene Words" in the Carioca newspaper A.B.C., in which he highlighted the imperialist nature of the conflict.²³

Before Agripino Nazareth's second article entered the public domain, the PCB had given to the public a new document from the Central Executive Committee, entitled "Social-Confusionism," repeating the criticisms made previously of the leader of the PSB and of Vanguarda. The document was originally dated 12 January 1926, but its publication in the newspaper Voz Cosmopolita only occurred on 19 January 1926.²⁴

In the third article in the series, published in the 25 January 1926 issue of Vanguarda, Agripino Nazareth highlighted what he described as "exasperated fanaticism" of Brazilian communists, incapable of assimilating criticism of anyone. According to the Bahian socialist, the "immodesty of Brazilian communists" made them incapable of understanding that if Lenin came to Brazil at that moment, he would support a party with the characteristics of the Socialist Party, as combative as the PCB. Agripino refuted the thesis that only communists had supported the principle of the internationalist solidarity of workers in relation to the First World War. In reality, in the majority of countries the communist parties had been founded by people leaving the socialist parties. According to him there had been treason on the part of socialists like Albert Thomas, a "false legionnaire of socialism" who extended his "ambitious paw to the thirty pieces of silver from the French ministry of munitions." However, there were socialists such as Jean Jaurès, who opposed the war with the "veto of the proletariat" and was assassinated by a French nationalist, desiring a conflict with the Germans on 31 July 1914. Based on his own trajectory and that of his comrade Adolpho Porto, Agripino Nazareth observed that the Brazilian Socialist Party had been founded seven years after the war, but the socialists had already made emphatic declarations in the press against the entrance of Brazil into the conflagration.²⁵

Articles numbers 4, 5 and 6 of the series Comic Opera Communists were published by Vanguarda on 1, 8 and 22 February 1926. In these Agripino Nazareth reiterated the argument present in previous texts that the Russian Revolution was experiencing a moment of international isolation which was only denied by the PCB, but which was visible in the light of the failure of the revolutions in Germany and Hungary and in the large political and economic concession which the revolutionary government was making to capitalists internally and externally. The understanding which Agripino Nazareth had constructed about the question was that the Soviet government was being forced into a 'strategic retreat,' as the PCB itself had stated. However, he was indignant about what he considered as a profound contradiction on the part of the Brazilian asked Communists, namely the non-recognition of the same status for the PSB, whose practices were not seen as being derived from the harsh circumstances existing in Brazil, but as a simple betrayal of the workers' cause. Since the PCB had accused Agripino numerous times of becoming an enemy of the nation that had emerged under the leadership of Lenin, the Bahian socialist ratified his position in defense of the recognition of the Soviet Union and the reopening of relations between Brazil and the Soviet country. According to Agripino, this had been his position in the press and on the podium since the beginning, restated in the programs of the Bahian Socialist Party, founded by him in 1920, and the Brazilian Socialist Party, created with his participation in 1925.²⁶

The PCB continued the controversy in an article entitled "Geraldine Socialism," published in Voz Cosmopolita on 6 February 1926. In this text the Communists insisted that Agripino Nazareth and the PSB were serving a cause opposed to Lenin, the Russian Revolution, and the Soviet Union, benefitting Geraldo Rocha and his reformist socialism. The PCB accused Agripino of being personalist and a "petite-bourgeois individualist," incapable of adapting to "party discipline" or of distinguishing the more important from the lesser questions. This was "one of the reasons why he did not understand communism, where the individual had to subordinate themselves to the party." As a result of this was his sympathy for "anarchism, a theory whose social base is the same as socialism: the petite bourgeoisie." The argument raised by the communists was that the socialists had no unity of thought, which led to a lack of unity of action. This was the historic cause of the victory of the bourgeoisie over the working class, even at the international level, since at that time English bankers in a conspiracy with Russian monarchist forces were preparing military intervention against the Soviet Union. Also participating in this conspiracy were the International Yellow Union in Amsterdam, all the Second International, who had organized with the large banks against the Communist International, the International Red Union, and the Russia of the Soviets. This large anti-Communist international had correspondence in Brazil:

Nationally there is the same single front. The socialists Agripino and Evaristo de Moraes, the cooperativist Sarandy Raposo, the anarchists Fábio Luz, Edgard Leuenroth and Victor Saavedra, the anarcho-sindicalist Alfredo Ferreira, the organ of all governments O Paiz, the horseradish newspaper Vanguarda, the yellows Amaro de Araújo, Soutello and Luiz Oliveira, the fascists from the Southern Cross Legion, the petite bourgeoisie of the Partido da Mocidade (Youth Party), all in partnership with the café planters, have made a single multi-colored front against us, slandering us, point us to reaction, as recently Sarandy, O Paiz, and Evaristo did (at the end of an article of his in Correio da Manhã).

The Communists also rejected Agripino Nazareth's thesis about the ignorance of the PCB of the Brazilian reality and their incapability to adapt Marxism and communism to Brazil. In their reply, the Communists stated that these declarations were unfounded and borrowed from Oliveira Vianna, described by them as a "bourgeois sociologist." According to the communists, it was Agripino Nazareth who did not know the "communist literature of Brazil" and who had not produced any study of the "Brazilian reality." Moreover, they repeated the argument that sooner or later Agripino Nazareth would follow the same path of betrayal of the European socialists, since his socialism was based on "class collaboration," similar to that of his comrades in the Old World; on "trade union neutrality," "one of the bases of propaganda of the Mensheviks;" on "petite bourgeoisie pacifism;" and on "reconciliation between admiration for the Russian Revolution and collaboration with its enemies...". Finally, the communists tried to exploit differences that emerged between Brazilian socialists, stating that the repulsion Agripino Nazareth had for the French socialist Albert Thomas, seen by the former as a traitor and adventurer, was not justified, since Evaristo de Moraes, his "chief and master," was the Albert Thomas of Brazil, to whom the bourgeoisie could resort and who would receive their support if Brazil entered into war, fatally dragging with him Agripino and the Socialist Party.²⁷

In another long document entitled 0+0+0, dated 24 February 1926, but only published in Voz Cosmopolita on 1 March of that year, the Central Executive Commission of the PCB stated that the analysis made by Agripino Nazareth in Vanguarda was equivalent to zero, since he used what they said were the international agencies in the US press, i.e., the "most suspect sources, on sources where the bourgeois venom against Russia was most concentrated." The Brazilian communists questioned the honesty of the US mainstream press, accusing it of being formed of "miserable lackeys of internationalism imperialism, sold to US finance." For this reason they were incapable of telling the truth about the "grandiose Russian Revolution." As "the Brazilian journalist is in 98% of cases a doormat of café planters, the US journalist is almost always a sleuth of the Morgans and Rockefellers."

This argument constructed by the communists to discredit the international sources used by Agripino Nazareth in his analyses of the Russian Revolution, also served to establish connections with the Brazilian press. The idea was to associate the socialists of Brazil with an orchestrated campaign in the international sphere to disseminate false and/or distorted information about the Soviet Union and the communist movement in Europe. Vanguarda was classified as "an instrument of US imperialism in Brazil," and the ideals professed by Agripino Nazareth were labeled as "Socialism with the wages of finance!"²⁸

Agripino Nazareth's seventh article was published in Vanguarda on 8 March 1926. Resorting to irony, Agripino directed himself at Octavio Brandão as a subject who was a poet "even in prose that did not rhyme," when he was perpetrating the "exegesis of Marxism." However, 'Brandãozinho' should not carry "poetic license to the extreme in agreeing with nonsense." Agripino was referring to the PCB's description of the regime existing in the Soviet Union as a "dictatorship of the proletariat." In his opinion what the CEC (Central Executive Commission) of the PCB defended in the name of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was a fiction, a regime based on the "denial of the liberty of thought," on "submission to Bolshevik dogmas" and on "unconditional applause for the governmental acts of the Soviet." This conduct had led to the disappearance of "all fantasies of criticism of the current socio-political system," which, thus, signifies the return to "Tsarist autocracy." Rejecting the PCB's classification of PSB, as a "pick and mix" in which each professed a different form of socialism and no one understood anyone else, Agripino Nazareth, once again, resorted to the argument of Brazilian communists' inability to examine and propose concrete solutions to Brazil's problems:

Anyone who studies a philosophical doctrine or examines a political system, and does not add anything to it or restrict anything, and who, when they are led to the field of practice of the ideas professed, is shown to be incapable of suggesting their own method of actions is a mental eunuch. In Brazil, however, this class of people are adorned with the title of "first and only party of the proletariat" and feeds the pretention to organize future society.

Evidentially, men who have pride in themselves, although rooted in a political party grouping, are not required to abdicate the faculty of thinking freely. In the Brazilian Socialist Party, everyone is in agreement about the cardinal point of socialist ideology, and the less important questions, which stir in the same ideology and about which there can be divergences, do not have enough force to prevent us from finding a common slogan.²⁹

On 15 March 1926, Agripino Nazareth published his eight article in his dispute with the PCB, in which he reaffirmed the arguments about the retreat of the revolution in Russia and Europe, a fact which could be observed in the economic and political effects of NEP (the New Economic Policy), which disfigured the image of Russia as a socialist country. At the same time the CEC of the Communist Party published a long text entitled "Against the socialist chaos," which resumed and repeated in a systematic manner everything which had already been said about the PSB, the international communist movement, and the destinies of the Russian Revolution. Agripino Nazareth was now explicitly described as an ally of Chamberlain, "the caricature of Kautsky," "enemy of the Russian Revolution" and "agent of international imperialism."³⁰

"NEP" was the title which the communists gave to the article dated 25 February, but only published in Voz Cosmopolita on 1 April 1926. The CEC (Central Executive Commission) of the PCB explained that Agripino Nazareth had not understood the character of the two periods which Russia had gone through, limiting himself to reproducing the anti-communist campaign in the foreign press. In War Communism between 1917 and 1921, everything had been concentrated on "crushing the counter-revolution," with the country being disorganized from the industrial point of view. In 1921, following victory over the forces of internal and external reaction, the NEP was implemented with the aim of economically reorganizing Russia, giving it a solid base, "a strategic retreat within the rules of the Marxist-Leninist dialectic," to "advance afterwards," and not a renunciation of the construction of socialism, as argued by Agripino.³¹

Agripino Nazareth's ninth article in his polemic with the PCB was published on 22 March 1926, and was aimed at refuting what he considered to be a mistaken interpretation of the communists of the fact that the PSB was not exclusively composed of workers. For the Bahian socialist the existence of non-proletarian individuals within the Brazilian Socialist Party in itself did not signify incompatibility with its objectives of overcoming capitalist society. Agripino stated that no member of the PSB had a class position "incompatible with the idea of the emancipation of the proletariat." In relation to the presence of lawyers, journalists, doctors, engineers, and businessmen in the ranks of the PSB, Agripino noted that many workers could be found alongside these professionals and that in the PCB there were also many elements of the "petite-bourgeoisie" "guiding, leading and commanding."³²

The tenth and final part of the series "Comic Opera Bolsheviks" was printed in Vanguarda on 5 April 1926. Agripino Nazareth began the article stating that in five years of existence the PCB had not yet managed to convince the working class of the correctness of its position, and had done nothing other than to sow dissent, intrigue, and division in the workers' movement, weakening worker associations in regard to the bourgeoisie. The "actual balance of forces at the last anniversary of the PCB," when the latter had shown the existence of "a little more than half a million supporters," was a "confession of weakness."

Agripino also said that the lack of penetration by the PCB of worker milieus could not be explained and justified by the government repression which the communists had suffered, since the socialists had also been the victims since the beginning of the Republic of the same adversaries. He noted that in January 1921, when he had been a PSB candidate for federal deputy, he had been arbitrarily arrested, kept incommunicado for two days and expelled from Bahia. Furthermore, Agripino had been arrested twice more in July 1922 and July 1924, in the company of those who at now attacking him in the press in the name of the PCB. Finally, the Bahian socialist cited the cases of persecution suffered by members of the Brazilian Socialist Party. One of these had been Luiz Palmeira, second secretary of the PSB, who "had been detained for a long time." Another was Francisco Alexandre, its general secretary, who, "returning from a propaganda trip to São Paulo, was deprived of his liberty for 18 days." Many "documents of high importance for the life of the party" had been confiscated and never returned. In summary, Agripino argued that both organizations - the PCB and the PSB - and the members of the two parties, irrespective of their class origin, social condition or creed, were being victimized by the "state of siege" and its "measures of public security."³³

The ideological controversies and political disputes involving, on the one hand, Agripino Nazareth and the PSB, and, on the other, Octávio Brandão and the PCB lasted for years. When interviewed in 1977, the old communist militant demonstrated that a profoundly negative memory had crystallized about Agripino's actions in the 1920s. In 1978 Brandão published his memoires, in which he reproduced all the adjectives used against the socialists between 1925 and 1927.³⁴

Adversaries on the right flank

In the middle of the 1920s, Agripino Nazareth did not only have arguments with the communists, but also with other currents and leaders. In November 1925, for example, he used the pages of Vanguarda, of which he was one of the editors, to criticize Nino Bergna and the articulations which had led to the foundation of the Latin American Labor Federation (Federação Latino-Americana do Trabalho - FLAT). According to Agripino, all the confusion began when the Second International Congress of Mutual Assistance and Social insurance was held in Rio de Janeiro in July 1923, where the Chilean delegation had proposed the creation of this body. During the conclave, in which he had taken part as a "delegate of various proletarian association in Bahia," Agripino had opposed the idea of the founding of a National Labor Foundation (Federação Nacional do Trabalho - FNT). In his opinion the question should be the subject of the sole deliberation of the working classes of Brazil, and not the "joint decision of employers, the government and the proletariat." Having been victorious in his position that the Congress should abstain on the FNT in 1923, Agripino was surprised to read a communiqué from Bergna about the creation of FLAT in 1925, supposedly following the decision of the 1923 event. Agripino Nazareth made emphatic declarations that proletarian internationalism was a positive principal against the attacks on the bourgeoisie on workers, and that the latter should unite to defend their rights and demands, irrespective of their ideological divergences. However, the creation of FLAT obeyed other imperatives. According to Agripino, the aim of the entity was to promote the "division of the worldwide proletariat" and the "fight against the so-called extremists parts of the working class." Agripino went even further, saying that FLAT was a "yellow guard" meant to "play the game of Mussolinism and Riverism against the advanced current of the proletariat."

In fact, after 1928 Nino Bergna moved from mutualism to fascist propaganda and a fierce anti-communism, as Agripino had already denounced in 1925. In the interviews which he gave to A Noite newspaper, Bergna was presented as "as a strong organizer and natural adversary of Bolshevism," an Italian citizen based in South America who for 10 years had been in a campaign in Europe and America against the "expansion of the red creed." The counter-attack was made in the column "The Proletarian Morning," in A Manhã. A writer signing as I. R. made wide use of irony calling Nino Bergna a "travelling salesman of fascism" and messenger of Mussolini, whose government beat and tortured workers in cities and forced rural workers, through intimidation and violence, to accept the reduction of their wages in a ruined economy.³⁵

Final Considerations

On 1 January 1931, Agripino Nazareth became part of Getúlio Vargas' government, joining the recently created Ministry of Labor, Industry and Commerce (Ministério do Trabalho, Indústria e Comércio - MTIC), at the invitation of Lindolfo Collor, the first holder of the position. He started his career as a Technical Consultant in the National Department of Labor (Departamento Nacional do Trabalho - DNT) and retired as a Procurador do Trabalho (Labor Prosecutor). His support for the 1930 Revolution, however, was not something exceptional. Various social reformers from the First Republic, with different class and ethnic origins, from culturally diverse worlds, did the same, although some became disillusioned with the new government very early. These included the lawyers Evaristo de Moraes (1871-1939), Joaquim Pimenta (1886-1963), Maurício de Lacerda (1888-1959) and Deodato Maia, the literati and journalist Carlos Cavaco (1878-1961), and the colored lithographer Francisco Xavier da Costa (187?-1934).³⁶ The analysis of the historical reasons for this support, apparently contradictory with the militant past of these individuals, however, cannot be made here.

NOTES

Article received on 15 August 2012. Approved on 10 November 2012.

• ¹ Arquivo da Faculdade de Direito da USP. Prontuário n. 5266 Registro de Diploma e Histórico de Agripino Nazareth; A Província, Recife, 31 maio 1905, p.1; A Província, Recife, 1ş jun. 1905, p.1; 30 ago. 1905, p.1; 16 maio 1906, p.1; Jornal de Notícias, Salvador, 15 jun. 1919, p.3 e 5; NASCIMENTO, Luiz do. História da imprensa de Pernambuco (1821-1954), v.II. Recife: Imprensa Universitária - UFPE, 1966. p.174-236.
• ⁵ BATALHA, Claudio H. M. Dicionário do movimento operário: Rio de Janeiro do século XIX aos anos 1920, militantes e organizações. São Paulo: Fundação Perseu Abramo, 2009. p.32-33.
• Sobre a Revolta dos Marinheiros de 1910, cf. NASCIMENTO, Álvaro Pereira. Cidadania, cor e disciplina na Revolta dos Marinheiros de 1910 Rio de Janeiro: Mauad X; Faperj, 2008.
• ⁷ DULLES, John W. F. Anarquistas e comunistas no Brasil (1900-1935). 2.ed. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1977. p.63.
• ⁸ ADDOR, Carlos A. A insurreição anarquista no Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro: Dois Pontos, 1986.
• ¹² Sobre a atuação de Agripino Nazareth na Bahia entre 1919 e 1921, cf. CASTELLUCCI, Aldrin A. S. Industriais e operários baianos numa conjuntura de crise (1914-1921). Salvador: Fieb, 2004;
• _______. Flutuações econômicas, crise política e greve geral na Bahia da Primeira República. Revista Brasileira de História, São Paulo, v.25, n.50, p.131-166, 2005.
• ¹³ Para a distinção entre o sindicalismo revolucionário e o sindicalismo reformista, cf. BATALHA, Claudio H. M. Uma outra consciência de classe? O sindicalismo reformista na Primeira República. Ciências Sociais Hoje, São Paulo: Vértice; Anpocs, p.17-27, 1990;
• TOLEDO, Edilene T. Travessias revolucionárias: ideias e militantes sindicalistas em São Paulo e na Itália (1890-1945). Campinas (SP): Ed. Unicamp, 2004.
• ¹⁷ HALL, Michael; PINHEIRO, Paulo Sérgio. O grupo Clarté no Brasil: da Revolução nos espíritos ao Ministério do Trabalho. In: PRADO, Antonio Arnoni (Org.). Libertários no Brasil: memória, lutas, cultura. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1986. p.251-287.
• ³⁴ REGO, Otávio Brandão. Otávio Brandão (depoimento, 1977). Rio de Janeiro, CPDOC, 1993. 139p.
• dat. As referências à polêmica com Agripino Nazareth e o PSB estão nas páginas 81-89; BRANDÃO, Octavio. Combates e batalhas: memórias.São Paulo: Alfa-Omega, 1978. p.319, 324-329.
• ³⁶ Para a reconstituição das trajetórias de alguns desses personagens, cf. MENDONÇA, Joseli Maria Nunes. Evaristo de Moraes, Tribuno da República Campinas (SP): Ed. Unicamp, 2007;
• SCHMIDT, Benito Bisso. Em busca da terra da promissão: a história de dois líderes socialistas. Porto Alegre: Palmarinca, 2004.

1

Arquivo da Faculdade de Direito da USP.

Prontuário n. 5266. Registro de Diploma e Histórico de Agripino Nazareth;

A Província, Recife, 31 maio 1905, p.1;

A Província, Recife, 1º jun. 1905, p.1; 30 ago. 1905, p.1; 16 maio 1906, p.1;

Jornal de Notícias, Salvador, 15 jun. 1919, p.3 e 5; NASCIMENTO, Luiz do.

História da imprensa de Pernambuco (1821-1954), v.II. Recife: Imprensa Universitária - UFPE, 1966. p.174-236.

2

Diário Oficial da União, Rio de Janeiro, 28 out. 1894, seção 1, p.5; 13 mar. 1903, seção 1, p.1; 11 maio 1906, seção 1, p.4; 2 jul. 1909, seção 1, p.7; 12 ago. 1911, Seção 1, p.15; 23 mar. 1928, seção 1, p.49, e 16 fev. 1939, seção 1, p.75;

A Província, Recife, 4 fev. 1902, p.1; 2 fev. 1906, p.2;

Correio da Manhã, Rio de Janeiro, 24 dez. 1921, p.2;

A Época, Rio de Janeiro, 2 jan. 1915, p.1-2; 3 jan. 1915, p.2; 9 abr. 1915, p.2; 11 abr. 1915, p.2; 12 abr. 1915, p.1; 16 abr. 1915, p.1; 17 abr. 1915, p.2.

3

Jornal de Notícias, Salvador, 15 jun. 1919, p.3 e 5.

4

A Época, Rio de Janeiro, 16 out. 1912, p.1-2; 25 jan. 1913, p.2; 24 fev. 1914, p.1-2; 1º mar. 1914, p.6-7; 3 mar. 1914, p.1-3; 4 mar. 1914, p.1; 3 abr. 1914, p.1; 10 maio 1914, p.7; 20 out. 1914, p.3; 1º abr. 1915, p.2; 11 abr. 1915, p.4; 4 jun. 1915, p.5; 24 jun. 1915, p.2; 17 ago. 1915, p.3.

5

BATALHA, Claudio H. M.

Dicionário do movimento operário: Rio de Janeiro do século XIX aos anos 1920, militantes e organizações. São Paulo: Fundação Perseu Abramo, 2009. p.32-33. In relation to the 1910 Sailors Revolt, cf. NASCIMENTO, Álvaro Pereira.

Cidadania, cor e disciplina na Revolta dos Marinheiros de 1910. Rio de Janeiro: Mauad X; Faperj, 2008.

6

O Paiz, Rio de Janeiro, 8 abr. 1916, p.5; 23 nov. 1924, p.6; NORONHA, Abílio de.

Narrando a verdade: contribuição para a história da revolta em São Paulo. 3.ed. São Paulo: CMG, 1924. p.9-17. This author was, at the time of the facts narrated, a major-general, and had been president of the court martial of the sergeants.

7

DULLES, John W. F.

Anarquistas e comunistas no Brasil (1900-1935). 2.ed. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1977. p.63.

8

ADDOR, Carlos A.

A insurreição anarquista no Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Dois Pontos, 1986.

9

The

A.B.C. collection (1916-1934) was consulted in Cedem/Unesp. Agripino's articles are in the editions of: 30 nov. 1918, p.2; 7 dez. 1918, p.3; 14 dez. 1918, p.6; 28 dez. 1918, p.3; 4 jan. 1919, p.2; 11 jan. 1919, p.3; 18 jan. 1919, p.2; 23 jan. 1919, p.3; 1º fev. 1919, p.2-3; 8 fev. 1919, p.1-2.

10

Jornal de Notícias, Salvador, 15 jun. 1919, p.3 e 5;

A.B.C., Rio de Janeiro, 30 nov. 1918, p.2, and 18 jan. 1919, p.2.

11

Jornal de Notícias, Salvador, 13 jun. 1919, p.3.

12

In relation to Agripino Nazareth's activities in Bahia between 1919 and 1921, cf. CASTELLUCCI, Aldrin A. S.

Industriais e operários baianos numa conjuntura de crise (1914-1921). Salvador: Fieb, 2004; _______. Flutuações econômicas, crise política e greve geral na Bahia da Primeira República.

Revista Brasileira de História, São Paulo, v.25, n.50, p.131-166, 2005.

13

For the distinction between revolutionary and reformist trade unionism, cf. BATALHA, Claudio H. M. Uma outra consciência de classe? O sindicalismo reformista na Primeira República

. Ciências Sociais Hoje, São Paulo: Vértice; Anpocs, p.17-27, 1990; TOLEDO, Edilene T.

Travessias revolucionárias: ideias e militantes sindicalistas em São Paulo e na Itália (1890-1945). Campinas (SP): Ed. Unicamp, 2004.

14

The collections of

Germinal and

A Voz do Trabalhador were originally consulted in Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth (AEL/Unicamp), but they are also available in Cedem/Unesp.

15

A Tarde, Salvador, 24 e 27 ago. 1920, p.3.

16

A Manhã, Salvador, 27 jan. 1921, p.1;

A Província, Recife, 28 jan. 1921, p.1;

Vanguarda, Rio de Janeiro, 5 abr. 1926, p.1;

A Manhã, Salvador, 28 e 29 jan. 1921, p.1;

O Paiz, Rio de Janeiro, 30 jan. 1921, p.8;

Diário de Notícias, Salvador, 28 jan. 1921, p.1-2; 29 jan. 1921, p.1; 2 fev. 1921, p.1;

A Voz do Trabalhador, Salvador, ano I, n.18, 5 fev. 1921, p.3.

17

HALL, Michael; PINHEIRO, Paulo Sérgio. O grupo Clarté no Brasil: da Revolução nos espíritos ao Ministério do Trabalho. In: PRADO, Antonio Arnoni (Org.).

Libertários no Brasil: memória, lutas, cultura. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1986. p.251-287.

18

A.B.C., Rio de Janeiro, 2 abr. 1921, p.2;

Hoje, Rio de Janeiro, 15 set. 1921, p.15-16.

19

Rio-Jornal, Rio de Janeiro, 14 set. 1921, p.1;

Hoje, Rio de Janeiro, 6 out. 1921, p.15-16.

Rio-Jornal, Rio de Janeiro, 14 set. 1921, p.1.

20

Vanguarda, Rio de Janeiro, 14 dez. 1925, p.5.

21

Voz Cosmopolita, Rio de Janeiro, 1º jan. 1926, p.1-2.

22

Vanguarda, Rio de Janeiro, 11 jan. 1926, p.5.

23

Vanguarda, Rio de Janeiro, 18 jan. 1926, p.3.

24

Voz Cosmopolita, Rio de Janeiro, 19 jan. 1926, p.2-3.

25

Vanguarda, Rio de Janeiro, 25 jan. 1926, p.1.

26

Vanguarda, Rio de Janeiro, 1º fev. 1926, p.1;

Vanguarda, Rio de Janeiro, 8 fev. 1926, p.1;

Vanguarda, Rio de Janeiro, 22 fev. 1926, p.1.

27

Voz Cosmopolita, Rio de Janeiro, 6 fev. 1926, p.9-10.

28

Voz Cosmopolita, Rio de Janeiro, 1º mar. 1926, p.3.

29

Vanguarda, Rio de Janeiro, 8 mar. 1926, p.1.

30

Voz Cosmopolita, Rio de Janeiro, 15 mar. 1926, p.1-3.

31

Voz Cosmopolita, Rio de Janeiro, 1º abr. 1926, p.3.

32

Vanguarda, Rio de Janeiro, 22 mar. 1926, p.1.

33

Vanguarda, Rio de Janeiro, 5 abr. 1926, p.1.

34

REGO, Otávio Brandão.

Otávio Brandão (depoimento, 1977). Rio de Janeiro, CPDOC, 1993. 139p. dat. The references to the controversy with Agripino Nazareth and the PSB are on pages 81-89; BRANDÃO, Octavio

. Combates e batalhas: memórias

. São Paulo: Alfa-Omega, 1978. p.319, 324-329.

35

Vanguarda, Rio de Janeiro, 2 nov. 1925, p.5;

Correio da Manhã, Rio de Janeiro, 18 jul. 1923, p.2;

A Noite, Rio de Janeiro, 11 fev. 1922, p.1; 17 jul. 1923, p.3; 24 jul. 1923, p.1; 8 mar. 1928, p.1; 21 mar. 1928, p.1;

A Manhã, Rio de Janeiro, 23 mar. 1928, p.4; 17 jul. 1928, p.1 e 7.

36

For the recreation of the trajectories of some of these people, cf. MENDONÇA, Joseli Maria Nunes.

Evaristo de Moraes, Tribuno da República. Campinas (SP): Ed. Unicamp, 2007; SCHMIDT, Benito Bisso.

Em busca da terra da promissão: a história de dois líderes socialistas. Porto Alegre: Palmarinca, 2004.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  16 Jan 2013
• Date of issue
  Dec 2012

History

• Received
  15 Aug 2012
• Accepted
  10 Nov 2012