As trabalhadoras e trabalhadores têxteis e sua fábrica em Santarém: experiência operária, Justiça do Trabalho e indústria de sacaria no Baixo Amazonas, 1951-1990

Abstract

This work deals with the experience of workers at the only jute and mallow spinning and weaving factory in Baixo Amazonas, Tecejuta, a large establishment whose history as a company extends from 1951, the date of its foundation, to 1990, the year of its closure. In order to better understand this experience, we initially discuss the factory’s history, which has an important intersection with the history of jute cultivation in the Amazon and with the history of regional planning, which, for this reason, are also focused here. We also discuss the relations between countryside and city in the region and their implications regarding the culture and profile of Tecejuta’s workers, in addition to their notion of customary law. Next, the emergence of Santarém’s Labor Board and its effects on labor relations in the municipality and region are discussed, as well as the patterns of manpower use by the factory in its first phase, which demonstrates its roots in the traditional way of relating the local economic elite with their subordinates in society. Next, we examine the patterns of disciplinary power application at the factory and its dismissal policy, particularly of women, seeking to identify their changes after the intervention of Banco de Crédito da Amazônia and Sudam in the company, between 1970 and 1976, as well as in the later period. Finally, we approach the protest mobilizations of the factory workers and their forms of syndical organization. Permeating the construction of the text from chapter 3, we seek to identify and understand the workers’ ways of resistance within the factory and their tactics when resorting to the Labor Court in search of rights enforcement, which configured a form of construction of their citizenship.