Italian immigration in Rio Grande do Sul

A wealthy elite was formed, which promoted an erudite culture, founded associations and clubs, and lived in urban palaces, supported by a mass of marginalized proletarians, many of them coming from the countryside.

[1][2][3] Despite the inequalities that soon manifested themselves in colonial society, since the early twentieth century the signs of progress became evident, a "work ethic" guided customs, and an apologetic discourse was articulated around the alleged qualities of the Italian, presenting them as civilizing heroes, creators of wealth, and models of virtue.

This enthusiasm, supported and encouraged by the native officialdom, was interrupted during the Vargas Era, due to a nationalizing program and the state of war with Italy, situations that cast a pall of repression over the Italian language and culture of the region.

In this period the emphasis on production also changed, industry and commerce assumed primacy, and those who had remained in the countryside suffered the consequences of the decline of the agricultural sector, starting a great exodus to the city, to other colonies, and other states.

[1][2][4] The practical reflex of the modernizing program was the intense growth of the industrial sector, with the development of a pole concentrated in Caxias do Sul, a city that, due to a privileged location, placed itself since the 19th century at the forefront of most of the advances.

However, this accentuated and accelerated growth has not occurred without issues such as urban violence, inequality and exclusion of the poor, environmental devastation, inefficient policies, economic and real estate speculation, the lack of popular housing, sanitation, and the precariousness of basic services.

[6][3] The presence of Italians in the area today, defined by the limits of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, is attested at least since the 17th century when several Jesuit missionaries of such nationality went to the region to catechize the natives and organize reductions.

Their presence remained extremely reduced until the beginning of the 19th century, when the population of newcomers began to increase, settling mainly in the capital Porto Alegre, but also reaching several other cities, such as Livramento, Bagé, and Pelotas.

The project was revolutionary: At a time when a system of large-scale monocultures for export or extensive cattle raising still prevailed, with a slave labor force, the goal was to create a stable rural population of free men who owned small plots of land, settled on unclaimed land, which could improve the usually precarious internal supply of basic consumer products, and help "whiten" the Brazilian population, at the time largely made up of black and indigenous people.

They ended up piled up in the cities in generally subhuman conditions and even those who were mostly property owners had been impoverished by steeply rising taxes and competition with the large landowners, getting into debt and needing to sell their land.

[3] Texts from diplomats and politicians of the time show that the Italian population was lost within the newly unified and still unstable nation, "they were not citizens to help and defend, but impertinent peasants who with their misery and ignorance offend the Fatherland,"[3] so that protectionist measures were few, hesitant, late and had little effect.

The role of the Italian authorities consisted of advising the emigrants, acting most vigorously in a few problematic individual cases, and leaving in practice all recruitment, transfer and settlement to the international shipowners and Brazilian imperial agents.

[7][8] However, most of the Italians never materialized their wishes, having been directed to the coffee plantations of São Paulo, finding poor survival conditions, and without having, for the most part, their own land, which reproduced the same situation from which they had wanted to flee.

Soon the surpluses started to be traded, reaching as far as Porto Alegre, fulfilling the government's objectives to increase domestic supply, and generating an income for the settlers that could be reinvested, providing the first comforts, such as a bigger house and better equipment, besides favoring the birth of the first handcraft manufactures and small industries that processed the rural production.

Moreover, the experience of the effective possession of their plots, even if of only a few hectares, would prove to define an entire culture to be created in the New World, where a narrative of success and self-glorification of long and wide influence would be established.

"[1]The colonies were divided into long lots with a narrow frontage facing a trail, which allowed the movement of people and cargo between the properties, forming a dense road network.

Although there were no insurmountable barriers in the rugged geography of the colonies, and many trails were opened in all directions, for a long time between the main headquarters there were only a few viable paths for passing caravans of cargo or people.

A rustic wooden house, sometimes of adobe or stone, divided into a large kitchen where the focolaro (the domestic fire) was, and one more living room, one or two bedrooms, and an attic as storage or additional sleeping quarters.

[13] In the second stage, when the situation stabilized, the rustic houses and pavilions of the beginning were replaced by larger and better-equipped facilities, often with external and internal ornaments, of which an important group of stone, masonry, and wood, in various typologies survives.

[1][25][26] The destabilization of the rural way of life was accentuated in the interwar period, when the Italian culture was repressed by Getúlio Vargas' nationalist program, and the regional production system began to concentrate on industry and commerce.

[11][27] However, Bento Gonçalves had its development hindered until 1917 when it was connected to the state railroads,[10] and Antônio Prado, which was envisioned by the government to become the head of the region, ended up stagnating due to the detour of a fundamental road for the interconnection between that area and northern Brazil.

"[27] With the collaboration of a class of public servants, this elite, which included some large fortunes, as was the case of Abramo Eberle, promoted a rich intellectual and cultural flourishing of the erudite profile, which besides expressing the evolution of aesthetic customs and ideologies, was also evidence of material success and a form of social affirmation.

The large masonry mansions multiplied, and the wooden ones were enlarged and ornamented with wainscoting and other artistic details, replacing the primitive urban landscape composed of small and rustic dwellings.

The rhetoric was influenced by fascism and theories of racial supremacy based on land, ethnicity, labor, morality, and religion, decanting the immigrant from his humble rural origins to a civilizing agent.

The feast became a tourist success in the state in a few years, understood as the main stage for ideological, identity and community representations of "Italianness", receiving collaborators and exhibitors from all over the colonial region and the approval of distinguished Portuguese-Brazilian intellectuals and politicians.

A new commemorative album was published reiterating the importance of the Italians for the growth of the state, and a series of parallel activities were organized, such as lectures and conferences, musical performances, theater plays, film festivals, economic missions, and art exhibitions.

[43][44] When the fiftieth anniversary of immigration was celebrated in 1925, the state government organized an exhibition in Porto Alegre, bringing the best agro-industrial and artistic products from the colonies, being a success, and at the same time published a substantial collection of critical essays and informative and statistical articles about the Italian presence in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, in two volumes, entitled Cinquantenario della Colonizzazione Italiana nel Rio Grande del Sud, 1875-1925.

[45] The legend of the immigrant and his descendants, since the 1970s, has generated a vast literature, which continues to grow, and has led to the formation of several research groups in universities, exclusively focused on the study of this theme in its various expressions and developments,[46] and has also given rise to a large number of popular literary productions, plastic/visual, poetic, theatrical, television, and film creations, of a documentary, humorous, fictional, or artistic nature.

[48][27][49] However, given the complexity and contradictions of the colonies' evolution process, since the 1970s this discourse has been revised and criticized by academics, who have emphasized the intentional aspects of the historical attempts to affirm the elites and the ambiguous and partly artificial features of the process of building sociocultural identities, also showing that several other cultures and ethnicities have actively participated in the growth of the region, especially large groups of newcomers that in some places, in recent decades, have been supplanting the population of Italian origin, bringing other pasts, other cultural bases, other needs, and demanding space and recognition.

[5][49][50][51][52] Still, it is a consensus that Italians left an important legacy on multiple spheres; in crafts, architecture, economy, politics, festivals, folklore and legends, cuisine, sports and games, scholarly arts, language, science, ways of working, understanding the world, living and relating, and acting in groups.

The National Monument to the Immigrant in Caxias do Sul .
Queen and Princesses of the Festa da Uva of 1934. Sitting: Odila Zatti, the Queen. Standing: Carmen Hippolito, Ivone Paganelli, and Ilka Fontoura. The queens and their court became true ambassadors of Italian culture in the state, playing this role to this day. [ 5 ]
The Schmitt-Presser House Community Museum in Novo Hamburgo is a typical example of the German half-timber tradition.
Ship with Italians at the port of Santos .
Immigrants in the central courtyard of the Hospedaria dos Imigrantes (Immigrants' Guest House) in São Paulo .
A typical immigrant couple with their young children.
Italians working on a coffee farm.
The early urban core of Colônia Caxias around 1876–77.
Plan of Colônia Caxias (in green) from 1885.
Rural plot of the immigrant Italo Massotti in Caxias do Sul , late 19th century.
Casa Righesso, in Bento Gonçalves , an important example of stone building in the countryside, 1889.
Reconstitution of a colonial kitchen at the Casa de Pedra Ambience Museum in Caxias do Sul . The setting is original, but not its objects, which are of various origins. The kitchen was the settlers' main family living space. [ 12 ]
Detail of Bertarello House, in Bento Gonçalves
Chapel of Santo Antonio in the rural area of Flores da Cunha , a typical representative of colonial sacred buildings. Generally, the first chapels were made out of wood. Most of them were replaced in the early 20th century by masonry buildings like this one. [ 16 ]
Benvenutti family reunion, 1928.
Italian settlers with grape baskets at the end of the 19th century.
Plan of the Conde d'Eu Colony. In the dark area, the colony's urban headquarters.
A section of the Antônio Prado Historical Center.
The influential Prince of Naples Mutual Aid Society of Caxias, incorporated for the celebration of the birthday of its patron, King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, on November 11, 1896
The Palace of Abramo Eberle.
Cover of a publication commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Italian immigration in Rio Grande do Sul.
São Romédio Community float at the 1932 Festa da Uva .
Safe-conduct issued in favor of Ema Panigas Artico authorizing her to travel from Caxias do Sul to São Marcos , 1944.
New neighborhoods in Caxias do Sul , already densely urbanized.
Nicola Rocco's famous confectionery in Porto Alegre, which was a meeting place for politicians, intellectuals, and businessmen.
Group of Our Lady of Caravaggio , a work by Pietro Stangherlin at the Farroupilha ("Ragamuffin") Sanctuary, the center of one of the most traditional pilgrimages in Brazil.
São Romédio Chapel in Caxias do Sul, historical and cultural heritage of the state.
Entrance to the Centennial Park with the monument to the immigrants, in Nova Milano