Acceso usuarios
Kit. McPhee
This article examines the experiences of the Afro-Brazilian coffee transport workers of Rio de Janeiro's port district in the generation following the abolition of slavery in 1888. While they have been condemned by some scholars as reformist and placatory, this article argues that these Afro-Brazilians aggressively contested the new ‘free labour’ regime and the thousands of immigrant labourers who arrived to compete with them. Indeed, far from marking them as passive recipients of state paternalism, the subsequent decision of the port workers to seek an alliance with the state points to the importance of nativism as a middle-ground upon which successive Brazilian governments and Afro-Brazilians could meet.
