A CORDEL OF SOLIDARITY AND STRUGGLE
mANUELA MARCONDES
In Brasil (mainly the Northeast, or Nordeste), the ‘cordel’, an illustrated pamphlet, was a popular way for important messages to be communicated to a population that had low literacy rates, but who could be reached through their great love for folk music and storytelling. The pamphlets would contain songs like the one we see here, which were written for people to commit to memory and sing in taverns and on the road so that the content of the cordel could be shared with as many as possible.
This cordel, with an illustration by Marcelo Soares, aims to inform the nordestinos of ‘The Law of Two Years’ which gives farmhands two years to collect the money they are owed by landowners (the ‘patrão’, or boss). While the aim of the cordel, to communicate labour laws, is straightforward, a voice of solidarity amongst working people in the Nordeste is heard loud and clear in the folk song. The last two stanzas read:
Image Courtesy of the Senate House Library Latin American Political Pamphlet Collection
Brothers of this same nation,
There so many different laws
That must be made clear by us,
as Brasil won’t leave a trail for us.
Read and sing this tolheto -
Study it with your brother,
Your companion, and your friend.
An organised union is the lifeforce of this nation.
While the woodcut image printed on the front of booklet is credited to Marcel Soares, the song in this cordel is not attributed to one specific author. In this, we learn a wider truth about the nature of cordels and the solidarity they promote amongst a struggling people. The cordel is written with one purpose and one purpose only, to galvanise workers to claim what is rightfully theirs and inspire brotherhood amongst nordestinos. The sense of solidarity here is local, it creates a political subject based on nordestino identity itself; it defines their struggle from the perspective of a largely slave-descended, worker and farmer population living in an area that is prone to drought, dominated by exploitative landowners and bosses, and which has been historically neglected by the central government.
This cordel shows us the solidarity amongst working people and their hope for fair laws and working practices. The cordel gives us an insight into how soliadarity was practiced and communicated, and gives a powerful voice to an underrepresented group whose agency is often overlooked in historical literature. In a quiet way, this simple pamphlet says a lot about the ways in which the working man can stand up to a country limiting their freedoms and stifling their hope.
