Ho Chi Mihn, a key figure in Vietnam’s independence from France and the war in which the US was defeated, was forced to stay in Brazil for a few months. It was here that the communist leader was impressed by the story of a black man from the northeast, little remembered in national historiography.
José Leandro da Silva was an active union leader during the Maritime Strike, which took place in Rio de Janeiro in the early 1920s.
Known as Pernambuco, he was shot by police — and also threw agents into the sea — while trying to incite a strike at a port in the city. The sailor survived and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
The story of Pernambuco’s victory in Justice was narrated by Ho Chi Minh in a text called Solidarity of Classes, in which the Vietnamese leader highlights the fraternity between people and talks about racism.
He narrates that, after a series of protests in the country, a new trial was held in which Pernambuco was acquitted.
“The verdict was met with a torrent of applause. And José, the black striker, let himself fall into the arms of his companions and defenders, the white workers’ delegates. For despite the multiplicity of colors, there are only two races in the universe. : that of the explorers and that of the exploited. And there is only one true fraternity: the proletarian fraternity”, wrote Ho about José Leandro da Silva.
Strike inside a ship
The beginning of the 20th century in Brazil was a period marked by great conflicts in social relations. The arrival of foreigners to replace slave labor on farms and, later, in cities also brought new political ideas to the country that ended up changing labor relations at the time.
“These foreigners come to Brazil with an experience of a socialist movement and find space here to develop this work. So much so that the forces of repression of the Brazilian State will say that the movement is not Brazilian”, said Silvio Gallo, professor-doctor at the Universidade Estadual of Campinas (Unicamp).
In this context, workers on one of the ships of the Lloyd Brasileiro Shipping Company, stationed in Rio de Janeiro, decided to go on strike in 1921 to improve living conditions on board. They were fed up with tolerating “a regime of slaves” on board ships, says Hamilton Santos, a doctoral student in history at UFRJ.
In February, the strike by the ship’s workers gained strength and spread. “Numerous workers from the Cantareira Company left their jobs and declared themselves in solidarity with the movement”, reported Folha da Noite.
The Brazilian government recommended maximum force to the police to contain the strikers. He sent the warship Piauí to intimidate the movement.
José Leandro da Silva was a cabin boy — responsible for cleaning cabins and common areas on ships.
Commotion in social movements
On March 4, 1921, he tried to convince other seafarers to stop activities. Pernambuco ended up clashing with police officers who were trying to stop him, throwing one of them overboard. In defending himself, he also wounded others with a knife.
The striker was beaten by other agents and ended up seriously wounded with about 17 projectiles in his body, according to the text written by Ho Chi Minh.
Despite his injuries, Pernambuco managed to survive and was arrested. The news of the incident made headlines across the country, reinforcing the police and unfavorable view of José Leandro.
“the cabin boy [José Leandro] was presented as a threatening figure of the harmonious social order. [Ele era representado como uma figura] bestial, uncontrolled, with power of violence superior to that of agents of state repression”, says Hamilton Santos.
Pernambuco was sentenced to 30 years in prison for what happened. The striker’s condemnation, however, caused commotion among social movements.
Several efforts were made to raise funds for the payment of lawyers and, about three years after the event, the Federal Supreme Court (STF) granted a habeas corpus to José Leandro.
Soon after, a new trial was scheduled in the Jury Court in which Pernambuco was acquitted by the Justice in 1924. Social movements celebrated the result in the streets.
Ho Chi Minh in Brazil
There are no official data or historical records, but biographers say that Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969) was in Brazil probably in 1912.
Still with the name of Nguyen Tac Thanh (Ho Chi Minh means “the one who illuminates” and was adopted years later), the leader of the unification of Vietnam and of the wars against France and the USA saw up close the social conflicts of a country that still breathed the air of a long period of slavery and was influenced by the new winds of social disputes at the beginning of the 20th century.
Ho was working at the time as a kitchen boy on a French ship called the Admiral Tréville. During a voyage to South America, he became ill and was left in Brazil by the crew to treat an illness that has not been specified by historians.
In the approximately three months he waited for the ship to pass again, Ho survived by working as a kitchen helper in a restaurant that was located in a hotel in Lapa.
“Ho Chi Minh lived in Santa Teresa, in a pension, worked in Lapa and constantly went to the port of Rio to get news of the ship that would take him to continue his journey,” said Ariel Seleme, a Brazilian diplomatic envoy who lived in Hanoi and studied Ho’s passage through Brazil.
There are no records, however, of a meeting between Ho and Pernambuco — even though they may have attended the same places in Rio de Janeiro at the same time.
According to experts heard by BBC News Brasil, it is most likely that Ho Chi Minh learned about the mobilization of workers in favor of José Leandro through Astrojildo Pereira, one of the founders of the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party).
Ho and Pereira met in Moscow to discuss the revolutionary movement in 1924.
“The Ho Chi Minh article was published in 1924, just after the successful outcome [de José Leandro] and on the occasion that Ho met with Astrojildo Pereira in the Soviet Union, because the Brazilians were there to make the PCB official. Most likely they were the ones who took the news of what had just happened in Brazil. At that time Ho was publishing chronicles about the struggle of workers around the world, and he published this one about the sailors of Rio”, said historian Rafael Galante.
According to Pierre Brocheux, a French biographer of Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese leader’s travels, including Brazil, shaped his personality.
“Ho Chi Minh traveled around the world not as a tourist, but as a sailor and discoverer. Therefore, he closely observed the world and peoples, but at the same time he built open and friendly ties. He behaved like this not only with workers, but also with intellectuals and artists”, said Brocheux.
“After his travels, he did not become an extremist, but a pragmatist with a clearer vision of things and of men. Therefore, he was convinced that socialism was the future of humanity, but he also said that ‘to build the socialism there must be socialists,'” he added.
artistic intervention
Plastic artist Pedro Rajão intends to revive the figure of José Leandro through art in the city — more specifically on a wall near Arcos da Lapa, where both José Leandro and Ho Chi Minh were.
Rajão leads the Negro Muro project, which seeks to honor historical black characters with artistic interventions in Rio.
“José Leandro is a completely unknown black figure with a cinematographic history. I wanted to pay tribute to Pernambuco, in which Ho Chi Minh also appeared as a leader and influential person that he was”, he said.
