THE SAGA OF A NORTHEASTERN BRAZILIAN IMMIGRANT IN SÃO PAULO

Abstract

The present work is based on the results of a Master´s thesis entitled “A northeastern brazilian immigrant in São Paulo A guitar player that took hold of the city”, which attempts to understand the reasons which a northeastern immigrant attributes to his permanent residency in the city of São Paulo, his social adaptation difficulties, his de-rooting and the impact of a new and prevailing culture upon himself. To achieve this goal, the internal migration of the northeasterners towards Southeastern Brazil was analyzed, as were the reasons for their migration patterns. The poorly effective public policies for the northeastern region by federal and state governments end up favoring the migration process for they drive the native inhabitants away. These men, women and children become migrants, who , when reaching their destiny, struggle to get a home, find work, a process that causes them to undergo psychological strain as they become stigmatized by their southerner countrymen. The choices such migrants have to make after their arrival, their adaptation to Sao Paulo and the different customs of the northeastern culture brought along may entail an eventual personal emancipation movement. In order to understand such a phenomenon, a qualitative survey was performed through the analysis of the life history of a 58 year old married migrant named José, who had not finished junior high school education, and who is a professional singer of impromptu songs, locally called “De Repente”. Jose was born in the State of Paraíba and had been living in São Paulo for thirty years. Understanding a life history through a narrative can be regarded as a building of consciousness carried out by both the researcher and the interviewee. A striking trait that makes José an emblematic person lies in the fact that, besides having a steady job and having recorded CDs in the Southeast, he is still bound to his homeland through the media, by sending to the radio stations of Paraíba all the recordings of the programs in São Paulo, where he was interviewed, thus providing information of this career to the people of his native region. All in all, he managed to succeed and to give to himself and to his whole family better life conditions.