Against the sons of the Empire Celeste: the vision about chinese immigration according to Angelo Agostini

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyze the view of the Italian Angelo Agostini when considering the hypothesis of Chinese immigration. Even knowing that the use of Chinese labor had been successful in countries like Cuba, the United States, and Peru, it was still a hindrance here. Although few Chinese came to our country, this acceptance took place with a curious fact: it was accepted only on a transitional basis, that is, after years of work, the emigrant of the Celestial Empire, had to return home. This transitory character seems to have calmed the nerves of an elite that had as objective to obtain cheap and white labor because it avoided that they remained in Brazil. This characteristic of elites has been reproduced and has been the subject of discriminatory views. In order to try to understand how the Illustrada Magazine, printed means of communication in the period, as sources for the analysis of the question, we will use the cartoons published in it. From then on, we will have a concise basis for analyzing the artist’s cartoons under the prism of Asian immigration.