Curitiba - Demographics

Demographics

According to the 2010 IBGE Census, there were 2,469,489 people residing in the city of Curitiba. The census revealed the following numbers: 1,381,938 White people (78.9%), 294,127 Brown (Multiracial) people (16.8%), 49,978 Black people (2.9%), 23,138 Asian people (1.4%), 2,693 Amerindian people (0.2%).

In 2010, the city of Curitiba was the 8th most populous city in Brazil.

In 2010, the city had 359,201 opposite-sex couples and 974 same-sex couples. The population of Curitiba was 52.3% female and 47.7% male.

As most of Southern Brazil's population, Curitiba is mostly inhabited by Brazilians of European descent. The first Europeans to arrive in the region were of Portuguese origin, during the 17th century. They intermarried with the native people and with the African slaves.

Immigrants from Poland first arrived in 1871, settling in rural areas close to Curitiba. They largely influenced the agriculture of the region. Curitiba has the second largest Polish diaspora in the world, second only to Chicago. The Memorial of Polish Immigration was inaugurated on 13 December 1980, after the visit of the Pope John Paul II to the city of Curitiba in June of that year. Its area is 46 thousand square meters and was part of the former Candles plant. The seven wooden log houses are parts of this memorial area, as a souvenir of the Polish immigrants, and their struggles and faith. Objects like the old wagon, the pipe of cabbage and the print of the black virgin of Częstochowa, who is the patron saint of Polish people, form parts of the memorial.

In the 19th century, the influx of immigrants from Europe increased. In 1828, the first German immigrants settled in Paraná, but large numbers of immigrants from Germany did not arrive in Curitiba until the 1870s, most of them coming from Santa Catarina or the River Volga from Russia.

Italian immigrants started arriving in Brazil in 1875 and in Curitiba in 1878 coming mostly from the Veneto and Trento regions of Northern Italy. They settled mostly in the Santa Felicidade neighborhood which to this day remains the center of the large Italian community of Curitiba.

Nearly 20,000 Ukrainian immigrants settled in Curitiba between 1895 and 1897, consisting mostly of peasants from Galicia who emigrated to Brazil to become farmers. Nowadays there are around 300,000 Ukrainian-Brazilians living in Paraná. The State of Paraná has the largest Ukrainian community and Slavic community of the country.

Curitiba has a well established Jewish community that was originally established in the 1870s. Much of the early Jewish congregation has been assimilated. In 1937 with the conquest of power by Nazi Germany, several notable German Jewish academics were allowed into Brazil, some of them settling in Curitiba.

Physicist César Lattes and former mayors Jaime Lerner and Saul Raiz were Jewish. A monument in memory of the Holocaust has been erected in the city. There is also a community center, a Jewish school, a Chabad house (Beit Chabad), at least three synagogues, and two Jewish cemeteries, one of which was defiled in 2004.

Japanese immigrants began settling in the region in 1915, with a larger contingent arriving in 1924. Curitiba received a significant influx of Japanese immigration, which established themselves mostly between Paraná and São Paulo state. The city has the second largest Japanese community in Brazil, only behind São Paulo according to IBGE. Although both cities have around the same proportion of Japanese descendant population, other large cities in the countryside, such as Maringá and Londrina, have a much higher rate. Some estimates point to a number superior to 40,000 Japanese-Brazilians living in the Curitiba. The city has elected in 1996 the first Japanese descendant Mayor of a Brazilian state capital. Cássio Taniguchi served two consecutive terms, 1997-2000 and 2001-2004.

Other immigrants, such as French, Lebanese, Dutch, Greek, Chinese, Russians, and other Eastern Europeans also settled in Curitiba.