Jorge Coutinho and «The awakening of rural workers» (1911)

Abstract

Two texts, forgotten and difficultly to be found, are published here. They were written in 1911 for Lumen, a libertarian weekly, and their author, Jorge Coutinho was, at that time, the general-secretary of the Executive Committee of the Trade Union Congress, an organ that worked as a central of the Portuguese trade unions. The first text, under the title of «The awakening of rural workers», is an account and an analysis of the rural workers' movement in Ribatejo, Estremadura and Alentejo, a processus of struggles begun almost immediately after the 5^th October 1910 (the proclamation of the Republic) and prolonged all the next year round up to 1912. In this article, written upon the occurrences, the author is bent to conclude that the movement of the rural proletariat was very promising, a view contrasting with the pessimism he then felt as to the urban workers, less cohesive and fighting. As it is known, nevertheless, that «awakening of rural workers» had no continuation either on account of the Republican repression that fell over the workers or the demobilization among them, already visible in 1912-1913. The second text by Jorge Coutinho, published under the title of «My views» in the same review, is the account of a trip by the author to the Baixo Alentejo in a propaganda assignment, at the end of 1911. Eight hours of train through the south of Portugal are the pretext for a quick analysis of the workers' situation, the system of culture, the distribution and use of land in Alentejo. Then he makes a short description of the visited places, their loneliness and forlornness, the people's communitarianism, the caciquismo (the power of local political bosses), the (weak) power of the Church. Everything mingled - like in the previous text - with strong marks of anti-republicanism and anti-clericalism, positions that, only by themselves, almost defined the anarchism of that time.