“Antes que o mal cresça, diz o velho adágio, convèm suprimi-lo”: organizações dos trabalhadores rurais e repressão no interior paulista (1961-1964)

Abstract

This text aims to analyze the struggle of rural workers for better living and working conditions, as well as the actions to repress social movements in the interior of São Paulo during the 1964 coup. We investigated the process of building unions in small cities, addressing the understandings of Palmital/SP and the actions of people included in a union network that interconnected the Middle Paranapanema region, in the division between the states of São Paulo and Paraná. Through the actions of subjects who worked during the period, we seek to reflect on the resistance of the rural movement and the oppression and coercion promoted by speeches, imaginaries and actions, in addition to their implications for the maintenance of inequalities. The concept of social networks will be used as a methodology inserted in microhistory, as the mapping of relationships can reveal guiding threads for the actions of rural workers and repressive agents, connecting biographical aspects to the fabrics of sociability. Finally, part of our trajectory will understand the impact of the coup and persecution on the policy that was being built and on the perpetuation of corporatism by local elites. The sources used include documents from the Revealed Memories Database, the Brazil: Never Again Project, the collection of the Center for Documentation and Historical Research at the State University of Londrina, the Public Archive of the State of São Paulo and the Public Archive of the State of Paraná.