The first day of May, though rooted in ancient seasonal rites that celebrated renewal and fertility, has, in the modern world, come to signify something more urgent and more human: the struggle for dignity in labor. Its contemporary meaning traces back to Haymarket Affair, when workers in Chicago demanded the reduction of the working day to eight hours and were met with violence—police repression that left several dead and many more injured. In the days that followed, the crackdown intensified, but so too did solidarity. What began as a local tragedy soon became a global cause.

By 1889, at the Socialist Congress in Paris, May 1 was formally established as International Workers’ Day—a date that would come to embody not only protest, but the enduring aspiration for justice in the conditions of work and life.

Across nations and regimes, with varying degrees of tolerance or repression, the day asserted itself as a symbolic threshold—a moment when labor could speak, even if only briefly, against the structures that constrained it.

In Portugal, the first commemorations date to 1890, initiated by the Associação dos Trabalhadores, aligned with the International Workingmen’s Association. Yet even from the beginning, the ideological content of May Day proved fluid, shaped by the political currents of each moment and the forces that claimed it.

In the Azores, however, the story unfolds differently.

The archipelago’s limited industrial development delayed the emergence of a structured working class. Only in Ponta Delgada did a recognizable labor presence begin to form, and even there, it lacked the cohesion and political force seen in larger urban centers. Associations tied to workers and artisans existed, but they were often sustained by the initiative of craftsmen and segments of the petite bourgeoisie—figures who sought to instill awareness rather than mobilize confrontation.

The absence of a strong class consciousness, combined with the social and economic fragmentation of the islands, resulted in a muted form of May Day expression. Early twentieth-century commemorations were less acts of protest than rituals of recognition. Buildings were adorned with flags; speeches were delivered in solemn assemblies; civic processions moved through the streets toward cemeteries, where flowers were placed on the graves of deceased members and symbolic figures such as Antero de Quental—a thinker whose legacy straddled philosophy, social critique, and the Azorean condition.

These processions, often accompanied by firefighters, schoolchildren, and philharmonic bands performing May Day hymns, reflected a civic rather than insurgent spirit. The day concluded, more often than not, with musical gatherings in public squares—moments of community rather than rupture.

With the advent of the Portuguese Republic in 1910, the form of the celebration remained largely intact, but its language shifted. The emergence of local socialist structures in the three district capitals, the influence of anarchist thought, and the formation of labor federations introduced a sharper rhetorical edge. In worker-aligned publications, critiques of capitalism became more explicit, and calls for reform more insistent—framed not only in local terms, but within a broader internationalist vision.

Yet the distance between discourse and action remained pronounced. Demands rarely extended beyond formal petitions to authorities. Confrontation was avoided; negotiation, however limited, prevailed.

Under the Estado Novo, May Day was absorbed into the regime’s corporatist and nationalist framework, stripped of its oppositional force and reconfigured as a controlled expression of labor harmony. After World War II, however, this façade began to erode. Repression became more visible, particularly when spontaneous demonstrations or work stoppages emerged.

In the Azores, by the early 1970s, May Day began to acquire a different texture. Pamphlets circulated—quietly but persistently—bringing with them the language of political dissent. Documents from the Comissão Nacional de Apoio aos Presos Políticos and materials linked to student movements found their way into the islands. In 1973, leaflets distributed across several islands denounced layoffs at the Lajes Air Base and criticized Decree 196/72, which had facilitated such dismissals. They also called attention to the working conditions of retail employees in Angra do Heroísmo.

These were small gestures, but they marked a shift—from ritual to awareness, from silence to articulation.

Then came the rupture.

In the aftermath of the Carnation Revolution, May Day was celebrated freely for the first time in decades. In 1974, the streets of the three district capitals filled with demonstrators—not only commemorating past struggles, but demanding structural change. The language of denunciation, long suppressed, surfaced with intensity, accompanied by calls for reform across political, economic, and social spheres.

In the years that followed, as trade unions established themselves in the archipelago, May Day retained a degree of mobilization. Yet, as the revolutionary fervor subsided, so too did the intensity of the commemorations. The day remained a public holiday, but its original political and social urgency gradually receded, fading into a more subdued presence within Azorean public life.

Today, May Day persists—observed, remembered, but often detached from the struggles that gave it meaning.

And yet, its history remains.

In the Azores, that history is not one of dramatic confrontation, but of slow emergence—a gradual awakening shaped by distance, fragmentation, and the quiet persistence of those who, even in the absence of mass mobilization, insisted on the dignity of labor.

It is, in its own way, an insular history.

Less visible, perhaps. Less explosive. But no less real.

And like so much in the Azores, it continues—not loudly, but beneath the surface, waiting to be read again.

Diniz Borges, PBBI-Fresno State.

Based on an entry in Enciclopédia Açoriana by historian, poet and novelist Carlos Enes