The Farming Guilds of Employers («Grémios») in Alentejo and Algarve and their liquidation processes

Abstract

Within the scope of a research on the extinction of the Corporatist Organization of Farming in Portugal after the 25^th April, a reflection was made on the liquidation processes of the Farming Guilds of Employers and their Federations in Alentejo and Algarve. Two main orientations have marked this reflection: to say exactly «what was» the Corporatist Organization of Farming in April 1974 and identify, in the liquidation course of this Farming Guilds and their Federations, the main obstacles - economic and political - that appeared later. Embracing a large space of time, pratically the last twenty years, though dealing with the liquidation period in a more systematic way, the present article announces and antecipates, under a quicker treating form, some of the questions raised by that reflection. In the body of the article two parts are essentially pointed out: that concerning the Federations (within the scope of a district or a province) and that falling upon the Guilds of Employers (usually within the scope of a municipality). One begins with the reference to the information sources used here according to the methodology applied by the author, and one presents a first theoretical scheme for the approach of the materials operated later. These materials embrace aspects connected with the characterization of the Federations, their scope of intervention, associative vitality, managing staff, actions developed and, at last, the liquidation period. As far as the Farming Guilds of Employers are concerned - they preceded the Federations and the later took the former for their basis - one tries to identify the main economic, representative and political functions they had and one places, at the end, the liquidation issue within a context simultaneously deriving from the economic insertion of the social and political institutions and conflicts that reached them direct or indirectly.