InBrazil, asarará (Portuguese pronunciation:[saɾɐˈɾa] or[saɾaˈɾa]) is amultiracial person, being a particular kind ofmulato orjuçara (a tri-racialpardo withAmerindian features), with perceivableBlack African facial features, lightcomplexion andfair but curlyhair, calledcabelo crespo, or fair butAfro-like frizzly hair, calledcarapinha,cabelo encarapinhado orcabelo pixaim (IPA:[piʃɐˈĩˑ]). In the 1998 IBGE PME (Monthly Employment Survey), 0.04% of respondents identified, in an inquiry on race/colour, as "sarará".[1]
While the emphasis on fair skin in Brazil is not as visible as in other post-colonial societies, with many preferring and advocating themoreno orolive skin beauty type, European facial features and hair texture are a beauty standard in Brazil, and many people of diverse backgrounds useflat irons and chemical hair treatments to pass their hair as straight or wavy. In a society thatdivides between "white" and "black",sararás will be placed together with theBrown-skinnedpardos as non-whites, despite their fair complexion and hair.
It is known that the genes responsible for blondism i.e.blonde hair (that firstly appeared in the regions of westEstonia plus land east of coast ofGulf of Riga onBaltic Sea) and rutilism i.e.red hair (that probably firstly appeared inAfrica[citation needed] and then spread to other continents, but is only present in significant numbers in Western Eurasian populations and their descendants) arerecessive, so that a person with full Amerindian or sub-Saharan African ancestry, or a mixing between the two, is by far very unlikely to have red-haired or blond-haired offspring, no matter how fair the complexion of her or hisCaucasian or multiracial sexual partner or spouse.
The genes responsible forbrown hair are also extremely rare amongIndigenous peoples of the Americas andBlack Africans, but not as uncommon. The most common hair colour in Brazil is brown. Natural blond and red hair are especially found in the South where 78% of the population has European phenotype, home to large German-Austrian (Santa Catarina), Dutch, Norwegian, Northern Italian, and Slavic (Paraná) populations, and the Southeast region that has the largest absolute numbers of Whites. About 21% of Brazilians descend from the country'sindigenous peoples andPortuguese settlers, as well as Dutch, French and Spanish colonial settlers, including Crypto-Jews or Anusim and Gypsies or Roma people, while 7% to 25% also haveAfrican slave ancestors.[2] Since the arrival of the Portuguese in 1500, considerablemiscegenation between these groups has taken place, in all regions of the country (with European ancestry being dominant nationwide according to the vast majority of all autosomal studies undertaken covering the entire population, accounting for between 65% and 77%).[3][4][5][6]
MostPortuguese colonists as well as mostPortuguese immigrants to Brazil came from Northern Portugal, which are its blondest regions.Colonial Brazil was also home to someDutch invaders who were successful at staying in Brazil even after their territorial loss. The second most common non-Portuguese European group in Colonial Brazil were theFrench, with itscultural influence, represented by things such as theFrench artistic mission, that can be seen until this day, with the greater number of loanwords intoBrazilian Portuguese coming from theFrench language.
The earliestCentral Europeanmass immigration started by the 1830s, and increased much in part due to theslavery crisis. Together with theGermans and theSwiss, came the earlyItalians. While the total Italian immigration to Brazil was evenly distributed between South, Center and North, most early Italian colonists came from the Northern provinces who had land borders with other European countries. Other immigration waves, from all regions ofEurope, as well theLevantine Arabs andEast Asians, came thereafter.
A colonialSpanish genetic contribution is present in the southernmost state ofRio Grande do Sul, with some estimates placing it almost as high as the Portuguese one, and up to 15 million people nowadays are descendants of post-independenceSpanish immigration waves. As with those descended from the Portuguese, most Brazilians of Spanish heritage trace it to the blondest region of Spain,Galicia.
Genetic research on ancestry of Brazilians of different races has extensively shown that, regardless of skin colour, Brazilians generally have European, African and Amerindian ancestors.
According to a genetic study about Brazilians, on thepaternal side, 98% of the White BrazilianY chromosome comes from a European male ancestor, only 2% from an African ancestor, and there is a complete absence of Amerindian contributions. On thematernal side, 39% have a EuropeanMitochondrial DNA, 33% Amerindian and 28% African MtDNA.[7] This analysis only shows a small fraction of a person's ancestry (the Y Chromosome comes from a single male ancestor and the mtDNA from a single female ancestor, while the contributions of the many other ancestors is not specified),[8] but it shows that miscegenation in Brazil was directional, between Portuguese males and African and Amerindian females.
AnalyzingBlack Brazilians' Y chromosome, which comes frommale ancestors through the paternal line, it was concluded that half (50%) of the Black Brazilian population has at least one male ancestor who came fromEurope, 48% has at least one male ancestor who came fromAfrica and 1.6% has at least one male ancestor who wasAmerindian. Analyzing theirmitochondrial DNA, that comes fromfemale ancestors though maternal line, 85% of them have at least a female ancestor who came fromAfrica, 12.5% have at least a female ancestor who was Native Brazilian and only 2.5% have at least a female ancestor who came fromEurope.[9][10]
As for the complete genetic ancestry of Brazilians, research has shown that it is predominantly European, even among non-white Brazilians. According to another study (autosomal DNA) conducted on a school in the poor periphery ofRio de Janeiro thepardos there were found to be on average over 80% European, and the "whites" (who thought of themselves as "very mixed") were found out to carry very little Amerindian and/or African admixtures. "The results of the tests of genomic ancestry are quite different from the self made estimates of European ancestry", say the researchers. In general, the test results showed that European ancestry is far more important than the students thought it would be. Thepardos for example thought of themselves as 1/3 European, 1/3 African and 1/3 Amerindian before the tests, and yet their ancestry was determined to be at over 80% European.[11]
Another autosomal DNA study, from 2010, also focused on the autosomal contribution (which is about the sum of the ancestors of each individual, the overall picture), found out that almost 80% of the Brazilian genes are of European origin in all regions except in theSouth where it stands for 90% of them (regardless of census' racial classification).[12] "Ancestry informative SNPs can be useful to estimate individual and population biogeographical ancestry. Brazilian population is characterized by a genetic background of three parental populations (European, African, and Brazilian Native Amerindians) with a wide degree and diverse patterns of admixture. In this work we analyzed the information content of 28 ancestry-informative SNPs into multiplexed panels using three parental population sources (African, Amerindian, and European) to infer the genetic admixture in an urban sample of the five Brazilian geopolitical regions. The SNPs assigned apart the parental populations from each other and thus can be applied for ancestry estimation in a three hybrid admixed population. Data was used to infer genetic ancestry in Brazilians with an admixture model. Pairwise estimates of F(st) among the five Brazilian geopolitical regions suggested little genetic differentiation only between the South and theremaining regions. Estimates of ancestry results are consistent with the heterogeneous genetic profile of Brazilian population,with a major contribution of European ancestry (0.771) followed by African (0.143) and Amerindian contributions (0.085). The described multiplexed SNP panels can be useful tool for bioanthropological studies but it can be mainly valuable to control for spurious results in genetic association studies in admixed populations." The samples came fromfree of charge paternity test takers, thus as the researchers made it explicit: "the paternity tests were free of charge, the population samples involved people of variable socioeconomic strata, although likely to be leaning slightly towards thepardo group".[13]
According to another different study (also autosomal DNA from 2009), European ancestry predominates in the Brazilian population. The Brazilians as a whole, from all regions, and of all complexions, would liemore closely to the European group than to the African populations or to themestizos fromMexico, from the genetical point of view.[14] This shows that the genotypes of individuals in a miscigenated population does not necessarily match theirphenotype.
In the 19th and 20th centuryBrazilian culture has promotedracial integration andmiscegenation.[15] Intermixing is common between Brazilians who come from more recent immigrant waves and those descendant of older, or different, immigrant communities.Interracial marriages comprised 22.6% of all marriages in 2000.[16] There has never been a widespread taboo against racial or ethnic mixing in any Brazilian ethnic community, with the notable exceptions of German and latterJapanese immigrants, who nevertheless fullyintegrated in the second halves of the 19th and 20th centuries respectively. In Brazilian culture, ethnic preservation taboos are regarded as plainfear of outsiders – in part inherited fromnationalism defining a single Brazilian cultural identity, with no space for any other.
Since the offspring of a couple with some genetic differences will have a random combination of their genotypes, their appearance, that depends on a smaller number of elements from this gene pool, will also be of a random combination. As a result of the continuing process of intermixing, any sort of phenotype between those stereotypically European, African or Amerindian will show up, and even if many of the genes related to European-like features are recessive, they are likely to evenly manifest in the Brazilian population, just being more common in the regions where European immigration was greater.
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