All of us know that the city with the most Italians in the world is not Roma (the capital of Italy) but Sao Paulo in Brasil. In the metropolitan area of Roma there are nearly 3 million Italians, but in the one of San Paolo (as is called in Italian) there are nearly 6 millions (the double). Of course only one million are "real" Italians born in Italy or Italo-brasilians with also the Italian passport, but they are more than half the actual population of this huge brasilian city (that has nearly 11 million inhabitants). These Italians of San Paolo are in many cases the descendants of one of the biggest emigrations in History: the Italian diaspora of the last two centuries.
The skyscraper "Italia" in downtown Sao Paulo, built by the Italian community of San Paolo in the 1960s (when was the tallest in south America, with nearly 170 meters of altitude and 50 floors)
In 1916 the Italians were 187,540, or 37% of the city population of nearly 400,000 inhabitants, according to official census.
After some years working in coffee plantations, many Italian immigrants earned enough money to buy their own land and become farmers themselves. But most of them left the rural areas and moved to cities, mainly São Paulo. A very few became very rich in the process and attracted more Italian immigrants. In the early 20th century, São Paulo became known as the "City of the Italians", because 31% of its inhabitants were of Italian nationality in 1900. Indeed the city of São Paulo had the second-highest population of people with Italian ancestry in the world at this time beginning the xx century, after only Rome. In 1901, 90% of industrial workers and 80% of construction workers in São Paulo were Italians. Most of them participated actively in the industrialization of Brazil in the early 20th century.
Photo of Count Matarazzo, a poor Italian emigrant who was named "Count" by the King of Italy in 1926 and had 20 billion dollars worldwide when died -after becoming a very rich industrialist of San Paolo- in 1937. He was one of the richest man in all LatinAmerica (80 years later, in 2017, these $20 billion were worth the equivalent of 220 billion dollars! More than the 2017 Sao Paulo state GDP!)
Others became investors, bankers and industrialists, such as Count Matarazzo (if interested, please read in italian: https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/francesco-matarazzo_(Dizionario-Biografico)/), whose family became the richest industrialists in São Paulo by holding the property of more than 200 industries and businesses (in Rio Grande do Sul, actually 42% of the industrial companies have Italians roots and in the San Paolo State the percentage is similar but a bit less).
Count Matarazzo died in 1937, when was the fifth most rich man in the "western capitalist world"!
Italians and their descendants were also quick to organize themselves and establish mutual aid societies (such as the "Circolo Italiano"), hospitals, schools (such as the "Istituto Colégio Dante Alighieri", in São Paulo), labor unions, newspapers as "Il Piccolo" and "Fanfulla" (for the whole city of São Paulo), magazines, radio stations and association football teams such as: "Clube Atlético Votorantim", the old Sport "Club Savóia", Clube "Atlético Juventus" of Italians Brazilians from Mooca (old worker quarter inside the city of São Paulo), "Esporte Clube Juventude" and the great clubs (which had the same name) "Palestra Italia", later renamed to "Sociedade Esportiva Palmeiras" in São Paulo.
In 1920, nearly 80% of São Paulo city's population was composed of immigrants and their descendants and Italians made up over half of its male population. In 1900, a columnist who was absent from São Paulo for 20 years wrote "then São Paulo used to be a genuine brasilian city, today it is an Italian city." Furthermore, after WW1 the Governor of São Paulo said that "if the owner of each house in São Paulo display the flag of the country of origin on the roof, from above São Paulo would look like an Italian city".
It is noteworthy o pinpoint that Sao Paulo served as the adoptive home of 56% of the Italian immigrants who arrived in Brazil between 1886 and 1934 (the last year of huge emigration from Italy before WW2).
For reasons of practicality, Italian immigrants tended to settle in the urban neighborhoods of Sao Paulo with other Italians of similar regional origins. Literary scholar Mario Carelli (in 1985) affirmed that familial relationships and kinship ties led Neapolitans to Bras, Calabrians to Bixiga (previously known as "Bexiga," or "bladder," in Portuguese), and Venetians to Bom Retiro. Carelli also notes that these neighborhoods, as well as Barra Funda and Belenzinho, were positioned in the valleys of the Tiete and Tamanduatei rivers and within easy access of Sao Paulo's railways (for going to work). The area in which the Italian immigrants settled constituted the "cidade baixa," or the working-class ghettos of the city. The neighborhoods, particularly Bixiga, boasted affordable rent and property values, although the living conditions were precarious initially in the first half of the XX century.
Indeed in 1920 in San Paolo there were 1,446 companies and industries in the hands of italians enriched, who gave work to more than 9,000 "poor" italians emigrants.
Italian emigrants in the ''Hospedaria dos Imigrantes'' (Immigrants Hospital), in 1895 São Paulo.
Furthermore, Italian language & dialects have influenced the Portuguese spoken in some areas of Brazil like the State of Sao Paulo. Italian was so widespread in São Paulo city that the Portuguese traveler Sousa Pinto said that he could not speak with cart drivers in Portuguese because they all spoke Italian dialects and gesticulated as Neapolitans.
The Italian influence on Portuguese spoken in São Paulo is no longer as great as before, but the accent of the city's inhabitants still has some traces of the Italian accents common in the beginning of the 20th century like the intonation and such expressions as "Belo", "Ma vá!", "Orra meu!" and "Tá entendendo?". Other characteristic is the difficulty to speak Portuguese in plural, saying plural words as they were singulars like in the italian language. The lexical influence of Italian on Brazilian Portuguese, however, has remained quite small.
The Italian influence in Brazil affects also music with traditional Italian songs and the merging with other Brazilians music styles. One of the main results of the fusion is "Samba paulista", a samba with strong Italians influence, that has a Brazilian rhythm and theme but (mostly) Italian lyrics. Indeed Samba paulista was created by Adoniran Barbosa (born João/Giuseppe Rubinato), the son of Italians immigrants. His songs translated the life of the Italian neighborhoods in São Paulo and merged São Paulo dialect with samba, which latter made him known as the "people's poet."
There is no doubt that Italian Fascism in Sao Paulo was a remarkable movement in the 1930s, with thousands of members and followers, but it disappeared after WW2. However in San Paolo in the 1930s and until 1942 all the newspapers in italian were controlled by the italo-brasilian fascists supported by Count Matarazzo (please read in italian: https://web.archive.org/web/20121116054510/http://www.asei.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=178:gli-italiani-in-brasile-vid-parte&catid=65:articoli&Itemid=250)
According to Maria Luiza Carneiro Tucci, the "Fascio di Sao Paolo" was formed in March 1923, approximately 6 months after the fascists took power in Italy, with huge success among the Italians of the city. This was confirmed by its quick spread to other cities and Italian communities. In November 1931, a branch of the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro that had existed in Italy since 1925 was founded in São Paulo and put under the control of the Fascio di Sao Paulo, which was responsible for spreading the fascist doctrine among the local italian popular classes. Another important institution at that time was the "Circolo Italiano di Sao Paolo", formed in 1910 and continuing today, which aimed to preserve and disseminate Italian culture to Italian-Brazilians and Brazilians in general. In the middle 1920s, the fascist doctrine began to infiltrate this community through the influence of the 'March on Rome veteran' Serafino Mazzolini, Italian consul to Brazil.
These three Italian institutions, and several more, along with their members, were spied on, persecuted, and sometimes even closed by the brasilian "Estado Novo regime" under the allegation that they were "conspiring against the Brazilian State" by orders of the fascist government in Italy. Some members were arrested; one of them, Cesar Rivelli, was expelled from the country. Indeed, after the Brazilian declaration of war against the Axis powers in 1942, for example, the traditional Dante Alighieri school of São Paulo, in that time frequented by students of Italian background, had to change its name to "Colégio Visconde de São Leopoldo," returning to the formal name only after the war was over.
Actually 45% of the Italians in San Paolo came from Northern Italy, 34% from Central Italy regions, and only 21% from Southern Italy. Brazil (and San Paolo, of course) is the only American country with a large Italian community in which Southern Italian immigrants are a minority. The italian regions from where they mainly came are Veneto and Friuli/Trentino, followed by Campania and Lombardy.
An italian-brasilian family (the Rizzoli) in 2012
After the Second World War, Italian emigration to Brazil once again recorded a significant positive balance. In 1946 emigration amounted to just 603 units (against 97 repatriations), but already the following year it exceeded 4,000 (against 1,142 repatriations) and in 1951 9,000 (against just over 2,000 repatriations). In the meantime, the dispute between Italy and Brazil over assets seized from Italian citizens during the war has been resolved and the agreement ratified in Rio de Janeiro on 8 September 1949 provided for the establishment of a mixed colonization and immigration company, financed by Italy also using the capital newly released in Brazil. In 1952-1954, 17,026, 14,328 and 12,949 emigrants left the Peninsula respectively, while adding the data for the three years, the overall repatriations did not exceed 10,000 units. The movement of departures began to decline in 1955 (8,523 emigrants against 2,592 returns), but remained above 1,000 units until 1962, when, however, the returns were 1,477. During the remaining sixties the migratory balance was always negative and departures from Italy were less than a thousand. This figure was exceeded again only in the mid-1970s, when net migration briefly became active again.
After the Second World War, Brazil was the third Latin American pole of attraction, preceded by Argentina and Venezuela, for Italian emigrants. However, the Italian-Brazilian community was unable to really increase its numbers. From the 1950 census there were 44,678 naturalized Italians and 197,659 immigrants with an Italian passport. Three-quarters of this presence was concentrated in the state of São Paulo, the remaining quarter was divided between the federal district, Rio Grande do Sul, Minas Gerais and Paraná. Ten years later the percentage was more or less the same, even if the age of the population of Italian origin had decreased slightly, although the over-fifties still predominated.
In fact, the new wave of immigration did not achieve great results, also because the attempt to restart agricultural colonization failed. The disorganization of the Brazilian state and the harshness of living conditions on the farms or on the border prevented any effort from being successful. The only immigration flows that therefore worked were those linked to the industrial and commercial sectors and to the reunification of family units. However, the migratory experience was much less lucrative than in the past and returns to Italy were numerous.
Divisions within the community also played a role in this failure, which obviously did not exclude cases of individual success. To the now gangrenous conflicts between anti-fascists and fascists (these were among other things strengthened by the many who abandoned Italy as soon as the war ended to avoid retaliations and sought a new homeland in Latin America) were added those between the new and the old emigrants. The former did not believe in the values of the latter and above all they emigrated to make a quick fortune, therefore they had no intention of giving in to employment blackmail and wanted to immediately obtain the best possible working conditions. Furthermore, they did not join the associations of the old, considered leftovers from a now vanished era, especially those of a more parochial nature. In exchange, the old welfare associations did not care about those who have just arrived and in many cases even refused to help them. The only moments of cohesion between old and new, but not without contrasts, were linked to humanitarian initiatives in favor of Italy, such as the collection of funds for the victims of the flood in the Polesine.
On the other hand, the integration of new arrivals into Brazil was hindered not only by economic difficulties, because after all the country, even in its worst moments, was still considered to have great potential and therefore immigrants were not frightened by the recurring crises, but also and above all from the political one. In 1950 Vargas was re-elected president and launched a series of development plans, which, however, did not take off. Four years later he committed suicide, opening a new period of great confusion. In August 1961, for example, Janio Quadros, elected not even a year earlier, resigned, declaring that the forces of reaction prevented him from intervening in any important decisions. Finally, in 1964 the armed forces deposed President João Goulart (formerly Quadros' deputy), accusing him of sympathizing with the communists, and opened a true dictatorial phase.
The Brazilian political upheavals and the type of brutal development imposed on the country by multinationals with American and European capital or by a capitalist class with very little social sensitivity have certainly influenced the nature of Italian immigration. In the sixties, farmers no longer arrived looking for land, but from that decade the Italians moving to Brasil were mostly artisans and specialized workers and in some cases graduated individuals.
Dancing italian-brasilian group (made of descendants of Italians emigrated from Italy's Trentino region), celebrating the "2012 Festa dell'emigrante"
