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151 9 Quin­ tes­ sen­ tial Em­ i­ grants Val­ a­ da­ renses It’s a rare house­ hold in the ­ county that ­ doesn’t have some­ one who went to the­ United ­ States, who lives there, or at least, who is think­ ing of going. Rec­ tor, Uni­ ver­ sity of the Vale do Rio Doce, Govern­ ador Val­ a­ dares (quoted in Cor­ rêa 1994, 70) Govern­ ador Val­ a­ dares is a quin­ tes­ sen­ tial emigrant-sending com­ mu- ­ nity. This town of some 260,000 per­ sons, lo­ cated three hun­ dred ki­ lom­ e­ ters north­ east of Belo Hor­ i­ zonte, is also the re­ gional eco­ nomic cen­ ter of east­ ern and north­ east­ ern Minas Ge­ rais and the neigh­ bor­ ing state of ­ Espírito Santo. Govern­ ador Val­ a­ dares and the sur­ round­ ing towns in the Vale do Rio Doce con­ sti­ tute what has been ­ called a “send­ ing hub” be­ cause by 2007 just over half of local house­ holds had at least one mem­ ber liv­ ing ­ abroad. In fact, the num­ ber of pass­ ports held by the cit­ i­ zens of Govern­ ador Val­ a­ dares would be av­ er­ age for a city of one mil­ lion, not a city­ one-quarter that size. ­ Thoughts about em­ i­ grat­ ing are al­ ways on the minds of towns­ peo­ ple—not nec­ es­ sar­ ily doing it but at least con­ sid­ er­ ing em­ i­ gra­ tion as a pos­ sibil­ ity (Si­ queira and Jan­ sen 2008; Be­ raba 2007). If the area sur­ round­ ing Govern­ ador Val­ a­ dares is in­ cluded, some forty thou­ sand peo­ ple in the re­ gion are liv­ ing out­ side Bra­ zil. With al­ most no in­ dus­ try, the mu­ nic­ i­ pal­ ity ba­ si­ cally lives on ser­ vices and com­ merce, both of which are sus­ tained by money ­ earned in the ­ United ­ States and else­ where. By the mid-2000s, some $5 mil­ lion a month or $60 mil­ lion an­ nu­ ally was being sent to the city in the form of re­ mit­ tances. This is why it has been­ dubbed “Govern­ ador Valadólares”: about 60 per­ cent of the money flow­ ing­ through it is di­ rectly or in­ di­ rectly sent from ­ abroad. ­ Viewed from a na­ tional per­ spec­ tive, na­ tives of the Vale do Rio Doce re­ gion sent back about 14 Quintessential Emigrants: Valadarenses 152 per­ cent of the $6.4 bil­ lion re­ mit­ ted to Bra­ zil in the mid-2000s. In ­ contrast, the São Paulo met­ ro­ pol­ i­ tan area, with an es­ ti­ mated ­ twenty mil­ lion res­ i­ dents, was the re­ cip­ i­ ent of just 4 per­ cent of these funds (Reel 2006; Peix­ oto 2007;­ Scheller 2008c). While Govern­ ador Val­ a­ dares is the focal point of em­ i­ gra­ tion ac­ tiv­ ity, nu­ mer­ ous small towns and vil­ lages in the Vale do Rio Doce also have been bit­ ten by the mi­ gra­ tion bug. Take ­ Capitão An­ drade, for ex­ am­ ple, some­ twenty-two miles from Govern­ ador Val­ a­ dares. An es­ ti­ mated 1,000 of its 3,200 res­ i­ dents are liv­ ing ­ abroad and are send­ ing back $500,000 a month— $100,000 or more than the en­ tire mu­ nic­ i­ pal bud­ get. Then there is Ta­ ru­ mi­ rim, a town of 12,000 peo­ ple that is less than an hour from Govern­ ador Val­ a­ dares; ­ nearly ­ one-third of its res­ i­ dents are liv­ ing in the ­ United ­ States. The rel­ a­ tive pros­ per­ ity they see in Govern­ ador Val­ a­ dares is the cat­ a­ lyst for the ex­ o­ dus from these small towns, an ex­ o­ dus that con­ sists ­ largely of young men. So many have left that it has be­ come dif­ fi­ cult to find work­ ers to hire to do farm labor, and women are said to have a hard time lo­ cat­ ing po­ ten­ tial­ spouses (Mineo 2006a, 2006c). Em­ i­ gra­ tion and re­ lated top­ ics—such as the ex­ change rate for dol­ lars— are so per­ va­ sive in Govern­ ador Val­ a­ dares and the sur­ round...

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