Brazil is a wonderfully diverse country, much more so than I expected when I decided to study abroad here. Having visited a few Spanish-speaking countries of Central and Latin America before, I was expecting the sort of homogeneity that I had encountered there, where the main diversity was found in the difference between indigenous peoples and those with colonial heritage.
The reality I have seen on the ground here in Rio de Janeiro is completely different, and it has blown away all my preconceived notions of Brazil. Walking down the Copacabana Promenade, I can’t seem to find one face that is even remotely similar to the one before it. In reality, Brazilians trace their origins back to African slaves—brought into the country by Portuguese colonialists, to Western European whites—mostly from Portugal, Spain, Italy and Germany, to Japanese and other Asian immigrants—brought in to supplement the labor force, to Jews—forced to convert to Christianity by the colonialists, as well as Syrian or Lebanese Arabs escaping from persecution.
If that wasn’t interesting enough, these communities tend to congregate in different states of Brazil, so that visiting places other than Rio for me has sometimes felt like stepping into a different world. Brazil has the largest population of Japanese ancestry outside Japan, with 1.5 million Japanese-Brazilians, most of them living in São Paulo. It came as a shock to me that I had the best ramen soup of my life in the Asian quarter of São Paulo just last month. When I went to Salvador, in the northeastern state of Bahia, I was pleasantly surprised by the diversity there as well; it is considered one of the largest black cities of the world, and a large majority of black or mixed Baianas trace their roots back in some way to African slaves.
The descendants of European immigrants—particularly Germans, Italians, and Poles—are mainly concentrated in the southern part of the country, and the cities there remind me of small European towns. Everywhere I have gone in this country, I have encountered amazing racial diversity. It is not a coincidence that the Brazilian census has multiple categories for "mixed" races (called pardo), from mulatto (black and white) to cafuzo (black and Indian), juçara (black, Indian, and white), and ainocô (white and Japanese).
The basic thing that I have discovered here is that Brazil is not just the country of tan, buxom boys and girls on the beach like we see on the postcards: it’s an incredibly diverse country, which has a whole set of racial and social tensions that come along with that diversity. But being “Brazilian” is a lot more complicated than it sounds—which is great, because it leaves someone like me with a little wiggle room in calling myself part Brazilian now as well.
If that wasn’t interesting enough, these communities tend to congregate in different states of Brazil, so that visiting places other than Rio for me has sometimes felt like stepping into a different world. Brazil has the largest population of Japanese ancestry outside Japan, with 1.5 million Japanese-Brazilians, most of them living in São Paulo. It came as a shock to me that I had the best ramen soup of my life in the Asian quarter of São Paulo just last month. When I went to Salvador, in the northeastern state of Bahia, I was pleasantly surprised by the diversity there as well; it is considered one of the largest black cities of the world, and a large majority of black or mixed Baianas trace their roots back in some way to African slaves.
The descendants of European immigrants—particularly Germans, Italians, and Poles—are mainly concentrated in the southern part of the country, and the cities there remind me of small European towns. Everywhere I have gone in this country, I have encountered amazing racial diversity. It is not a coincidence that the Brazilian census has multiple categories for "mixed" races (called pardo), from mulatto (black and white) to cafuzo (black and Indian), juçara (black, Indian, and white), and ainocô (white and Japanese).
The basic thing that I have discovered here is that Brazil is not just the country of tan, buxom boys and girls on the beach like we see on the postcards: it’s an incredibly diverse country, which has a whole set of racial and social tensions that come along with that diversity. But being “Brazilian” is a lot more complicated than it sounds—which is great, because it leaves someone like me with a little wiggle room in calling myself part Brazilian now as well.
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