The Italian emigration
The Italian emigration began in a delicate moment. Italy around 1860 to 1870 has just finished the struggle for political unification. Its economy was largely agrarian and suffered with the advance of capitalism. It is in this context that we must understand it.
1.1. He emigrated to SURVIVE
Between 1850 and 1920 more than one and a half million immigrants came to Sao Paulo, to work as most settlers in the coffee farms. Some farmers noting that slavery was doomed, some experiments performed with hand labor in Europe since the 1840s and 1850s. These experiences were almost always abandoned due to resistance of immigrants to the degree of exploitation imposed.
The Italian immigration was of decisive importance for the history of Brazil. She not only contributed to the economic progress of Brazil, but also to social and cultural changes in the country.
The Unification of Italy and the capitalist transformations substantially undermined the poorest of the population, leading her to emigrate. Many rural workers or small landowners were no longer able to survive as the cultivation of their lands. That’s because they could not compete with the large landowners who supply products at lower prices in the market. Moreover, smallholders were paying very high rates of taxes on the land, without financial resources by borrowing that made them increasingly indebted.
For coffee farmers in Brazil to labor, slave labor was the basis of agricultural production and disposal greatly harm their economic interests. With the disintegration of the slave system, the Sao Paulo coffee elite encouraged immigration mainly from the Free Womb Law of 1871. The scarcity of slaves was already a problem since 1850 with the prohibition of the slave trade, the law Eusebio de Queiros.
The provincial laws of 30 March 1871 and April 26, 1872 helped the Paulista planters keen to attract immigrant workers. These laws authorize a financial support up to 900 contos for the travel costs of immigrants. Thus began subsidized immigration to Sao Paulo.
The misery that ruined the Italian countryside, the courage to leave the country, revealed that the act of emigrating not only understood “making America” as is often said. The emigrants were not, in general, adventurers in search of easy wealth, but rather part of his country as a way of defending themselves against the cruel conditions imposed by the solidification of capitalism in the Italian countryside. Immigration accounted for Italy, a solution to the crisis of unemployment that plagued the country since 1870. This, came about because the advance of capitalism has released a surplus of manpower that the country itself could not absorb. Thus emigration emerged as an alternative for survival. In Sao Paulo, on the other hand, immigration appeared as a solution to disgregation of labor, slave labor on farms.
The slow industrial development in Italy continued emigration. According Candeloro, “emigration was crucial for the socio-economic (…) in the period which saw the launch of Italy’s industrial north-west, and continued thereafter as a condition for economic development due to the imbalance established between the north and south of the country. ” How well summarized Longuitano,
“The emigration to Italy is a must. We need from 200 to 300 thousand people per year, so they can find those who are working.”
In the early nineteenth century the Italian economy was essentially agricultural. Many Italian regions also feature semi-feudal and feudal period of unification (1870). The north of the country was more industrialized, capitalist agriculture had mold, unlike the South, where agriculture still showed traces of servitude.
The industrial and commercial bourgeoisie favored even after the unification Italian national, had little participation in the political class because it was composed of large and medium landowners. It took several years for the group to reach the bourgeois economic and political control of the country, to leave the state for the accumulation phase essentially industrial.
In areas with strong prevailing feudal aspects of emigration “big time”. These characteristics limit any structural change, and the only outlet for the surplus population was emigrating.
In this region the production took hold in the work of the whole family. The workmanship was basically divided into two groups: those who worked for themselves, ie, small landowners, tenants or sharecroppers, and those who worked as employees. Within this last group were the braccianti or laborers, they could be fixed, attached to the property through an annual contract, or temporary, which work only in times of great need for manpower, or by getting a day quota. The braccianti were the most exploited rural workers.
The small landowners, tenants or sharecroppers were the first contingent of immigrants. They were the first to leave Italy because of their living conditions. The Veneto region during the initial phase of expulsion can be described as follows:
The field is divided into small lots where rows of trees to cling to the vines, while the spaces in between – 25 to 40 feet wide – are almost always plowed and planted with cereals. The field thus faithfully reflects in its external appearance, the production regime imposed by the social conditions of the region. It provides owners corn and wine, corn workers, and very little fuel to feed the two animals, however, must plow and fertilize the ground already so depleted.
The Venetian peasant producer was practically a self-sufficient. Agricultural work was almost always associated with the domestic industry of cloth or straw. The small property gave them an illusion of independence, not much happened after the unification.
The Venetian families lived in small core of land that belonged to them. They were composed of twelve to fifteen elements, usually with two or three men, their wives and children are able to work. His father was the ultimate authority and when he could no longer maintain control, was replaced by his eldest son. All held together until the property when she provided the resources necessary for survival. They ate mostly of polenta. Smallholders who were in charge up to six people, had a more bountiful table, with eggs, fish sausages, vegetables, even so, rarely ate meat when he was eating pork or lamb, beef was used for the day party or when ill.
The Italian emigration represented a solution to the crisis of unemployment that plagued the country since 1870.
In fact, the living conditions of small farmers, tenants and sharecroppers was almost the same conditions of braccianti. Many were forced to work on other properties. Among them were the common habit of dividing the land when the children married. Among many problems that faced the small property in this period, this was one of the most important reasons for its division or weakening.
Until 1885, large regions of Veneto and expellers Belluno, Treviso, Udine and Vicenza, were predominantly made up of mountains and hills. In Udine there was an owner for every two residents, one for every three in Belluno, one for every four in Vicenza, and properties were insufficient to sustain a family.
Some Italian regions Veneto and in particular stood out for being the major suppliers of manpower for Sao Paulo. This situation was marked by a lack of technical improvements in agriculture, high taxes, changing the natural conditions, such as the devastation of forests that have damaged the river system, leading to flooding in the lowland. In the regions of mountains and hills to the lack of rain rocked the agricultural production.
Compounding the picture painted in the period 1873 to 1895 the international arena was marked by the agrarian crisis or “great depression”. This crisis has demonstrated the transition from the old individualistic capitalism of free competition to monopoly capitalism imperialism. This was a period of bitter fighting over the disputed consumer markets that affected Italy in a dramatic setting of its political unification. Agriculture was hit hard by competition from similar products. The American and Russian wheat was offered at prices well below cost of production in Italy. Thus the production of wheat fell into decline, taking with them the cultivation of other commodities of Italian agriculture such as corn, rice and oil. Thus, agricultural producers lost their place in the market and your only alternative was to leave the field, affected by more powerful competitors.
The newspaper L’Amico del Popolo, in 1882, published an article noting that the records had disappeared from Italy more than 20 000 smallholders, and certainly, everyone would have emigrated to America.
The Venetian emigrants did not leave Italy with the hope of returning, as the South They went to jettison everything they owned, animals, household items. They departed after the wheat harvest in the fall, between September and November.
Therefore, the first contingent of workers who came to São Paulo are made by these immigrants. The system of settlement in Brazil equaled all immigrants to a single standard, the peculiar characteristics of the first contingent of immigrants have been forgotten. In employment contracts were not considered any individual aspects. The system of settlement ended the outward differences between tenants, sharecroppers and others, but not with the internal organization of families, their cultural habits, values for country people.
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