-
8. Other Destinations: And for the Poor
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
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...