A photographic memory preserved in saved labor press of the dictatorship

Abstract

This article aims to reconstruct of some aspects of the work history and workers’ struggles through research and photographs identification in Arquivo Social da Memória Operária Brasileira´s work newspapers (ASMOB,acronym in Portuguese, 1900-1930), originally Astrojildo Pereira Archiev, name of its organizer, journalist, writer, anarchist and communist activist in the early twentieth century. Complementarily, is presented, in general, how this Archive was rescued from the military dictatorship in Brazil, in the 1970s. We had as methodology: newspapers and photography as a historical source and oral history based on testimony of the three main protagonists of the Archive´s rescue from São Paulo to Rio de Janeiro and from here to Milan (Italy). In the study of the working press photography at that time, and the recognition of the Archive rescue route, we assume history as a process of life and history as a research method in the context of every social situation. Main conclusions are: the importance of the workers newspapers to the memory and history of living conditions, work, education and organization of workers at the beginning of the last century; the reiteration in the newspapers, the few photos in newspapers offices; the great courage of action and resistance to authoritarianism of Dictatorship in rescuing the Archive; the fundamental importance of this documentation (newspapers, letters, pamphlets, photographs, etc.) for the work history and education.