Race Relations and Favela Workers’ Movement in Belo Horizonte: The Formation of Class and Race Consciousness within Urban Politics (1959-1964)

Abstract article analyzes the favela social movement in Belo Horizonte and its newspaper O Barraco, highlighting the formation of class and race consciousness in the practices of the Federação dos Trabalhadores Favelados [Federation of Favela Workers] in the 1950s and 1960s. The first part of the text discusses how favela associations have been framed in urban sociology, emphasizing the silence about racial issues in studies about Belo Horizonte, particularly monographs and books written during the second half of the 20th century by pioneers of the analysis of urban space and mobilizations in favelas. The second part focuses on the social movement, showing how the experience of favela workers was related to racialized stigmas and social controls in the city and to a 1960s working-class political culture. The analysis makes use of monographs, statistics, newspapers, photographs, documents accumulated and seized by the political police, and civil association statutes to understand the formation of class and race consciousness articulated in associative and protest practices.