Remembering the Others: The Sao Paulo Museum Memorial do Imigrante

In order to better understand the makeup of the city, the Sao Paulo Museum Memorial do imigrante is a good place to start. The level of diversity in Sao Paulo is immense and, for some visitors, unexpected – what better place to sate that curiosity than in a museum solely dedicated to the people who came to the city looking for a better life for themselves and their families?

The Sao Paulo Museum Memorial do imigrante has a vast collection of photographs, furnishings, and documents that came out of Sao Paulo’s primary migration periods and which contribute to the sense of national identity. The building itself, however, may be the biggest draw: built in 1887, it was originally something called the ‘Hospedaria dos Imigrantes’ – it was a holding place where around 4,000 immigrant workers would stay at one time, though on many occasions there could be up to 10,000 people in the building at once.

The dorm rooms of the building are simply massive, and it was for this reason that sliding rails were placed alongside the rooms – it made it easier to transport luggage and people throughout the house, fresh off the ships and directly from the dock. Photographs tell the tales of men and women who were herded here by wardens and guards, employed to ensure that no one slipped away from the ships or escaped the building at night, since after all, not everyone who came to Brazil to make a ‘new life’ wanted to start it on the coffee plantations. And yet, the only way out of the Hospedaria was through that guarantee of work – if you saved enough money, you could make your own way. But until then? Immigrants were destined to backbreaking labor.

Millions of immigrants came to Sao Paulo to make a better life, and all these people moved through the Hospedaria. The Sao Paulo Museum Memorial do imigrante does all it can to remember these people and the hard work they did to make their way in the world – and just so that no one can forget, the museum building has been declared a protected cultural heritage site within the city.

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