SolRem’s Community Workshops aims to educate and raise awareness about the history of resistance and solidarity against right-wing authoritarianism and dictatorships. This community workshop This community workshop focused on the conception, implementation and characteristics of Portuguese corporatism during the Estado Novo. The different approaches brought by the two speakers created the opportunity to provide a dense and problematising view of the phenomenon of corporatism and the concomitant outlawing and persecution of free trade unionism. It also provided a very young group (17-19 years old) with a vivid description of a reality that is little studied in a school context and which affected the lives of many of their ancestors.
The event took place at the University of Minho, Braga, on the 7th of December 2023. It aimed to fulfill the purpose of preserving the memory of corporatism and of those who fought it in the time of the Portuguese dictatorship, by providing a space for researchers in the field to contribute with more insights about the topic.
There were 26 people in the audience engaging in the discussion and debate of the topic of corporatism, followed by 2 people in the online meeting streaming the session.
Agenda
| 7th December 2023 – 18:00-20:00 |
| Opening of the Community Workshop Transnational Narrative Corporatism: Bruno Madeira, CITCEM/UMINHO |
| Corporatism in Portugal: Natália Pereira (PhD researcher at Lab2PT/UMinho) |
| Commentary on the lecture given by Natália Pereira: Conceição Meireles Pereira (CITCEM/UPORTO) |
Contributions
Corporatism in Portugal
Under the topic of corporatism in Portugal, our guest Natália Pereira took us through the history of corporatism as an ideology and model of socio-economic organisation of the contradictions between capital and labour in the post-World War I Italian context and its subsequent application in Portugal by the Estado Novo regime. In the second part of his talk, he devoted himself to mapping the conception, implementation and characteristics of Portuguese corporatism. Focusing on the work she has been doing as part of her doctoral thesis, Natália Pereira focused above all on the dynamics of corporatism in a rural context, systematising the distribution of the various corporatist organisations throughout Portugal and comparing the number of members of the Casas do Povo and the National Trade Unions. He also guided us through the progressive territorialisation of these organisations and the resistance that the clandestine opposition – but also the ultra-conservative Catholic Church – put up against them. It shows the advances, hesitations and setbacks that marked the various phases of the implementation of Portuguese corporatism and provides a critical systematisation of the ideology underlying the People’s Houses and the Farmers’ Guilds. Finally, taking into account the audience and also the studies he has been carrying out, he dealt in detail with the reality of corporatism in the district of Braga – the district that boasted the highest density of Casas do Povo in the whole country.
Commentary on the lecture given by Natália Pereira
Professor Conceição Meireles Pereira, in her commentary on Natália Pereira’s speech, tried to give an even broader view of the corporative complex of the Estado Novo – focusing not only on the structures that brought together employers and workers, but also looking at the structures for organising and controlling leisure time (the National Foundation for Joy at Work) and for organising and controlling women (Obra das Mães para a Educação Nacional and Mocidade Portuguesa Feminina). In addition to this framing and deepening of the dynamics of corporatism, he also focused on the insertion of corporatism in the political, ideological, cultural, social and economic project of the Portuguese dictatorship.
Conclusions
The Community Workshop Transnational Narrative Corporatism provided a informed environment for the exchange of knowledge and experiences related to the subject corporatism.
The audience interacted with our guests by proposing interesting and compelling questions. In general terms, the audience was receptive to the discussion and in agreement with the ideas exchanged in the session. In this sense, this reflects that more conversations should be held about the topic of corporatism.