Anarchism was an influential contributor to the social politics of the First Brazilian Republic. During the epoch of mass migrations of European labourers at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, anarchist ideas started to spread, particularly amongst the country’s labour movement. Along with the labour migrants, many Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and German political exiles arrived, many holding anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist ideas. Some did not come as exiles but rather as a type of political entrepreneur, including Giovanni Rossi's anarchist commune, the Cecília Colony, which lasted few years but at one point consisted of 200 individuals.
Workers raise black flags during the São Paulo General Strike of 1917
Giovanni Rossi (right) and other Italian anarchists who embarked in Brazil to form the Cecília Colony
Delegates of the First Brazilian Workers' Congress, held in April 1906, gathered at Centro Galego in Rio de Janeiro.
Seal of Brazilian Workers' Confederation
The First Brazilian Republic, also referred to as the Old Republic, officially the Republic of the United States of Brazil, refers to the period of Brazilian history from 1889 to 1930. The Old Republic began with the deposition of Emperor Pedro II in 1889, and ended with the Brazilian Revolution of 1930 that installed Getúlio Vargas as a new president. During the First Brazilian Republic, Brazil was dominated by a form of machine politics known as coronelism, in which the political and economic spheres were dominated by large landholders. The most powerful of such landholders were the coffee industry of São Paulo and the dairy industry of Minas Gerais. Because of the power of these two industries, the Old Republic's political system has been described as "milk coffee politics."
The Proclamation of the Republic, by Benedito Calixto.
President Venceslau Brás declares war on the Central Powers, October 1917.
Constitution of the United States of Brazil, 1891. National Archives of Brazil.
President Artur Bernardes (1922–1926) and ministers of state, 1922. National Archives of Brazil.