Losing Its Young to an American Dream

The site manager is considering naming the development "The Neighborhood of Immigrants."

Such a name wouldn't exactly be bracingly original here. A local newspaper, for example, is called the Immigrant and has correspondents in Massachusetts, Florida and Connecticut. The city itself has been referred to as "Little America" and "Governador Vala-dolares" -- a reference to all the dollars sent home by stateside relatives.

Between 40,000 and 50,000 people from Governador Valadares are estimated to be living in the United States, most of them illegally. About 60 percent of the money flowing through the city is directly or indirectly linked to those relatives, city officials estimate.

"There are a lot of neighborhoods here built solely with the money sent back from the U.S.," said Raimundo Santana, editor of the Immigrant, who recently returned after living legally in Massachusetts for eight years. "You see a lot of homes with additions and parts that have been remodeled, all from their relatives."

The city's strong connection with the United States began in the early 1940s, when U.S. corporations began exploiting the surrounding hills for mica -- a heat-resistant mineral valued for wartime manufacturing. The companies set up processing factories, and one of the executives who came to Brazil to oversee the operations stayed and married a local woman. In the early 1960s, his family opened an English-language school that launched exchange programs with schools in the United States. At a time when much of Latin America was recoiling against U.S. influence, this city was devouring as much of it as it could, said Zenolia Maria de Almeida, a university sociologist who studies migration and is the city's education secretary.

Because Boston was the site of a historic Portuguese community, some of the first emigrants from the area settled in Massachusetts. Soon, small communities of Brazilians from this area began to spring up in New England. The most well-known U.S. cities here are not necessarily New York or Washington or Los Angeles, but instead have names like Danbury and Framingham.

Brazil received about $6.4 billion last year from its citizens who live abroad, second only to Mexico among the countries of Latin America. A University of Sao Paulo study estimated that about 14 percent of the dollars sent from the estimated 1.5 million Brazilians living in the United States end up in this city. To put that into perspective, Sao Paulo -- South America's largest city, with about 20 million residents -- gets about 4 percent.

The importance of the economic link is lost on no one here, including the city's mayor, who has instituted programs designed to improve the image of emigrants, labeling them heroes who make enormous sacrifices for their families and community. The city's most recent marketing campaign is labeled, "Wherever You Are, City Hall Is With You."

"The leaders here know that Governador Valadares is the city it is right now only because of the people who have gone to the United States," said Almeida.

Discouraging Words Fail

One of the most popular nightspots in town is a bar that consists of plastic tables arranged in the parking lot of a gas station. Paulo Marcos Costa sat at a table on a recent day, greeting friends who had stopped by for beers. He chatted with the waitress about her uncles and cousins who live in Danbury. A man in a Boston Red Sox cap patted him on the shoulder as he walked by.

"See that woman inside, at the counter?" Costa asked, discreetly nodding toward a customer seated near the cashier's station. "She's married, and her husband is in the U.S. right now."

The woman's hand rested on the thigh of a man sitting next to her.