Goodbye, Brazil: Émigrés from the Land of Soccer and Samba

Preface and Acknowledgments

xi Pref­ ace and Ac­ knowl­ edg­ ments In 1964, the famed Bra­ zil­ ian so­ ci­ ol­ o­ gist Fer­ nando Hen­ rique Car­ doso was­ forced to flee Bra­ zil for Chile and, later, ­ France as mil­ i­ tary au­ thor­ ities, who had led a coup ­ against the duly ­ elected Bra­ zil­ ian govern­ ment that year, began breath­ ing down his neck. Fer­ nando Hen­ rique, who later be­ came a­ two-term pres­ i­ dent of Bra­ zil, was but one of many dis­ tin­ guished ac­ a­ de­ mi­ cians, pol­ i­ ti­ cians, musi­ cians, and art­ ists ex­ iled from their home­ land in the late 1960s and 1970s as a re­ sult of mil­ i­ tary rule.1 Over the past three ­ decades, there has been a new kind of ex­ o­ dus from Bra­ zil, al­ beit one based on eco­ nom­ ics, not pol­ i­ tics. By 1990, some 1.3 mil­ lion Bra­ zil­ ians had “gone miss­ ing” in the ­ nation’s fed­ eral cen­ sus and were pre­ sumed to be liv­ ing out­ side Bra­ zil, and in 2009, more than 3 mil­ lion Bra­ zil­ ians were liv­ ing ­ abroad. They were liv­ ing in 112 coun­ tries, and their num­ bers ­ ranged in pop­ u­ la­ tion from about 1.3 mil­ lion in the ­ United ­ States, 200,000 in Par­ a­ guay, and a sim­ i­ lar num­ ber in Japan to 60 in Viet­ nam and 32 in Ethi­ opia. In 2008, Bra­ zil­ ians liv­ ing in the ­ United ­ States, Eu­ rope, and Japan sent some $7.4 bil­ lion back home. But, given the size of the Bra­ zil­ ian econ­ omy— today the sixth larg­ est in the world—re­ mit­ tances rep­ re­ sented just 1 per­ cent of the ­ nation’s gross do­ mes­ tic prod­ uct. Nev­ er­ the­ less, the money re­ mit­ ted to Bra­ zil by cit­ i­ zens liv­ ing ­ abroad had a big im­ pact on ­ so-called send­ ing com­ mu­ nities, towns, and small cit­ ies—such as Govern­ ador Val­ a­ dares in the Bra­ zil­ ian state of Minas Ge­ rais—that have many res­ i­ dents liv­ ing­ abroad. ­ Half-built ­ houses and new con­ do­ min­ iums line their ­ streets, as do­ stores with ­ American names like Stop & Shop Mer­ cearia (mar­ ket). This book is about the Bra­ zil­ ian di­ as­ pora, the re­ al­ ity that siz­ able pop­ u­ la­ tions of Bra­ zil­ ians live not only in the ­ United ­ States, Par­ a­ guay, and Japan but also in Por­ tu­ gal, Spain, Italy, and En­ gland, with ­ smaller con­ cen­ tra­ tions in still other coun­ tries. This is true even ­ though, prior to the late Preface and Acknowledgments xii 1980s, Bra­ zil as a na­ tion had no his­ tory or ex­ pe­ ri­ ence with em­ i­ gra­ tion. Why has this ex­ o­ dus oc­ curred? Who are these ém­ i­ grés, and why do they­ choose cer­ tain des­ ti­ na­ tions? And how do they fare liv­ ing in ­ foreign lands? These top­ ics are cov­ ered in this book. How did I come to write it? A word about my own back­ ground by way of ex­ pla­ na­ tion. I have been re­ search­ ing and writ­ ing about Bra­ zil­ ian em­ i­ gra­ tion since the late 1980s, when I first en­ coun­ tered Bra­ zil­ ian im­ mi­ grants liv­ ing in New York City. I am a na­ tive of Man­ hat­ tan and an in­ cur­ able New ­ Yorker—de­ spite hav­ ing lived in Flor­ ida and hav­ ing ­ taught at the Uni­ ver­ sity of Flor­ ida for more than ­ thirty years. I am also an anthro­ pol­ o­ gist who ­ speaks Por­ tu­ guese and spe­ cializes in Bra­ zil­ ian cul­ ture. Dur­ ing pe­ ri­ odic vis­ its to the city in the late 1980s—for what I call my “New York fix”—I began no­ tic­ ing that more and more peo­ ple there were speak­ ing Por­ tu­ guese. I heard it not only in the mid­ town areas usu­ ally fre­ quented by tour­ ists but also on city sub­ ways—a form of trans­ por­ ta­ tion that ­ non-English-speaking tour­ ists often avoid. There has...