The Social and Economic Integration of Spanish Immigrants in Brazil

Abstract

The great wave of European and Asian migration which followed upon the abolition of slavery in 1888 brought some 5 million foreign born migrants to Brazil. In this mass migration, immigrants from Spain played a major role. The three quarters of a million Spaniards who came to Brazil in the next seventy years were vitally involved in the expansion of the Brazilian coffee economy and eventually in the construction of a major urban and agricultural economy in the state of Sao Paulo. They were third in importance nationally after the Italians and Portuguese, but because of their concentration in Sao Paulo, they would rank second in importance in this vital state. The timing of this migration, like that of the Italians, was totally tied to the demands for unskilled agricultural labor in the expanding coffee fields in the western planalto hinterland of the city of Sao Paulo. With the mass desertion of the 150,000 slaves in the expanding paulista coffee fazerEs, the fazendeiros forced the state in 1886 to begin subsidizing foreign immigrants,l a task which the federal government assumed in the following years, and which did not end until 1926.2 It was this subsidization and the real potential for savings and access to land, which finally made the Brazilian labor market attractive to European workers. Though agricultural colonization had brought German and Italian peasants to the southem regions of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Parani in the 19th century, and such planned communities of agriculturalists continued to be constructed even into the 20th century in states as far north as Espirito Santo, these migrations represented an insignificant part of the national labor force. It was the 4 million Africans who came to Brazil from its foundation to 1850,3 who provided the bulk of the agricultural labor in the plantation export crops of sugar, cotton and coffee. These black workers in turn were supplemented by a mixed labor force of mestizos and native born whites. In this context the European migrants were but a small element in a largely subsistence or regional agricultural economy. As late as 1872, they in fact represented no more than 3.8% of the national population, and but 3.5% of the population of Sao Paulo. By 1900 they would be 7% of the national population and a substantial 21% of the population of the state of Sao Paulo.4 In this modern wave of immigration, the Spaniards were an impressive element. Just prior to 1914, they temporarily passed the Italians in importance, and accounted for 22% of all migrants coming to Brazil (see table 1). Like the Italians, the bulk of the Spanish migrants came before 1930, though there would be an important flow again after World War II. But the majority of this migration was tied to the movement of the coffee economy, and to such external factors as the outbreak of European war. Thus, from the data available, it would appear that the Spaniards in the pre-World War I period were primarily drawn to Brazil by the transport subsidization provided by the local State and Federal governments. Thus of the 102,800 Spaniards who passed through the Hospedana dos