page_title: Italian Brazilians
section_title: Prosperity
hierarchical_section_title: Italian Brazilians / Prosperity
caption_attribution_description: Português: Torcida da Sociedade Esportiva Palmeiras no Estádio Palestra Itália
context_page_description: Italian Brazilians are Brazilian citizens of full or partial Italian descent. Italian Brazilians are the largest number of people with full or partial Italian ancestry outside Italy, with São Paulo being the most populous city with Italian ancestry in the world. Nowadays, it is possible to find millions of descendants of Italians, from the southeastern state of Minas Gerais to the southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul, with the majority living in São Paulo state and the highest percentage in the southeastern state of Espírito Santo. Small southern Brazilian towns, such as Nova Veneza, have as much as 95% of their population of Italian descent.
  There are no official numbers of how many Brazilians have Italian ancestry, as the national census conducted by IBGE does not ask the ancestry of the Brazilian people. In 1940, the last census to ask ancestry, 1,260,931 Brazilians were said to be the child of an Italian father, and 1,069,862 said to be the child of an Italian mother. Italians were 285,000 and naturalized Brazilians 40,000. Therefore, Italians and their children were just over 3.8% of Brazil's population in 1940.
context_section_description: Historically, Italians have been divided into two groups in Brazil. Those in Southern Brazil lived in rural colonies in contact with mostly other people of Italian descent. However, those in Southeast Brazil, the most populated region of the country, integrated into Brazilian society quite quickly.
  After some years working in coffee plantations, some immigrants earned enough money to buy their own land and become farmers themselves. Others left the rural areas and moved to cities, mainly São Paulo, Campinas, São Carlos and Ribeirão Preto. A very few became very rich in the process and attracted more Italian immigrants. In the early 20th century, São Paulo became known as the City of the Italians, because 31% of its inhabitants were of Italian nationality in 1900. The city of São Paulo had the second-highest population of people with Italian ancestry in the world at this time, after only Rome. In Campinas, street signs in Italian were common, a large commercial and services sector owned by Italian Brazilians developed, and more than 60% of the population had Italian surnames. Today, nearly 30% of the population of Belo Horizonte remains of Italian ancestry.
  Italian immigrants were very important to the development of many big cities in Brazil, such as São Paulo, Porto Alegre, Curitiba and Belo Horizonte. Bad conditions in rural areas made thousands of Italians move there. Most of them became laborers and participated actively in the industrialization of Brazil in the early 20th century. Others became investors, bankers and industrialists, such as Count Matarazzo, whose family became the richest industrialists in São Paulo byholding of more than 200 industries and businesses. In Rio Grande do Sul, 42% of the industrial companies have Italians roots.
  Italians and their descendants were also quick to organize themselves and establish mutual aid societies (such as the Circolo Italiano), hospitals, schools (such as the Istituto Colégio Dante Alighieri, in São Paulo), labor unions, newspapers as Il Piccolo from Mooca and  Fanfulla (for the whole city of São Paulo), magazines, radio stations and association football teams such as:  Clube Atlético Votorantim, the old Sport Club Savóia from Sorocaba, Clube Atlético Juventus of Italians Brazilians from Mooca (old worker quarter from city of São Paulo) and the great clubs (which had the same name) Palestra Italia, later renamed to Sociedade Esportiva Palmeiras in São Paulo and Cruzeiro Esporte Clube in Belo Horizonte.
caption: Palmeiras supporters in Estádio Palestra Itália. The club was founded by Italians immigrants in São Paulo in 1914 as Società Sportiva Palestra Italia.
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