Expats E Locals

1 Expats e Locals: “Assimilação” e Imigração entre Anglófonos no Rio de Janeiro Proposta para a apresentação de um trabalho ao GT de Migrações Internacionais, ANPOCS 2002 Thaddeus Gregory Blanchette TEMA: Clivagens internas nos grupos de imigrantes Resumo Os estadunidenses e britânicos, juntos, formam um dos grupos diferenciados mais antigas do Rio de Janeiro. A presença, em massa, dos anglo-falantes em torno da Baia de Guanabara data, no mínimo, da abertura dos portos por Dom João VI em 1808. Mercenários ingleses e americanos tiveram um papel destacado na luta para independência brasileira em 1821 e, de acordo com os relatórios de viajantes como Maria Graham, o comércio britânico e os pubs que serviam marujos anglofalantes dominaram o velho centro do Rio durante a maioria do século XIX. Importantes instituições socioculturais cariocas foram fundadas pelos anglófonos, tais como a igreja anglicana Christchurch em Botafogo (uma das mais antigas igrejas protestantes no Brasil), a escola Bennet, o Cricket Club de Niteroi e, é claro, o futebol. Em sumo, os norte-americanos e britânicos (e seus ramificações coloniais) tem tido uma presença intensa e contínua no Rio de Janeiro e, de acordo com os dados do IBGE, são entre os dez maiores grupos nacionais/étnicos que forneceram imigrantes internacionais para a região da Baia de Guanabara. Notável, então, que os estrangeiros anglofalantes morando no Rio de Janeiro geralmente não são considerados, nem se consideram, imigrantes. O trabalho aqui apresentado analisará essa contradição aparente na luz de informações que descobri durante minhas pesquisas para minha dissertação de mestrado no PPGAS do Museu Nacional. Existe, no mínimo, duas redes de sociabilidade, quase totalmente separadas e independentes, entre os anglófonos do Rio. A primeira, mais visível e notada publicamente, se estrutura em torno de “expatriados”, trabalhadores contratados por empresas multinacionais e grandes corporações/estatais brasileiros. A segunda se articula entre pessoas cuja estadia no Brasil se explica por outros fatores, entre dos quais se destaca, ou uma acentuada interesse em “coisas do Brasil”, ou ligações pessoais, intensas e/ou íntimas com indivíduos brasileiros. Analisarei como essa clivagem básica se articula com 1) os pressupostos do “senso comum” a cerca de que é um “imigrante”, 2) os preconceitos nativistas brasileiras que visam a redução de alteridade como um marcador do “bom estrangeiro”, 3) as estruturas, formadores de imperialismo, de transmissão de poder, prestígio e capital, e 4) a busca da exótica e a manipulação de categorias culturais tidas como “autenticamente brasileiras” como marcadores de status entre angloamericanos. A interação desses fatores produz uma situação que dificulta a etnogênese entre os anglófonos do Rio e diminua a (auto)percepção desse grupo como imigrante. Obs: Uma versão desse trabalho, em português, pode ser obtida comigo pelo correio eletrônico através de [email protected], a partir de 10/10/02. Essa versão é, portanto, preliminar. 2 Introduction It seems to me that the traditional approaches to ethnic groups and their territorial/social expressions within the urban environment break down when the group in question consists of a foreign population originating in countries popularly considered to be more prestigious and powerful than the host nation. Traditionally, these groups have been seen as “colonies”, but rarely has their insertion in the host society been looked at as an expression of migration or ethnicity, their presence being preferentially understood through the lens of economic relations and/or dominance. Over the last couple of decades, anthropology and related disciplines have made significant strides in recovering the colonial history of the 19th century European empires as cultural interaction between definite individuals and groups within local spaces shaped by larger concerns of power (COOPER & STOLER; PELS; SAID). In these studies, a purely economicist view of colonialism is rejected and the colony itself is often portrayed as a “contact zone,” a “social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and power” (PRATT:4). Relatively little work has yet been done, however, in recovering the identity structures of the post-colonial world’s contact zones (see, however, CRAPANZANO for a thought provoking exception) and it is precisely within this vacuum that the study of Anglo-Americans and their ethnic projection as immigrants in Brazil must fall. Anglo-Americans generally consider themselves and are considered to be separate from Brazil to the point where the use of “ethnic group” or even “immigrant” to describe them appears, at first glance, oxymoronic. It would be easy to explain this group of foreigners’ presence, particularly in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, as simply a function of imperialism in the Weberian sense: an expansion of other nation’s structures of prestige, power and capital into Brazilian lands and lives (WEBER, s/d: 187-210). My fieldwork among Anglo-American residents of Rio de Janeiro has led me to question the universality of this premise, however. I have found that many, if not most, Anglo-American residents of Rio have few – if any – direct connections to the lived structures that are the bones and sinews of empire. Furthermore, there certainly is no commonality of interest or political allegiance among them. In other words, a significant part of the Anglo-American presence in Brazil cannot be explained either in terms of 3 tourism or as a direct result of their nations of origins’ political and economic expansion. In theory, one can describe Anglo-Americans in Rio as an ethnic group in the Weberian sense of the word in that they are seen and see themselves as a commonly descended and fairly cohesive collectivity (WEBER, 1991). In practice, however, these gringos are not so easily distinguished from the (mostly) middle-class Brazilians they move among, a situation that only intensifies to the degree that they continue living in Rio and improving their Portuguese. Furthermore, they are a group that is intensely divided by internal cleavages corresponding to class, social status and – most importantly – their internal understandings of the meaning of their presence in Rio. Anglo-Americans, Anglofones, Cariocas and Gringos For the purposes of this article, “Anglo-American” is intended include English speaking citizens of Great Britain or any of her former “settler nation” colonies where English is an official language, including – but not necessarily limited to – the United States, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. I deal with this conglomerate’s relative ethnic unity in the main text. “Anglophone” means an English speaker – of whatever nationality. “Carioca” means a resident of the city of Rio de Janeiro, of whatever nationality. “Gringo”, if used on its own without other qualifiers, should be understood in the context of this work to mean an Anglo-American living in Brazil (I am, of course, aware that Anglo-Americans are not the only “gringos in Brazil). “Brazilian” means a native born citizen of Brazil who sees himself – and is seen by his co-citizens – as such. In the context of reporting native testimony, the reader is advised that it generally means Brazilian-born carioca middle-class residents of the South Zone Rio de Janeiro, as these are the “Brazilians” most “gringos” commonly socialize with. Thus, while potentially and perhaps theoretically an ethnic group, ethnogenesis – understood as the (re)production of collective communal identification (SIDER; DIAMOND,) – is quite weak among Anglo-Americans in Rio de Janeiro. In effect, it appears to be overwhelmed (but not eliminated) by the particular culture and social structure of the city environment itself. As Gilberto Velho puts it, "..[P]or mais significativas e inclusivas que pudessem ser categorias como família e parentesco, bairro e vizinhança, origem tribal e/ou étnica, grupos de status, estratos e classes sociais, [registra- se] circulação, interações sociais associadas à experiências, combinações e identidades particulares, individualizadas” (VELHO, 1994: 20-21). In other words, class, workplace, residency and affinities between individual projects tend to unite Anglo-Americans and Brazilians more than Anglo-Americans shared identity as gringos. Furthermore, gringos relatively high economic and social status within the city, as well as the fact that most of 4 them are able to return to their countries of origin as required, weaken their need to ethnically organize in mutual aid associations. In almost all the cases I’ve witnessed, deeper, more intimate social contacts with Brazilians have been more of a factor in aiding individual Anglo-Americans in emergencies than their contacts with other gringos. Furthermore, there is a nationalist, nativist tradition of assimilation in Brazil, which, in the words of Giralda Seyferth, apprehends the foreigner as a potential threat to “Brazilianess” that needs to “incorporate the national spirit”, often specifically through overt tutelage that attempts to reduce his alterity and encourage his adherence to an ideologically defined national norm (SEYFERTH, 2000: 46-47). If it’s true that gringos rarely find occasion to salient markers of their identity as an ethnic group (BARTH), this is partially due to the fact that their Brazilian friends and colleagues give them reason to and, in fact, applaud their attempts at

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