Carcamano

Carcamano (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˌkaʁkɐˈmɐ̃nu]) is an ethnic slur used in Southern Brazil for the descendants of the non-Iberian European immigrants who arrived in Brazil in the late 19th century and in the early 20th century.

This name was originally given to the Italian-Brazilians, the largest non-Iberian European community in Brazil, but was slowly spread to other non-Iberian white Brazilian communities like German-Brazilians, Slavic-Brazilians and others.^[1]

In some regions of Northeastern Brazil (especially the states of Maranhão and Ceará), this term is also used for Brazilian Jews and Arab Brazilians.

The origin of the term is controversial. Folk etymology advocates that the word carcamano is composed of two separate words. Carca- drawn from the verb carcare, which means "to press down" and -mano meaning "hand". The idea was to refer to the foreigner, probably of Italian origin (whence mano, vs. Portuguese mão), of pressing down on the scales when weighing goods in the dry goods or grocery store. It is a way of calling the vendor a cheat. This is now generalized to dishonest practices directed to foreigners of Italian descent.

The term "carcamano" ("carcamani", pl.) is of Italian linguistic origin, more specifically probably a slang from a dialect whether from Naples, Sicily or Calabria; not of Brazilian origin, though it is used there a lot; it was not used for most of the 20th-21st. centuries for "cheating merchant", the term's usage transformed with time; it is derogatory even in Italy, though it lost its stronger bigoted expression, in the past and nowadays, it has been used by "Italian-Brazilians" and Italian immigrants themselves as well, it is even used in light jokes, it refers to low social class taste and vulgar, course, crass behavior and way of talking; though it is true that stereotypes of Jewish and other immigrants in both Brazil and US could also fill the definition of 'carcamani". Originally used in Brazil to refer to uneducated poor immigrants from Napoli, Calabria and Sicily.

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