This article examines the engagement of Brazilian workers in several tasks in railway building and coffee plantations in São Paulo during the second half of the nineteenth century. In general, most of historiography argues that nacionais lived a marginal existence, either due to the prejudice of contemporary Brazilian society against free poor people, invariably presented as "indolent", "vagrant" and "lazy"; or to the free people´s resistance to the shift from cultural practices based on traditional values, to a more disciplined, methodical labour life. In contrast to these views, first, this article stresses the presence of Brazilian workers in the activities of both railway building and coffee plantations. Second, the article maintains that, in fact, it was the failure of agriculture to generate year-round employment that produced a pattern of instability and geographical mobility, that many (planters, officials and railway entrepreneurs) interpreted as an indication of worker indolence or cultural bias against regular employment, and asked for harsh social legislation against the poor workers.
Railways; coffee plantations; Brazilian workers; labour; São Paulo