Structural Factors of Swiss Immigration to the National Territory of Misiones Between 1935 and 1939

Although traditionally migrations were addressed from structuralist approaches —the pull- push theory being predominantly employed (dealing with immigrant expulsion and attraction factors)—, the migration process of Swiss people to Misiones would not be understandable without starting from a structural analysis. Such process was due to the favorable policy towards immigration from European countries that prevailed in Argentina, adding to it the critical situation which many States in the old continent were going through. Thus, the creation of Swiss colonies in Misiones did not represent a case exceptional to other cases of other origins, as it also happened due to a convergence of factors: National territory needed population and Switzerland needed a place that would receive its population surplus.

In the second half of the 19th century, rural areas in Switzerland were population ejectors, affected by a series of liberal measures, among them the implementation of the Napoleonic code regime, which implied an excessive inheritance division of real estate. At the same time, “there were bad crops and a decrease in the prices of rural products, progressive unemployment in the textile industry due to technical advancements” (^{Schobinger, 1957, p. 31}). In turn, “farmers were severely impacted by reason of the international trade expansion and the competition from abroad” that came along with the introduction of the railway in 1847 (^{Schobinger, 1957, p. 31}). The instability of the country in the second half of the 19th century was largely due to the advance of capitalism in its territory.

During the first half of the 20th century, the situation in Switzerland did not appear to improve. The years after the First World War were the most severe; “inflation, revolutions, unemployment [and] hunger [were common happenings] in what is known as the old continent” (^{Roth, 2008, pp. 57}), and from the second half of the 1930s decade, with the repercussions of the global economic crisis.

Even if Switzerland underwent a notable recovery in the mid-1920s, the economic depression that unleashed because of the global economic crisis was one of the most severe ever hitting the country. While the repercussions of this crisis were seen later in relation to other European countries, its aftermath was strong. Unemployment numbers, reaching 8,000 people (0.4% of the total population) in 1929, went as high as 93,000 people (4.8%) by 1936 (^{Schneider, 1998}).

The areas most affected by the “rationalization of workplaces” were construction and textile industry workers (^{Glatz, 1997, p. 204}). All throughout Europe, the most dramatic situations were due to the deficiencies of the social security public systems (particularly so in long periods of crisis), with a percentage of the workforce ranging from 0% to 25% being covered, except for “Germany, where 40% of the population had right to unemployment insurance [...]” (^{Hobsbawn, 2007, p. 100}).

Banking activities were also heavily impacted by substantial difficulties, having its balance cut in half by 1936. In this sense, the Swiss Federal Council and the National Bank’s adhesion to a deflationary policy resulted in a long period of economic depression, the Swiss franc devaluating 30% by mid-1936 (^{Schneider, 1998}; ^{Bouquet, 2005}).

In other instances, more than the severe economic situation, some Swiss people considered emigration before the possibility of a conflict in Europe and how unsafe it could be to stay in their homeland (E. Fintzterer de Schweizeir, personal communication, October 14, 2015, and L. Zimmermann, personal communication, November 9, 2010).

Among the internal factors we can count the state policies that promoted immigration for the purpose of fostering the populating of the country and attracting workforce to work the fields. The ideal of the immigrant expected to arrive at the country was set forth in 1853 in article 25 of the Constitution of the Nation of Argentina, which states that:

The Federal Government will foster European immigration; and there will be no restriction, limitation nor taxation for entering Argentinian territory to foreigners who come with the goal of working the land, improving the industries, and introducing and teaching the sciences and the arts ( ^{Devoto, 2009, p. 34} ).

By promoting European immigration, the aim was on “the possibility of obtaining the individual desired by the dominant class of Argentina; in the post-enlightenment European, the individual one wants to be is sought” (^{Halpern, 2009, p. 27}). The European immigrant was “someone associated with working and, as a desired object, to agriculture” (^{Devoto, 2009, p. 34}); however, their role was not restricted to providing workforce, as it embodied the civilizing ideal for the young country. In this sense, the immigration and colonization law of 1876 understood the terms “immigrant” and “foreigner” as synonyms, but only in the case of those who entered “in steam or sail ship,” coming from the “ports of Europe or those located in outside capes”; besides this first characterization, an immigrant was one who entered the country in second or third class (^{Devoto, 2009, pp. 31-32}).

In turn, since the consolidation of the national State, Argentina began its journey towards insertion in the global market as a provider of primary products. Agricultural production destined for exportation was the “dynamic factor for growth” and directed the achievement of the state policies followed by the ruling sectors. As driving forces of transformation, “progress” and “civilization” were central elements in the expansion process of the national State.

The annexation of great extensions of land into the state orbit and the increase of “the exploited surface and the volume of export production” (^{Oszlak, 2012, pp. 192-193}) made it evident that populating was required. The demand for foreign workforce came to compensate for the scarcity of population in the territory, and thus “immigration should populate the desert, and agricultural colonization should build a sociability in Argentina that its extension and lack of population made otherwise non-existent” (^{Devoto, 2009, pp. 229}).

As for Misiones, it was the scenario of great political-administrative and military instability for the entire 19th century as a result of the dispute for its territory by different border States and by some of the provinces belonging to Río de la Plata. This situation implied a late jurisdictional and territorial organization, in turn delaying the organization of the colonies and the settlements of European immigrants.

Misiones remained under the jurisdiction of Corrientes from 1832, until 1881 with the creation of the National Territory. Within the frame of this process, a great polemic arose between the province of Corrientes and the national government regarding the Project of Law on the Federalization of Misiones. However, in the face of the inevitability to create a new National Territory and the consequent loss of the right to use and enjoy those lands, in June 1881, the leaders of Corrientes authorized a rapid sale of the Misiones lands in large fractions of 25 square leagues. Almost two-thirds of the territory were “sold” this way, standing out among the great owners, former governor of Corrientes Antonio B. Gallino and Julio A. Roca, brother of the country’s then-president.

Finally, with the creation of the National Territory of Misiones on December 22, 1881, the national State wanted to achieve two clear goals: solve the ongoing border problem with the province of Corrientes and to incorporate a new space into the national domain. The conformation of large private estates that ensued from this process became, however, an obstacle to the establishment of agricultural colonies, as it limited the availability of land.

The creation of an extractive front⁵ of native wood and yerba mate positioned Misiones among the extra-regional relations of Pampa capitalism, conditioning the beginning of the colonization process to the disappearance of the large private estates (^{Hernández, 1887, p. 17}).

By 1894, the national government managed to invalidate some of the land sales in Misiones after its territorializing, as they did not comply with the corresponding measurements; thus, the lands recovered became settlement centers for the first European immigrants that arrived at Misiones.

The populating of Misiones was propelled first by state mechanisms. Although the first colonies were established in the southern part of the Misiones National Territory —among them, Santa Ana and Candelaria, measured in 1883 by Rafael Hernández— official colonization gained more strength with the re-foundation of old Jesuitical colonies such as Apóstoles in 1897, which received Polish Galician immigrants as promoted by then governor of the National Territory Juan José Lanusse.

The settlement of Swiss immigrants in Misiones corresponded to a period in which the access opportunities to public land in the provinces with mild weather were already closed. During the mid-1930s decade, emigration was seen as a relief mechanism for the social pressure Switzerland was going through due to the high unemployment indexes: after the signing of the Swiss-Argentinian Treaty for Emigration and Colonization on July 6, 1937, more than fifty Swiss families were expatriated to Argentina.

The destination point was the Misiones National Territory, not only due to the land being accessible but also because counting “with an initial capital not above 4000 francs” (^{Ferrari, 1942, p. 37}), the sale of native wood from the economic unities would provide additional income for future settlers; effectively, these advantages offered by Misiones translated into numbers: between 1900 and 1939, 60% of Swiss people who entered the country had the National Territory a as destination, whereas after the signing of the 1937 Swiss-Argentinian Treaty for Emigration and Colonization, 74% of the subsidized arrived at this same destination.

If we follow after the theses held by Ravenstein (1885) to analyze Swiss migration during the second half of the 1930s decade, perhaps the first one would explain best the structural reasons behind these phenomenon, as it were the economic disparities in Switzerland and the possibility of gaining access to land as owners in Misiones that influenced most strongly the constitution of this migration movement.

The other postulates held by the author, however, can hardly be applied to this case in particular. For example, pertaining the third law —which holds that migrants mobilizing long distances generally prefer large trade or industrial centers— and the seventh law — linked to the lesser propensity of native populations residing in cities to migrate compared to rural area populations (^{Arango, 2000})— the situation unfolded inversely to Ravenstein’s theory, as migrants departed from urban centers which were commercially and industrially more developed than Misiones.

Up until the beginning of the 20th century, a large portion of European migrants still preferred the United States as the main destination, but by the beginning of the 1920s, the laws fostered by this country in immigration matters turned away from the liberal trend of granting access with no major restrictions. In fact, the 1921 Quota Acts reduced the number of immigrants to the United States, and the migration origins moved from the south and east of Europe to northern and western Europe (^{Massey & Pren, 2013}). The Quota Acts also established a cap for the entrance of migrants “to a 3% of the total amount of residents of each national group at the time of the 1910 national census” (^{Devoto, 2009, p. 164}).

Sanctioned by the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, the entrance limitation was taken to a greater extreme, as emigration visas were now granted to only a 2% of the total amount of applicants of each nationality in the United States, based on the 1890 national census. This selective measure was intended to favor even more the access of individuals coming from northern Europe, and to limit that of migrants from southern and eastern Europe (^{Devoto, 2009, p. 164}).

After 1920, Brazil underwent changes around the treatment of migration. This State, which during the second half of the 19th century was an important destination for immigrants, went through important changes in the orientation of its migration policy during interwar periods allowing the entrance of “European labor immigration, and preference was given to nationals of European countries that were the main origin of previous migration influxes, rather than to nationals from other countries” (^{VV. AA., 2004, p. 574}).

The orientation of Brazilian migration policies towards ethnic selection was based on achieving integration between establishes and newly established migrant communities, as well as to prevent that cultural diversity would translate into “a liability for immigrants” (^{VV. AA., 2004, p. 574}). By the 1930s, Brazil implemented a restrictive policy not so much in terms of migratory flows but rather in labor integration ones: the companies doing business in the country had to have “at least two-thirds of their employees” of national origin (^{Devoto, 2009, p. 166})

Australia is another example of the era of the implementation of highly restrictive migration policies. By 1924, a quota system was implemented that was even more strict than that of the United States, as it specifically limited the entrance of individuals coming from southern European countries. Achieving White Australia through the migrant selection criterion was the objective pursued. At the same time, and even if there were no legal dispositions of “racial exclusion,” other highly ambiguous mechanisms were set in motion with one clear concern: “to prevent the massive arrival of Asian workers, particularly Chinese ones” (^{Sánchez Alonso, 2007, pp. 239-240}). Shortly after, an economic criterion followed the racial one, by establishing a minimum amount that the immigrant had to have at the time of entry to the country, to prevent migrants from being a burden to the State (^{Devoto, 2009, p. 166}).

In New Zealand —a country that was discarded by the Swiss in the 1930s as a migratory destination due to its “high living cost”— the situation was very similar to the Australian case, even more arbitrarily. Since 1920, the legal dispositions oriented towards repelling the entrance of people from close Asian countries even allowed the rejection of immigrants “with no justification needed” (^{Devoto, 2009, p. 167}). In both Oceania and Canada, governments would not only did not restrict the access of British migrants but also encouraged it by paying part of the traveling costs.

In Argentina, the State also implemented protectionist migration policies as a mechanism that aimed at preventing competition in the labor market, “to protect internal employment and fight unemployment” (^{Novick, 1997, p. 8}). Between 1931 and 1940, the decrease in European immigration to Argentina was significant —although less than in the United States—, as only 310,000 people arrived against the 1,760,000 of the first decade of the 20th century, and the 1,400,000 immigrants in the period from 1921 to 1930 (^{Devoto, 2009, pp. 162-163}).

Within this context of severe restrictions is where the arrival of the largest number of Helvetic immigrants took place: between 1936 and 1939, over 1,000 people emigrated from Switzerland overseas, and most established themselves in Argentina, Brazil, and, to a lesser extent, Canada. Even if Swiss migration into Argentina was not massive —^{Frid (2013)} estimates that between 1857 and 1940, 50,000 Swiss people entered the country, with a net migration of 25,000 for the period— in South America, Argentina was still the principal receiver of this influx, only surpassed in the same period by the United States.

Towards 1939, the entrance of immigrants was interrupted as the Swiss borders were tightly closed unless one would get special permits. At the same time, the Swiss labor market improved; the army stood out as an employer during that period, garnering many recruits for the defense of the borders before the possibility of war.

Social Networks in the Process of Adaption

Without neglecting the contributions of the structural approach, the micro-analysis approach will allow to “reconstruct the fabric of social and political relationships in a society characterized by heterogeneity, mobility, conflict, fluidity” (^{Piselli, 1995, pp. 64-65}). In this sense, social networks provides the elements for an approach that starts from the individual and their practices and strategies of adaptation on a daily basis, also allowing to identify the fabric of relationships they establish with others, thus enabling to “reconstruct trajectories and channels of social mobility,” studying “the conflict and change dynamics from the within” (^{Piselli, 1995, pp. 64-65}).

Certain structural factors impact on the social and psychological area of the population, which does not necessarily involve an individual in isolation, but rather represents a family survival strategy. In fact, many of the Swiss immigrants who arrived at Misiones in the second half of the 1930s were family groups that resulted most affected by the economic depression, including artisans and workers coming from large urban centers; for them, the jungle represented the unknown, inhospitable, isolation. In 1942, in his notes on traveling through the Swiss colonies in Misiones, Luis Ferrari wrote: “What and how many problems! What and how many questions! First, the disparity of the weather, then the different languages and the contrast between livelihoods, and between the old and new environments” (^{Ferrari, 1942, p. 23}). Certainly, and as pointed out by the Swiss government official:

To uproot oneself to a home from, say, Untergerlafinger [Switzerland] to Puerto Rico, is not only, nor mainly, a financial move or a matter of economic reach, or of consequences communicable in numbers; it is an operation whose projections in social and cultural order surpass those of other nature ( ^{Ferrari, 1942, pp. 22-23} ).

Most Helvetic migrants settled in rural areas of Argentina between the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, and only 25% of them had urban areas in Buenos Aires and Rosario as their destination. In Misiones, an important juncture of the Swiss colonies migration process was linked to the beginning of work for the yerba mate plantations towards 1902 and its profitability in the following years, starting with the formation of a migration network revolving around the “green gold call.” The creation of the Yerba Mate Regulatory Commission⁶ in 1935 did not mean, however, that new migrants were to dedicate to urban activities but rather the implementation of new farmlands as an adaptation mechanism.

In these scenarios, the arrival of future colonizers was particularly difficult, not only due to the scarce resource with which they came into the new environment, but also because the acquisition of many land plots was carried out without previous inspection, or even when due diligence was done, the lack of knowledge of agricultural practices resulted in bad choices.

Going over the clearings, Johannes [Schedler] and his eldest daughter went about looking for a farm to buy. They found it in Línea Cuchilla, where there already were some Swiss families. Johaness, who logically knew nothing about agriculture, chose the beautiful plot of land No. 88, as a stream ran through it, and he liked it, even if the soil was not good for cultivation as it was a large rocky terrain ( ^{Schedler de Schweri, 2003, p. 1} ).

Besides the little knowledge they had about rural labor, Eugenio Keller added the factor of “the circulation of wrong information among immigrants” regarding the cultural works in the farm at the time of sowing; thus, the interviewee explained:

[...] a colonist associated the cultivation of cassava with that of potato, and started by sowing pieces of cassava root; the days passed, and after he went over the farmland several times looking sprouts and finding nothing, he discussed this with other colonist and it was only then that he was informed this was not the way the plant reproduced (E. Keller, personal communication, October 4, 2013).

Keller would remember the anecdotes of his parents and pointed out that joking was also quite common:

[...] one day this German-Brazilian colonist jokingly told a Swiss immigrant who had just arrived at Línea Cuchilla that he should buy two bundles of fumo [black tobacco], cut them into pieces and then plant that in the farmland. [A few] days after this same colonist asked what was the result of the operation, and the Swiss man answered that there were no visible sprouts but that those pieces of fumo waren schon ziemlich dick [where already quite thick] (E. Keller, personal communication, October 4, 2013).

The problem of the urban origin of immigrants not only lied on how difficult it was adapting to the rural labor “in the wild,” as it was also worse for those who did not have an occupation to pursue and that would be of use in their new environment:

For example, dad was a carpenter and he would help other colonists building their houses and sheds, and even built furniture [...] in the case of Senn, he was a cab driver in Switzerland... but what good is a cab in the wild? (E. Keller, personal communication, October 4, 2013).

The settlement of Swiss people took place mainly in the colonies established with private capital, and these started to emerge in Misiones during the first decades of the 20th century, after the exhaustion of the extractive front, a process that brought along the division and sale of large private estate to entrepreneurs dedicated to colonization endeavors.

There were several cases in which Swiss migrants turned into colonizing entrepreneurs to attract fellow countrymen. In 1919, Eugenio Lagier —a native of Aubone, Switzerland— bought land from the Roca family in association with Luciano Leiva from Santa Fe and sold them to Swiss immigrants after dividing them into lots. In 1925, Julio Ulyses Martin —a Swiss-French immigrant from the small settlement of Vaud— requested his 4,000 hectares of land in Oro Verde —a Swiss colony along Río Paraná, 20 km from the colony of Puerto Rico— to be measured for the formation of a Swiss colony (^{Gallero, 2009}); in 1937 Enrique Bucker —native of Malters, Lucerna— requested the same in Puerto Esperanza; Bucker, despite having settled there since 1926, did not hesitate to attract Swiss immigrants during the recession period of this country.

Even if the private colonies in Puerto Rico, Eldorado, and Montecarlo mainly consisted of migrant groups coming from Germany and by Germans coming from Brazil, these colonies also received Swiss immigrants in different periods, more so towards the mid- 1930s.

As pointed out by ^{Dolores Juliano (1994)}, people tend to group in one destination according to the places they come from “not as a consequence of an occasional confluence at the destination location but due to a link originating in the genesis of the migratory phenomenon itself” (^{Juliano, 1994, p. 94}).

In the early 1920s, Swiss immigration to the colony of Puerto Rico was quite scarce, and the arrival of Johan Christian Theler at Cuña Pirú (located southeast of the Puerto Rico colony, about 20 km from the Río Paraná) and, shortly after, of his family, can be seen as a first precedent of the Helvetic presence in the colony.

As a result of the deterioration of his fields and of the dairy farm that he owned in Ambrosetti, in the province of Santa Fe, Theler decided to move to Misiones —a place recommended to him by the Swiss Peter Allemann, then-writer of the Argentinisches Tageblatt newspaper— and “summon” his entire family, which remained dispersed between Switzerland and Santa Fe, hoping to ensure jobs for his son and son in law “in the brilliant urban centers” that were taking shape in the Alto Paraná colonies, and to gather at once all of his family in one place (^{Theler, 2007, p. 39}). In this case, migration was a family strategy in which social networks aided to consolidate the process.

Since the signing of the 1937 Swiss-Argentinian Treaty for Emigration and Colonization, following on the ideas of Dr. Wilhelm Joos,⁷ the Swiss government tried to solve their social problems through emigration. This way, Luis Ferrari —a member of the Swiss Consulate in Buenos Aires— managed to relocate 400 Swiss nationals in Misiones, arriving at the port of the capital. At the same time, as recommended by a Swiss resident in Santo Pipó —a Swiss colony located in Alto Paraná, 70 km away from the city of Posadas, provincial capital of Misiones— named Jacques de Chambrier, an agreement was signed with Adolfo Schwelm for the settlement of immigrants and the allotting of land to the new colonists for half their prices, and granting them greater payment facilities.

Once the Treaty was signed, over 50 Swiss families settled in Argentina. The destination point was the Misiones National Territory, not only due to the land being accessible but also because counting “with an initial capital not above 4000 francs” (^{Ferrari, 1942, p. 37}), the sale of native wood from the economic unities would provide additional income for future settlers.

On the other hand, in the Pampa region, 20 hectares of land is insufficient for the accomplishment of extensive exploitation; besides that, the price per hectare was way higher than that of Misiones, due to the fertility of the soil and because the land was located closer to the consumption centers of the country and port. Also, each colonist was meant to cover the costs of wire-fencing their properties, an expense that was not immediate in Misiones.

Within this framework, after 1937, the Colonizing Company Eldorado organized the sale of land to Swiss immigrants who distributed themselves over km 28 of Eldorado, in Línea Cuchilla, and San Alberto; the latter were located in the Puerto Rico colony. Adolfo Schwelm saw in this situation an opportunity to attract immigrants to his colonies, and so he propelled intense propaganda to sell the land for a lesser price than they were sold to colonists without subventions: “the price of 70 pesos per hectare, instead of 110 and 120 pesos, which was the price paid for these same lands up until four or five months ago” (^{Ferrari, 1942, p. 27}).

In the context of economic recession, the Swiss government promoted immigration as a relief mechanism to the social pressure happening inside the country, as a result of unemployment, in this sense, the signing of the 1937 Swiss-Argentinian Treaty for Emigration and Colonization follows along the lines of such policy. Thus, “für die Ursprungsregionen der Auswanderer bedeutete die Abwanderung nach Übersee eine Entlastung” [for the regions of origin of emigrants, emigration abroad meant relief] (^{Andrian-Werbung Von, 2007, p. 15}). Most Swiss immigrants that arrived at Misiones in this way were those that had been more heavily affected by the economic crisis, and they left looking for a way to improve their fortune in the place that would offer the most advantages for their insertion, considering the scarce resources with which they arrived (^{Zang, 2013}).

At the time of leaving Switzerland, not all of them had direct information —as in, provided by other migrants— about the characteristics of Misiones and, in that sense, the colonization companies employed in Europe for the attraction of migrants provided disparate information:

[...] they would even tell you what was the food here —remembered one Swiss immigrant coming from Basile— but they did not say that it was all mountains here; das war sehr schlecht [that was quite bad] […] there were many promises and lots of information circulated around, but very little of it was true (A. Wurlig in ^{Pellegrini, Maranesi, Berini, & Manfrini, 1971} , without numbering).

And so, the construction of social networks after their departure, during their journey, and once settled in their destination, represented an important contribution in the process of adapting to the new space.

On its own, the information that circulated in advertising brochures published in Europe about the differential advantages of potential migration locations did not represent sufficient motives for people to mobilize. In many cases, it was necessary to have first-hand information provided by migrants already settled in the new destination, and so family and country ship relationships played an outstanding role in the decision of traveling.

The Studer family, for example, emigrated to Argentina within the frame of the project promoted from Switzerland by Emil Immoos, president of the Artisans Home of Zurich. Immoos, “as a member of a special commission sent by the Swiss government,” traveled through south Brazil, Chile, and Argentina, studying the living conditions and the possibilities these regions offered for the transit of immigrants. Besides providing information and advising their countrymen eager to emigrate on the characteristics of those places, Immoos’s project took into account a preliminary period of gastronomic adaptation: “every day one would eat rice and beans, and drink cooked mate” (^{Engeler, 2008, p. 148}).

As one of the first immigrants settling by the mid-1930s in Línea Cuchilla, Francisco Studer provided information to his countrymen still in Switzerland. The first contact that the Zimmermann had with Misiones took place after receiving a letter from Línea Cuchilla where Studer advised them against migration:

[...] he wrote and told us how things were here; he told us about the different insects such as mbarigüíes , uras , and piques , about the heat, but he also told us there were large mountain areas [...] but when we knew about the mountains, that is what convinced us as we were working the wood in Switzerland already, and we knew that the mountains in Misiones would provide the raw material we needed to keep on working something similar (L. Zimmermann, personal communication, November 9, 2010).

In this new reception space, the reconstruction of “previous social environments, by means of informal networks of information and reception” (^{Juliano, 1994, pp. 93-94}) became evident many times. This way, economic reasons such as the devaluation of the Swiss franc in other parts of the world, and particular reasons such as having information about the vast mountain areas in Misiones, were determining factors in choosing the destination.

Not only us, others had contemplated the possibility of going to New Zealand, Canada or Australia, but those places were discarded because a sum of about 1,500 francs was necessary, and the possibility of contact with other immigrants you knew where smaller [...] many years ago, my uncle had emigrated to New Zealand, but over time we never knew about him anymore (L. Zimmermann, personal communication, November 9, 2010).

Thanks to previous contacts with friends and family who arrived before them, “migrants accessed knowledge, assistance and other resources that facilitated their transit” (^{Massey et al., 2000, pp. 24-25}); and so, those migrants who arrived earlier served as guides and advisors for those coming after from Europe, both in terms of the organization of the farms and of the agricultural works, as well as in getting to know the vegetation of the place and the necessary care for the control and interaction with insects. In this sense, we can posit social networks as a form of social capital⁸ (^{Arango, 2000}), that served immigrants — through the bonds established beforehand, and even already in their destination— as an enabling mechanism for the migration process, as it allowed to achieve access to certain goods or information.