Clio: Revista de Pesquisa Histórica (Dec 2008)
A "PENOSA WALK": The extension of labor law to the sugarcane zone of Pernambuco
Abstract
Rural sugar cane workers in Pernambuco count among the first such wage earners to use the Rural Worker Statute, a law promulgated in 1963, to strengthen their legal rights as a labor force. Large social mobilizations, involving organizations of rural workers, allowed them to enforce those rights. Considered a milestone in social history, this new legal status is presented in the historiography as having decisive importance in the expulsion of former resident workers from the plantations, characterized as the “proletarization” of the labor force. Sugar cane cutters have distinctive opinions and their own ideas of periodization, placing their struggle in the broader context of the Brazilian legal framework of working relationships. The present article brings some precise data from the first legal procedures immediately after the promulgation of the statute, demonstrating how these new rights were claimed in court in three tribunals of the sugar cane area of Pernambuco.
