Trabalho e cotidiano na Estrada de Ferro Madeira-Mamoré (1907-1919)

Abstract

At the beginning of the 20th century, the construction of the Madeira-Mamoré Railway (EFMM), designed for the purpose of exploring raw materials from the Amazon region, mobilized a large contingent of men and women subjected to labor relations in a determined hierarchical system by their nationalities, functions, ethnicities and genders. Manuel Ferreira (2005) and Francisco Foot Hardman (2005) identified a flow of 25,000 to 30,000 workers and laborers circulating there during the construction period (1907-1912), of which around 6,000 died. From 1912, with the opening of the railway, a smaller and more stable number of contract workers and service providers were maintained during the foreign administration of the railway until 1919. The main objective of this Dissertation is to investigate aspects of the constitution of the everyday life established for and by the workers and laborers of Madeira-Mamoré Company from the structuring of a control system and maintenance of the workforce by the Company during the period of construction and operation of the railway in the first decade of the 20th century, more precisely between 1907 and 1919. For this reason, we chose to analyze elements understood by Agnes Heller (2004) as “organic parts of everyday life”: organization of work through the division of functions and establishment of hierarchies; work and housing spaces, social activities, mobilizations; conflicts, resistance, norms of social behavior, deviant behaviors; sanitary conditions, disciplining bodies, physical and mental health. These elements, discussed by the angle of the work relations established by the company, configure tensions, practices of domination, control, and disciplinary mechanisms that take place in everyday life. To reach the proposed objectives, the problematizations were obtained through an extensive set of historical sources, such as travel literature, poems, academic productions (dissertations, theses, articles and books), memorial reports, newspapers and periodicals, scientific reports, photographic catalogs and criminal proceedings. As part of the study of the social history of work, this Dissertation intends to contribute to the understanding of the concrete experiences of men and women who made their own story while selling their workforce for the construction of the Madeira-Mamoré railway, a fundamental landmark to understand the history of the state of Rondônia and capitalist expansion over the territory of the Amazon region in the 20th century.