Syrian and Lebanese in Western São Paulo

Abstract The article seeks to explore the conditions and distinctive characteristics of the socioeconomic insertion of Syrians and Lebanese in the interior of São Paulo between the 1880s and 1950s. From the difficult beginning as peddlers with a distant culture, Syrians and Lebanese managed to establish themselves as merchants, seizing the opportunities that their networks (of relatives and of countrymen) and the expanding coffee economy offered, establishing themselves mainly in the sectors of clothing, linen and fabrics, cattle and cereals. Taking as main source a series of works in which the Syrian and Lebanese immigrants are portrayed in the interior, the article also indicates the main regions of west of São Paulo where the group mainly concentrated, and discusses trajectories which illustrate some of the possibilities of mobility, formation of leadership, the way religious practices have been transformed and the marked mobility - as doctors and politicians - achieved by strata of the first generation born in Brazil.