Silva, Lindolfo (1924–)

Lindolfo Silva (b. 25 November 1924), rural labor spokesman of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB). Born on a farm in Rio de Janeiro State, he worked as a tailor until hired by the PCB in 1952. In 1954, he helped found the semiclandestine Union of Farmers and Agricultural Laborers of Brazil (UL-TAB), becoming its first secretary. He traveled the nation to address farm workers, published regularly on rural labor matters, and led delegations of workers to lobby officials and attend Soviet-bloc conferences on peasants. Silva's 1963 election as president of the government-sanctioned National Confederation of Agricultural Laborers demonstrated PCB strength in the countryside and in national politics. With the coup d'état of 1964, the military suppressed the PCB, and Silva went into hiding. He did, however, remain a party bureaucrat into the 1990s.

See alsoBrazil, Political Parties: Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Neale J. Pearson, Small Farmer and Rural Worker Pressure Groups in Brazil (1967).

Clodomir Moraes, "Peasant Leagues in Brazil," in Agrarian Problems and Peasant Movements in Latin America, edited by Rodolfo Stavenhagen (1970).

Additional Bibliography

Chilcote, Ronald H. The Brazilian Communist Party: Conflict and Integration, 1922–1972. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.

Santana, Marco Aurélio. Homens partidos: Comunistas e sindicatos no Brasil. São Paulo: Boitempo Editorial, 2001.

Santos, Raimundo. Política e agrarismo sindical no PCB. Brasília, D.F.: Fundaçao Astrojildo Pereira, 2002.

                                         Cliff Welch