“Our internationalism” Nation, racialization, class and anarchism in Brazil (1890-1920)

Abstract

This article aims to address some aspects of the anarchist debates produced in the context of the First Republic in Brazil, in which concepts such as nation, race and class were implicated in the construction of anarchism. Although constructed and developed transnationally and under an internationalist programme, anarchism was not alien to the structural transformations that shaped national practices and discourses. Thus, internationalism was often used only rhetorically, coexisting in tension with transnational networks of immigrants of the same nationality. While this may have blocked the development of a national working class and strengthened ethnocentric discourses, anarchists and revolutionary syndicalists sometimes took advantage of such national imaginaries to spread their ideas, linking this tendency to a practical internationalism practiced among Brazilians and immigrants, which ended up combating racial discrimination. In this way, practical internationalism allowed the construction of trade union and editorial groups that brought together native-born and immigrant workers of different national and ethnic origins, with networks of militants and anarchist groups from all over the world.