Stephen Nugent and Mark Harris (eds.), Some Other Amazonians: Perspectives on Modern Amazonia (London: Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of … (original) (raw)

2005, Journal of Latin American Studies

government policy makers ' (p. 135) in the early 1930s, an attitude that would only be reinforced during the dictatorship of the Estado Novo. Thus, he concludes, ' worker agitation was as much if not more a caso de polícia under Vargas as it had been during the First Republic ' (p. 139). Drowning in Laws is an excellent discussion of-and engagement with-several of the most important threads in the historiography on Vargas and Brazilian statelabour relations, reflecting French's substantial experience in this field. It is, however-somewhat surprisingly if we are to judge by the title-less about labour law. French points out the often paradoxical reference to labour law in workers' rhetoric as, on the one hand, an ideal and a hope, and, on the other, as a fraud. But even if this discursive element-how the law is talked about-is important, it can only be a starting point to finding out how the law actually worked. Here, French offers little more than the general reflection that there existed an abyss between the CLT on paper and the CLT in practice and that the slow process of the labour courts often prevented workers from obtaining their legal rights. While this is plausible, it does not help us understand more about the nature of Brazilian labour law. How did severance pay, pensions, accident compensation, union recognition and collective bargaining work in practice ? Were there differences-and what were they-between the individual and collective aspects of labour law ? How did interpretations of the laws change over time ? How did the federal nature of the Brazilian state influence the workings of labour law ? What were the legal strategies used by employers to circumvent the laws ? And what were the legal strategies attempted by workers to enforce them ? These are all questions the answers to which would have helped us understand more, both about the nature of the CLT, and why workers simultaneously rejected and idealised it. We might even understand more about why workers resorted to the labour courts in increasing numbers in the period following the courts' establishment, in spite of all the evident obstacles they faced.