Revolution of the Ganhadores
Revolution of the Ganhadores | |||
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1857 African porters' strike Part of Slavery in Brazil | |||
Date | 1–13 June 1857 (1 week and 5 days) | ||
Location | |||
Caused by | Passage of a city ordinance that affected how porters operate in Salvador | ||
Goals | Repeal of the ordinance | ||
Resulted in | Partial victory for the strikers; city ordinance repealed and replaced with new one | ||
Parties | |||
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The Revolution of the Ganhadores, also known as the 1857 African porters' strike, was a
During the 1800s, ganhadores were crucial to the transportation of goods through Salvador. The trade was dominated by both enslaved and free people of African descent who worked together in self-governing groups known as cantos. While the ganhadores were given a great deal of freedom to move through the city, fears of a slave revolt, in the vein of the
The strike effectively shut down transportation inside the city. Local newspapers reported on the strike with front-page stories and noted the impact that the action was having on the local economy. Within days, the president of the province, João Lins Cansanção, Viscount of Sinimbu, ordered the city council to rescind the fee requirement from the law. However, the strike continued, and within a week, the city council announced that they were repealing the law, replacing it with a new one. This new law still required ganhadores to register and wear identification tags around their necks, but it removed the registration fee and changed the rules regarding freedmen so that they no longer had to have a guarantor, but instead just a "certificate of guarantee" from an authority or a respectable citizen. With these changes, the strike continued, but more ganhadores registered and returned to work, and by 13 June, the Jornal da Bahia newspaper reported that the strike had effectively ended.
According to Brazilian historian João José Reis, the strike was the first
Background
Urban slavery in Salvador
In 1857,
Ganhadores
Many black people in Salvador worked as laborers known as ganhadores ('earners').[6] These ganhadores worked as porters, transporting goods, cargo, and people throughout the city.[7] Transportation in the city was largely dependent on these ganhadores, as other forms of transportation were either unavailable or economically unfeasible for most merchants.[8] At the time, it was a profession held entirely by black people, with no white people or pardo Brazilians (people of mixed race or ethnicity) working in that field.[7] During an 1847 visit to Salvador, Alexandre, Baron Forth-Rouen des Mallets of France, wrote that black people constituted "the majority of the Bahia's population" and were "the only ones to be seen in the streets, like beasts employed to carry all kinds of burdens, and which circulate laden with heavy loads".[7] A similar observation was made by German explorer Robert Christian Avé-Lallemant during an 1858 stay in Salvador, where he said, "Everything that runs, shouts, works, everything that transports and carries is black".[7] About 30 percent of the Nagos slaves in Salvador worked exclusively as ganhadores, and a majority worked either full-time or part-time as such.[9] The ganhadores of Salvador organized themselves into work groups known as cantos,[note 2] with each canto covering a particular area of the city.[11] These cantos also functioned as important public spaces for Africans in Salvador, as they served as gathering places where people could interact, buy and sell goods, and engage in religious practices.[12] Each canto was led by an individual known as the capitão-do-canto ('captain of the canto'), who was selected from among the ganhadores of the canto and could be either freedmen or slaves.[13]
Malê revolt and its aftermath
Between 1807 and 1835, slaves in Bahia staged over 20
1857 city ordinance
Despite the failure of Law 14, Brazilian authorities continued to try to exert control over the ganhadores over the decades that followed.
Course of the strike
The blacks have hidden themselves; and if the masters do not intervene, ordering them to obey the Law, this calamity will continue because, according to what we have heard, they are so disposed.
Coverage of the strike in the Jornal da Bahia, 2 June 1857[27]
The
With the financial portion of the ordinance repealed, the ganhadores continued to strike over the regulations found in the law,[29] specifically the provision that they needed to wear metal identification tags.[30] On 2 June, the Jornal reported that there had been some movement of goods from the customs house, but that overall transportation was near-nonexistent.[29] By the third day, however, some slaves began to defect and return to work.[30] Many had had their tags acquired for them by their owners and faced retribution from their owners for continuing to strike.[31] According to archives kept by the city council, there were 40 registrations made on 4 June, after owners were made aware that they would not have to pay the fee, compared to just three registrations that had been made prior to that date.[32] The Jornal reported that some slaves who wore their tags in public were attacked with stones by strikers, and others chose to take off their tags and resume striking after pressure from other Africans.[32] Despite these incidents, solidarity remained relatively strong among the strikers and the supporting community, with evidence that some ganhadeiras allowed the strikers to purchase food on credit.[32] On 5 June, the Jornal called the strike a "dangerous crisis, a revolution" led by "new revolutionaries", labeling it the "revolution of ganhadores".[33] Many white Brazilians in the city were alarmed at the impact that the strike was having and were fearful of an all-out slave rebellion.[33]
On 8 June, some ganhadores began to return to work without wearing their identification tags.[34] This number continued to increase in the days that followed.[32] On 9 June, the city council voted to repeal the ordinance and replaced it with a new one that did away entirely with the tax.[34] Additionally, freedmen were no longer required to have guarantors, but instead only had to have a "certificate of guarantee" from an official or reputable citizen.[34] However, the new law still required all ganhadores to wear their tags in public.[34] Following this new law, many freedmen began to collect certificates of guarantee and register with the city government, and by 12 June, many ganhadores had returned to work, wearing their tags.[34] However, a significant number returned to work without tags, either as a form of continued protest or because the city government had run out of tags.[34] The following day, the Jornal reported that commerce was resuming to pre-strike levels, with the strike effectively over.[34]
Aftermath
The strike had a large short-term impact on Salvador's and economy and history, as it had effectively shut down transportation within the city for a week.
Notes
- ^ Estimates vary widely for the 1857 population of Salvador. Brazilian historians Ana Amélia Nascimento and Kátia de Queirós Mattoso estimated that the city had a population of 58,498 and 89,260, respectively. The Jornal da Bahia newspaper gave a contemporary estimate of between 140,000 and 150,000, though historian João José Reis states that this may be an exaggerated estimate.[2]
- ^ The word canto in this context has a double meaning, as it can be translated as either 'corner' or 'song'.[9] The translation as corner refers to streetcorners, where many ganhadores would gather for work.[10] The translation as song refers to the work songs that the ganhadores often sang.[10]
- ^ A 1997 article by João José Reis in the Journal of Latin American Studies does not give an exact date, but states that it had occurred "three months" before 1 June 1857.[6]
References
- ^ a b c Reis 1997, p. 358.
- ^ a b c Reis 1997, p. 357.
- ^ a b Reis 1997, pp. 357–358.
- ^ a b c Reis 1997, p. 359.
- ^ Reis 1997, pp. 359–360.
- ^ a b c Reis 1997, pp. 355–356.
- ^ a b c d e Reis 1997, p. 355.
- ^ a b c d Reis 1997, p. 380.
- ^ a b Reis 1997, p. 360.
- ^ a b Reis 1997, p. 366.
- ^ Reis 1997, p. 365.
- ^ Reis 1997, pp. 366–367.
- ^ Reis 1997, p. 368.
- ^ Graden 2005, p. 130.
- ^ Reis 1997, p. 361.
- ^ a b Reis 1997, p. 372.
- ^ a b Reis 1997, pp. 372–373.
- ^ Reis 1997, pp. 373–374.
- ^ a b Reis 1997, p. 373.
- ^ Reis 1997, p. 374.
- ^ Reis 1997, pp. 374–375.
- ^ a b Reis 1997, p. 377.
- ^ a b Reis 1997, pp. 375–377.
- ^ Reis 1997, pp. 378–379.
- ^ a b c d e f Reis 1997, p. 356.
- ^ a b c Reis 1997, p. 381.
- ^ a b c d Reis 1997, p. 379.
- ^ a b Reis 1997, p. 382.
- ^ a b Reis 1997, p. 383.
- ^ a b Reis 1997, p. 384.
- ^ Reis 1997, pp. 384–385.
- ^ a b c d Reis 1997, p. 385.
- ^ a b Reis 1997, p. 386.
- ^ a b c d e f g Reis 1997, p. 387.
- ^ a b c Reis 1997, p. 390.
- ^ a b Reis 1997, p. 391.
- ^ a b Reis 2005, p. 144.
- ^ Reis 2005, pp. 141–142.
Sources
- Graden, Dale T. (2005). "African Responses to the End of the International Slave Trade and Abolitionist Initiatives in Bahia, Brazil, 1850–1865". In Curto, José C.; Soulodre-La France, Renée (eds.). Africa and the Americas: Interconnections During the Slave Trade. Translated by Gledhill, H. Sabrina. Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press. pp. 127–140. ISBN 978-1-59221-271-2.
- Reis, João José (May 1997). "'The Revolution of the Ganhadores': Urban Labour, Ethnicity and the African Strike of 1857 in Bahia, Brazil". S2CID 55955013.
- Reis, João José (2005). "Street Labor in Bahia on the Eve of the Abolition of Slavery". In Curto, José C.; Soulodre-La France, Renée (eds.). Africa and the Americas: Interconnections During the Slave Trade. Translated by Gledhill, H. Sabrina. Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press. pp. 141–172. ISBN 978-1-59221-271-2.
Further reading
- Bartz, Frederico Duarte (2009). "Partido Communista do Brazil (1919): lutas, divergências e esquecimentos". Revista Aedos (in Portuguese). 2 (4). ISSN 1984-5634.
- Dias, Everardo. História das Lutas Sociais no Brasil. São Paulo: Alfa-Omega, 1977.
- Flores, Rafael (25 November 2022). "Trabalhadores negros da primeira greve do Brasil são inocentados em Júri Simulado da Defensoria" [Black workers of the first strike in Brazil are acquitted in Simulated Jury of the Ombudsman]. Electronic Official Gazette of the Public Defender's Office of the State of Bahia (in Brazilian Portuguese). Archived from the original on 23 June 2023. Retrieved 27 July 2023.
- Marasciulo, Marilia (5 August 2020). "Entregadores do século 19 paralisaram Salvador na primeira greve do Brasil" [19th-century delivery men paralyzed Salvador in Brazil's first strike]. Universo Online (in Brazilian Portuguese). Archived from the original on 22 June 2023. Retrieved 27 July 2023.
- Maués, Flamarion (2020). "Edição, política e ditadura: dois livros de oposição da Editora Alfa-Omega". História (São Paulo). 39. ISSN 1980-4369.
- Reis, João José (2019). Ganhadores: A greve negra de 1857 na Bahia (in Portuguese). São Paulo: OCLC 1122742402.
- Reis, João José (5 March 2020). ""When the Africans Hid Themselves": The 1857 Strike in Bahia". Princeton University Media Central. With Isadora Moura Mota. Archived from the original on 28 July 2021. Retrieved 25 July 2022.