There is no doubt that Italian immigration is a constituent part of contemporary Brazilian identity, both in qualitative and quantitative terms. According to IBGE data, between 1876 and 1920, 1,243,633 Italians arrived in Brazil, the majority from the Veneto (365,000), Campania (166,000), Calabria (113,000) and Lombardy (105,000) regions. The destination states in Brazil were mainly São Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná, Santa Catarina, Espírito Santo and Minas Gerais.
Carmem Lussi and Roberto Marinucci