The phenomenon of Polish emigration to Brazil made history mainly because of its scale. Brazil appeared to the peasants leaving en masse for overseas as an opportunity for a better life. Believing in the stories of the land and prospects awaiting them there, they did not think about the adversities they would have to face. Meanwhile, the weeks-long journey and the new, often unfavourable living and climatic conditions meant that many of them died during the initial adaptation period. One of the greatest tragedies in the history of Polish emigration occurred in 1911, when a typhoid epidemic decimated the Polish colony located in the south of Paraná.

Epidemic cemetery of Polish emigrants
. In what was to have been one of the centres of Polish settlement in Pátio Velho, the cemetery where the victims of the 1911 typhoid epidemic were buried has been preserved to this day. Its traditional graves, strewn with earth, are most often marked only by modest wooden crosses - now crumpled and covered with moss and lichen. The road to the cemetery leads through a gate, near which there is a wooden chapel from 1912 with an image of Our Lady of Czestochowa and a symbolic inscription in Polish and Portuguese: "They left Poland, their homeland, they came to Brazil, the promised land, they went through a painful journey ... they rest in this cemetery".

During the celebrations held in 1986 to mark the 75th anniversary of the arrival of Polish immigrants, a commemorative cross was erected in the cemetery. On its base is a plaque with a text in Portuguese - the translation reads: '75 years of Polish immigration. 1911-1986 Victory has swallowed up death. Where is, O death, your victory? (1 Cor. 15:55). To the memory of the martyrdom of the first Polish colonists in this land. Gratitude of the descendants".

Memories of emigrants
One can read about the fate of Polish emigrants in Brazil, among others, in the Memoirs of Emigrants, collected as a result of a competition and published in the late 1930s. Memoirs of Emigrants. South America.

The beginnings of the settlement in Santana are described by one of the exiles, Tadeusz Hryncz, as follows:

. "Just as few people came back from Siberia, so few survived from those emigrant groups going willingly towards the Mountains of Hope. The hardiest peasants lay down like sheaves and in such great numbers that the freshly built sawmill could not keep up with the cutting of the planks for the coffins, while the healthier peasants' shoulders swelled from carrying their fellows to the nearby cemetery. The moaning and weeping of widows and orphans tore apart the dark and gloomy depths of the wilderness every day, which seemed to gloat over the suffering of these people abandoned by everything and everyone, people who had only one protector, comforter and refuge left - God."

Anti-immigration actions
The greatest intensity of emigration to Brazil occurred in the last decade of the 19th century.The so-called Brazilian fever occurred on Polish soil at that time. The Polish peasants taking part in it, risking everything, sold off their possessions and left their family homes to cross the border and, in Bremen or Hamburg, board a ship bound for the ocean. The authorities and social organisations tried to prevent the mass exodus of the population. A number of expeditions were undertaken to investigate the conditions of the voyage and the situation awaiting the refugees overseas. In 1890, such an expedition was undertaken on behalf of the "Kurier Warszawski" by Adolf Dygasiński, and in 1891 by the envoy of Catholic circles, Rev. Zygmunt Chełmicki. Jozef Siemiradzki and the Greek Catholic priest Jozef Wolanski travelled to Brazil as representatives of the Galician National Sejm. The horror of the situation on the ground is drawn out in their reports. The Basilian authorities were completely unprepared for the large number of immigrants. There was a shortage of designated plots of land and the barracks in which they were to await their land allocation were disastrously furnished and overcrowded. The anti-sanitary conditions in the barracks were the cause of widespread epidemic diseases. In addition, in the end, the emigrants were not promised fields ready for cultivation, but only plots of land in the middle of a forest that had to be cleared.

Poles in Cruz Machado
The colonisation of the Cruz Machado region (a municipality located in the south of the state of Paraná) began at the end of 1910. By order of the federal government, a colony was established there, with the first Polish immigrants arriving in July 1911. It is estimated that this colony was populated by more than 850 Polish families, amounting to nearly 5,500 people.

The colonisation campaign was conducted very haphazardly, and although the number of immigrants who eventually arrived turned out to be much lower than planned, even for them no proper infrastructure was prepared. They were mostly farmers from the vicinity of Siedlce, Lublin, Chelm and Bialystok. They waited for the allotment of plots of land promised by the Brazilian government in overcrowded wooden barracks, where living conditions were extremely harsh.

Due to the poor sanitary situation, a typhoid epidemic broke out in the colony, which took a deadly toll. Only after months of waiting did those who survived receive their coveted land allocation. They were scattered over vast areas of the Paraná forest, far from other centres of civilisation, making it virtually impossible for them to assimilate with the local population. Today, Cruz Machado is home to the fifth generation of Polish settlers. It is estimated that around 65% of the region's inhabitants are of Polish origin.