Redemption and integration: Vittorio Buccelli and school in the italian settlements in Brazil

Abstract

In the early twentieth century, the Italian representative Vittorio Buccelli toured the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, at the invitation of the local Republican Party (PRR). The report of his travels in southern Brazil was published in Milan, in 1906, and presented at the international exhibition that was taking place in that city. Marked by the 19^th and 20^th Italian expansionist policies and by PRR propaganda, the report exalts the Rio Grande do Sul as an immigration space with great conditions for the immigrants´ upward social mobility. Buccelli wanted to create the image of a European Brazil, or better, a geographic and human area with a quality of life much higher than that of the old continent, or rather, untainted by the social problems which were afflicting Europe. In his elaboration of a positive representation of the Rio Grande, conceived as a propitious place to receive immigrant workforce and investments from Italian capitalists, the image that the author establishes with regard to the school proves his vainglorious discourse.