Portuguese-Brazilian

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Portuguese Brazilians
Total population c. 163 million
90% of Brazil's population
Regions with significant populations Brazil:
   163,000,000 (including those of partial ancestry) [citation needed]
Language Portuguese.
Religion Predominantly Roman Catholic
Related ethnic groups Italo-Brazilians, German-Brazilians, Spanish Brazilians, Polish Brazilians and other European groups.

Portuguese-Brazilian (Portuguese: luso-brasileiro) is a Portuguese-born person with Brazilian citizenship or a Brazilian-born person of Portuguese ancestry.

Portuguese are the main European ethnic group in Brazil. They first appeared in the colonial period, in the 16th century, though most arrived in the early 20th century.

Contents

[edit] Immigration to Brazil

[edit] Restricted Portuguese immigrants (1500-1700)

In 1500, the first Portuguese explorers, led by Pedro Álvares Cabral, disembarked in Brazil, where nowadays Porto Seguro is located. They had the first contact with the Indigenous of Brazil. At first time, the Portuguese thought they had discovered an island, but soon found they were in a new continent. In the first years, just a few Portuguese settled in Brazil, most of them living among the Amerindians.

Pedro Álvares Cabral
Enlarge
Pedro Álvares Cabral

During the 16th and 17th centuries, Portuguese emigration to Brazil was very low. The Portuguese Crown was expanding its Empire in Asia, and cared little about the new lands in the Americas. However, many pirates, mainly French, were already dealing pau brasil with the Amerindians. This situation worried Portugal, and in 1530, it effectively started to colonize Brazil.

The first Portuguese colonists started to settle in large numbers in the middle 16th century, along the cost of Brazil, where the first Portuguese villages were established. Many of these colonists were degredados: deported convicts, such as thieves and murders, who had been given the choice of death or exile.

During the 17th century, most Portuguese settlers in Brazil were rich people, who moved to the northeastern part of the country to establish the first sugar plantations. At the same time, Sephardi Jews were being expelled from Portugal. Some of these emigrated to Brazil, where the first Jewish community in the Americas was established. Some Portuguese-Gypsies also immigrated to Brazil during this time.

Most of these Portuguese were men. The number of Portuguese women in Brazil during the colonial period was low, because they were afraid to bring females to Brazil. For that reason, many Portuguese men had relationships with Amerindian women and later with female African slaves, resulting a large mixed-race population.

[edit] Growing Portuguese presence(1700-1850)

In the 18th century, Portuguese emigration to Brazil expanded rapidly, stimulated by the discovery of gold in the Minas Gerais region, in the Center-West of Brazil. In addition, Portugal was overpopulated, with many unemployed. Although many rich Portuguese emigrated to Brazil during this period, most of the new arrivals were poor peasants from Minho, in northern Portugal. At first Portugal encouraged the emigration of minhotos to Brazil, but, after some years, the number of arrivals was so great that the Portuguese Crown set up barriers to further immigration. Most of these Portuguese settled in Minas Gerais.

In the mid-17th century, a large number of Portuguese moved from the Azores to the coast of southern Brazil.

During this period, the number of Portuguese women in Brazil grew, resulting a larger white population.

A significant immigration of very rich Portuguese to Brazil occurred in 1808, when Queen Maria I of Portugal and her son and regent, the future João VI of Portugal, fleeing from Napoleon, relocated to Brazil with 15,000 members of the royal family, nobles and officials. They established themselves in Rio de Janeiro, returning to Portugal in 1821. Brazil won its independence the following year.

[edit] Waves of Portuguese immigrants (1850-1960)

Portuguese immigrants waiting for a ship to Brazil, early 20th century
Enlarge
Portuguese immigrants waiting for a ship to Brazil, early 20th century

After independence, instead of decrease, Portuguese immigration to Brazil increased a lot. In 1850, the traffic of African slaves to Brazil was forbidden, then the Brazilian Government started to stimulated European immigration to Brazil, in order to obtain workers to the coffee plantions, that were spreading enormously in the region.

In the late 19th century and early 20th century, hundreds of thousand of Portuguese immigrated to Brazil. Most of them were very poor peasants from the interior of Portugal and used to immigrate in families, with large porcentage of women and children. The majority settled in urban centers, mainly in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, working mainly as small traders. Almost all the bakeries in Rio, for example, were of Portuguese people.

[edit] Low Portuguese immigration (1960-2000)

In the 1930's, the Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas created a law that produced difficulties to the settlement of immigrants in Brazil. This law led to a decline in Portuguese immigration. However, between 1940 and 1960, thousands of Portuguese continued to emmigrate to Brazil. After that, with the growth of the Portuguese economy, a declining number of Portuguese immigrants settled in Brazil, and in the present day the movement is mostly in the reverse direction.

[edit] Portuguese immigration in numbers

Portuguese immigration to Brazil from the beginning of colonization, in 1500, until present day in 1990
Source: Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IBGE)
 
Decade
Nationality 1500-1700 1701-1760 1808-1817 1827-1829 1837-1841 1856-1857 1881-1900 1901-1930 1931-1950 1951-1960 1961-1967 1981-1991
Portuguese 100.000 600.000 24.000 2.004 629 16.108 316.204 754.147 148.699 235.635 54.767 4.605

[edit] Portuguese-Brazilian identity

Brazil has been colonized by Portugal, and both countries share many cultural aspects: the language, the main religion and many traditions. After independence, the elite of Brazil, even though they were of Portuguese descent, tried to dimish the Portuguese culture in the new country, and estabilish a Brazilian culture, different from that of Portugal. Portuguese immigration to Brazil has occurred since the 15th century. Since then, the Portuguese mixed a lot with other ethnic groups of Brazil, such as the Amerindians and Africans and, from the 19th century, with other European immigrants in Brazil, such as Italians and Germans. For all these reasons, many Portuguese-Brazilians do not know or are not interested about their Portuguese ancestry and do not have much affinity with Portugal, different from other more recent immigrant groups in Brazil, such as Japanese Brazilians, who are for the most part, still connected with Japan.

The Brazilian culture is in large part derived from the Portuguese culture and for the similarities between both cultures and the relatively easy integration of immigrants in Brazil makes it nearly impossible to keep a separate Portuguese identity. Starting from the second generation, Portuguese descendants start seeing themselves as purely Brazilians.

Nowadays, the Brazilian culture is influencing the Portuguese one. Brazilian music, Brazilian telenovelas, movies and traditions makes part of the reality of Portugal. Even the different words used in Brazilian Portuguese are now being adopted in the European Portuguese. Since the early 1990's, Portugal became a destination of Brazilian immigrants.

[edit] The Portuguese in current Brazil

There are many Portuguese-born people in Brazil. In the 2000 census, there were 200.000 Portuguese immigrants in Brazil, most of them immigrated to Brazil in the middle 20th century, and the community is in full decline, because the majority of them are old people.

In fact, it is almost impossible to know the number of Portuguese-Brazilians, because the Portuguese have been a presence in Brazil since the 15th century. Estimates say that at least 35 million Brazilians have Portuguese ancestors who settled in Brazil after 1850. A far higher number of Brazilians have Portuguese ancestry dating back even earlier.

In recent years, a significant number of Portuguese pensioners have been moving to Brazil, mainly to the northeast, attracted by the tropical weather, the beaches and Brazil's lifestyle. Most are dedicated to tourism.

[edit] How many Brazilians have Portuguese ancestry?

There are no real numbers about the number of Brazilians of Portuguese descent, because the Portuguese immigration to Brazil is very old.

If we take the White population of Brazil in 1872 (3.7 million), almost all of them will be of Portuguese ancestry, since other Europeans (mostly Italians) only started to immigrate to Brazil after´1875. The mulatto population (those of mixed Portuguese and African heritage) were 4 million, with a total of 7.7 million Brazilians of some Portuguese heritage in 1872.[1]

From 1870 until 1990, close to 1.5 million Portuguese immigrated to Brazil[2], and nowadays their descendants are about 25 million people, as big as the Italo-Brazilian population.[3]

However, only 15% of Brazilians consider themselves to be of Portuguese heritage, so we can note that most Brazilians do not know about their Portuguese ancestry.[4]

[edit] Famous Brazilians of Portuguese descent

This list contains only people of actual Portuguese origin or with very close Portuguese ancestry.

[edit] See Also

[edit] External links

  • [5] (an article about immigration to Brazil)
  • [6] (a Brazilian page from IBGE, in Portuguese)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../p/o/r/Portuguese-Brazilian_8064.html"
In other languages