A Colônia Luxemburguesa

A Colônia Luxemburguesa & [L]aço is a transmedia project telling the fascinating story of steel-framed migration trajectories of Luxembourgers and other Europeans to Brazil. Arbed’s overseas activities in Brazil date back to 1921, when the Luxembourg-based steel giant inaugurated its subsidiary called 'Companhia Siderúrgica Belgo Mineira'. Since then, hundreds of engineers, technicians, foremen and workers migrated from our Bassin Minier to the vast tropical mining area of Minas Gerais and, together with their families, helped shaping the Colônia Luxemburguesa.  

The interactive web-documentary 'A Colônia Luxemburguesa' shares some of their stories, in their own words. It analyses the political and societal implications this giant of the steel industry had for the everyday lives, not only of the members of the board of directors, but also of workers and the broader Brazilian community. It builds around the entangled and converging histories of the migrant community and the company.

By gaining personal insight into the migrants’ state of mind, this web-documentary gently deconstructs the myth of the Colônia Luxemburguesa as a successful migration history of an alleged unified and homogeneous community. Furthermore, this web-documentary includes a participatory section where the viewers/users can upload and share their personal archives with basic metadata that would then be added to the [L]aço digital archive collection (with the support of the CNA and the C2DH).

Text provided by the project partner.