ABSTRACT
The change and development process in Latin America has ordinarily occurred gradually, through adaptation and assimilation, within a framework that combines and reconciles traditional and modern. Owing to the absence of a revolutionary past in all but a few of the Latin American nations, traditional forms, ideologies, and classes pertaining to an earlier feudal, Catholic, patrimonialist and corporative society persist, coexisting with modern movements and currents. The origins of the Brazilian Catholic labor movement go back to the “Catholic revival” of the 1920s and 1930s. The fundamental tenets upon which the program of the Brazilian Catholic labor movement are based were contained in the papal encyclicals Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno. The fact that the Circulo movement is still bound up closely with the traditional triumvirate— the paternalistic state, the Church, and the wealthy elites—provides another indication of its fundamentally conservative nature. The Circulos are caught in the dilemma of being an “apolitical” movement in an increasingly politicized society.
