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Italian Brazilian
Ítalo Brasileiro

Regions with significant populations
Brazil: Mainly Southern and Southeastern Brazil
Languages
Predominantly Portuguese. Some also speak Italian and/or Italian dialects
Religion
Predominantly Roman Catholic
Related ethnic groups
White Brazilian, Italian people

An Italian Brazilian (Italian: Ítalo-Brasiliano, Portuguese: Ítalo-Brasileiro) is a Brazilian citizen of full or partial Italian ancestry. According to the Italian government, there are 25 million Brazilians of Italian descent. It is the largest population of Italian background outside of Italy itself.

Citizenship

According to the Brazilian Constitution, anyone born in Brazil is a Brazilian citizen by birthright, including all Italian Brazilians. In addition, many who were born in Italy have become naturalized citizens after settling in Brazil. In recent years, a considerable number of Italian Brazilians have in turn acquired Italian citizenship, as they do not lose their Brazilian citizenship by doing so, but become dual citizens. Italian law grants citizenship to those of Italian descent without requiring them to live in Italy or speak fluent Italian.

Italian immigration

As a nation state, Italy only appeared in 1861, before that Italy was politically divided, it was only a geographic region, the Italian peninsula, home to several kingdoms. Many Italians fled Italy after the failure of revolutionary movements in 1848 and 1861 but mass migration started only after the Italian unification. "Before 1914, the typical Italian migrant was a man without a clear national identity but with strong attachments to his town or village of birth, to which half of all migrants returned." For these immigrants the feeling of a national Italian identity and of being one united ethnic group was created later on, when they were already in Brazil. The reason for northern and southern Italians to immigrate was the poverty and lack of jobs and income. Thus most of the Italian immigrants were very poor peasants, mainly farmers.

The poverty and political turmoil occurring in Italy in the last quarter of the 19th century brought many immigrants to Brazil (as well as to other countries, such as Argentina and the United States).

Brazil’s ‘Great Naturalization’ naturalized all the immigrants residing in Brazil prior to Nov. 15, 1889 into Brazilian citizens "unless they declared a desire to keep their original nationality within six months" . At that time a great number of Italians was thus naturalized Brazilian. In Italy, the Prinetti decree, in 1902, forbidding subsidized immigration diminished the wave of Italian immigration to Brazil.

The "Whitening Project"

Italians started arriving in Brazil some years after the end of the international slave trade in the country (1850). The first groups arrived in 1875 and the immigration thrived when coffee plantations flourished in São Paulo state. At the end of the 19th century, the Brazilian government was influenced by eugenics theories. According to some scholars, Black people had no capacity to develop Brazil; therefore, it was necessary to bring immigrants from Europe. Brazil issued laws prohibiting the entry of Asian immigrants in 1889 and the situation changed only with the Immigration Law of 1907.

The "whitening project" was discussed by an Agriculture Congress in 1878 in Rio de Janeiro. It was proposed that only Europeans could migrate to Brazil. Some politicians have said that in some decades, the Blacks would disappear from Brazil through miscegenation with European immigrants. The immigrants from Italy, Spain and Portugal were considered the best ones, because they were white and, mainly, Catholics.

Northern Italy was undergoing an agrarian crisis at the time, due to unemployment caused by the introduction of new techniques in agriculture, while Southern Italy agriculture remained mostly untouched by such changes in agrarian structure. Northern Italians, and Venetians in particular, tend to have a greater proportion of light complexions, such as blond hair and light eyes, compared to southern Italians. For this reason, immigrants from Northern Italy were most desired by the Brazilian government, since their physical characteristics would bring desired results to the "whitening project" of the Brazilian people.

The peak of Italian immigration to Brazil happened between 1878 and 1920. About one half of the Italian immigrants came from Northern Italy, with about 30% from Veneto.

On July 28, 1921, Andrade Bezerra and Cincinato Braga proposed to Congress a project whose Article 1 provides: "It is prohibited in Brazil immigration of individuals from the black race." Two years later, October 22, Mr mining Fidélis Reis had another project on the entry of immigrants, whose fifth article was as follows: 'It is prohibited the entry of settlers from the black race in Brazil and, to Asians, it will be allowed each year, a number equal to 5% of those existing in the country.(...).

In 1945, the Brazilian government created a law showing the optimism at the entrance of European immigrants in the country: "The entry of immigrants comes from the need to preserve and develop, in the ethnic composition of the population, the more convenient features of their European ancestry"

The lack of workers

After 1888, when the slavery was finally abolished by a decree of the Imperial government, the number of farm workers fell drastically in Brazil, due to the fact that most black (former) slaves, with no lands of their own and no money to buy them, moved mostly to urban areas. Moreover, the coffee plantations were spreading enormously in the region. Coffee became the main export product of Brazil and there were few workers for planting and harvesting it. Therefore, the Brazilian government started to attract more Italian immigrants to the coffee plantations.

Italian settlement in southern Brazil

Italian immigration to Brazil was quite significant, especially from 1880 to 1930. The main areas of settlement were in Southern and Southeastern Brazil, namely the states of São Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, Paraná, Espírito Santo, and Minas Gerais.

Italians had been settling in Brazil as single individuals or small groups since the country was discovered in the 16th century. However, the first large groups of Italian pioneers arrived in Brazil in 1875. The Brazilian government, headed by Emperor Pedro II instituted an open-door immigration policy towards Europeans, especially after 1850, when the traffic of African slaves was abolished in Brazil, thus creating potential labor shortages. In the early 19th century, the Brazilian government created the first colonies of immigrants (colônias de imigrantes). These colonies were established in rural areas of the country, being settled by European families, mainly Germans. These German immigrants colonized many areas of Southern Brazil. Following the same project, colonies with Italian immigrants were also created in southern Brazil.

The first colonies to be populated by Italians were created in the highlands of Rio Grande do Sul (Serra Gaúcha). These were Garibaldi and Bento Gonçalves. These immigrants were predominantly from Veneto, in northern Italy. After five years, in 1880, the great numbers of Italian immigrants arriving caused the Brazilian government to create another Italian colony, Caxias do Sul. After initially settling in the government-promoted colonies, many of the Italian immigrants spread themselves into other areas of Rio Grande do Sul seeking further opportunities. They created many other Italian colonies on their own, mainly in highlands, because the lowlands were already populated by Germans and native gaúchos. The Italian established many vineyards in the region. Nowadays, the wine produced in these areas of Italian colonization in southern Brazil is much appreciated within the country, though little is available for export. In 1875, the first Italian colonies were established in Santa Catarina, which lies immediately to the north of Rio Grande do Sul. The colonies gave rise to towns such as Criciúma, and later also spread further north, to Paraná.

In the colonies of southern Brazil, Italian immigrants at first confined themselves within their own ethnic group, where they could speak their native Italian dialects and keep their culture and traditions. With time, however, they would become thoroughly integrated economically and culturally into the larger society. In any case, Italian immigration to southern Brazil was very important to the economic development, as well to the culture and ethnic formation of the region.

Italians in coffee plantations of Southeast Brazil

A part of the immigrants settled in the colonies in Southern Brazil. However, the majority of them settled in Southeast Brazil (mainly in the state of São Paulo). Coffee became the main export product of Brazil and there were few workers for planting and harvesting it. In the beginning, the government was responsible for bringing the immigrants (in most cases, paying for their transportation by ship), but later the own farmers were responsible to make contracts with immigrants or specialized companies in recruiting Italian workers. Many posters were spread in Italy, with pictures of Brazil, selling the idea that everybody could become rich there by working with coffee, which was called by the Italian immigrants as the green gold. Most coffee plantations were in São Paulo and Minas Gerais, and in a smaller proportion also in Espírito Santo and Rio de Janeiro.

Italians used to immigrate to Brazil in families. The colono, as rural immigrants were called, had to sign a contract with the farmer and was obliged to work in the coffee plantation during a minimum period of time. However, the situation was not easy. The Italian immigrants were substituting for the African slaves, so many Brazilian farmers used to treat the immigrants in much the same manner as they had their slaves, imposing indentured labor.

The boom of Italian immigration in Brazil happened in late 19th century, between 1880 and 1900, when almost one million Italians arrived. Most of them were Northern Italians from the regions of Veneto, Lombardy, Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna. On the other hand, during the 20th century, Central and Southern Italians predominated in Brazil, coming from the regions of Campania, Abruzzo, Molise, Basilicata and Sicily.

While, in Southern Brazil, the Italian immigrants were living in relatively well-developed colonies, in Southeast Brazil the semi-slavery conditions in the coffee plantations were hard. Many rebellions against Brazilian farmers occurred, which caused great commotion in Italy and forced the Italian government to establish difficulties and barriers to further immigration. In consequence, the number of Italian immigrants in Brazil fell drastically in the beginning of the 20th century.

Areas of origin

In the History of the Italian immigration to Brazil, most of the immigrants came from Northern Italy. However, the distribution of the immigrants was not homogeneous in the different parts of Brazil. In most areas of Italian settlement in Brazil, the majority of the immigrants came from the Northern areas, with the notable exception of the state of São Paulo, where the Italian community was more diverse, including a large number of people from the South and from the Center of Italy.

In the first decades, the vast majority of the immigrants came from the North. Since Southern Brazil received most of the early settlers, the vast majority of the immigrants in this region came from the extreme North of Italy, mainly from the Veneto and particularly from the provinces of Vicenza, Treviso and Verona. In Rio Grande do Sul, many came from Cremona, Mantua, from parts of Brescia, and also from Bergamo, in the region of Lombardy, close to the Veneto. The regions of Trento, particularly the area of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol and of Friuli-Venezia Giulia also sent many immigrants to the South of Brazil. Of the immigrants in Rio Grande do Sul, 54% came from the Veneto, 33% from Lombardy, 7% from Trento, 4.5% from Friuli-Venezia Giulia and only 1.5% from other parts of Italy.

Starting in the early 20th century, the agrarian crisis also started to affect Southern Italy and many of them immigrated to Brazil. The Southerners went mostly to the state of São Paulo, since it was in need of workers to embrace the coffee plantations. Among the Italian immigrants in São Paulo, most came from Calabria, Campania and the Veneto.

Areas of settlement

Among all Italians who immigrated to Brazil, 70% went to the state of São Paulo. In consequence, São Paulo has more people with Italian ancestry than any region of Italy itself. The rest went mostly to the states of Rio Grande do Sul and Minas Gerais. Due to the internal migration, many Italians, second and third generation descendants, moved to other areas. In the early 20th century, many rural Italian workers from Rio Grande do Sul migrated to the west of Santa Catarina and then further north to Paraná. More recently, third and fourth generations have been migrating to other areas, then nowadays it is possible to find people of Italian descent in Brazilian regions where the immigrants had never settled, such as in the Cerrado region of Central-West, in the Northeast and in the Amazon rainforest area, in the extreme North of Brazil.

The prosperity

Despite the problems, most Italians in Brazil, after some years working in the coffee plantations, earned enough money to buy their own land and become farmers themselves. Some of them became big owners and very rich in the process and attracted more Italian immigrants to their possessions. Others left the rural areas of Brazil and moved to Brazilian urban centers, mainly São Paulo, Campinas, São Carlos, Ribeirão Preto, etc. In early 20th century, São Paulo was known as the city of the Italians, because 30% of its inhabitants were Italians (even today, is one of the largest "Italian" cities in the world, second only to Rome.) In Campinas, street signs in Italian were frequent, a large commercial and services sector owned by Italians developed, and more than 60% of the population had Italian surnames. In 1907, Belo Horizonte had nearly 60% of its population composed of Italians and first-generation descendants. Italians and their descendants were also quick to organize themselves and establish mutual aid societies (such as the Circolo Italiano), their own hospitals, schools (such as the Instituto Dante Alighieri, in São Paulo), syndicates, newspapers (such as La Fanciulla), magazines, radio stations, and even soccer teams (such as Palestra Itália, later renamed Sociedade Esportiva Palmeiras in São Paulo, and Cruzeiro in Belo Horizonte after World War II.)

Italian immigrants were very important to the development of many big cities of Brazil, such as São Paulo, Porto Alegre, Curitiba and Belo Horizonte. Bad conditions in rural areas of Brazil made thousands of Italians move to these big cities. Most of them became laborers and participated actively in the industrialization of Brazil in the early 20th century. Others became investors, bankers and industrialists, such as Andrea Matarazzo, whose family became the richest industrialists in São Paulo, with a holding of more than 200 industries and businesses.

Italians were divided in two groups in Brazil: those living in Southern Brazil were closed in rural colonies, in contact only with other Italians, where they were able to create a New Italy. In the other hand, Italians living in Southeast Brazil, the most populated region of country, were quickly integrated into Brazilian society.

Languages

Nowadays, most Brazilians with Italian ancestry speak Portuguese as their native language. Actually, Italian language and dialects were forbidden to be spoken in Brazil (along with German and Japanese) by the president Getúlio Vargas, when he declared war against Italy in the 1930s.

However, the Italian dialects influenced the Portuguese spoken in some areas of Brazil. In São Paulo, the diversity of the languages of the immigrants resulted in a peculiar way of speaking, which differs substantially from the Caipira dialect, once spoken in the area before the arrival of the Italians. The new "dialect" resulted from the mix of Calabrian, Neapolitan, Venetian, Portuguese and with the Caipira accent. This mix resulted in a peculiar way of speaking Portuguese in the streets of São Paulo, creating a vernacular not found elsewhere in Brazil. Currently, the Italian influence in the Portuguese spoken in São Paulo is not as great as in the past, although the accent of the city's inhabitants is still marked by the Italian Brazilian "dialect" that prevailed in the city in the beginning of the 20th century. It is noteworthy that the Italian influence in the spoken language of São Paulo is fairly widespread, the point to embrace the inhabitants of that city who are not of Italian descent.

Similar phenomenon occurred in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul, but encompassing almost exclusively to people of Italian origin. After decades of Italian settlement, a dialect named Talian has emerged, mostly in the northeast part of the state (Serra Gaúcha). Talian is a dialect mostly based on the Venetian language, but with influences from other Italian dialects and Portuguese. In southern Brazilian rural areas marked by bilingualism, even among the monolingual Portuguese-speaking population, the Italian-influenced accent is fairly typical.

Italian Brazilians and ethnicity

The Italian ethnicity became the 4th most important ethnic group of Brazil, just behind the Portuguese, Africans and Amerindians. Italian surnames are common among Brazilians since 25 million Brazilians have Italian ancestors.

Although victims of some prejudice in the first decades (and in spite of the persecution during the World War) Italian Brazilians managed to mingle and to incorporate seamlessly into the Brazilian society. Many Brazilian artists, politicians, footballers, models and personalities are or were of Italian descent; several senators, many deputies and ambassadors. Three Presidents of Brazil were of Italian descent: Emílio Garrastazu Médici, Pascoal Ranieri Mazzilli and Itamar Franco.

Italian Brazilians tend to be very participant in local politics and their influence is acknowledged to have improved the economy of the places where they settled.

Other Influences

• Use of ciao ("tchau" in Portuguese) as a 'goodbye' salutation (all of Brazil),
• Adoption of the pizza, pasta and panetone in the national cuisine (initially in the South and Southeast, now in all of Brazil),
• Wine production (in the South),
• A bunch of loan words (italianisms), such as ravióli, espaguete, macarrão, nhoque, pizza, lasanha, panetone, esquifoso, feltro, pivete, bisonho, cicerone, and many others.
• Softening of the Brazilian pronunciation (mostly São Paulo, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul)
• Early introduction of more advanced low-scale farming techniques (Minas Gerais, São Paulo and the South).

References

1. People of Italian descent in Brazil
2. http://www.consultanazionaleemigrazione.it/itestero/Gli_italiani_in_Brasile.pdf
3. Gabaccia, Ottanelli, Italian workers of the world, University of Illinois Press
4. Emigrazione Italiana in Brasile
5. Italian Migration
6. Italian Citizenship.Kirk Buckman, Nationality Law and Italic Identities
7. Fim da escravidão gera medidas de apoio a imigração no Brasil - 16/02/2005 - Resumos | História do Brasil
8. SANTOS, Sales Augusto dos. Historical roots of the “whitening” of Brazil. Translated by Lawrence Hallewell. Latin American Perspectives. Issue 122, Vol. 29 No I, January 2002, p 62.
9. Brasil 500 anos - Italianos - Regiões de Origem
10. IBGE teen
11. "A tese do branqueamento" - escreveu Skidmore - "baseava-se na presunção da
12. Skidmore. "A tese do branqueamento"
13. http://www.ibge.gov.br/ibgeteen/povoamento/italianos/regorigem.html
14. A maior parte veio do Vêneto.
15. [http://www.revistafenix.pro.br/PDF6/5%20-%20ARTIGO%20-%20AILTONPEREIRA.pdf PELOS CANTOS DA CIDADE: MÚSICA POPULAR EM SÃO PAULO NA PASSAGEM DO SÉCULO XIX AO XX].
16. Especiais - Agência Brasil
17. http://www.italplanet.it/interna.asp?sez=143&info=2344&ln=0
18. Gli italiani in Brasile
19. Prefeitura de S.Paulo - Mil Povos
20. Itália Nossa - O Portal da Comunidade Ítalo-Brasileira ::
21. Italianos.It ::: Bem-Vindos
22. Migração - Cidadania Italiana - Dupla Cidadania - Encontro analisa imigração italiana em MG
23. Itália Nossa - O Portal da Comunidade Ítalo-Brasileira ::
24. Itália Nossa - O Portal da Comunidade Ítalo-Brasileira ::
25. Itália Nossa - O Portal da Comunidade Ítalo-Brasileira ::
26. Itália Nossa - O Portal da Comunidade Ítalo-Brasileira ::
27. [http://www.histedbr.fae.unicamp.br/navegando/artigos_frames/artigo_087.html A NACIONALIZAÇÃO DO ENSINO NO CONTESTADO, CENTRO-OESTE DE SANTA CATARINA, NA PRIMEIRA METADE DO SÉCULO XX].
28. http://www.revistafenix.pro.br/PDF6/5% 20 -- 20ARTIGO% 20% -% 20AILTONPEREIRA.pdf
29. http://www.cbtonline.com.br/FiquePorDentro/2007/0, 0062072507.aspx

• Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE) in Portuguese

See also

• Italians
• List of Italo-Brazilians
• Italian Argentine
• Italian American
• Italian diaspora
• Demography of Brazil
• White Latin American
• List of Portuguese words of Italian origin

v t e Ancestry and ethnicity in Brazil
Brazil Brazilians Indigenous peoples Mixed-race or mestiços ainokos pardos caboclos mamelucos Amazonian Jews cafuzos juçaras caiçaras mulatos sararás Africa By ethnicity Black quilombolas Kalunga West Africa Nigerian Central Africa Angolan Congolese Americas North America American (United States) Americana Confederados New Texas Santa Bárbara d'Oeste Canadian Mexican Caribbean Barbadian Cuban Haitian Jamaican Central America Costa Rican Guatemalan Honduran Nicaraguan Panamanian Salvadoran South America Argentine Bolivian Chilean Colombian Ecuadorian Guyanese Paraguayan Peruvian Surinamese Uruguayan Venezuelan Asia By ethnicity Yellow (East Asian) By country or region Eastern Chinese Filipino Indonesian Japanese in São Paulo Korean Malaysian Thai Vietnamese Southern Bangladeshi East Indians Pakistani Romani Central Afghan Western Armenian Arab Iraqi Lebanese Palestinian Syrian Iranian Jewish Turkish Europe By ethnicity White By country or region Central Austrian Czech German Hungarian Polish Swiss Eastern Belarusian Russian Ukrainian Northern Estonian Latvian Lithuanian Scandinavian Southern Bulgarian Croatian Greek Italian Macedonian Portuguese Romanian Spanish Western Belgian British (English and Scottish) Dutch French Irish Luxembourgian
Related topics	Demographics of Brazil Colonization Slave trade Immigration from Europe Emigration Racism

External links

• Oriundi.net. A site for descendants from Italians in Brazil

Template:Link FA

• Brazilians of Italian descent
• Brazilian people
• Ethnic groups in Brazil
• Italian diaspora