The 1917 general strike and the deaths by the repression: an approach to forensic anthropology in cemetery research

Abstract

In 1917, about 50,000 people in São Paulo - out of a population of 400,000 - joined a general strike for better working conditions. The historic strike under the strong influence of different movements, including the anarchist movement, was one of the greatest expressions of mobilization of the workers in the city. The reaction of the state involved the entire police force with the use of cavalry and resulted in the death of strikers and the persecution of militants who subsequently suffered expulsion processes and various forms of repression. According to reports at the time, dozens of people were killed in the clashes and buried in the Araçá Cemetery (DEL ROIO, 2017), despite the official record of only three of them. Due to a demand from human rights groups and also from the interest of researchers linked to these groups, the research was developed to elucidate the disappearance and death of strike-linked militants based on the burial records of this cemetery. The work made it possible to establish a panorama about the sending of bodies to the cemetery by the institutes responsible for the identification process, which are related to a chain of technical knowledge that will structure, to a certain extent, the necropsy and the destination of corpses in the city of São Paulo until today.