Stories of Paraná - Poles in northern Paraná

Stories of Paraná - Poles in northern Paraná

Poles in northern Paraná
Mariano Kawka

The responsible for the colonization of much of the land north of Paraná Land Company was the Northern Parana, the Brazilian subsidiary of Paraná Plantations Ltd., whose formation was due to the initiative of some farmers from São Paulo, knowledgeable fertility of red earth, and willing to take advantage it to the coffee culture, and managed to sensitize entrepreneurs Englishmen, in the person of Simon Joseph Fraser (Lord Lovat), in the region to apply the necessary capital for the colonization of these lands.
The Paraná Plantations Ltd. was established in London in 1925. Between that year and 1927, its subsidiary, the Company Lands Northern Parana (later Company Improvements North of the Paraná) acquired a total of 1,246,300 acres (12,463 km ^) of vacant land, located on the left bank of the river Paranapanema between rivers and Tibagy Ivaí by installing a high camp 22 kilometers from the river Tibagy, which arise after the city of Londrina.
The settlement was made by the system of small farms and at the time, there was an intense propaganda to attract settlers to the region of diverse nationalities.
An employee of the Company, the engineer Ignatius Szankowski, booked a fertile area, 15 kilometers from Londrina to be settled by Poles.
It was through one of these propaganda leaflets that in 1932, the Polish Cebulski Edward, surveyor and landowner in Santa Catarina, noted that "promised land" and decided to meet her.
Excited by what he saw and heard, Cebulski invited several heads of households Colony Polish Pines, in the highlands of Santa Catarina, to be acquainted with the new "Eldorado". New buyers were coming from various locations in Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, southern Paraná and São Paulo.
It was necessary to choose a name for the new colony.
A meeting was organized in the open, with residents sitting in an important peroba newly felled.
John Langowski, one present, suggested the name Warta, a river of Poland.
Your suggestion, applauded, was accepted immediately, and so was baptized the "equity" and future district.
Within this same colonization scheme was planned colony Gleba Orleans (which means "little eagle"), located 15 kilometers Arapongas.
Before the arrival of the first transport of Polish and Ukrainian settlers of Europe, we find there some pioneers Poles, who had come on their own.
It was some single guys, who generally worked in road construction.
They were the lords Golas, Macur, Olszewski and Pochwatka.
In 1937 several Polish and Ukrainian families from Europe settled in the colony.
Later Polish settlers came from southern Paraná and Santa Catarina. And to be noted that some aspects of the original plan of colonization could not be executed, through no fault of the Company's colonizing, but because the outbreak of the Second World War interrupted definitely the massive influx of migrants from Poland to Brazil.

Mariano Kawka, teacher


Source: Stories of Paraná, Brasil.