Astrogildo Pereira

Born Oct. 7, 1890 in the state of Rio de Janeiro; died Nov. 20, 1965. Figure in the Brazilian workers’ movement, a founder of the Brazilian Communist Party, historian, literary critic, and publicist. Son of an impoverished peasant.

Pereira worked as an office employee, journalist, and printer in Rio de Janeiro. An anarchist from 1910 to 1917, he joined the trade-union movement in 1913 and organized a strike in Rio de Janeiro in 1918. He adopted the Comintern’s positions in 1919, organizing the first communist groups in the capital two years later. He was secretary general of the Brazilian Communist Party from the party’s inception in 1922 until 1930, when he became a member of the Central Committee. From the 1930’s he engaged mainly in the publication of Marxist literature and in literary activity. He is the author of several scholarly works on the workers’ and communist movements in Brazil. Pereira was repeatedly arrested and imprisoned.