Enclaves of inequality: Brasiguaios and the transformation of the Brazil-Paraguay borderlands

Abstract

This contribution traces the history of Brazilian immigration to Paraguay and the emergence of ‘Brasiguaio’ communities, arguing that the enclaves are products of the development policies of each country's military dictatorship. Although Brasiguaios are currently associated with wealthy Brazilian agriculturalists in Paraguay, the majority of these immigrants have been poor workers who face constant marginalization from state bureaucracies and unequal access to land. Paraguay's eastern border region is among the most complex spaces in Latin America of cultural, economic and national hybridity. The transformation of this borderland is predicated on a highly unequal social hierarchy that resulted largely from the evolution of Brasiguaio immigration.

Keywords:

• rural immigration
• dictatorship
• development
• agriculture
• borderlands

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Professors Gay Seidman and Francisco Scarano at the University of Wisconsin and the two anonymous reviewers at the Journal of Peasant Studies. Additionally, conversations in the summer of 2013 helped shape the arguments found herein; special thanks to Ricardo Canese and Herib Caballero Campos in Paraguay, and Senilde Guanaes and Paulo Renato in Brazil.

Notes

¹Although it is difficult to establish the exact number of Brazilians living in Paraguay, most estimations fall between 400,000 and 500,000. A commonly cited number is 459,147, from a 2002 report by the Brazilian Ministry of Exterior Relations (cited in Albuquerque 2010, 59). It must also be noted that while Brazilians comprise the largest portion of migrants in Paraguay, other immigrant groups in Paraguay include (in order of largest population) Koreans, Uruguayans, Mexicans, Japanese, Chileans and Germans (Menegotto 2004, 46).

²An example of the global media coverage of land conflicts and their attendant role in the impeachment of Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo includes Romero (2012).

³It should be observed that 77 percent of Paraguay's arable land is currently owned by just 2 percent of the population (Hobbs 2012).

⁴The ambiguity stemmed from the treaty's inclusion of the hills surrounding the Sete Quedas waterfalls as part of the Paraná shores (Albuquerque 2010, 36).

⁵At the meeting, Paraguay was represented by the diplomat Sapeña Pastor; the Brazilian delegation was led by the diplomat Juracy Magalhães (Monteiro 1999, 14).

⁶Although large-scale immigration into Paraguay did not begin until the late 1960s and early 1970s, there are examples of Brazilians who succeeded in crossing the border to work in agriculture. Most of these Brazilians were peasant farmers, were the notable exception of Geremías Lunardelli, a Brazilian coffee baron who in the 1950s came to own more than 1 million hectares of subtropical forest lands in eastern Paraguay thanks to an initial 1952 land grant of 540,000 hectares given personally by Stroessner (Cortêz 1994, 17; Kohlhepp 1999, 206).

⁷These statistics were compiled from (Ribeiro 2002, 28) and (Germani 2003, 54–58).

⁸Kohlhepp (1999, 209) offers the 1/6 cost estimation, while Kleinpenning (1987, 178) quotes the price as 1/10 compared to Brazil.

⁹Along with the IBR, another key mechanism of settlement were the private commercial enterprises known as colonizadoras that advertised on both sides of the border and oversaw the financial transactions with settler farmers. For much of the period of military rule, widespread corruption linked these two settlement mechanisms as government agencies and private corporations frequently colluded in dolling out land as political and personal favors. A final form of settlement came via spontaneous land occupations that involved groups of farmers taking over unused lands that belonged either to the government or to large landholders.

¹⁰For example, one of the laws passed created by the IBR required that at least 20 percent of a local settlement population must be Paraguayan. Despite this new law, multiple examples were cited in the border regions of Alto Paraná and Canindeyú where Brazilians represented well over 80 percent of the inhabitants, despite being in clear violation of the law (Kohlhepp 1999, 217).

¹¹It should be noted that the term ‘corruption’ has been the subject of recent debate, wherein some scholars have considered it as a category imported ‘from the North’ that is superficially imposed on foreign cultures. For more, see Haller and Shore (2005). Its use in this contribution is intended to portray instances where government bureaucrats and military officials acted outside of the purview of their immediate responsibilities, practices that enriched them and their acquaintances and/or distributed land in ways that ran counter to the letter of the law.

¹²For an analysis of why the Paraguayan government was willing to sell off its own land to Brazilians, see Kleinpenning (1987, 180). It is important to observe, however, that although the Stroessner government clearly advocated for and facilitated the import of Brazilian immigrants, this process was not solely the product of official state policies. Much of this history resulted from the actions of local elites, members of the military, and corrupt functionaries who capitalized on opportunities in a poorly regulated environment.

¹³It is necessary to note that Paraguayan smallholders confronted similar problems, underscoring the fact that land bureaucracies exploited farmers regardless of their nationality. Moreover, the illegality and pervasiveness of these processes suggest the extent to which local practices in the border region developed independently of official state policy. For more on Paraguayan smallholders and the problems of land titles, see Souchaud and Carámbula (2007).

¹⁴It should also be noted that opposition to Brazilian settlers also came from established political structures in Paraguay. In 1972 and 1974, leaders from the oppositional parties of Partido Liberal Radical Autentico (PLRA) and the Partido Febrista attempted to institute a law prohibiting the sale of land to foreigners along the border. These were some of the first institutional reactions against the 1963 Agrarian Statute that had originally legalized the sale of land to foreigners and specifically favored Brazilians (Albuquerque 2010, 118).

¹⁵For more on the differences between cotton and soybean production, see Nagel (1991, 112–14).

Additional information

Jacob Blanc is a doctoral student of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His dissertation focuses on the intersection of land tenure and political opposition during Brazil's dictatorship, looking specifically at the construction of the Itaipu hydroelectric dam and the subsequent mobilizations of rural workers in the southern state of Paraná in the 1970s and 1980s.