Dispatches from the Field: São Paulo
Dispatches from the Field: São Paulo
100,000 Bolivians, many of them undocumented immigrants, live and work in São Paulo, re-creating a Bolivian community in the midst of Brazil's industrial capital. Read the full article in the Spring 2008 issue of Americas Quarterly.
Yola Usnayo, born to a poor family in the Bolivian capital of La Paz, dreams of becoming a hairdresser. The 25-year-old mother puts in 17-hour days as a seamstress at a cramped sweatshop in São Paulo’s Bom Retiro neighborhood. She earns less than $500 a month for sewing up to 400 articles a day. But since she arrived in Brazil by bus three years ago, she has been determinedly putting away her savings for the better life she is convinced awaits her family.
“I’m happy,” says Yola, who lives rent-free in the shop along with her one-year-old son and two other workers. “The only thing I don’t like about living here is that I’m far away from my family.”
But at least she’s not alone. An estimated 100,000 expatriate Bolivians like Yola are scrabbling for an economic foothold in Brazil’s wealthiest city.
These hidden migrants...
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