Laudelina de Campos Melo

Laudelina de Campos Melo (born October 12, 1904 in Poços de Caldas , † May 12, 1991 in Campinas ) was an Afro-Brazilian activist, work organizer and community worker . As a lifelong domestic worker , she noticed early on how much working women were discriminated against and underestimated. During her life she tried to change public perception and politics and has successfully established organizations for domestic workers, which advocated a change in their treatment and fought for them to be accepted as members of the working class and thereby receive their benefits and rights.

Childhood and early life

Laudelina de Campos Melo was born on October 12, 1904 in Poços de Caldas, Minas Gerais , Brazil, to Sidônia and Marco Aurélio. Her mother was also a domestic worker, her father worked as a lumberjack. Both parents were children of slaves, but were given their freedom at birth under the Lei de Ventre Livre , which was passed in 1871, while their parents remained in bondage. At the age of 12, when her father died in an accident while cutting trees, Melo dropped out of school to look after her five younger siblings so that her mother could work full-time in a hotel.

Even in her youth, Melo was interested in improving her community and worked in various cultural organizations for blacks. In 1920 she was elected chairman of a cultural group, Clube 13 de Maio , which specialized in political activism and the organization of leisure activities. In her youth, she started working as a domestic worker for Julia Kubitscheck. Kubitschek's son, Juscelino , became president of Brazil in the mid-1950s and Melo lived and lived in her household after the family moved to São Paulo .

activism

In 1924 Melo married a stone carver, Henrique Geremias, who was from Rio de Janeiro . She became more and more politically active and joined the Communist Party of Brazil , the Frente Negra Brasileira (Black Brazilian Front), and the cultural organization Saudade de Campinas. The couple stayed in São Paulo until 1932, where their two children were born before moving to Santos . There Melo's activism focused on combating racial prejudice and discrimination against working women. In 1936 she founded the Associação de Trabalhadoras Domésticas (Association of Domestic Workers) of Brazil. The aim of this organization was to press for the rights of domestic workers so that their work cards would be signed and their employment relationship protected. By uniting workers in the organization, she hoped to create a platform to improve their education on legal issues of concern to them and to build a common awareness and solidarity among female domestic workers to fight for their rights .

In 1938, Melo moved to Campinas after separating from her husband. She continued to push for rights for domestic workers until social organizations were banned in 1942 by the dictatorship of President Getúlio Vargas . When Vargas was deposed by a coup d'état in 1946 , she continued her activity in the union of workers as its president. In the 1940s, while working as a nanny, she moved the family she worked for to Mogi das Cruzes , where she ran a farmhouse / hotel until her employer died. In 1954 or 1955 she therefore returned to Campinas and opened a pension, leaving her life as a domestic servant behind. To supplement her income, Melo sold small items in the Guarani and Ponte Preta football stadiums and also doubled her work in areas of cultural and commercial activism. Through her activity in the black movement of Brazil, she participated in the Teatro Experimental do Negro (Black Experimental Theater) group, which sought to enable the black youth through dance and theater performance to create trust-building cultural activities. To support access to professional training, Malo founded a dance and music school in Campinas.

In 1961, Melo founded the Associação Profissional Beneficente das Empregadas Domésticas (Professional Association of Domestic Workers) to promote literacy and union work for domestic workers, and as many as 1,200 workers attended the opening ceremony. The organization was forced to close in 1964 when a new military coup brought back the military dictatorship that ruled until 1985. Since the political repression forbade any kind of trade organization, Melo tried to accommodate the association as a committee under the União Democrática Nacional (Party of the National Democratic Union), but for health reasons she was forced to give up her project in 1968 and the party turned to the problems of the Domestic workers. At the time, Melo was also working with the progressive wing of the Catholic Church to continue improving the rights of domestic workers. In 1970 it finally succeeded in enforcing the law that domestic workers had to have their work cards signed, which resulted in their rights and benefits as workers being legally protected.

In 1982, when the restrictions on workers 'organizations were lifted, Melo resumed work in the domestic workers' association. In 1988 she restructured the association into an official union, which operated under the name Sindicato dos Trabalhadores Domésticos (union of domestic workers).

Death and legacy

Melo died on May 22, 1991 in Campinas and donated her house so that it could be used as the headquarters of the Sindicato dos Trabalhadores Domésticos . She is recognized as the founder of the first House Workers Union in Brazil and a pioneer in Brazil to draw attention to the problems of house workers and to protect their rights. Their work led to the establishment of similar organizations in other states and was central to the recognition of domestic workers who have earned the right to be classified as workers and who have protected benefits.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l} Franklin W. Knight, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,: Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American biography . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2016, ISBN 0-19-993580-7 ( oxfordreference.com [accessed April 14, 2019]).
2. ↑ Elisabete Aparecida Pinto: Etnicidade, genero e educação: a trajetoria de vida de D. Laudelina de Campos Mello (1904-1991) . 1993 ( unicamp.br [accessed April 14, 2019]).
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Heróis. Retrieved April 14, 2019 . 
4. ↑ ^{a b} Laudelina de Campos Melo. criola.org.br, May 27, 2016, accessed April 14, 2019 . 
5. ↑ EBC | Conheça 8 mulheres que influenciaram a luta pelos direitos femininos no Brasil. April 16, 2018, accessed April 14, 2019 .