Caipira

A Caipira (Portuguese pronunciation: [kajˈpiɾɐ] (listen)) is an ethnic group native to Paulistânia, cultural area in Brazil, the term "caipira", of origin in the Paulista General language, probably influenced by the terms "kai'pira", "ka'apir", "ka'a pora" or "kopira", from the Tupi language, originally designates, since Brazilian colonial times, the inhabitant of the countryside, the "bush cutter". The caipira reached, mainly, due to the cycle of bandeirism and tropeirism, populations of the former Captaincy of São Vicente (later Captaincy of São Paulo), which today are the states of Santa Catarina, Paraná, São Paulo, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais , Goiás, Mato Grosso, Tocantins, Rondônia and Rio Grande do Sul, as well as parts of south of Rio de Janeiro state, such as Paraty, which was part of São Paulo until 1727[1] and parts of Uruguay that were disputed with Spain.

Portrait of a Caipira (1893) by Almeida Júnior.

The term "caipira" is often used in Brazil in a pejorative, ethnocentric and stereotyped way for inland populations, as in the book Urupês by Monteiro Lobato, where the caipira is portrayed as an "old plague", "parasite caboclo", "parasite of the earth", "unimportant people", "seminomadic", "unadaptable to civilization", "urumbeba",[nt 1] etc.; As in the traditional Festas Junina, where people dress in simple countryside, generally stereotyped as representing the caipira.[2]