Aço e suor pelo açúcar e em nome do progresso : 1ª Seção da Recife São Francisco Railway (Pernambuco, 1852-1859)

Abstract

With the Decree n. 1,030, dated August 7, 1852, an imperial concession authorized the construction of a railroad in the province of Pernambuco, to be undertaken by Recife and São Francisco Railway Company. The norm established an interest guarantee policy; allowed the acquisition of goods free of tax incidents; predicted the expropriation of lands; prohibited the use of slave labor; exempted from recruitment and granted exemption from military service to those working on the railroad. Under the cover of the discourse of progress and of the Nation, the actions of man on nature and on man himself were highlighted, changing social political conditions and the cartography of the region at the time, even in the face of the perpetuation of slavery and the elements constitutive of sugar plantations – big lands (latifundio), forced labor and monoculture aimed at exports. Politicians, investors, engineers and workers have integrated these public-private dynamics, analyzed from the parliamentary debates of normative authorization, to the construction and operation of the 1st section of the railway. Built 31.5 km, the first section was inaugurated and shortened the trajectory between Cinco Pontas (Recife) and Cabo village. There was diversity and precariousness of the formal statutes of the workers, among them recruits and deserters, who opened paths, beating sleepers and fixing rails of that road. Emperor Dom Pedro II, after experiencing the road, on December 1, 1859, pointed out in his diary the impressions of the landscape, the engineer in chief, the workers and the workshops. It was from these various alterations and artifacts left in historical records that this dissertation analyzed the state and private dynamics of railroad construction. The role of the state in the productive logic of capital relief was examined and the trajectories of engineers were studied, and a plexus of workers of varying conditions was analyzed in the open interval that had been drawn between not free and technically free work, a sample of the work history and its patterns of exploitation.