Rio Grande Do Sul - Demographics

Demographics

According to the IBGE of 2008, there were 10,860,000 people residing in the state. The population density was 38.53 inhabitants per square kilometre (99.8 /sq mi).

Urbanization: 80.8% (2004); Population growth: 1.2% (1991–2000); Houses: 3,464,544 (2005).

The last PNAD (National Research for Sample of Domiciles) counted 8,776,000 White people (80.80%), 1,495,000 Brown (Multiracial) people (13.77%), 529,000 Black people (4.87%), 43,000 Amerindian people (0.40%), 11,000 Asian people (0.10%).

People of Portuguese - mostly Azorean - background predominate in the coastal region. The Southwest, on the other hand, was originally populated by Pampeano Indians. Like the other Gauchos from the La Plata Basin the population there was a result from the mixture of Spanish and Portuguese men with Amerindian women with a possible predominant Spanish ancestry and also a significant African contribution, resulting in a population that is 81.20% White.

These speculations about a supposed Spanish predominance among the population of Southwestern Rio Grande do Sul are widely spread, but they contradict the historic knowledge about the region. In fact, there was always very smallish Spanish colonial presence there, in practice restricted to Jesuit initiatives towards the Amerindian populations, which, of course, had no genetic impact in the demographic composition. On the other hand, it is well established that it is Northern Uruguay that has always had an important Luso-Brazilian presence, which in fact impacts until nowadays its language, not the other way round.

People of German descent predominate in the Sinos Valley (Novo Hamburgo, São Leopoldo, etc.) and in the center-eastern part of the State (Santa Cruz do Sul). People of Italian descent predominate in the mountains (Serra Gaúcha, Caxias do Sul, Bento Gonçalves, etc.). The Northern and Northwestern parts of the State also have significant numbers of people of both Italian and German descent. There are sizeable communities of Poles and Ukrainians across the state. People of African ancestry are concentrated in the capital city and in some cities in the litoral, such as Pelotas and Rio Grande.

According to Argentine demographer Miguel Ángel García, Italian immigrants were 60% of the total immigration to Rio Grande do Sul and according to French historian Jean Roche as of 1950 people of German descent made up 21.6% of the state's population.

The region that is now Rio Grande do Sul was originally settled by Amerindian peoples, mostly Guaraní and Kaingangs. European presence in the region started in 1627 with Spanish Jesuits. The Jesuits established Indian Reductions in the region; those reductions where populated exclusively by Amerindians, mainly Guarani, and certainly not by Europeans, either Spanish or Portuguese. Portuguese Jesuits established Indian Reductions in 1687 and dominated the region. Most of the Indians of the region became Catholics and went to live among the Jesuits. These reductions were destroyed by the Bandeirantes from São Paulo in the 18th century, who wanted to enslave the Indians. The Portuguese settlement in Rio Grande do Sul was largely increased between 1748 and 1756, with the arrival of two thousand immigrants from the Azores Islands, Portugal. They settled many parts of the state, including the nowadays capital, Porto Alegre. Blacks were 50 percent of Rio Grande do Sul's population in 1822. This proportion decreased to 25 percent in 1858 and to only 5.2 percent in 2005. Most of them were brought from Angola to work as slaves in the charqueadas.

German immigrants first arrived to Southern Brazil in 1824. They were attracted to Brazil to protect the country from invasions of the neighboring countries and to populate the empty interior of the southern region. The first city to be settled by them was São Leopoldo. In the next five decades, around 28 thousand Germans were brought to the region to work as small farmers in the countryside.

Italian immigrants started arriving in Rio Grande do Sul in 1875. They were mostly poor peasants from Trentino and Veneto, Northern Italy, who were attracted to Southern Brazil to get their own farms. Italian immigration to the region lasted until 1914, with a total of 100,000 Italians settling there in this period. Most of the immigrants worked as small farmers, mainly cultivating grapes in the Serra Gaúcha part of the state.

Other European immigrants also migrated to Rio Grande do Sul, mostly coming from Eastern Europe (Poland, Ukraine).

European genomic ancestry predominates throughout Brazil at 80%, except for the Southern Region (which includes Rio Grande do Sul), where it reaches 90%. "A new portrayal of each ethnicity contribution to the DNA of Brazilians, obtained with samples from the five regions of the country, has indicated that, on average, European ancestors are responsible for nearly 80% of the genetic heritage of the population. The variation between the regions is small, with the possible exception of the South, where the European contribution reaches nearly 90%. The results, published by the scientific magazine 'American Journal of Human Biology' by a team of the Catholic University of Brasília, show that, in Brazil, physical indicators such as skin colour, colour of the eyes and colour of the hair have little to do with the genetic ancestry of each person, which has been shown in previous studies".