The labour movement in the countryside of São Paulo: an analysis of the general strikes of 1917 and 1919 in Piracicaba

Abstract

The second decade of the twentieth century was marked by two major general worker strikes, respectively in the years 1917 and 1919. Workers in the city of São Paulo played an important role in the history of the proletarian movement of that period and were the first to cross their arms in the search for profound social reforms that would improve or even radically transform the living conditions of the country’s working class; influencing militants and workers indifferent municipalities in the interior of the state and even in other federal units in Brazil. The stoppages, however, took on specific shapes in each of the cities taken by the working class. The 1917 and 1919 workers’ strikes in Piracicaba maintained similarities with the wall movements of the São Paulo capital, but they were also marked by peculiarities that may help us to understand the complex performance of workers in small and medium-sized Brazilian cities during the First Republic. This article intends to analyze these two important events in the municipality, comparing them with the mobilizations verified in the capital, pointing out the regional connections and singularities.

Keywords

• workers' strike
• piracicaba
• first republic