in Europe, Africa and the Levant. The Japanese in the Center-West region mix with native AmerIndians, Europeans and Negroes. The economy there consists of subsistence agriculture, mining, grazing and forest products. Major products of the region include gold, diamonds, tin, titanium, chromium, rock crystal, mica, asbestos, iron ore, nickel, rubber, yerba matte tea, oil-bearing nuts, quebracho wood, lumber, hides, meat and farm products (Poppino, 1968:36-158).
In the western part of Brazil's North, a settlement in western Parana founded in 1945 had Japanese settlers and a Buddhist temple by the early 1970s. This area, with settlers from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland and Germany, was a frontier zone, much like the Amazon today. The zone resembles the Old West of the United States, with settlers fighting one other all the time for land possession and violence being prevalent in problem solving (Nyrop, 1983:101-107).
Brazil has accepted immigrants from all over the world, though the great majority (75 percent) came from Portugal, Italy and Spain. Japan and Germany have provided about 10 percent of the immigrants to Brazil since 1884. Russia ranked sixth among the countries supplying immigrants to Brazil, providing about 2 percent of Brazil's immigrants, mostly prior to World War I. Brazil has strong ties to Portugal because of its former Portuguese colony status and the large number of Portuguese immigrants. Two-thirds of the post-1884 Italian immigration to Brazil was prior to 1902, when the Italian government discouraged immigration to Sao Paulo. The Japanese, Europeans and Levantines have tended to be rather well-off in comparison to the ill-clothed, illiterate and ill-housed mulattos and negroes. After the Revolution of 1930, the Japanese had more upward mobility in Braz
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