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138 8 Other Des­ ti­ na­ tions And for the Poor The first im­ pres­ sion one has who vis­ its these “Bra­ zil­ ian com­ mu­ nities” in east­ ern Par­ a­ guay is that the inter­ na­ tional bor­ der has been dis­ lo­ cated since the 1970s. The ­ strong pres­ ence of Bra­ zil­ ians in this fron­ tier re­ gion makes it seem like a piece of Bra­ zil in­ side Par­ a­ guay or a state in­ side an­ other state. Bra­ zil­ ian vis­ i­ tor in Par­ a­ guay (quoted in Al­ bu­ querque 2009, 162) Awave of em­ i­ gra­ tion dis­ tinct from that pre­ vi­ ously de­ scribed has been tak­ ing place over the past four ­ decades as im­ mi­ grants from Bra­ zil have been mov­ ing to ad­ ja­ cent na­ tions in South Amer­ ica. These fig­ ures in table 7 pro­ vide some sense of the size and scope of this ex­ o­ dus. Some 400,000 Bra­ zil­ ians live in the ten coun­ tries bor­ der­ ing Bra­ zil, ac­ cord­ ing to es­ ti­ mates. Al­ though the first ex­ o­ dus from Bra­ zil to Par­ a­ guay oc­ curred in the late 1960s and the 1970s, the em­ i­ gra­ tion of Bra­ zil­ ians to Table 7 Brazilians in South America Country Number Paraguay 200,000 Argentina 37,000 Venezuela 26,000 Uruguay 30,000 Bolivia 50,000 Suriname 20,000 French Guiana 18,000 Guyana 7,500 Source: Ministério das Relações Exteriores 2011. Other Destinations: And for the Poor 139 neigh­ bor­ ing coun­ tries took off in the mid-1980s, about the same time that the de­ par­ ture for the ­ United ­ States and other na­ tions ­ abroad in­ ten­ sified. What some have ­ called an “inter­ nal ex­ o­ dus” to South ­ American na­ tions that bor­ der Bra­ zil had very dif­ fer­ ent roots—land­ less­ ness, land con­ sol­ i­ da­ tion, the mech­ a­ ni­ za­ tion of ag­ ri­ cul­ ture, and the ab­ sence of agrar­ ian re­ form—from those that led Bra­ zil­ ians to more dis­ tant parts of the world. It was in those years that rub­ ber tap­ pers, min­ ers, and small cul­ ti­ va­ tors— share­ crop­ pers, ten­ ant farm­ ers, and land­ less day la­ bor­ ers—­ crossed inter­ na­ tional fron­ tiers in the north­ ern and west­ ern Am­ a­ zon and the South­ ern Cone. Some sug­ gest that this inter­ change in­ volved an “ex­ por­ ta­ tion of so­ cial ten­ sions” and ­ served as an es­ cape valve that moved Bra­ zil­ ians to neigh­ bor­ ing coun­ tries to re­ duce ten­ sions gen­ er­ ated by ­ Brazil’s inter­ nal prob­ lems of agrar­ ian struc­ ture (Klin­ to­ witz 1995; De Al­ meida 1995, 28). The prin­ ci­ ple of na­ tion­ al­ ity comes into play in these pop­ u­ la­ tion move­ ments in that the laws that di­ vide and dis­ tin­ guish na­ tional en­ tities in such­ cross-border ­ travels are ig­ nored. Many of them have in­ volved con­ flicts— along the bor­ ders of Ven­ e­ zuela, Co­ lom­ bia, Bo­ livia, ­ Guyana, and ­ French Gui­ ana—­ between na­ tives of those coun­ tries and Bra­ zil­ ian min­ ers, rub­ ber tap­ pers, land­ own­ ers, and in­ dig­ e­ nous pop­ u­ la­ tions. The Bra­ zil­ ian press has taken to call­ ing these same areas “our ag­ ri­ cul­ tu­ ral fron­ tiers ­ abroad” (nos­ sas fron­ tei­ ras ­ agrícolas no ex­ te­ rior), and the Bra­ zil­ ian im­ mi­ grants who jour­ ney there are said to be “the last ban­ dei­ rantes,” a ref­ er­ ence to the ad­ ven­ tur­ ers and trail­ blaz­ ers who criss­ crossed Bra­ zil in the six­ teenth ­ through the eigh­ teenth cen­ tu­ ries (quoted in De Al­ meida 1995, 35). Des­ ti­ na­ tion: Par­ a­ guay Today the ap­ prox­ i­ mately 200,000 Bra­ zil­ ians in Par­ a­ guay make up fewer than 5 per­ cent of that ­ country’s pop­ u­ la­ tion but may oc­ cupy as much as 10 per­ cent of the ­ nation’s ter­ ri­ tory. In some east­ ern areas that bor­ der Bra­ zil, such as...

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