Penedo: A Finnish Utopian Colony In Brazil 80 years

Abstrakti

Penedo is a Finnish colony, created in 1929 in the Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil. A group of young vegetarians, leaded by Toivo Uuskallio,1 bought a farm and created a community where freedom, life close to nature in the tropics and equality between people were the main ideals. He had a “call” to create a new society in the South, and was followed by a group organized within naturalistic movements. That was the result of some existing movements in Finland, of natural treatments for health, vegetarianism and some Pentecostal religious thoughts, and also Uuskallio’s own ideals.2 The end of the 19th and beginning of 20th Century was a period of great migration from Finland, especially to the United States and Canada but there were some different experiences that Peltoniemi3 called the foundation of Finnish Utopian Colonies, with examples as Sointula inCanada, founded at 1900, Colonia Finlandesa in Argentina, created at 1906 and Penedo in Brazil, founded in 1929.