State and unions in the transformation of the Brazilian countryside, 1964-1979

Abstract

The account focuses on how the military's labor policy, as part of the agrarian project, led to the emergence of the union movement in the period from 1964 to 1979. The first section will sketch the failed populist attempt (1962-1964) and the first military attempt (1964-1967) to resolve the agrarian question. These efforts laid the legal groundwork for the unequivocal answer offered by the hard-line military after 1968. A detailed account will follow of the military's agrarian project and the role played by rural unions. The next section will show how the Generation of '68 built the union movement from within. The conclusion will compare the incorporation of rural labor with the initiatives that Getulio Vargas took regarding the urban working class in the 1930s and 1940s. This comparison will demonstrate the importance of the struggle between the centralizing national state and regional and local political elites in the development of labor policy and the union movement.