ÁUREA, a town in the northern part of Rio Grande do Sul, calls itself the “Polish capital of Brazilians”. To a visitor, it is the Slavic personality that comes through at first. The children tumbling out of school are mostly fair-haired. Wheat and thickets of pine cover the surrounding hills. An occasional palm tree is the only sub-tropical feature.
Áurea makes the most of its Polishness. More than 90% of its 4,000-odd residents say their origins are in the central European country. It hosts an annual czernina festival; last year 1,000 people came to savour the black soup thickened with duck blood.
But ties with the mother country are loosening. Although Polish can still be overheard on the street, mass was last celebrated in the language three years ago, reports Artêmio Modtkowski, in Portuguese-inflected Polish. His grandfather, Jan, was among the 12 founders of the settlement in 1906. Despite appearances, Áurea’s inhabitants are as Brazilian as members of the other groups that make up the country’s ethnic mishmash.
Some 60,000 Poles, mostly impoverished peasants, landed in Brazil between 1869 and 1920. Nearly all went to Paraná, another southern state. Its capital, known to Poles as Kurytyba (and to everyone else as Curitiba), is the only city in South America that has a polonised name. From there the newcomers...Continue reading
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