Created with the objective of fighting the rising cost of living and contributing to the organization of the workers’ movement, the Workers’ Federation of Rio de Janeiro (FORJ) was fundamental in the mobilization of the Rio de Janeiro working class in 1917. The Federation looked to incentivize the unorganized working class to create their own associations. It was “a kind of central union” which united associations of various categories of workers, with the intention of creating better working conditions.
The meetings were severely repressed and prohibited by the police, who linked the organization directly to anarchism. “During the strike of July, 1917, many people were associating the actions of the Workers’ Federation with those of the anarchists. We can also affirm that many anarchists not only disagreed with this, but also went out of their way to make the differences between them and the Federation publicly clear,” says a study by Wellington Nébias. They believed that “fighting for better living and working conditions, the Federation contributed to the continuation of the capitalist system and not to its end.” However, the research does point out that there were anarchist groups connected to the Federation.
The motion published in the Workers’ Section of the journal A Pátria (Rio de Janeiro) on October 18, 1923, announced a new phase for the Federation: “The Workers’ Federation of Rio de Janeiro, solemnly beginning a new phase of union organizing, seeks to invite you to abandon this state of lethargy which nearly all Brazilian workers have been in for more than two years, and to come resolutely work with us on the formidable job which we must carry out, reorganizing the workers of the extensive Brazilian region. Never so much as now has there been such a necessity to gather around our burning stage to strongly oppose the indestructible barrier of capitalist greed, which drowns us all, and the invasion of a regressive conservatism which in voluminous waves threatens to submerge the fragile barge of proletarian demands.” A note after the text reads: “The Federal Committee of FORJ will convene tomorrow, Monday, at 8:00pm, at the headquarters of the Naval Carpenters’ Association, on Saúde street, house 345. – Domingos Passos, Associate Secretary.”