SINDICALISMO, AUTORITARISMO E REPRESSÃO ENTRE DOIS POLOS

As greves metalúrgicas de Osasco em perspectiva histórica (1968-1980)

Abstract

The article analyzes, in a historical perspective, aspects of the repression triggered by the political intensification of 1968, with emphasis on the strikes in Osasco and reverberations in the later cycle of ABC paulista in the late 1970s. It builds the analysis from the memorialistic production of characters from the period and it locates the participation of the Army and of entrepreneurs that stood out in the two conjunctures. The argument developed presupposes a change in the scale and nature of the repression, which would have shifted from markedly police forces to articulate the scope of the Armed Forces' "powers," in particular the Army. In this way, unions and unionists came to make up the spectrum of the “internal enemy” defined in the National Security Doctrine. One of the highlighted aspects is the strategic character of the metallurgical sector, whose companies were partly associated with international capital. On the other hand, in addition to highlighting the specificity of military action in union repression, the article seeks to aggregate the presence of the business community in the repressive escalation as an element of analysis.