O povo do abismo : trabalhadores e o aparato repressivo durante a construção da Hidrelétrica de Itaipu (1974 1987)

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to study the organization and the activity of repressive apparatus formed by Binational Itaipu Security Agencies and the UNICON Consortium from 1974 to 1987. For this research, cases have been selected which involved workers and were produced by these agencies offices, besides narratives of workers and security guards of these agencies. In this sense, the study starts with a discussion about the military origin of these agents, as well as the militarization of those bodies of security. This discussion in the first chapter allowed, throughout the study, to approach the military rigging at that time dictatorship to the action of these agencies. So, the incidence of torture against workers at the Construction Site and on the areas intended to be used as their home was endorsed by a broader power which exceeded the Construction Site itself. In this context, military or paramilitary training of these agents has provided meaning to the transformation of Binational Itaipu complex to a "Total Institution". The police world formed around these agencies or small military units had a purpose, i.e., beyond maintenance of order, to create a consensus among the mass of workers that they were all the time being monitored and their actions liable to punishment. If there were these characteristics of military and constant vigilance in society, it was also necessary to bring to the Construction Site, in terms of bureaucracy and practices, the same procedures adopted by regular police apparatus. This was the way that these security agencies kept the sign of torture and repression against common workers during the construction of the dam. The receipts of people which were commonly exchanged between the police agencies, by the delivery and the receiving from arrested individuals, were also adopted by these militarized sectors of Itaipu. In this way, it was coronated a complex scheme of repression connected to other entities which formed the basis of national information communities. If in the early chapters the study has intensified the analysis of police rigging around the Construction Site, in the following chapters it leaves the pure scope of militarization. In this other approach, the dynamics of hiring and the different ways that the job-seekers arrived at the contractors recruitment center are studied. Many workers already had a profession, and for these ones the hiring was facilitated. However, there were those who tried to get a job with no qualification at all, because they had come from other production branches which were in decadence, mainly from agriculture. In this sense, the diversification of the origin of the workers will be examined, demystifying the figure of the "barrageiro" (Dam-man) attributed by the official history to all those who worked on the construction of the Itaipu s Dam. Not everyone who came and sat as workers for UNICON Consortium and other contractors, forming the irregular subdivisions of Foz do Iguaçu in Paraná state, were barrageiros (dam-men). In this context, many were rushing into an oppressive and strange work modality. Not enough the hard and stressing journey of work under the gaze of the overseers and security guards, men were recklessly victimized by accidents at work: as the "cathedrals of concrete" came up higher, increased the number of accidents, the repression, the widows and orphans who migrated with other unemployed to the local informality Finally, the uprisings of these workers who entered in the "Total Institution" were studied. Many problems referring to coercion and control lasted dispersed or asleep until the end of the military government in 1985. After this period of junction in trade unions (1986), the workers protested against the excesses of the contractors. However, it was in this already democratic moment, more precisely in 1987, that the "barrageiros" (dam-men) were harshly repressed by the public forces. For this purpose, these forces were helped by secret information produced by the remains of Itaipu Security Advising. This uprising indicated what was happening in other strikes in Brazil. The more the National Constituent Assembly was announced, more and more the repression against social movements increased as occurred in the Itaipu s Dam and it was discussed in the last chapter