São Paulo , with a population of about 20 million, is the largest city in the southern hemisphere and Brazil’s financial and cultural capital. In 2004 the city celebrated the 450th anniversary of its founding by the Portuguese.
Like New York, with which it is often compared, São Paulo was a magnet for migrants from all over the world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It has large Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Arabian and Portuguese communities dating from this time as well as new contingents of immigrants, including Lebanese, Armenians, Greeks, Jews and Koreans.
The city continues to attract new arrivals – some 200,000 per year – but now mostly from within Brazil itself rather than from abroad.
|
