From Andes to Sao Paulo

7/30/2019 From Andes to Sao Paulo

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N27-2001

BRAUDELPAPERS

Migration far and wideFrom the Andes to So PauloAlbino Ruiz Lazo

From the Andes to So Paulo 03

00Old Times in Bom Retiro x14

Document of the Fernand Braudel Institute of World EconomicsAssociated with the Fundao Armando Alvares Penteado


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BRAUDEL PAPERS 02www.braudel.org.br

03From the Andes to So Paulo(Albino Ruiz Lazo)

My birth stopped telegraph service on the linethat used to link the towns along the shore of LakeTiticaca in Perus highlands. On...

03 New Opportunities

04 Migrations and Human Adaptation

05 The Cuzco Cradle

07 Koreans Arrive08 Low Production Costs

10 Sunday Nights in the Plaza Par

11 Work Like Coolies

14Old Times in Bom Retiro(Bernardo Ricupero)

Ju Bananre never existed. But a young Brazilianwriter using this name produced one of the best

portraits of So Paulo of the early...

BRAUDELPAPERS

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Copyright 2001 Fernand BraudelInstitute of World Economics

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My birth stopped telegraph service onthe line that used to link the towns along theshore of Lake Titicaca in Perus highlands.On a dull wet Sunday in December 1955,neighbors rook an old blind midwife fromher shack high above the town of Acora tothe post office where my mother worked as

a telegrapher. When her labor pains starred,my mother informed the other telegraphoperators on the line from the city of Punoto the Bolivian border. They kept the lineopen, in case my birth proved difficult andshe had to be rushed in a passing truck toPuno, 30 kilometers to the north.

Every day Peruvian telegraphers spreadnews of villages and the world, transmittingheadlines of Lima newspapers which didntreach Andean towns, news of politics,

soccer and military coups. Japanesetransistor radios, available elsewhere, hadnot yet reached our mountain villages. Thetelegraph office where I was born took partin all the changes which Peru went throughuntil improved communications discardedthe thousands of poles and wires of thenational telegraph system.

The wand of change worked its magicquickly connecting isolated communities

with the rest of the world, freeing thepeasants from servitude and ignorance.The changes brought new roads, schools,different fuels, electricity, transport bybus, truck and plane, telephones withdirect dialing, radios and recently publicInternet booths, a new medium of masscommunications. In remote towns, peoplenow pay 57 U.S. cents per hour to phonerelatives in the United States or Europe

using an Internet Protocol, sharing details


Albino Ruiz Lazo is a Peruvian researcher for the Fernand Braudel Institute of World Economics.Some illustrations for this essay are taken from old Andean weavings.

Migration far and wide

From the Andes to So PauloAlbino Ruiz Lazo

of the corruption scandal leading to the fall ofPresident Alberto Fujimori and the creation of

new political alliances. My son Miguel, wanderingamong the villages of Puno, Formed an Internetfriendship with Raquel Salvador, a Spaniard livingin London, whom he met in the Chat Caf Ole. Shehas just arrived in Peru to spend a few days withMiguel in the Andes to become better acquainted.

New OpportunitiesEven before the Internet facilitated

communications so dramatically, the spread of

secondary schools after the agrarian reforms ofthe 1970s pulled young people from villages intotowns and cities. The new opportunities brought bythese changes dispersed the mass of poor Quechua-speaking peas-ants who went to my mothers postoffice to receive the medicines and cures that shedistributed. When I returned to Acora many yearslater only old people were left. I was treated like astranger. They told me I spoke and dressed like agringo, that in my long absence I did nothing for

my people.


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Another absentee is Oswaldo Curo, who was bornin 1971 in Capachica, on the other side of LakeTiticaca. I met him in So Paulo on a cold dawn in

August 2000, looking for space to sell hand-made

earrings among spectral hawkers of jewelry, leathergoods, clothing and school supplies cramminga crowded street market near the old financialcenter of So Paulo. Chinese, Koreans, Chileans,Rumanians, Angolans, Ecuadorians and Peruvians,along with migrants from Brazils Northeast, sella whole wide range products wholesale to store-owners from interior towns until the arrival at 8 a.mof tenants of the street stalls which are rented fromhandicapped concessionaires. At that hour a blitz ofmunicipal inspectors, alerted by the handicapped indefense of their acquired rights, may descend uponthe scurrying street hawkers.

Oswaldo lives and produces costume jewelry witha mulata from Minas Gerais in the Hotel Itana,home to many Peruvian migrants in So Paulo. Hehas lived in Brazil for three of his 29 years, afterdropping out of the Adventist University in Limafor lack of money. I was ten years old when I leftmy town for the first time on a school trip to seethe sea in Arequipa, he said. I didnt understand

Spanish and didnt know what to saywhen someone spoke to me. In my townwe just spoke Quechua. During schoolvacations I went back to Arequipa andsold ice cream in the streets. I learnedabout the city. My boss fed me andlet me sleep in a corner of his factory.Something always drove me to leavehome. So I went to Lima to study andnow Im here.

The door of the Hotel Itana openson to the Avenue Rio Branco. Thehotel gives off an acrid smell of mildewcoming from the top of the stairs leading

to the upper floors. Doors, railings and decorationsin a faded green splash four of the five floors withcolor. Dim side corridors connect the 17 rooms oneach floor. Doors remain half open most of the time,

releasing smells of soap, food, sweat and Andeanwool. Children play near the doors, while cries ofbabies mix with Cuzco cassette music. On the floorsof the rooms, piles of alpaca fabric are separated intopiles of woolen gloves, hats, chullos (Andeancapscovering the ears), and handbags. Hanging From

wall hooks are hundreds of colored bracelets andnecklaces from Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay, Brazil andBolivia. Rooms at the back, hidden and divided bycurtains, are used as bedrooms/workshops. Beds andmattresses crammed together at night give way byday to the making of earrings by trusted people paidfive centavos per piece. Oswaldo employs youngBrazilian girls in his room to make accessories likethose used by the exuberant dancing Feticheira(Sorceress) on TV. The girls like to wear whatFeticheira is wearing. Every Richer traders havebuilt shelves in their rooms, used alternatively asbunk-beds and for storing goods. During the day therooms become secret bazaars supplying thousandsof Peruvians and other petty merchants arriving

from the streets or the interior ofBrazil. A central corridor connects thesecond row of rooms with the toilets,from which, in mid-morning, pour outhalf-dressed hotel residents dripping

with water, on the way to their rooms.These are wholesalers returning fromthe turbulent dawn market. The hotelhouses 350 Cusqueos in its 80 rooms.

Migrations and Human AdaptationThese Cusqueos form part of the

crescendo of world migration, one ofthe oldest forms of human adaptation.


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Between 70,000 and 100,000 years ago, when thefirst humans appeared in Africa, migration resultedin the spread of people over all the continent,almost always as a response to ecological crises,

political conflicts and new opportunities. Thehistory of America is, in its widest sense, thehistory of migrations, observes the demographichistorian Noble David Cook. Waves after wavesof migrations have formed the World City of SoPaulo: Portuguese, Negroes, Italians, Germans, Jews,Russians, Japanese, Koreans and now poor workersand traders from neighboring Latin Americancountries.

The human torrent today crosses borders and

continents. Peruvians, Brazilians and Iraniansswarm into Japan, whose populations has beendecreasing for decades due to a fall in birth rates.South Africa each year expels 100,000 of its twomillion immigrants who have no documents, butmany return illegally. Chinese enter Europe throughthe Balkans, Muslims go to Italy through Bosniain weekly flights from Istanbul and Tehran. In thefirst semester of 2000, the government of Croatiacaptured 10,000 illegal immigrants, compared

with 8,000 in all of 1999, who came from China,Rumania, Turkey, Bangladesh and elsewhere.Albanian gangsters and prostitutes enter Italy tocirculate throughout Europe. In

June the asphyxiated bodies of 58Chinese, trying to enter Britainillegally, were found in the backof a truck in Dover. Accordingto The New York Times, Thesestories seem to confirm thegrowing alarm among diplomats

and immigration officials inthe West. They believe thatan extensive and sophisticatednetwork of traffickers of human

beings from Asia, has transferred its targets from theUnited States to Europe.

In New York, 40% of today's population wasborn outside the US, in 167 different countries,

speaking 116 languages. Without immigration,New York would be very different with wholedistricts abandoned and a shrinking population,states the sociologist Philip Kasinitz. The mostrecent waves of immigrants come from Russia,Mexico, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the DominicanRepublic and Colombia. Similar migrations arrivein Paris and London. In the United States, 12% ofthe work force consists of immigrants, a total of15.7 million people, of whom 5 million are illegal.

The United States annually issues 250,000 visasto foreign software technicians. In Silicon Valleyin California, Indians in 1998 ran 774 companiesand another 2,001 were run by Chinese, togetheremploying 58,282 people producing 17% of the hightechnology sales of the Valley. The state governmentof Iowa, in the farming heartland, is now recruitingimmigrants, alarmed by demographic losses, theaging of its native population and emigration ofits young people after they leave school. Italy, with

one of the lowest birthrates in human history, hasmore people older than 60 than younger than 20.It is difficult to think of a solution other than

immigration for the demographicproblem of Western Europe

with its negative reproductionrate. What is politically difficultis to attempt to establish legaldistinctions between the freemovement of goods and the freemovement of people.

The Cuzco CradleSince the end of the Shining

Path terrorist insurrection in


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the early 1990s, Cuzco has become one of SouthAmericas main tourist attractions. Amid colonialchurches and the massive stone monuments of theancient Inca empire, Quechua-speaking Indiansdraped in colorful ponchos pose for tourist photosbeside llamas festooned with pink ribbons tied to

their ears, asking for tips in smatterings of Englishand French. Discos and bars flash neon lights andVisa signs. Hawkers surround tourists to sell alpacasweaters and native jewelry, a business that engagedRal Aquino as a boy when he arrived in Cuzcofrom a mountain village to finish his secondaryeducation. It was so easy to sell these artifactsto Brazilian tourists that Ral, like other poorCusqueos, decided to try his luck in So Paulo.

In the Hotel Itana, Ral and Fausto, and Indianfrom Ecuador, talk and do business. Short and

round-faced, with a long ponytail typical of his nativeregion, Fausto says that every eight days he flies toOtavalo, his town in northern Ecuador, to bringbracelets and personal adornments with Brazilianmotifs made to order there. Artisans in the regionproduce crafts that are well-known internationally.Like Fausto, the people of Otavalo today travelthe world to sell their crafts in every conceivablemarket. In So Paulo, the Otavaleos stay at thePeruvians hotel so they can make contacts through

the Peruvians and get to know the local market.Ral was one of the first Peruvians to stay at the

hotel. When I first arrived in 1995, we just camefor a few days. We had to sell our goods quickly andreturn because it was very expensive for us to stay,

with the exchange rate high. Those in the hotel nowarrived a short time ago. Ral now lives in a room ina nearby apartment, with a floating group of friendsand relations. Almost all of them completed theirsecondary education, in contrast to most Brazilian.

Bolivian and Ecuadorian men of their age and socialclass. He is 27, broad-shouldered with tiny darkeyes. He is renewing his residence permit to rent astall in a Chinese Shopping Center in downtown.He comes to the hotel to buy goods. His brotherNacho has just returned to Peru with money to lookafter their mother and their two sisters who study atthe University of Cuzco and is looking for earrings,now in short supply. Here things are very different,he says. Everything gets sold. The consumers arehungry, especially women. They like what we bring.

But novelties wear off and we must always changeour merchandise.

Except on Sundays, the hotel wakes up before5 a.m. Light from under the doors shines into the

corridors. Low voices, a few quiet cassette recordersand then a sudden herd of people leaving withenormous parcels into the darkness of the streetsand the early morning market. They leave in groupsto protect themselves against thieves. They havetaken precautions since the hotel was robbed in July,

when the traders' goods and money were stolen.They keep lots of cash because they cannot legallyopen a bank account.

In recent years over 50,000 Peruvians, mostlyfrom Cuzco, migrated to Brazil. Many sell inmarkets, beaches and interior towns, making SoPaulo their center of operations. They say that theyhave never visited a shanty-town. An average of tenpeople share the rooms, each of them responsiblefor their share of living costs, part of a network offamilies and friends. Peruvians and Brazilians buy

and sell merchandise from each other to take totheir places of origin. The Peruvians sell in three

ways: The travelers supply wholesalers of the hotelat a basic price. They also sell directly in street stallsat a slightly higher price. The retailers are suppliedac any time in the hotel for cash or on credit if theyhave a guarantor or good commercial standing.

Peruvians come from all over. Daro, fromHuancayo in the Andes, became king of the fridgemagnets, small ceramic fruits that housewives love.

He first came to Brazil as an international traffickerof university theses, selling theses from Brazilianuniversities to students in Peru and Bolivia. Hediscovered a good market for Peruvian handmademagnets to decorate refrigerators, cheaper and ofbetter quality than those made in Brazil or Asia.So he decided to bring fridge magnets from Peru inoverland trips. When Brazil's currency was devaluedin early 1999, he started manufacturing them inBrazil to take advantage of cost economies. In the

poorest areas of Lima he found skillful hands tomake fridge magnets. Daro also discovered that it isa Peruvian component that gives the magnets theirquality and viscosity. So he brought both materialsand labor and began production in a workshop atthe back of a house in the So Paulo district of CasaVerde. Sales boomed. He set up more clandestine

workshops and built a commercial platform thatnow dominates the market. Now Daro says that he

will export. He returned to Peru to set up a factoryin a poor Lima district, with dozens of craftworkers

doing piecework.The Peruvians protect their apartments with

security systems common in So Paulo, with closedcircuit TV cameras focusing on corridors and


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elevators connected to a cable system. The systemenables them to see what is going on outside theirdwellings, filled with a jumble of boxes, merchandise,suitcases and piled up mattresses. In order to movefrom the Hotel Itana to a small apartment, thetenant has to meet certain requirements. He must

put down a deposit equal to several months rent.His identity documents must be in order and hemust have a guarantor and proof of regular income.

The presence of the Cusqueos in Brazil derivesin part from its growth as a worldwide touristattraction in the last 30 years after the constructionof an international airport and, more recently, thepaving of the road to La Paz. Immediately after thecontrol of Peru's cholera epidemic and the end of theguerrilla war in the early 1990s, the flow of touristsincreased between 1995 and 1999 by 500% to reach

a million. Cuzco's native crafts revived along withmigrations along the old corridor to Bolivia, usedfor levies of forced labor and trade with the silvermines during the colonial era..

In the Andean world, migrations follow ancientpatterns. In Inca times migrations took place as aresult of the organized transfer of workers to buildingsites. Soldiers went on conquering expeditions orto control or punish peoples already conquered.In colonial times Andean peasants fled their

communities to escape forced labor in the mines.In 1680, almost half of Cuzcos urban population

was made up of migrants working as muleteers ,craftsmen, traders and household servants. Withmodernization and urbanization, migrations havemultiplied.

With the increase in international tourismcame the international traders of craftwork keento produce earrings and necklaces with incrustedBrazilian stones en masse. Jeff the Gringo set

up a factory which employed 100 craftworkersremembers Ral Aquino. He made us work dayand night, making us produce more and more. Hepaid us $10 a week to produce a hundred pairs ofearrings. I set up my own workshop when directbuyers appeared. One day they told us that there

was a glut on the market and that they couldnt payus for the merchandise that we had given chem. Ihad 4,000 pairs of earrings and a lot of debts. I cameto Brazil to sell them directly to the public. Thestone sellers told me that there was a good market

here.When Peru's recession of the 1990s got worse,

thousands of Cusqueos went to Brazil to lookfor a market. When making his way around Lake

Titicaca Ral obtained the rough alpaca fabrics thatthe gringos like to buy. They discovered that themulatas in So Paulo love to show off their clothes inthe short So Paulo winter. Indian chullos, now nolonger used in Peru, come out of the metro stationsin So Paulo, on the heads of their proud buyers.

To increase his sales volume, Ral rented a 2x2meter stall inside the S central metro station, wheretwo million of the 17 million people who live in SoPaulo pass by every day. Greater So Paulo generates20% of the gross national product of Brazil, almosttwice the size of the economies of Peru and Boliviacombined.

Koreans ArriveBefore the Peruvians and the Bolivians, the

Koreans arrived. Tjitjalenka was the name of the boat

that in 1963 brought the first 100 Korean familiesfrom the land of the ancient kingdom of Kyriounder an agreement between the governments ofBrazil and Korea. Thus a long tradition discouragingemigration was broken. Unemployment amongthose who escaped From North Korea and theenormous economic crisis alter the division ofKorea 50 years ago led the government of SouthKorea to finance emigration to Brazil with theaims of control-ling population growth, relieving

unemployment, obtaining hard currency that theemigrants would send home, and gaining allies inthe non-Communist world.

But the immigrants had a different idea. Theydid not want to keep their links with Korea. Theirdeparture was final. They arrived in Brazil with theidea of becoming farmers. They were army officers,educated middle-class and some from the upperclass. They failed. They tried to get work in SoPaulo but few succeeded. So they went on to the

streets to sell Asian scarves and shirts door-to-door.Success was immediate, remembers Mu KonKim, an elderly evangelical pastor. Most Koreans

were Christians from a variety of churches. In thebeginning it was very easy to know what the rest

were doing as they almost all lived in the Koreanarea of the Liberdade district. When they found outthat door-to-door sales could make money, othersdid the same. This enabled them to get to knowthe city and its needs, and encouraged the threepioneering Kims, Soon San Kim, In Bae Kim and

Sun Hoom Kim to begin manufacturing textiles.Only the oldest remember the gambit that led

Soo San Kim to buy a small sewing machine ininstallments to sew tablecloths and scarves at home,


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until late at night, and sell them the nextmorning at ten to twelve times the cost of thefabric. The other Kims successfully followedhis example.

The success of the three pioneers inspiredother Koreans. This febrile activity soon

dominated their homes. Brazil's fast economicgrowth at the time absorbed production thatincreased daily, pouring out of rudimentary

workshops hidden near the center of thecity. Household sewing machines bought ininstallments were the only equipment they had.They cut fabric with scissors, kneeling on thefloor. When the demand grew to frighteningheights, the Koreans no longer had time to eat.They sewed day and night until they fainted.

New groups of Koreans came into Brazil

every day across the Bolivian border. Those whohad started to make garments did not hesitateto exploit the illegal immigrants' fear of beingdeported to subject them to a kind of slaveryin the hidden workshops of the Vila Coreana.They sweated away in secret, with closed

windows, hiding the children so that publicview of them would not betray their presence.They feared that each passing police car wascoming for them. By the time their residence in

Brazil was legalized by an immigration amnestyin 1982, hundreds of small wholesale businessesflourished in Bras and Bom Retiro.

The Koreans now say that they control 60%of the garment industry, of which 99% is nowproduced by Bolivian sewing machine operatorsin no less than 30,000 workshops in the centerand many districts of So Paulo's sprawlingperiphery. There are some 150,000 craftsmen.Most inhabitants of So Paulo acquire clothes,

generally of poor quality, produced by themingling of two racially and culturally distantgroups: the Koreans and the growing mass ofBolivians.

Low Production CostsBefore the 1982 amnesty, wholesalers

supplied by clandestine workshops did well. Anagent working at a commission of 5% wouldplace the production of the workshops on themarket and collect orders. The workshops tried

to make a profit of 100% on the value of theproduct and the wholesalers 20% on the retailvalue. The prosperity generated in the informal

workshops led the manufacturers who had

become wealthy since 1975 to move their homesaway from the immigrant districts of Brs,Bom Retiro, Par and Liberdade to the smarterarea of Aclimao. Prosperous entrepreneurskept advancing to better neighborhoods, timetoward Higienpolis and Moema. But the old

immigrant districts of Bras and Bom Retiroremained the operational centers of theirbusinesses.

Competition between small firms produceda culture of saving and simplicity among theKoreans in Brazil. The importance of savingcan be seen in all their businesses. Decorationand furniture are very simple, without evensigns and shop window decoration. Bargainsare noted down on rough pieces of paperhanging from a box. Low production costs

are obtained through minimum investment ininfrastructure, maximum control over wagesand technological backwardness. To insuresuccess and reduce risks of loss, they have twostrategies. The first is stock control, producingin small quantities, normally lots of between400 and 1,500 items, with the most daringreaching 7,000. The second is credit, paying thesupplying workshops only after sale and returnof unsold goods. When a model is placed on

the market, it is immediately tested. If it beginsto sell, new stock is requested. If is doesnt sellin between 30 and 60 days, it goes back to the

workshop.Many Bolivians, motivated by the dynamic

market in Brazil and the critical situation inBolivia, illegally entered Brazil as the Koreans

were starting to dominate the So Paulogarment industry. The thousands of illegalKorean sweatshop workers who became legal

residents after the 1982 amnesty were replacedby Bolivians fleeing hunger, so that Koreanfirms still could grow in the competitive andvoracious So Paulo market.

Bolivians have their own roots in thegarment trade. In the middle of the 1980s,textile businesses were set up in the outskirts ofLa Paz and El Alto in Bolivia. Open-air marketsflourished on the borders with Peru and Chile,

where local imitations of American clothessuited for the cold were sold. The commercial

network employed a floating population ofsellers whose movements retrace the steps of

wandering Andean merchants in colonial times.Clothes entered Peru illegally over the border at


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Desaguadero, near Lake Titikaka. Inhabitants of thePeruvian border towns of Ollaraya, Unicachi andTinicachi made fortunes smuggling Bolivian jeansand coats, until Peruvians learned to make them intheir own workshops in Lima.

The rough clothes were very popular in the

Andes for their low prices. Throughout the 1980s,workshops were constantly going bankrupt and newones set up with more sophisticated machines able toproduce more detailed and complicated embroidery.The workshops that could not compete failed. Firstthe craftsmen and then the owners of the workshopsmigrated to enter the garment industry of So Paulo,often bringing their old machines with them.

Used to wandering from one place to another,to living in mines and seeing daylight only for afew hours a week, the Bolivians quickly got used to

living in the Koreans workshops. Entire families ofillegal immigrants accepted living and working inconditions of near slavery. Doing piecework for 16hours a day, they reproduced the routine of theiremployers when the Koreans were illegal. Some150,000 Bolivians now work in Korean sweatshopsfor small and elusive wages paid by vouchers thatmay prove worthless.

The first Bolivian migrants cherished hopesof returning to -Bolivia to set up a workshop or

becoming capitalists like the Koreans in Brazil.A new immigration amnesty in 1998 gave themhope. Before they could be accused under law ofrunning a slave industry, the Koreans handed overthe control of the sweatshops to the new Boliviansfor a good reason. By transferring the risk to theBolivians and absorbing their labor, they would befreeing themselves from the fear of a possible fine

when discovered by the authorities. The Koreansweatshops continued to operate in wretched

conditions, but now behind the legal shield ofBolivian ownership.Now with identity documents and consider-

able experience, the Bolivians quickly entered thesweatshop business after their position was legalizedin Brazil. They could now legally rent property,have a bank account and take advantage of the ease

with which one can buy second-hand equipment atbargain prices on credit in So Paulo's many repairshops.

The cheapest Chinese sewing machine can be

bought for US$190. A Japanese Juki for US$270and an American one for US$325. The smalloverlock sewing machines are more expensive; thecheapest costs US$650. With no more than US

$900 a simple sewing workshop can be set up.More complex machines for specific works cost alot but not so much more. The businesses which sellthese machines generally belong to Brazilians whohave been regularly selling to Koreans and then toBolivians. Many of the machines now are assembled

in Manaus and arrive at prices lower than a fewyears ago. But these machines are technologicallyout-of-date.

Inexperience naturally has its costs. Somemigrants fulfill their dreams and some fail. Themore successful are able to get along in the new

world, overcoming ups and downs. They manage tobuy a house and drive their own cars. They bringup their children decently. They blend reasonably

well into Brazilian society. They manage dozens ofbusinesses. For their children Bolivia is a remote

place. The second group is made up of those whosurvived but failed in their attempts to run theirown business.

Some enter other lines of business. Rosa Elvirais now getting on in years. She speaks Portuguesebetter than Spanish because Aymara sounds arecloser to Portuguese. She sells electronic accessoriesand pirate copies of CD software in the downtownelectronics flea market of Santa Ifigenia Street. Icame here 20 years ago with all of my family. I had

a garment workshop near the district of Sopocachiin La Paz. I was born in La Paz. I couldnt sellanything in Bolivia. I had to sell clothing at thePeruvian border, but they were already making thesame clothes on the other side of the border. I lived

with all of my family in the workshop. We had tocome. The Koreans dont pay anything. We just gotvouchers. Just vouchers! No money! Weve doneeverything. Ive sold food. They gave you credit andthe workers you sold to on credit disappeared or

changed jobs. Weve also sold hot dogs in the street.Weve done everything. Now my daughter had aworkshop. I couldnt. I had to go all over lookingfor fabric, cooking for everyone. I had to pay fivethings: rent, electricity, water, food and wages.The moneys not enough. Too much work and notenough money. The Koreans pay just a few cents fora sewn garment. Just a few cents. Now Im betterselling software on the streets.

Those who go to Santa Ifigenia Street are lookingfor specific things. Specific copies of software,

hardware, plugs, adapters. When she doesnt havethem, she notes the order in a little book. Sheknows that people will return because the streetsellers are the best way to get any product cheaply,


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from woolen products from the Andes to the latesttechnology.

Other Bolivians work as designers and cutters.I prefer to work for Brazilians, explains SamuelCondo, a designer at Street Fashion on ArcoverdeStreet. They pay better and you can enjoy work. I

hate the Koreans. They take advantage. When youdesign something original, they dont give you anycredit. They always want more. Lets not even speakabout the Bolivians, they are like dogs eating eachocher up. The worst are those who work as foremenfor the Koreans. As they speak your language theysqueeze everything out of you, both the older onesand the new arrivals. Its hard to know why the newKoreans are in the garment industry.

Some younger Bolivians are the shame and worryof their parents in So Paulo. Many who arrived as

children identified with the habits of the lower classesin So Paulo. Aware that they are legal citizens, theyhave no interest in continuing with their parentsbusiness. They have no other horizon than that of

living from day-to-day. Braziliansociety is an enormous surface

where they are lost.

Sunday Nightsin the Plaza Par

From 5 p.m. everySunday the smalltriangular square of Santo

Antonio in the district ofPar is filled with Andeantunes blaring from withinthe railings that enclosethe bleak concrete spacethat remains empty untilthe end of the day. On

one side of the square,there is a jumble ofsoldered iron pipes whichhave sunk into the dirtysand, the playground

where children of allages play.

Out of thenight comethousands ofanxious Bolivians

for their weeklytaste of freedom.

The crowdscirculate among


the obstacles and stalls and help themselves totraditional Andean food outside the perimeter fence

where older Bolivians arrive in ancient cars withtheir families to open street s talls.

The Andean street market flourishes under itsflickering spotlights hooked up to local power lines.

Cassettes of Bolivian music are strewn over metalfolding tables as portable stereo players blast thelatest hits from La Paz. Inside the plaza evangelicalmissionaries preach in Spanish over loudspeakers toappreciative rows of young people, their sermonsalternating with lively sets by a Bolivian rock band.Outside the fence, other Bolivians crowd around anelderly woman selling from sacks of grain and tubersfrom the Andes: tubers such as quinoas, ollucos,and ocas, dried wheat, corn to make chicha, serranocheese, jerked beef, all brought from Bolivia. On

another corner, photos of Bolivian sporting andsocial events are displayed in thick albums to be soldat three reals for each photo.

Young Bolivians circle the Plaza Par, pausingbefore food stalls, hawkers and signs posted byKorean labor recruiters. They search for a familiarface, a gesture, a neighbor from Bolivia. Fromparked vehicles anxious eyes of recruiters followthe streams of young men like Walker and Rubn,

who, in shirtsleeves, shiver in the winter night while

gawking at the crowd. They suddenly cross thesidewalk to meet an acquaintance and shake hands.Nothing to say. Just a big smile and then they lookat the ground. The clothes of the new arrivals sayeverything, having just arrived from their sweatshop.

We arrived together, says Walker. We wereworking with the Bolivian who brought us. Hes hadus working for six months and only by arguing have

we got him to pay us 10 reals each, adds Rubn.We got in a taxi. We didnt know where we were, and

we told the driver: the square in Par. We paid himall the money. Do you understand our situation?Rubn and Walker, classmates in a school in El

Alto, fai led the entry exam to the University of LaPaz at the beginning of the year. They decided coreply to a radio advertisement offering work in SoPaulo with all travel expenses, board and lodgingincluded and good wages on top. There were six ofus, recalls Rubn. We waited on the border until it

was night to board a bus full of Bolivians. Arrivingin So Paulo, we were sent to different workshops.

Walker was angry: Our boss kept saying that we owehim money. Weve sewed pants, shirts, everything.He asked us to make more and more. He said thatit was never enough, chat we should produce more


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so we would begin to earn money. In the workshopthere were six other Bolivians. They never told usanything or wanted to help us. They could go outon Sundays. They escaped, comments an other

worker.In a dimly lit corner of the Plaza Par cardboard

signs hang from the fence with job offers scribbledon them. A Bolivian recruiter leads job-seekersto a Korean who tears pages from a notebook on

which he writes the address and phone number ofhis workshop. The Korean doesnt speak Spanish,explained an older Bolivian who works for theKorean. Youve got to go to the workshop to seeabout the conditions. Well-dressed Korean womenand a Brazilian man also hand out papers. The twofriends receive the papers and their faces light up.They still are shivering from the cold. They are no

older than 20, no more than five feet tall. They havenot been able to communicate with their parents.In his pocket Walker has some letters to send. Therecruiter takes them to the other end of the plaza

where a knot of young men is quietly talking andjoking. Others gather to silently stare at a Bol iviangirl passing by, sniffing her from a distance. TheBolivian recruiter parcels out his young charges.Go with that one points out the acquaintance.The younger Koreans are better, the old ones are

cheats. The Korean goes to a nearby parked car,followed by a group of young men whom the twofriends join.

For hours, until lace at night, the music sustainsthe atmosphere of a strange village Feastin the old immigrant district ofthe metropolis. At about 8p.m. the activity in the squarereaches its peak. Rubnrecognizes a girl who was

his neighbor in La Paz. Shepasses, looks at him as if sheas if he were a stranger andgoes on her way. The crowdbegins to thin out ac 11p.m. The patrol car, from

which pol icemen werewatching the crowd, turnson its circular lightsand goes away. Andfond words chime away:

Buenas noches, amigo.Chau. See you next Sunday.The strangers file throughthe lifeless streets. The hours

of freedom are coming to an end for those who arepermitted to air their bodies on Sunday evenings toget away from the entrails of the Korean sweatshopsof the districts of Bom Retiro, Bus and Par.

Very little has changed in the districts which havebeen successively inhabited by Italians, Jews and

Koreans in the last 80 years. Old houses are stainedby mildew and black dead moss. It never seemednecessary to build anything new. Discretion and aveil of simplicity prevail in the streets full of shopsthat receive merchants arriving on the hundreds ofbuses parked in front of the innumerable cheap hotelsaccommodating buyers and sellers coming from theinterior of Brazil or from other countries, similar tothe Hotel Itana of the Peruvians. The buses waitfor their passengers through the afternoon beforedisappearing into the veins of Brazil with their

enormous loads of merchandise acquired in the earlymorning in the 25 de Maro wholesale market andthe secret hiding places of nearby manufacturingdistricts.

Work Like CooliesThe new Bolivian owners of the sweatshops

learned, refined and eliminated costs of their oldbosses, the Koreans. Work like coolies is theirmotto. They attract and bring young Bolivians to

Brazil through their own recruiting agents.Coming to Brazil to work as a sewer is common

in Bolivia. Advertisements on radio stations paintmarvelous pictures to potential migrants, all young.

Three meals a day and lodgings provided by theboss, in addition to wages which will

be ten times that of the minimumBolivian wage, working in the

garment industry in So Paulo.No experience or knowledge

of sewing machine operation isrequired.The most common route is to

travel to the eastern Bolivian cityof Santa Cruz de la Sierra andfrom there catch what is known asthe Death Train for the long, hotand tiring crossing of the Chacoto Puerto Suarez, on the Brazil-

Bolivia border. Those withpassports ask in Corumba,

on the Brazilian side, for aone-month entry permit.Those without passports

wait until night-fall to


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mingle with the herd of traders and smugglers whocome in buses full of merchandise, traveling withthem to So Paulo to avoid problems at policecontrol points. Some arrive at the huge Tiet busstation in So Paulo. Others go to interior townsharboring Bolivian workshops. Each boss will bring

his own apprentices, some of whom ordered fromrecruiters. The trick is to instill them with greatfear of their illegal status. Even when they have astamped passport, they never manage to return tothe border to renew their visas for another month.

Just as the Koreans did with Korean migrants,and then with Bolivians, the new Bolivian owners ofthe informal workshops are viewed by the Brazilianlabor legislation as illegal and exploiting slavery.

The new migrants are less afraid than theirpredecessors. They know what may await them.

But they keep on coming. The Bolivians who nowown the sweatshops learned from the Koreans to

work with all their windows closed, turning up thevolume of their radios to drown out the noise oftheir machines. They forbid their sewing machineoperators to go out to the street even to buy candy.They offer higher wages for shifts from Mondayto Saturday chat begin at 8 a.m. and end aftermidnight, when the body can do no more.

The large number of Bolivian workshops has

collapsed the wage structure. The workshops sew toorder. They look for ads from Korean firms to acceptsmall job lots. Koreans pay the Bolivian workshopsonly one real (50 US cents) for sewing a pair ofpants. The Bolivian pays his sewer 25 cents. A Tshirt earns 30 cents. Its clean profit, says SabinoHuaman, a workshop boss. They arrive ignorant,they sew badly and they have no idea of how muchit costs to manage a workshop. Theyre incapable oforganizing a union. Who are they going to complain

to?The most common occupational disease is agradual loss of vision. The fabrics that most injuresight are black and white. Workers also suffer fromshortage of breath and respiratory illness caused bythe dust from the clothes. They often are afflictedby severe pains in their legs as well as circulationproblems and rheumatism caused by the lack ofmovement, awful working conditions and extensivealcoholism. When a Bolivian becomes ill, he has topay for his own cure or go to a public hospital.

At the slightest hint of a police blitz, the workshopis moved to another locale. Both to separate the new

workers from the older ones and to avoid a possiblesurprise from the tax inspectors, the workshops

have been transferred to distant districts such asGuarulhos and Guaianases on the eastern edge atGreater So Paulo. Staying in the same place as littleas possible is always the best practice. Mastery ofsewing techniques is an obsession for the workersas it allows them to change jobs quickly and earn

more money than they ever saw when working inthe mines. This enables them to get drunk on beerinstead of chicha, paying less than in Bolivia.

Opportunism and the search for quick profitshave created in the Koreans habits which makes itdifficult for them to conquer more sophisticatedmarkets. An ambitious project designed to joinsmall firms into a consortium in order to launchtheir products on to the international market wongovernment support from the Brazilian ExportPromotion Agency, with a three-year state subsidy

from September 1999, based on the success ofa company which sold US$300 million worthof products to Chile. Thus the Brazilian brandTropical Spice was launched.

The first international presentation of theKoreans in Las Vegas in February 2000 was astep into the unknown, doing away with all theirpretensions of becoming powers in the garmentindustry. International markets re-quire productionquantities beyond the capacities of small Korean

firms. For the first time in years the Koreans feltridiculous.

They brought to Las Vegas a catalogue containing150 samples. They were astonished when theyreceived their first orders of from 50 to 70 thousandunits to be delivered in less than 30 days. This wasimpossible, given the production structure of smalllots produced in badly equipped workshops, mostof which were in the hands of Bolivians crankingmuseum pieces. They came back with their tails

between their legs.In their market research they had never noticedthe volumes demanded in mass production forlarge retail chains. Korean and Bolivian sweatshopsin So Paulo lack the machines to produce qualitygarments that even the more advanced workshops inBolivia can make.

Sunk in their considerable stocks of unsoldclothes, using the same Las Vegas catalogue whichcirculates on the Internet, the Koreans attacked thesmaller markets of Mercosur such as Argentina,

Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile, without caringmuch for the quality of their finished products.Meanwhile, the Koreans obtained credit from theBrazilian government to modernize their industrial


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equipment. The Bolivians are a long way from beingable to overcome the barriers preventing them fromparticipating in such projects. Inability to cooperateand join forces prevents them from trying moreambitious projects. The sons of Bolivia who, intheir homeland are so good at organizing street

demonstrations of unions of blind telephone tokensellers, cannot unite in Brazil.Quickly, but not very perceptibly, a hotel in the

center of So Paulo is being taken over by Boliviantraders from El Alto as the smuggling of Bolivian

products on the Peruvian border falls. The openingof world markets casts more doubt upon the oldidea that the industrialists of the south of Peru madetheir political dogma: fear of expansion of Brazilianexports that would destroy Peruvian industry andthat made the projects for a road to link the twocountries sleep under the charm of eloquent phrasesof political speeches and diplomacy. But with itsindustry collapsed and its markets saturated withimported products, trying to keep the trade barrier

of the Andes intact no longer has meaning forPeruvian industry.

A new open world recognizes fewer polit icaland natural barriers. Brazilian products arrive inPeru. Peruvian and Bolivian immigrants arrive inBrazil. The governments end up by accepting defacto situations. New forms of communicationand business appear. Internet and cheap air fares

provide information and easy transport. Therealso are other types of international trade. Thereis now an enormous international market of usedgarments, from rich to poor countries. Second-hand Japanese cars are brought to Peru. Some 300

Pakistani traders have set up in Tacna, on the borderof Peru with Chile, selling a million Japanese cars inthe last five years. National barriers are now moreporous. Wealth ends up by being distributed in itsown ways. This is the most important meaning ofglobalization.

Translation by John Milton


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Bernardo Ricupero is a young political scientist and member of the Fernand Braudel Institute, with family roots in the immigrant neighborhood of Brs.

2. Old Times in Bom Retiro

Bernardo Ricupero

The greatest district of So PauloThat I most admire for its beauty

Is Bom Retiro(Ju Bananre)

Ju Bananre never existed. But a youngBrazilian writer using this name produced oneof the best portraits of So Paulo of the early20th Century: La Divina Increnca [The DivineConfusion]. Thanks to immigration, the city then

was as much Italian as Brazilian. Nothing more

natural, then, that a compatriot of Dante woulddescend to the inferno of this young metropolisand narrate, in an odd mixture of Italian andPortuguese, the adventures swarms in the streetsof Paulicia.

In these adventures, the bairro (neighborhood)of Bom Retiro had a central role, which should notsurprise since it grew up near the railroad stations.

After the opening of the So Paulo Railway in1867, Bom Retiro became an effervescent spectacle

of commerce, circulating imported goods arrivingon the famous English railway. Soon factoriesappeared to add value to these goods, giving BomRetiro its working-class character.

Alexandre Ribeiro Marcondes Machado, thereal author ofLa Divina Increnca, had a privilegedvantage point for describing what happened inBom Retiro and in the rest of the city. He was astudent of the Polytechnic School in Bom Retiroand could witness much of what he later wrote.

Sad irony may lurk in the fact that Ju Bananre,though never existing in mesh and blood, becameso famous that he erased the memory of his creator.Today nobody remembers Alexandre Machado,

while Ju Bananre has become a famil iar figureof So Paulo folklore. The cartoons of Voltolino,appearing in the weeklyO Pirralho, immortalizedBananre as a pot-bellied Italian with a bigmoustache, cigar and walking cane.

Bananre became so real in the popular mind

that he acquired a family and friends in his comic

book appearances. His personality never wasdearly defined in terms of age and occupation,varying in different cartoons from poet to barberto journalist to candidate for President of theRepublic. Banana also ventured into florid andfuturistic verse. He became known for his mostoriginal opinions, on the discovery of America,the Independence of Brazil, the government ofPresident Hermes da Fonseca (1910-14), theFirst World War, divorce and socialism, etc.,

participating in some of these events.Social mobility enables us to understandBananre. Thus a recently arrived Italian couldmake trenchant observation son the behaviorof prominent figures of the day, such as richcoffee planters and military chieftains. With thisapparently chaotic posturing, Alexandre Machadocould portray some of the principal features ofBom Retiro as well as of Brazil of those days,provoking public opinion into attitudes of irony

and objectivity about Brazils history and currentevents.The Bom Retiro of Ju Bananre little

resembled the original neighborhood. Althoughonly a mile from the central S Plaza, the bairro

was the pleasant scene of small farm plots andgardens until the railroad came. The name BomRetiro came from its use as a weekend refuge by

wealthier So Paulo families.The second wave of immigrants changed Bom

Retiro once again. If the Italians who settled nearthe train stations after 1880 were mainly workers,the Jews who arrived after 1900 were merchants.Rua Jos Paulino, the only street connecting theEstao da Luz railway terminal with Bom Retiro,

was still the manufacturing and commercial hubof the bairro. The words of Hilrio Dertnio of30 years ago describe the scene then as now.

Many old houses were tom down and replacedby large shopping galleries, each containing

hundreds of stores, mainly selling clothing that


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often was made in their back rooms. Little spaceremained for other commerce. There were twoor three drugstores, bakeries, bank branches,luncheonettes, government offices and furniturestores, only enough to sustain life on the street.The rest are stores, stores, stores, where So

Paulos six million people [now 17 million] canbuy supplies.

The Jews replaced Syrians and Lebaneseimmigrants who roamed over Brazil as itinerantpeddlers, selling a wide variety of goods to poorpeople. The peddlers called Turks came fromthe old Ottoman Empire, settling after a whilein centers of commerce and light manufacturing.They offered a greater choice of goods to farm

workers than the barraces, the country scores

owned by the landlords. Many of todays retailstore chains, still selling on credit, began with thiskind of peddling.

There was one big difference between the Jewsand the Turks. The natives of Syria and Lebanon

were roughly 10 times more numerous than theJews, enabling them to fan out al l over Brazil. Theless numerous Jews, today some 150,000 in all ofBrazil, had to settle in a few big cities to maintaintheir identity. In So Paulo, where nearly half of

Brazil's Jews live, they settled at first mainly inBom Retiro, specializing in manufacturing andsale of clothing.

Albino Ruiz Lazo magnificently cel ls the storyof what came next in this issue ofBraudel Papers.

In the succession of Italians, Jews, Koreans,Bolivians and Peruvians in Bom Retiro, little seemsto have changed. Enormous cultural differences

provide Bom Retiro with a kind of urbanarcheology in which the traces and contributionsof each wave of immigrants are found in successivelayers. These waves of immigrants pursue similareconomic activities, using similar production andcommercial techniques. They specialize in selling

cheap clothing, produced in precarious labor-intensive workshops that are under-capitalized,catering to the low-income population.

Thus with ingenuity and courage theimmigrants often can overcome their limitations.They move from declining neighborhoodsto more fashionable ones, leaving behind thenewcomers and the residual poor. Some Boliviansand Peruvians in So Paulo nourish the optimismof Ju Bananre:

Oh, let my last breathBe taken in Bom Retiro,

Where my tomb shall stay.

Documents

From Andes to Sao Paulo