The saga of Severino in the port of Santos to help the family and marry Raimunda

by Luiz Roberto Serrano-Editorias: Culture

Researching the sequence of getulist laws that resulted, in 1943, in the consolidation of labor laws, the always quoted CLT, I contributed to the research and Documentation Center of the History of Brazil, the cpdoc of FGV.

On page The Era Vargas of the years 20 to 1945, I came across the link years of uncertainty-1930-37, with the item proletarian literature, which said: “The literature of the 30s was quite distinct from the modernist literature, which sought to break with conventional standards through of aesthetic Research. The concern now was to bring to the Brazilian letters a theme practically unknown: The daily life of the poor and oppressed. This was the origin of the ‘ proletarian novel ‘, inspired by the theme of urban-industrial misery. The style of these works was approaching the so-called ‘ socialist Realism ‘, centered on the faithful account of the facts.

” In relating the works that joined this school, the text pointed, further: “The lives of the workers in the port of Santos inspired illuminated ships (1937), of Ranulfo Prata”. My sanctist soul immediately remembered the ages of the 60, when, at night, in the constant strikes in the port of Santos, the bar of the Bay of Santos was filled with illuminated ships, waiting to unload their cargo in the harbor. It was like there was a town on the other side of the bar.

reprinted in 2016 by the exquisite literary reserve collection, the Com-Arte and Editora da USP (EDUSP), illuminated ships account for a History well preceding the agitated years 60 in the port of Santos. A story that sowered the movements that, over time, fed the legend of the Red Harbor, of the Brazilian Barcelona, as the port of Santos was known until 1964. It is the history of the northerners, Northeastern and foreign workers who migrated to Santos to earn a living in the unhealthy work of carrying and unloading ships in the arms, in the back, at a time when the mechanization of the port was still incipient.

It is a story personified in José Severino, Baiano of patronage of Coité, whose family explored a land worthy of dry lives. The advice of friend Felício, who had gifts of snake charmer and for years worked in the harbor, Severino disbanded to Santos, moved by the illusion of earning some money and being able to marry Raimunda – which in Coité was waiting for him.

Ranulfo Prata was a Sergipano physician, graduated in Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, who after running Sergipe, Minas Gerais and São Paulo settled in Santos. He had his own practice, but headed the radiology service of Santa Casa, worked at Beneficência Portuguesa and at the Gaffrée and Guinle outpatient clinic, the dealers who received, in the rales of the reign of D. Pedro II, the right to build and explore the port For 90 years. Author of Tales, chronicles and books, his experience in the hospitals of Santos, especially in the ambulatory gaffrée and Guinle, made him live daily with the diseases and evils that covet the workers of the wharf-and this experience inspires and transpives in Several passages of illuminated ships.

“Suddenly, a huge flash arose over the waters. A transatlantic was passing, gigantic, slowly. It was so enlightened that it seemed to take all the stars from the sky… Severino, in a fascination with those who saw it for the first time, accompanied it with the view until it disappeared on the canal curve.

“The attention of Severino was the arrival and departure of great vapors (of passengers), mainly at night, with the glow of their lights. There were days of seeing this spectacle two and three times, in different warehouses, and it was not tired. ” That was Severino’s distraction before he got his job at the harbor. In fact, before aviation dominated passenger transport, the arrival and departure of transatlantic ships in Santos was a feast. Child, I, my brothers and fathers embarked on uncles Balbina and Gustavo for their annual trip to Buenos Aires, in some trans-Atlantic line C, and we ran to Ponta da Praia to say goodbye to them when the ship passed by. It was a common habit in the city. Today, with passengers, they only port in Santos tourism vessels.

Severino got a job at the CLA. Docks, first in the rough work of a boat repair shop and then in a traffic class, read load and unload the cargo ships, carrying heavy sacks on the back… There, I imagined him, he could make a little money to send to his family and marry Raimunda.

“He left the service with a pain in his left chest, a pain that increased by breath… After the coffee, when he went to the pier, he had a sudden access to cough and made him spit blood, this time a red and thicker stria.

The friend Felício advised him: “Man do not do this, the class is a hole, disgrace with the health of us. Stay where you are. Poor, for any band that hangs, it only gets worse… “. This time, Severino did not follow the advice of Felício. Verging under heavy sacks, day after day, he kept chasing after his illusions. The arrivals and departures of the illuminated ships were one of the few moments of pleasure in a life of heavy, hard and exhausting work.

“The matter of illuminated ships has imposed itself on the author, who gave her a exquisite fictional treatment, only comparable to that of Graciliano Ramos, among the writers of the 1930 novel,” says José de Paulo Ramos Jr., editor of the literary Reserve collection, and André Saretto, in Ear of the beautiful edition of the hard cover of illuminated ships. Recovering forgotten works in time is the purpose of the literary reserve collection. Illuminated ships is a fine example of achieving this purpose.

Source: jornal.usp.br