Southern Brazil has historically been the region with the highest percentage of white people. The Southern Region has had a white majority since colonial times, due to the smaller presence of indigenous and black populations. Even in the 19th century, it was a very sparsely populated region, following the reduction of Brazil's native population. The arrival of immigrants, mostly Germans and Italians, had a huge demographic and ethnic impact on this region, as they populated areas previously empty or inhabited by indigenous people. Southeastern Brazil also has a higher percentage of white people, as it was a major recipient of European immigrants, mainly Portuguese, Italians, and Spaniards. In the rest of the country, whites are not an absolute majority, as the contingent of those who self-identify as mixed-race predominates. In these other regions, those who self-identify as white are mostly of Portuguese descent. But this is changing very rapidly due to large internal migrations. Brazil is today an agricultural and agro-industrial superpower, and the Central-West region, which is the country's great grain-producing granary, is being colonized by migrants, entrepreneurs, investors, farmers, and laborers from the South and Southeast regions, who bring capital, labor, their ethnicity, and expertise, fleeing the saturation, bottlenecks, smallholdings, and very expensive land of the South and Southeast. The economic and ethnic profile of this region is changing rapidly, as is that of Brazil as a whole. If I were younger, I would be seeking opportunities in the Central-West of the country. Southern Brazil in no way resembles a Latin American country ethnically speaking, not even those Latin countries considered very European, such as Uruguay and Argentina, and I would say that in phenotypic terms, it doesn't even resemble Southern Europe at all. The states of Santa Catarina and Paraná, both in the Southern Region, are also major drivers of the country's economic growth and have increasingly attracted Brazilians from other regions of the country, who, unfortunately and absurdly, have also been victims of xenophobia and racism for not resembling the predominant ethnic type in those states and not fitting the profile of people they would like to see working and living there. The recent action by the mayor of Florianópolis, the capital of the state of Santa Catarina, to send back to their places of origin all those who arrive in the city and cannot prove they have a stable job or a place to live is causing quite a stir here. The City Council of my city, Belo Horizonte, copying the measure, approved a law to adopt this same type of automatic "deportation," adding that the belongings of the homeless population must be immediately collected by the municipal guard if they are littering, hindering the circulation of people, or the free exercise of economic activity by legally established merchants and companies, and that the homeless and drug addicts (the vast majority of those living on the streets) who cannot prove ties to the city must be returned to their cities and states of origin. This is an absolute lack of empathy from the right-wing rulers, who, not coincidentally, govern all the states and their respective capitals in the South, Southeast, and also the Midwest of the country. My son and his wife, natives of the state of Minas Gerais, like me, have lived in Paraná for three years and are building a prosperous and happy future there, where they are professionally very well established. They are fortunate to be the kind of outsiders that they don't mind having there and who go unnoticed. If it weren't for the climate there, which my wife and I particularly hate, I would get rid of all my assets here in Belo Horizonte and go there to be with them. But we are very happy where we are, and at the right time everything I have will be his in the great intergenerational transfer that is already looming all over the world, that is, if by then my wife and I haven't squandered everything we have on travel, leisure, fun, and good food, because at this stage of life we deserve it, and our son is doing very well and doesn't demand or ask for anything.
