THE THOSE WHO CAME TO BRANCH BRAZIL: THE MILL TO SPEND PEOPLE AND GERMAN IMMIGRATION IN THE 19TH CENTURY

Abstract

An introductory study about the immigration of German speaking people to Brazil during the nineteenth century, in a context where their coming was valued by theorists like Nina Rodrigues as those who would save Brazil from its destiny of becoming a black nation. Black and Indian races and miscegenation were viewed as the cause for the backwardness of the country. Manoel Bomfim, in the turn of the century, describes a relation of parasitism exercised by a dominant class which doesn’t want to have expenses but only profits, in a society where in the deepest layer is the enslaved negro. What relationship will have the German immigrant with this reality, in this period which culminated with the official abolition of slavery though its marks still shape the relationship between social classes in Brazil? Facing the risk of being swallowed by the “mill of wearing people”, the immigrant of German origin had a symbolic advantage of the whiteness as a way of scape.