Portland Perus Cement Factory: pedagogical articulation between popular movements and schools in the neighborhood of Perus

Abstract

Acting under the principles of “active nonviolence”, the Queixadas, workers at Portland Perus Cement company, located in the neighborhood of Perus, São Paulo, established in 1924 a new panorama of union activity that allowed changes in several aspects; among them the participation of women alongside their husbands, labor conquests, environmental struggles and so on. According to Mário Carvalho de Jesus, lawyer of the workers union “CimentoPerus”, strike committees visited factories, schools, universities and other spaces all over the city of São Paulo in a demonstration that the union and the permanent firmness, the motto of the Movement, would be the most effective and efficient way of fighting against the oppressive
forces of society and the exploitation of capital. The legacy of this struggle resists for decades through a dialogue between generations. The workers’ stories and memories, that is, their struggles for justice and dignity, as well as the architectural and industrial value of the Factory, motivated the desire for its protection, its preservation and its transformation into the Worker’s Culture and Memory Center. Moreover, this struggle that transposed the walls of the Factory, involving the local community, reached the walls of many schools in the neighborhood, which began to have in their educational practice, inside and outside their premises, a real articulation with significant themes regarding the Queixada heritage for the students,
defending the idea that Education can be effectively seen as a liberating and transforming instrument.