Domingos Passos

Domingos Passos was an anarchist and syndicalist activist from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A black man, he was a son of two ex-slaves freed right after the abolition. His birth date is unknown and there is almost no records about his early years. Working as a carpenter, he became involved with the civil construction workers union and was converted to anarchism. Soon, Passos stood out for his activism and rhetoric, becoming one of his union's leaders. He was also elected to represent the civil construction workers at the Third Brazilian Workers' Congress, in 1920.

His intense activities within the labor movement made Passos one of the most persecuted anarchists by the authorities, and he was jailed several times. In the repression following the São Paulo Revolt of 1924, in which some labor leaders took part, Passos was deported to the penal colony of Clevelândia do Norte, on the border with French Guiana. Under his escape plan, he and other prisoners crossed the French Guianese border and fled to Belém do Pará, where Passos stayed until 1927.

Returning to Rio de Janeiro, Passos resumed his labor activism, but soon moved to São Paulo, where he had an important role in the rearticulation of the São Paulo Workers' Federation and organized a committee to agitate for Sacco and Vanzetti. Under the new "Miscreant Law", which imposed serious restrictions to freedom of press and assembly, Passos was arrested in a pro-Sacco and Vanzetti meeting and remained forty days jailed at a Cambuci police station. Upon his release, he travelled to Pelotas in January 1928 to participate in the Fourth Workers' Congress of Rio Grande do Sul, returning to São Paulo right after this congress.

In February 1928, he was jailed again and remained incommunicable by orders of the Department for Political and Social Order's Ibrahim de Almeida Nobre. Passos stayed imprisoned in a dark, windowless cell of the Cambuci police station, receiving food only once a day. Released from prison, he was sent in a train and left to die in Sengés. He found shelter in a local village and wrote his comrades from São Paulo asking for money, which was delivered by a trusted emissary. Passos then disappeared, his fate unknown. Provided by Wikipedia