Samba Montclair

the nineteenth century, mostly to replace the West African labor force brought to Brazil in the Portuguese ships. Germans settled in the colder South; Japanese and Arabs settled in Sao Paulo, along with a million and a half Italians who migrated to Rio and Sao Paulo by 1880. Some worked on the sugar, coffee, and cocoa plantations, some labored on ranches and farms, and others moved into commerce; United States citizens came too. In a thriving colony called Americana, a couple of hours from Sao Paulo, one can see pink-freckled, blue-eyed, blond children-descendants of North Americans Southerners who migrated near the end of the Civil War. Pockets of foreign influences are apparent all over the place. One may encounter a German priest or a red-haired Greek who sells sweets along the roadside-both of them contented in their adopted country. But it is the dominant Portuguese and West African people, their heritage interwoven with that of the native Indians, which gave birth to Brazilian cuisine, rich in history and powerful in flavor.