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9. Quintessential Emigrants: Valadarenses
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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...