Na América, a esperança: os imigrantes sírios e libaneses e seus descendentes em Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais (1890-1940)

Abstract

The dissertation analyzes the syrian and lebanese immigrants’arrival in Juiz de Fora City, Minas Gerais, among 1980 and 1940. It was tried to identify these immigrants’ adaptation mechanism in the Juiz de Fora’s society, the cutural exchanges in this period and the obstacles and conflits faced. Therefore, it was considered different everyday life aspects of these ethnic group: the educational background, the marriages, the social mobility and the professional and economic activities practiced. To reach the proposed objectives, a different group of sources was used: oral interviews, school registration books (Granbery School, Academia de Comércio, Escola Estadual Delfim Moreira); marrige’s registrations made in the Catedral Metropolitana de Juiz de Fora Church; criminal cases; inventories; Associação Comercial de Juiz de Fora’s documents and the press. The main point of the research is the perception that the syrian and lebanese’s adaptation in Juiz de Fora was marked by cultural exchanges that didn’t result in a total comprehension and, as a result, waste of preimmigration culture. But, on the other hand, it was verified a double-hand process, in which cultural exchanges modified parcially the local population and the immigrants that were adaptaded in the city.