WORK WORK

Photography and the work reality

In many photographs and films from the colonial visual archives, the work activities of the various actors in these spaces are represented. Especially when the point of view is that of the coloniser, the political and social situations underlying the labour reality are not always apparent. As is the case of the forced labour regime that prevailed in the territories occupied by Portugal practically until the independence of these countries.

From the portraits that intend to show the participants in the missions, to the documentation of the fieldwork, to the images of Africans waiting to be measured, or in their local villages, to the photographs of meetings between scientists, in all these images are patent or suggested the unequal identities and the system of exploitation forged under colonialism, which sometimes we do not know how to see.

For this, it is necessary to associate the photographic act with its historical context.

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For 400 years, slavery victimised mainly black African people. In 1869, King Luís I of Portugal signed the last legislation to prohibit slavery in all regions of the reign, but with a transition period until 1878. It is estimated that Portuguese slave traders trafficked 6 million people during this period, about half of the total, mainly to the plantations in Brazil (source: slavevoyages.org). 

In 1875 “On the condition of freedom of the freedmen[“libertos”], and on the protection to which they are subject" was published, instituting that freed people from the former condition of enslaved passed to the guardianship of the State, creating the position of curator. Curators regulated the contracts and the obligation to work. 

Defended by the legislator as a protective figure against the bosses' abuses, the curator was, in reality, more of a controller. This regulation established that the "freedmen" remained with their former "employers."

The “Regulation for the contracts of servants and settlers in the provinces of Portuguese Africa" (1878)” gives the (black) servant the possibility to stop working for the former "master" and choose the employer for themselves. The minimum length of contracts is now 5 or 10 years, especially for those displaced to São Tomé and Príncipe. Wages are meagre and do not allow for independent survival. The curators continue to supervise compliance with the work obligation.

The legislation on vagrancy also continues, which is refined with each new law. A vagrant remains in public custody and is forced to work where the state tells them to.

Penalties of imprisonment are also stipulated for those who "entice" the servants, prevent them from working or persuade them to flee and revolt. A runaway worker becomes a vagrant, and the state can send him wherever.  The cycle begins again.

In the "Labour Regulations for Indigenous People" (1899), the "moral and legal" obligation to work is established for all black men between the ages of 14 and 65, instituting a regime of "labour debt" that has to be paid off by working for private individuals or the State. Exceptions are few, hard to achieve, and dependent on the consideration of the colonial authorities. For example, an African farmer who cultivated according to his tradition could be considered unproductive and forced to work wherever the state determined. Refusal to work entailed the criminalised status of vagrant, which passed first through a regime of compulsory labour and then, if denial persisted, through a regime of correctional labour. 

These provisions were further developed in the General Regulation for the Work of Indigenous People in the Portuguese Colonies (1914). It expands the administrative organisation that controls the work, creating a network between curators, other officials, and local African chiefs (Sobas). A census of the "labour force" was planned so that no one could escape, and forms of recruitment and migratory flows were organised, often compulsory (to S. Tomé and Príncipe, for example). Although requests to the bosses are permitted (for wages, food, health, etc.), they [the bosses] are allowed to have their police forces and punish disobedient servants. 

In the face of international accusations of slave labour in São Tomé and Príncipe (which the Portuguese government contested against the evidence), this regulation punishes anyone expressing such a viewpoint.

Since 1899, black workers have been asked to present a work certificate to prove their compliance with this obligation.  Soon, during the First Republic, this would give way to the “work certificate”, which would pave the way for the “Indigenous certificate", already during the fascist Estado Novo.  This booklet will be a hallmark of the indigenato regime that was in effect between 1926 and 1961. 

The Colonial Act of 1930 consecrated political segregation, refusing citizenship rights to black men and women, pretending to defend them with the proposal of the status of "assimilated", obtained through proof of being Portuguese and abandoning local traditions and languages. The "civilising function of labour" deepens as labour needs increase, which happens with the imposition of compulsory crops (as in the case of cotton).

The physical anthropology missions were part of this context as they sought to study African populations' physical and mental characteristics that would better equip them for certain types of work, maximising their productivity.  Forced labour and deportations would remain until the beginning of the liberation/ colonial war in 1961.