The Seed Was Planted

Until the 1960s, rural laborers and peasants composed the majority of Brazil's population and yet most scholars have downplayed their influence on the country's history. The Seed Was Planted, by contrast, argues that rural labor has been fundamental to the making of modern Brazil.

When the Brazilian military took power in 1964, anarchy in the countryside was one of the problems the conspirators used to justify ousting the civilian government. Cliff Welch examines this claim by narrating the history of rising rural worker activism in Sao Paulo, Brazil's most influential state.

Between a major revolt in 1924 and the 1964 coup d'etat, Sao Paulo rural workers gradually gained a place in Brazilian politics by seizing opportunities from ruling class initiatives designed to reform the agricultural economy. Welch shows how laws composed to incorporate rural workers in a controlled way became platforms for unexpected protest and political mobilization culminating in the 1963 Rural Laborer Statute (ETR). The unprecedented legitimacy the law brought the rural labor movement further spurred the agrarian mobilization cut short by the 1964 coup.

Drawing on rural worker letters, court records, news accounts, landlord observations, government studies, as well as personal anecdotes gathered in oral interviews, The Seed Was Planted offers a rich and engaging sense of how rural labor politics were structured and experienced during this crucial period of modern Brazilian history.

"Argues that rural land and labor activism extend back to 1920s, at least in Säao Paulo state. Details interaction of rural workers with Vargas state, the Partido Comunista Brasileiro, Catholic Church, and other actors, and workers' responses to repression after 1964. Important antidote to generally ahistorical analyses of contemporary Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

Examines the fundamental role of rural labor in the making of modern Brazil.

Until the 1960s, rural laborers and peasants composed the majority of Brazil's population and yet most scholars have downplayed their influence on the country's history. The Seed Was Planted, by contrast, argues that rural labor has been fundamental to the making of modern Brazil.

When the Brazilian military took power in 1964, anarchy in the countryside was one of the problems the conspirators used to justify ousting the civilian government. Cliff Welch examines this claim by narrating the history of rising rural worker activism in Sao Paulo, Brazil's most influential state.

Between a major revolt in 1924 and the 1964 coup d'etat, Sao Paulo rural workers gradually gained a place in Brazilian politics by seizing opportunities from ruling class initiatives designed to reform the agricultural economy. Welch shows how laws composed to incorporate rural workers in a controlled way became platforms for unexpected protest and political mobilization culminating in the 1963 Rural Laborer Statute (ETR). The unprecedented legitimacy the law brought the rural labor movement further spurred the agrarian mobilization cut short by the 1964 coup.

Drawing on rural worker letters, court records, news accounts, landlord observations, government studies, as well as personal anecdotes gathered in oral interviews, The Seed Was Planted offers a rich and engaging sense of how rural labor politics were structured and experienced during this crucial period of modern Brazilian history.

Booknews

Offers an examination of the development of Brazil's rural labor movement and its leaders in Sao Paulo, and especially in the state's northwestern agricultural zone. Strives to show the relationship between local and rural labor mobilization, state and national politics, and international political and economic pressures. Of primary importance is an analysis of the process of political incorporation experienced by rural workers during the period demarcated by the 1930 revolution and the golpe of 1964. Paper edition (unseen), $25. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Cliff Welch is Associate Professor of History and Coordinator of the Latin American Studies Program at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.