Anarchism in Brazil

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.

The working conditions and the oligarchic political system of the First Republic, which made it difficult for workers to participate, meant that anarchism quickly gained strength among workers. Revolutionary syndicalism exerted a great influence on the workers' movement, especially at workers' congresses and in the strikes of the period. Anarchists also contributed to the creation of a series of periodicals for the workers' press and founded several Modern Schools around the country. Anarchism ceased to be hegemonic in Brazil's workers' movement from the 1920s, when the Communist Party of Brazil (PCB) was created and, mainly, due to the repression promoted by the government of Artur Bernardes. Revolutionary syndicalism went into crisis during Getúlio Vargas' government, when the unions started to come under the control of the State, resulting in the decline of anarchism, now without spaces for social insertion.

Between 1946 and 1964, anarchists concentrated their efforts on building an anarchist political organization and on cultural actions, while maintaining initiatives in the trade unions. With the 1964 coup d'état, anarchist activity became even more limited due to repression. Despite this, there was a certain anarchist performance in the student movement of the period. In 1977, during the process of redemocratization, libertarians resumed their periodic press, starting a process of rearticulating anarchism in Brazil.

Beginning in the 1990s, the process of reorganizing anarchism in Brazil culminated in the creation of organizations influenced by the especifismo of the Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU), in a process that resulted in the foundation of the Coordenação Anarquista Brasileira (CAB) in 2012. Anarchists have since maintained a relevant, albeit minority, participation in various types of collective actions, such as union organizations, community and neighborhood associations, student mobilizations, homeless and landless movements and in waves of protests, like those of 2013 and the demonstrations against the 2014 World Cup.