Port of Santos
The Port of Santos is in the city of Santos, state of São Paulo, Brazil. As of 2024, it was the In 2022, it was considered the container ports|40th largest port in the world] for container handling, and the 35th per ton, according to the AAPA - American Association of Port Authorities ranking, being the busiest in Latin America.
It possesses a wide variety of cargo handling terminals—solid and liquid bulk, containers, and general loads. It is Brazil's leading port in container traffic. The terrestrial access system to the port is made up by the Anchieta and Imigrantes highways and by the railroads operated by Ferroban and MRS.
It was once considered the "port of death" in the 19th century due to yellow fever, and ships often avoided docking at the wood plank port. The floods in the city's area provoked illnesses.
Today it is Latin America's largest port. Its structure is considered Brazil's most modern.
In the early 20th century, major overhauling and urbanization created the port's modern structure seen today, eliminating the risk of diseases and providing the port with modern, industrial-age infrastructure.
The location of the city of Santos was chosen at a convenient point for crossing the Serra do Mar mountain range, which is the main obstacle to access the interior. The first railway link from the port to the state capital São Paulo City, 79 km away, and the state's interior, was completed in 1864. This allowed for an easier transportation of the vast masses of migrant workers who headed to São Paulo and the state's numerous coffee farms. The main product exported by Santos until World War II was São Paulo state's huge coffee production, Brazil's largest. Today, coffee has become a smaller component of Brazil's exports. Cars, machinery, orange juice, soybeans are now some of the port's main exports.
Millions of immigrants reached Brazil via the Port of Santos in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, proceeding to the country's interior by railway.
History
The port of Santos was originally founded on Tuesday, 2 February 1892. In 1913, there were about 90,000 inhabitants in the city of Santos and the economically active population was at about 37,000 with 22.7 percent working in the port as longshoremen, stevedores, carters, porters and coffee sackers. During the time after World War II, up to 1960, the port was known as the “Red Port” because of strong influence of communism in the workers unions and city's politics. Lack of investments and high tariffs were factors observed at the time and led the Port of Santos to a rapid decay around 1970. In 1980, the 90-year concession period ceded to Companhia Docas de Santos or CODESP. CODESP was a big player in the ports structure and worker culture. CODESP was in control of most of the port operations, created a new culture of work that created stronger bonds between the workers, and allowed for the creation of institutions to unite different categories of workers. Ever since the late 19th century the CODESP has tried to gain even more control over port operations. This, however, violated the workers’ sense of freedom and independence and caused the uprising of many of the worker institutions through different strikes for worker rights. In 1993, the Brazilian government realized that the singular control over the port that CODESP had was inhibiting the ports ability to be competitive and be more efficient. They then passed a law that de-monopolized the port's operational services.Worker Culture
The port is the principal source of jobs for the city of Santos. The fact that the town is mainly dependent on the one industry of the port, a strike in the port would cause considerable losses that could affect the entire city of Santos. Whenever the workers stopped working, the movement of goods would stop flowing, halting businesses, the flow of money, and all internal trade. This meant that when a strike would happen, the whole city joined the side of the workers because the city's population knew that the only way to return to the way of life was to end the strike. In 2016 the port declared that it had insufficient funds to pay for extra benefits and raises causing slowdowns. The workers were constantly unsatisfied and therefore demanded a 10% raise and were complaining about their new shift patterns. The strike halted all activities in the port terminals except for the release of dangerous cargoes, drugs, perishables, live cargo, funeral urns, and shipboard supplies.The Santos port and the port workers were not separated from the rest of the city. The financial and commercial center of the city was close to the docks, which made for a more heterogeneous society in those areas. The life of port workers was far from insular and was shaped by a strong urban culture, as working class politics invaded spaces previously closed to workers' political expression. In Santos, the neighborhoods of the workers weren't separated by different occupation, as others were at the time. They also all had offices together which expedited the process of creating unified movements.