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The genomic landscape of Brazil in 1950


A new whole-genome analysis out of Brazil has some interesting ancestry information. The preprint, Whole-genome sequencing of 1,171 elderly admixed individuals from the largest Latin American metropolis (São Paulo, Brazil):

As whole-genome sequencing (WGS) becomes the gold standard tool for studying population genomics and medical applications, data on diverse non-European and admixed individuals are still scarce. Here, we present a high-coverage WGS dataset of 1,171 highly admixed elderly Brazilians from a census-based cohort, providing over 76 million variants, of which ~2 million are absent from large public databases….

Admixed populations are useful for a lot of reasons. But let’s observe some things about his Brazilian population.

First, it’s old. The average age is 72, so these are people born in 1950. This is the genetic characteristics of Brazil in 1950 in many ways, not today. This is why you see so many individuals who self-identify as Asian who are nearly 100% Asian. These individuals are the children of Japanese immigrants. In 1950 the endogamy of the community was high. Today the youngest generation of Japanese Brazilians is 60% mixed.

Second, most of the ancestry of self-identified Brazilian whites in this sample is mostly white. Like the Japanese, a large number of these individuals are probably the children of European immigrants. I suspect this accounts for many of the 20% of the “white” sample that has no trace non-European ancestry. But observe that around another 20% has trace proportions (~1%) of non-European ancestry, mostly African.  My supposition, in this case, is that these are “old stock” white Brazilians. That this, one or both of their parents descend from Portuguese Brazilians who settled in overwhelmingly European areas and retain some non-European admixture due to long-term residence in Brazil. The remainder is white Brazilians who have substantial non-European ancestry, with a small minority whose proportions are quite high from a North American perspective.

A point of comparison is probably useful. About 95% of non-Hispanic whites in the United States seem to have almost no detectable non-European ancestry using this sort of model-based clustering. This illustrates the massive demographic difference between the USA and Latin American nations. The vast majority of white Latin Americans look quite Iberian, but the majority also have far more non-European ancestry than 95% of North American whites. This is partly a reflection of the smaller population sizes of native peoples in North America, and, the nature of hypodescent for people of any African ancestry in the United States, so that mixed individuals were integrated into African Americans.

Third, the people who are “mixed” and black in Brazil are more European than you might expect. All the estimates of European ancestry I’ve seen for self-identified black Brazilians (a somewhat protean category due to social changes over the past few generations) indicate higher European ancestry fraction than among African Americans (~20% median in the latter). Self-identified “mixed” Brazilians have more European ancestry than anything.

The native category is interesting because most of these people have only a minor component of that ancestry. Additionally, a huge number of white, mixed, and black Brazilians have native ancestry. This is not surprising from previous work. Ancestry deconvolution indicates this is an old admixture, and mtDNA lineages are more native than Y chromosomes. There was a sex asymmetry in the early settlement, and native women married into the settler population. Both black and white Brazilians (and mixed) have lots of native ancestry.

Finally, though there is some overlap between these groups (despite their average differences), I assume that the overlap is much greater in contemporary cohorts in terms of genomic ancestry. It will be interesting to see when we get temporal transects in Brazil to see how assortative mating does, or doesn’t, work.

Looking forward to more of this from Latin America. So many opportunities for admixture mapping!

27 thoughts on “The genomic landscape of Brazil in 1950

  1. Good analysis. I only would add that, given that the sample is from São Paulo, some of the white Brazilians with sizeable indigenous ancestry but little African ancestry are also likely to be old-stock – perhaps more so than the 20% that have minuscule amounts of African ancestry, which could well be recent Portuguese immigrants (there’s some African ancestry in Portugal, and there were plenty of Portuguese immigrants in São Paulo at that time).

  2. * I often use comparisons of the Brazil and the U.S. to illustrate the concept that while differences in locus of genetic ancestry are real objective facts, that the way the lines between the categories into which clusters of people are grouped racially, which are based mostly upon genetic ancestry, are socially constructed. What it means to be “black” or “white” mean very different things in Brazil and the U.S. respectively. Brazil is also a good example of the tendency of new clusters that are the product of genetic admixture tending to turn socially into a new socially constructed racial category of its own (just as it did in South Africa and in the Caribbean) rather than being conceptualized socially and culturally someone being part of one or both of the racial categories of their mixed race parents. People identify as mulatto or mestizo in Latin America, not as simultaneously being European and African, or simultaneously being European and Native American.

    * I appreciate the value add to the underlying article provided by this post, emphasized in its title, the notions of race and the process of admixture continue to evolve and have changed a lot even from the 1950s in Brazil to 2020 in Brazil, just two generation later. I didn’t know that there were meaningful numbers of Japanese-Brazilians, I’d thought that Japanese migration to Latin America had been almost exclusively to Peru and now I now better. I had been aware of the influx of Northern European exiles from defeated Axis countries (mostly Germany and Italy as far as I know) into both Brazil and Argentina to which you allude.

    * I understand that there was also an influx of slaveholding families from the slave states of the U.S. to Brazil in the 1850s and 1860s. I suspect that this would be difficult or impossible to discern in a sample of elderly São Paulo residents, however, because these migrations would have been to rural Brazil in an effort to re-establish a Plantation farming model and while some of their descendants may have migrated to major Brazilian cities, I suspect that most of that migration would have not really started in earnest until the 1960s or 1970s and thus would have escaped inclusion in this sample.

    * In academia and within the left, one very common frame of analysis is “anti-colonialism”. But as the contrasting examples of Brazil and the U.S. illustrate, “colonialism” isn’t a monolithic thing. The way Iberian colonialism in the New World was conducted differed profoundly from the Anglo and Dutch models in the New World, and while the French presence dwindled greatly (mostly due to historical accidents of events in European wars and revolutions) their approach split the difference between the two as exemplified in pre-Louisiana purchase life in what is now Louisiana which had more socially constructed racial categories with a range of social statuses that is illustrated nicely in a number of works of historical fiction from the milieu. The colonial experiences in Africa and Asia were different yet again. Sure, across the board, it was better to be a colonizer than to be colonized. But the differences are real and material. Maybe it is a personal bias and inclination, but I think it is better to try to understand colonialism with the mindset of a fox instead of a hedgehog.

    In particular, the Iberian approach in colonial times was much closer to modern liberal values than the English one. Yet, if you look at former Iberian colonies and compare them to former English colonies across the globe, it is hard to dispute that the former English colonies have fared better upon gaining independence.

  3. ohwilleke

    A range of brazilian governments stimulated overseas immigration from Europe and Japan, and the reason behind these actions is that brazilian elite wanted to turn Brazil population “more white”.

    “In order to attract the Germans to Brazil, they were offered a ship ticket at the expense of the government; free concession of a 78-hectare plot of land; daily allowance of one franc or 160 réis for each settler, in the first year and half in the second, in addition to animals for work; Brazilian citizenship; supplies and temporary exemption from taxes and military service. Protestantism was tolerated, as long as the places of worship remained without the external appearance of a church, since Catholicism was the official religion of Brazil, during the Empire.” (Wikipedia)

    Another point is that most european immigrants arrived long before WWII:

    1820–1876: small number of immigrants (between 10,000 and 20,000 per year), predominantly Portuguese (45.73%), with a significant number of Germans (12.97%);
    1877–1903: large number of immigrants (about 71,000 per year), predominantly Italians (58.49%);
    1904–1930: large number of immigrants (about 79,000 per year), predominantly Portuguese (36.97%);
    1931–1963: decrease in the number of immigrants (around 33,500 per year), predominantly Portuguese (38.45%).

    (also brazilian Wikipedia)

  4. Just from skimming the piece, it appears that the major European group in the samples are Italian (TSI), at least more so than Iberian? I may not understand that chart, but if so interesting for a sample from a Portuguese colony to be not particularly Portuguese.

    In the late 1880s, Brazilian immigration societies brought almost 100,000 Europeans, mostly Italian, to Sao Paulo in anticipation of slave abolition. There were a little over 100,000 slaves in the province at that time, so this was a significant effort at establishing possible replacements.

  5. @Hermenauta, I was composing my piece before I had a chance to read yours, and I was pausing on whether I would point out that my last paragraph describes what is generally understood as a “whitening” agenda.

  6. “A point of comparison is probably useful. About 95% of non-Hispanic whites in the United States seem to have almost no detectable non-European ancestry using this sort of model-based clustering. This illustrates the massive demographic difference between the USA and Latin American nations. The vast majority of white Latin Americans look quite Iberian, but the majority also have far more non-European ancestry than 95% of North American whites. This is partly a reflection of the smaller population sizes of native peoples in North America, and, the nature of hypodescent for people of any African ancestry in the United States, so that mixed individuals were integrated into African Americans.”

    The major factor there is that European settlers in the core Anglo nations (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand)brought large numbers of women with them. In the 17th century Massachusetts Bay colony, for example, the sex ratio was nearly 50/50, something that was unheard of in, say, colonial Mexico, where the European “immigrant” population was overwhelmingly male. Hence, unlike in Latin America, there was no need for European males to seek out non-European women.

  7. Did they read out the y- and mtDNA haplogroups? I guess they did, but they didn’t publish the distribution anywhere?

  8. @ohwilleke

    I understand that there was also an influx of slaveholding families from the slave states of the U.S. to Brazil in the 1850s and 1860s. I suspect that this would be difficult or impossible to discern in a sample of elderly São Paulo residents

    The number of Confederate migrants was small, and they mostly didn’t settle in the city of São Paulo, but in a specific town nearby.

    In particular, the Iberian approach in colonial times was much closer to modern liberal values than the English one

    That’s a novel approach to me; I don’t think many would agree, given that slavery was very much an integral part of the colonial experience in Brazil in ways that it wasn’t in, say, New England.

    @Hermenauta

    A range of brazilian governments stimulated overseas immigration from Europe and Japan, and the reason behind these actions is that brazilian elite wanted to turn Brazil population “more white”.

    That’s the standard narrative now, but it’s not the whole story. I mean, if it were only about enwhitening the people, no sense bringing the Japanese. The immigration was stimulated also with the goal of bringing people from countries where agriculture was more developed, so that Brazil could develop too – and in this regard, the whole enterprise was quite successful.

    @PD Shaw

    Just from skimming the piece, it appears that the major European group in the samples are Italian (TSI), at least more so than Iberian? I may not understand that chart, but if so interesting for a sample from a Portuguese colony to be not particularly Portuguese.

    I didn’t see this info in the paper, though; it looks like they didn’t break the European component in subclusters. But bear in mind that this sample is not representative of the country; it’s only for the city of São Paulo, where most foreigners converged to in the 20th century. Just notice the very large number of Japanese in the sample, compared to their numbers nationwide. Another paper that sampled a large number of people over three other towns found that Iberian ancestry dominates.

    (I think razib has a post on another paper using these 3 localities)

    @Obs

    Yeah, seems like it didn’t make to the paper. But there are other studies about this already, and they show just what one would expect.

  9. “All the estimates of European ancestry I’ve seen for self-identified black Brazilians … indicate higher European ancestry fraction than among African Americans (~20% median in the latter)”

    IIRC that the European fraction of African (U.S.) American, was more like 10%, or at least it was a few years ago*.

    Should the word latter in your sentence have been former? Or, is my memory bad?

    *Based on recent trips to Wal-Mart I think the % is a moving target.

    I recall that in 1968, I was in a clutch of white undergraduates listening to a black security guard explain the world to us. His advice was: “Work on Choclate”. Like I said, I think it is happening.

  10. @moscanarius

    Concerning the withening policy: it´s very well documented. Yes, there was also an economic imperative behind immigration policies and in the and the japanese were brought to Brazil against the will of the eugenists.

  11. @moscanarius

    These are excerpts of a brazilian MSc dissertation about the chinese immigration:

    The Chinese in the 1850s and 1860s

    With the English pressures on the slave trade, the concern with possible forms of substitution of the labor increases. Thus, discussions on immigration and alternatives for farming are intensified. Attempts to import Europeans have been made since the arrival of the Royal Family to Brazil and the results have been less than desired. The colonial nuclei present problems that point to the failure and impracticability of a great European immigration to Brazil.

    The violence of slavery, the lack of an effective land policy, the absence of laws that guaranteed free religious exercise (mainly for immigrants from Protestant countries) and the negative propaganda about mistreatment of European settlers in Brazil made it difficult to establishment of a consistent immigration flow from European countries. This increased the interest of landowners in the immigration of coolie workers, who were used as labor in several countries around the world.

    The hiring of coolie labor was common in American countries, mainly the United States, Peru and Cuba. The biggest advantage offered by this type of labor was the low wages and the acceptance of working hard on heavy tasks, generally avoided by other workers.

    One of the biggest advocates of adopting the coolie worker in this period was Quintino Bocaiúva, for whom the Chinese had the ideal characteristics for working in the large fields. His work, The Plowing Crisis (1868), influences sectors of the imperial government, such as the ministry of agriculture that was in favor of hiring Asian labor, mainly due to the failures of previous attempts at European immigration. The Commission for the Reform of the Servile Element of the Chamber of Deputies also drafted an opinion guiding the Brazilian government to encourage the arrival of Chinese.

    This movement of sectors of society and the imperial bureaucracy in favor of Chinese immigration was responsible for the beginning of the discussion of this topic at the Auxiliary Society of National Industry (SAIN) in 1870, initiating the “Chinese question”.

  12. @moscanarius

    The debates on Chinese immigration 1870 – 1880

    Aware of the importance of discussing immigration in the Brazilian agrarian economy, SAIN created a commission to study the need for Chinese immigrants. The opinion was presented to the board of that company at the session of June 14, 1870.

    In the following month, the imperial government, convinced by the supporters of the coolie labor force of the need to obtain “arms for farming” immediately, passed a decree that would guarantee for ten years the arrival of thousands of Chinese. This government measure, although not directly associated with SAIN’s opinion, stirred up debates on Asian immigration in 1870 in that Society, which further stimulated the anti-Chinese reaction.

    The commission’s opinion concluded that the import of coolies was necessary to supply the arms of the crop, although it agreed that the Chinese worker should not settle on the ground. Still, the opinion did not please the institution’s council, following a long debate that won the press and was discussed by sectors of the Empire’s elite. The interest is justified to the extent that Brazilian society was in a moment of reconstruction of the symbolic bases for a national identity: negotiating the type of immigrant and his role in this process is fundamental for everyone who sought to impose their political and social projects.

    The commission’s proposals recommending Chinese immigration were not accepted by the SAIN board of directors, in its place, the opinion was approved that stated that the Anglo-Saxon was the ideal type of immigrant to Brazil. After these heated debates, the matter continued as a relevant issue for the State. The interest in the matter remained through reports on immigration and in the call for the Agricultural Congress in the late 1870s, where the government and the agrarian elite would discuss plantations, immigrants and slavery.

  13. @moscarius

    The Agricultural Congress and the debates on labor.

    In July 1878, the Minister of Agriculture, Cansação de Sinimbu, and a member of the Liberal Party, summoned the “planters” of four states, which were Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo, to gather their opinions on the problems of large farming. For the first time the government was looking for solutions together with the farmers.

    The convening of the Agricultural Congress reinforces the dialogue between government and society on immigration, rekindling debates about coolies. This event was extremely opportune for the owners of the large plantation, who took their priorities to the government: “capitals and arms”. The claims of the landowners demonstrate their conceptions about the types of immigration desired, often in conflict with the “necessary”, and disputes over the formulation of the ideal type of immigrant.

    Definitely, it is the lack of men considered fit for work in the large fields that most concern Congress participants. In most of the speeches, the concern with ways of overcoming the lack of labor is noticeable. Among the solutions presented were the structuring of agricultural education for the training of national workers, the creation of laws that would make work mandatory for Brazilians, incentives for immigration and the coolie worker.

    It is important to emphasize that this discourse about the ideal worker comes from the farmers of the big crop, whose interest is for a worker who earns as little as possible, through an employment contract and is subject to all deprivations (unlike the European worker who would aim to become owner of their own land). So the Chinese would work like the African, without being enslaved. For the great farming and for the government, the Chinese represented an element of transition between free and slave labor, being able to provide a smooth transition and being replaced later by a “civilized labor.”

  14. IIRC that the European fraction of African (U.S.) American, was more like 10%, or at least it was a few years ago*.

    this is way too low. it’s around 20%

  15. @moscarius

    Anti-Chinese sentiment in the last decade of the empire.

    The advances in favor of Chinese immigration in the late 1870s were not left unanswered. In this twilight of the imperial order, it was mainly the abolitionists who opposed Asian immigration. The main motto was the denunciation of a new slavery, where Chinese would replace blacks. The participation of groups articulated against the “importation of Chinese” and the strategy of denouncing international bodies, diplomats and even parliamentary speeches and articles in current newspapers and institutional journals increased the visibility of the Chinese issue. Although the debates around the Chinese gained more space, the speeches remain racialized.

    The Central Immigration Society, created in 1883, had as its main function to promote European immigration. Among its main members were the abolitionists, the conservative party member Alfredo d’Escragnolle Taunay, the engineer André Rebouças and Carl von Koseritz. In his periodical calledThe immigration, harsh criticisms of the Chinese were broadcast, considered as the “pestilent fluid emanating from the rotten civilization of China”, “a stunted and corrupt race”, “bastardized and depraved”. The thesis of the Immigration Society is that Brazil needs European immigration much more due to cultural and civilizing nuances than just as labor, supporting all guidelines that would facilitate the life of European immigrants in Brazil, as well as their naturalization.

    No matter which side the interlocutors were on, for or against the coolies workers, the majority agreed that the Asian belonged to an inferior race or civilization and under no circumstances should they mix with the Brazilians. The exception fell to the Positivist Apostolate, whose position against Chinese immigration did not commune with racialized discourse; on the contrary, his position had felt as part of the group’s anti-slavery agenda.

    Two were the main criticisms of the positivists against the Chinese coming to Brazil. The main one would be the “continuity” of the slave labor regime. The contract system proposed to the coolie worker, coupled with the despotic custom of slaveholders, would make Asian immigration a new slavery. The second reason was the incompatibility between the civilizations of the West and the East, culminating in a culture shock that they considered harmful to both cultures.

  16. @moscarius

    Decree 528

    Efforts to establish an immigration flow of Asian coolies have been unsuccessful. The strategies of denouncing international anti-slavery bodies and the delivery of letters and reports to Chinese diplomacy in Europe by positivists and other abolitionists have had good results, increasing the difficulties of establishing an immigration flow from China. After heated debates in the Brazilian parliament during the 1880s, after the end of slavery and the Empire, the new republican government issued a decree that made the government’s view of non-white immigrants transparent.

    In 1890, the newly formed republican government enacted decree n.528, in order to regularize the introduction and location of immigrants in Brazil. The document was signed by the President of the Republic, Deodoro da Fonseca and the Minister of Agriculture, Francisco Glicério. The “restriction” on the entry of immigrants from Africa and Asia had an air of prohibition, since it would be allowed only with authorization from the national congress. The same decree encouraged farmers to install European immigrants, revealing an immigration policy that would last until the Getúlio Vargas government, although this decree was revoked in 1907 and its replacement did not mention a preference for any race or nationality.

    In 1892, Law 97 was passed, which allowed Chinese and Japanese immigrants to enter Brazil. Thus, the 1890 decree practically lost its effect. Although the decree has not achieved a practical result, it is extremely important that the State initiated a policy that hindered the immigration of non-whites (mainly blacks and Asians), while encouraging the immigration of Europeans.

    The episode of the ban on the entry of Chinese people in the country demonstrates how much the issues of colonization are linked to the construction of a national identity along the lines of European models. Immigration was seen at the same time as colonizing and civilizing, led by an elite concerned with homogenizing the nation, Europeanizing Brazil.

  17. Some comments on the study:

    1) ~20-30% of Brazilian self-identified whites are unmixed, though the number of unmixed Europeans in Brazil is surely going to decrease as the years go by. I believe that the number of unmixed Europeans in São Paulo city is nowadays much lower than 20% of self-declared whites. The bulk of people with 100% European ancestry in Brazil is located in the countryside of specific states (southern states, São Paulo and Espírito Santo).You can ocassionally find colonial or ”old stock” white Brazilians of fully European ancestry, but they are rare. They are especially common in the states of Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais. I believe the exact number of unmixed Europeans in nowadays Brazil is something in between 5-10% of the whole population, more common in older generations, among whom it can go up to 20-30% of the population.

    2) The trace African ancestry in some Brazilian whites could very well be Portuguese. When the population used as a proxy for European ancestry is non-Iberian the percentage of SSA ancestry increases by some few points in all Latin Americans. Portuguese, Galicians and Western Spanish people have indirect/archaic Sub-Saharan related ancestry that they got through North Africa. You just need to look at comparisons between 23andme and GEDmatch kits of Brazilians (and of Iberians of course) with mainly Iberian ancestry to see this pattern (23andme ascribed such archaic SSA-like admixture to Iberian cluster given that it’s different from modern SSAs and GEDmatch calcs call it just ”Sub-Saharan” or ”African” or whatever). Many Iberians that score 0% SSA on 23andme score around 3-4% on GEDmatch, even more in some cases. In low K tests some can score even more than 5%, depending on the amount of North African admixture they have.

    3) I believe that the vast majority of Brazilians have over 65-70% European ancestry, regardless of how they identify racially and a solid majority is probably over 80% Portuguese + some other European. When people point out that Brazilian census is innacurate because it says Brazil has 45% of Whites (thus constituting the largest self-defined racial group) and that most of these people are mestizo or mulatto in denial it largely depends on what one defines as ”white”, ”mestizo” or ”mulatto”. One thing for sure is that most people self-declared as white in Brazil have over 80% and many times 90% European ancestry, even many people self-declared as pardos/mixed have results in the 80-90%+ European range even though ”pardos” are usually in the 60-70% range.

    4) Full blacks or even African-American range blacks (75-80% African) are somewhat uncommon in most of Brazil, even though I think you are more likely to find someone 99%-100% African in Brazil than in USA due to the fact that up until mid 1950 you could find Brazilians whose grandparents were African slaves since the slave trade was finished only in 1853.

  18. @Hermenauta

    Yeah, I know this. Your analysis of the Chinese being perfect slave-substitutes ignores one point, however: the elite was not 100% behind exactly the same agenda. One part of the elite wanted to move beyond the old mode of exploration, and wanted to develop new farmland, new agricultural practices, and (with time) an industrial workforce. That faction won, no doubt in part by incorporating Yellow Peril ideas.

    Still, notice that despite all this, the Japanese were brought to the country – which is even more interesting given that the Chinese hardly were. China was perceived as more backward and less developed than Japan. Had the White Brazil Agenda been so dominant as the current narrative makes it, this would never have happened.

    My point is not that there was no “enwhitening” effort, but that in practice, this effort was heavily modulated by the economic concerns of the portion of the elite that won the debate – and who, in the long run, came to shape the country’s economy in the 20th century.

  19. Razib,
    I am Brazilian and all your analysis is perfect.
    Currently there are somewhere between 1.7 and 1.8 million people with some Japanese ancestry in Brazil (~ 0.83% of total population), representing the largest Japanese population outside Japan.
    Due to the diminished entry of Europeans into Brazil, Japanese immigration was strongly encouraged in the 1920s. Some political authorities even claimed that the Japanese were “whiter than Portuguese” due to its social and cultural advantages (see “Immigration, Ethnicity, and National Identity in Brazil, 1808 to the Present “, Jeffrey Lesser). In fact, it is contradictory nowadays to talk about “population whitening-project” with the encouragement of Japanese immigration, but at the time it was a common interpretation.
    São Paulo is not a good proxy for understanding the Brazilian population structure. This city received many immigrants from northern Italy in the early 20th century and 30% of its population has this type of ancestry. But it is a fact that in the case of mixed people and several black people are mostly Portuguese in terms of genetic ancestry.

  20. @Little Brazilian way

    I would like to correct you in a minor point: the Italian immigrants in the São Paulo city were mainly from Central Italy and South Italy. Northern Italians immigrated mostly to countryside of São Paulo state, Espírito Santo and Southern Brazil.

    I’d say São Paulo state received most immigrants from Lombardy in Brazil, while Venetians, Italian Tyroleans (from Trentino-Alto Adige) and Friulians populated the countryside all over Southeast and Southern Brazil. Italians are by far the third most important ethnicity in Brazilian genetic make up after Portuguese and various Sub-Saharan ethnic groups.

    The genetic profile of Northern Italians, especially Northeast Italians, is very different from South Italians and kind of different from Central Italians. Curiously, Northern Italians are very similar to Iberians in terms of genomic ancestry, the main difference is that Northern Italians have a bit more Eastern Mediterranean ancestry and Iberians have North African ancestry. I have both Northern Italian and Portuguese ancestry, like millions of Southeast Brazilians, and the calculators have a hard time to make a difference of both.

  21. Andretto,

    Thanks for the corrections. I extrapolated data from the State of Sao Paulo to the city of Sao Paulo.

  22. You should take into consideration the size and the growth of the city of São Paulo in 1950 – 2.200.000 and in 2020 – 12.350.000 and that’s only the city, the Município of São Paulo because the metropolitan area is close to 25 million and the entire state of São Paulo is nowadays close to 45 million, so in absolute numbers every segment, (unmixed or admixed) has grown consistently even with the new admixtures.

  23. @Latifundiário

    I don’t believe the numbers of unmixed people in São Paulo city are high nowadays; most of these people who are fully European (I’m including the whites with minuscule African ancestry but no Amerindian as full Europeans here because they are likely to be Portuguese immigrants) or Asian had intermixed with whites of colonial extraction that had higher non-European ancestry or even with pardos that lean to the European side.

    It is known that the Brazilian society is very endogamic and phenotypically black people marrying phenotypically white people is rare, but racial classification in Brazil is done mainly based on phenotype so no one would oppose his children marrying someone who looks fully white or even mostly white but with some few mixed traits like slightly darker skin tone (what we call ”moreno claro” here) if that person doesn’t look very obviously Native American or Black admixed. Brazilians don’t ask for genealogy or DNA results before marrying someone, so I believe most of the descendants of these full Europeans now score minor Amerindian and Black genetic components.

    I believe the average European ancestry will increase in Brazil with time, but at the same time the number of unmixed Europeans only tend to decrease outside of countryside areas as people of fully Euro genetic stock assimilate more and more with colonial ”old stock” whites and with Euro-leaning pardos in the big cities. The numbers of fully European Brazilians in big cities are almost insignificant.

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