The Liberals and labour

Introduction

Of the Latin American republics, Bolivia's working class is one of the most indigenous in its composition. Foreign investment was confined to the mining industry and the railways, hence the demand for manual labour was easily met from within the country. The Bolivian proletariat has always been recruited from two main sources: the peasantry, who live in conditions of extreme poverty and who have progressively been displaced from the best lands, and the impoverished sector of the petty bourgeoisie. This second group, especially the artisans among them, have experienced a process of economic decline which has been much too rapid to be offset by Bolivia's industrial development, and our factories have been insufficient to absorb all the sectors of the population displaced from other economic activities. The growth of industry in the main cities was initially accompanied by the proletarianisation of women and children, so the budding labour organisations added to their programmes demands for special treatment for these sectors of the working class until gradually the number of women and children in mining work was reduced. The rhythm of proletarianisation in Bolivia has been slow compared with other countries, and for this reason it has been unnecessary to resort to immigration as a source of working class recruitment. The dispossessed who cannot find employment in industry live in ever-increasing poverty.

The Catavi massacre

Conditions in the mines

In order to present objective data on the health and industrial safety conditions which prevailed in the mines at this time, we have selected as an example the Catavi mining company, because it was the largest and best attended. Towards the end of 1948 Dr Guillermo Guerra of the Department of Health and Industrial Safety of the Workers' Insurance and Savings Fund made a study of silicosis and tuberculosis in the Catavi district. Among workers in the interior of the mine he found that the ‘incidence of the disease is very high. 97.84% of the cases had the disease, while only 2.16% were completely free of it’. As an explanatory factor, he mentioned the large numbers of peasants who went to work in the mines. Before moving to the mines the peasant's isolated life, based on small villages with few inhabitants, generally protected him from infection. But this changed with the transition from rural life to large centres and work underground. ‘It is the peasants that must be regarded as the principal factor in the spread of tuberculosis. Over time, as a result of their migrations, and in particular the frequency of migration, they have brought about increasingly higher indices of infection, which are continuing to rise.’

The geological composition of the rocks flanking the principal mineral veins in the Siglo XX mine contains loose silica (Si.O2) in proportions ranging from 23% to 70% and this makes work there extremely dangerous.

The first strikes

President Bautista Saavedra, 1920–25

‘The year 1920 marked a crisis in Bolivian politics. The Liberals… were ousted in an almost bloodless revolution in July 1920 by the Republicans under the leadership of Bautista Saavedra.’ In power Saavedra repeated the bitter experience of Belzu. Like Belzu he found himself obliged to rely on the artisans for support, and like Belzu he was generous to his political enemies, offering them ministries and allowing exiles to return, but they responded only with contempt and intransigent opposition.

Saavedra deserves some credit for his efforts to draw up a coherent body of social legislation in an attempt to catch up with the achievements of economically more advanced societies, and for his willingness to make the government more responsive to the growing demands of the underprivileged sectors of society. His government introduced compensation for industrial accidents, a compulsory savings-scheme and an improved strike law, and set up the Institute of Social Reform. But it would be wrong to think that Saavedra adopted these laws simply because they coincided with some of his own personal theories. In fact, as this history is intended to show, the introduction of these reforms must be seen as a response to the campaigns mounted by the labour movement.

The workers had pinned their hopes for change on the various political upheavals which affected the country, and they had given enthusiastic support to successive governments in the hope of being granted political freedom and some measure of economic well-being.

Up to the Constitution of 1824

As has already been pointed out, during Brazil's colonial period Portuguese law imperfectly demarcated the prerogatives of various functionaries, showing no concern – as was generally the case at that time – to separate functions according to their nature. Hence, an accumulation of administrative, police and jurisdictional functions, in the hands of the same authorities, related to each other in a hierarchical system which was not always rigorously maintained. The confusion between judicial and police functions persisted for a long time.

From the point of view which interests us here, we must mention in the first place the ordinary judges and the outside (visiting) judges who had police and juridical functions as well as administrative ones. There were also in some places special judges for orphans and criminal judges. The chambers, for their part, retained certain juridical functions although much reduced by the Phillipine Ordinances.

Under the judges already mentioned were to be found the inspectors of weights and measures and the parish judges [juizes de vintena]. The inspectors, apart from infringements of the council's bye-laws, also presided in certain cases of royal law relating to works or buildings, and imposed penalties, there being a right of appeal to the judges.

The parish judges, also known as pedestrian judges, with a small court, presided in settlements remote from the towns or the cities; they had no jurisdiction in criminal matters but they could arrest someone in flagrante, or by means of a writ, or through a formal accusation, presenting the detainee to the competent judge.

Since its first appearance in Brazil in 1949, Victor Nunes Leal's Coronetismo, Enxada e Voto, here entitled Coronelismo: The municipality and representative government in Brazil, has come to be recognised as a classic analysis of the system that emerges from ‘the superimposition of structural forms evolved through the representative process on an inadequate social and economic structure’.

The text is here published without any substantial change or addition, according to the author's wish. His insights and approach remain as suggestive as when they first appeared; as Barbosa Lima Sobrinho pointed out in the preface to the second Brazilian edition, the work is not only the analysis of a structure, but the record of that structure and of the arguments about it at a certain time, a record important in itself.

Its place in the development of political analysis in Brazil is set out in Alberto Venancio Filho's introduction: ‘a divide in the history of political science in Brazil … the first landmark of the study of politics in our universities’. The work is everywhere recognised as an essential text for the student of that country.

It is also an essential text for the student of caciquismo in the hispanic and mediterranean world. Dr Nunes Leal's material is the history of Brazil, the laws of Brazil and the Brazil of 1949, but his model investigation provides guidance and stimulus to all those interested in that area where conventional political science and the study of the local community by sociologist or anthropologist so often fail: the nexus between superior government and locality, the boundaries of private and public power and their interdependence, the imperfections and constraints of democracy at its not-very-fertile root, whether in Brazil or elsewhere.

Municipal finances in the colonial period

The study of municipal finance in the colonial period has no great relevance to this work, but a few details are called for. Generally, local revenue was very scant: the Crown was not sufficiently modest in fiscal matters to leave greater tax opportunities in the chambers, neither did the economic system of slave-owning latifundia favour the enrichment of the district exchequer, since the landowners had to levy taxes on themselves. On the other hand, the rudimentary nature of urban settlement, and the means of communication existing at that time, could do little to convince people of the need for a huge municipal budget.

‘Municipal taxes were levied’, Caio Prado Júnior informs us, ‘on meat on the hoof, carcasses, a tax on the scales in which all basic foodstuffs were weighed, a tax for the public cellar (or market). There were, too, checks on weights and measures, the return from fines imposed for the infringement of municipal laws, and finally the letting of “little shops” (casinhas) – in some places, Bahia for instance, they were called cabins (cabanas) – where essential products were sold.’ Also contributing to the revenue of the chambers was the granting of patents and privileges, concessions to sell aguardente, tax on the place of manufacture, tax for transport to the chamber's boat, navigation tax, privilege of priority in transport, special levies (tributes known as fintas) for specific projects like bridges, roads, public buildings, wells for common use, etc.

It is a happy initiative to produce an English version of Victor Nunes Leal's book. It appeared in 1948 as a thesis presented in the competition for the chair in politics in the National Faculty of Philosophy in the University of Brazil, under the title of The Municipality and the Representative Regime in Brazil – A Contribution to the Study of Coronelismo, and was made known to the public under the title of Coronelismo, Enxada e Voto. In Brazil, the edition rapidly went out of print, and today it is a bibliographical rarity avidly sought after in the second-hand bookshops. Perhaps its publication in English will also make it easier for Brazilian students to get to know this fundamental work on the political institutions of their country, one that marks a divide in the history of political science in Brazil, being the first landmark in the study of politics in our universities.

These remarks are not lightly made, but correspond to the strictest truth. Before that date, studies in political science in Brazil were carried out by the self-taught amateur. Some had genius, as did Tavares Bastos, Alberto Torres and Oliveira Viana, but all suffered nonetheless from a lack of systematic culture in this field and from little contact in the university with foreign literature and the foreign masters. And coming as nearly all of them did from the faculties of law, their works ran parallel to those in public law, such as Pedro Lessa's O Poder Judiciário, or Anibal Freire's O Poder Executivo na República Brasileira.

Electoral legislation until the end of the Empire

An examination of Brazilian electoral legislation is very important for the study of coronelismo. Some indications have already been given with reference to municipal elections, but they are not enough.

The first electoral decree of Dom João VI was that of 7 March 1821, which ordered that the election of deputies to the Portuguese Côrtes be governed by the relevant rules laid down in the Spanish Constitution. As the system was a complicated one – indirect suffrage in four stages – there quickly followed the circular of 23 March, authorising the captains-general and the governors of the captainships to make the necessary modifications. New instructions of 19 June 1822 regulated the election of deputies to our first Constituent Assembly in two stages, by means of indirect suffrage.

The same system, with a progressive computation from the first to the second stage, was welcomed in the draft to the Constitution, which was discussed and voted upon in that abortive congress and in the Constitution confirmed by Dom Pedro.

The first elections which took place for senators and deputies, were regulated by instructions handed down with the decree of 26 March 1824. In order to proceed with the elections of the first stage, electoral boards were set up, composed of the outside judge (or the ordinary one, or someone acting on their behalf), the parish priest, two secretaries and two examiners.

Evaluation of coronelismo: its consequences. Signs of crisis in the system. Perspectives.

On the basis of the preceding observations, we are already able to summarise in a confident fashion the principal characteristics of coronelismo, whose apparent simplicity thinly disguises an underlying complexity.

Although its consequences are felt all through the country's political life, coronelismo operates in the limited field of local government. Its habitat is the municipalities of the interior, that is to say the rural or predominantly rural municipalities; its strength is in inverse proportion to the development of urban activities like commerce or industry. Consequently, isolation is an important factor in producing and maintaining this phenomenon.

If we take isolation to mean the absence or sparse representation of public power, coronelismo can immediately be seen as a form of incursion by private authority into the political domain. Hence the temptation to consider it merely as a legacy of survival from the colonial period, when manifestations of the hypertrophy of private power were frequent, disputing prerogatives which should properly belong to institutional authority. It would be wrong, however, to identify the patriarchalism of colonial times with coronelismo, which was at its most powerful during the First Republic. It would also be out of the question to give this name to the powerful influence which large economic groups have exercised over the state in modern times.

Quantitative concept

It is an extremely difficult task to determine exactly what, within a good administrative structure, should be municipal prerogatives. Observations of a very general nature shed little light on the subject. When one says, for example, that the municipality should assume functions of a local nature or those which affect its own particular interests, there still remains the problem of defining what are these particularly local functions and interests. The difficulty increases when one observes that certain matters which formerly concerned the life of only one municipality may now be the concern of several, or of a whole state, or even the whole country. This variation in time of the territorial area affected by a large number of administrative problems, makes the idea of ‘the municipality's particular interest’ or ‘local interest’ a very relative one, and makes it more difficult to find a solution based on general principles.

For the rest, it is not the intention of this work to discuss what would or would not be an ideal type of municipal authority, but simply to seek to understand certain aspects of municipal power as we have known it in reality. In this sense the most important thing is to demonstrate how the municipality's sphere of influence has been widened or restricted, comparing the various phases one with the other and not with some model erected a priori as a definitive standard of measurement.

Introductory remarks

Anyone who wishes to understand the nature of political life in rural Brazil must, first of all, take into account the notorious phenomenon of coronelismo. It is not a simple phenomenon, involving, as it does, a number of complicated factors relating to politics at the local government level. It will be the object of this work to examine these characteristics. Given the regional peculiarities of coronelismo and its variations over periods of time, the present study could only have been totally satisfactory if it had been based on detailed regional analyses of a kind which we were unable to undertake. Nevertheless, the most accessible documentation, and that relating to different regions, revealed such similarities in essential aspects, that we can undertake an over-all examination with the available material.

As a preliminary observation, we must stress that we conceive of coronelismo as the result of the superimposition of structural forms, evolved through the representative process, on an inadequate social and economic structure. It is not, therefore, a mere survival of private power whose hypertrophy constituted the typical phenomenon of our colonial history. It is, rather, a specific manifestation of private power or, to put it another way, an adaptation whereby the residual elements of a previously extravagant private power have been able to coexist with a political regime which accepts the principle of broadly based representative government.

The elective principle in the municipal chambers of the colonial period

The elective principle has traditionally been much stronger in Brazil with respect to the municipal chamber than to the office of prefect. The importance of the chamber increased in the colonial and imperial periods, when there was no local executive existing as a separate and autonomous body. In the republican phase, with the presence of the prefect (or equivalent official of a different name), this importance diminished, but even so, political and ideological controversies raged over the question of the supervision of the powers of the councillors, a problem inseparable from the elective issue.

According to section 67 of book I of the Phillipine Ordinances, the elective principle applied to the offices of the two ordinary judges, the three councillors, the attorney, the treasurer (when there was one) and the clerk. Other functionaries – parish judges, inspectors, guards, etc – were nominated by the chamber.

The mandate of those elected lasted only for a year, but elections were held every three years, all the officials who would serve in three consecutive years being elected at the same time. According to the ordinance quoted, the election was indirect and took place on the eighth day of Christmas in the last year of the triennium. In the first instance a vote was taken, at a meeting presided over by the oldest judge, of ‘worthy men and members of the public’, and those officials whose term of office was about to expire.