«Why have you come to fill your belly here?» The Portuguese, anti-Portuguese feeling and exploitation of working class housing in Rio de Janeiro under the Old Republic

Abstract

«Exploitation» was the key word in the formation of anti-Portuguese sentiment in Rio de Janeiro during the Old Republic (1890-1930). The Portuguese were regarded as economic «exploiters» and the locals had little hesitation in voicing their resentment in the streets of the city. In everyday life, «exploitation» and anti-Portuguese feelings were consistently linked to survival and social reproduction. The Portuguese were landlords of the overwhelming majority of houses for let in the city. The housing problem was fairly serious. It was difficult to find accommodation for the city dwellers and the migrants arriving from all over the country and the world. This was exacerbated by the miserly wages paid to workers. The solution was to share accommodation with others, and even then it was far from cheap. Too many people and not enough houses, meaning that landlords could get away with charging as much as they liked, constantly increasing the rent and even forcibly evicting tenants, as there were no tenancy laws and most contracts were merely oral. With the fall of Pereira Passos' government at the beginning of the century, the situation worsened, and the poor of the city were slowly and violently ejected from the centre of the city, often settling on the steep surrounding mountainsides, in order to stay near their place of work. The Old Republic dragged on paying little heed to the thousands of city workers in poor accommodation or without a home to go to after their days' work. This article seeks to examine the relations between Brazilians and Portuguese and anti-Portuguese sentiment as a social construct, which existed throughout Brazilian society, and found particularly fertile ground in working class areas. An understanding of how this sentiment was produced from living and housing conditions, and how it was used as a form of social control by the governmental elite, and as a form of resistance by the poor, is fundamental to understanding the configuration of the city, its policy for housing and control of the working population throughout the twentieth century.