Mauro Vieira and Ignazio Cassis met in Solothurn, where they visited the Cathedral of Saint Ours and Saint Victor.
KEYSTONE/© KEYSTONE / ANTHONY ANEX
During a meeting with his Swiss counterpart Ignacio Cassis, Mauro Vieira visited the city of Solothurn. The politician’s great-great-great-grandmother was Swiss and emigrated to Brazil.
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May 7, 2024 – 11:00
The location of the meeting was not due to chance: Mauro Vieira has Solothurn roots. His ancestors came from Erschwil, in Schwarzbubenland (canton of Solothurn). This is where they emigrated to Brazil 200 years ago.
Mauro Vieira’s great-great-great-grandmother, Agatha Jeker, made the long journey in 1819 when she was still a child. “She came from a family of farmers who also weaved linen,” explains Simon Lutz, village historian of Erschwil.
Agatha Lacaz, née Jeker, in a photograph from 1889. The ancestor of Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira was from Erschwil.
SRF/MARIO GUTKNECHT
At that time, many Swiss people were looking for a better life elsewhere. And they also hoped to find enough food, explains Simon Lutz. Europe and other parts of the world were suffering from crop failures and famines – the consequences of a volcanic eruption in Indonesia.
On the way to the land where milk and honey flow
Agatha Jeker’s journey first took her from Erschwil to the Netherlands, with 118 other Solothurns. There, a group of around 2000 Helvetians wanted to board sailboats for the New World. Many of these people, however, died in Holland, where malaria was rampant, or during the sea crossing.
There, a group of around 2000 people from Switzerland wanted to go on sailboats. But some travelers have already died in Holland from the malaria which rages there. Others lost their lives during the grueling sea crossing.
The boat carrying the migrants from Erschwil reached Brazil after 69 days. “Some people were so weakened by the journey that they died shortly after their arrival,” explains Simon Lutz. Documents stored in the state archives of Solothurn prove this.
Church donation
In their new homeland, the town of Nova Friburgo near Rio de Janeiro, the Swiss hoped to find the promised land, “where milk and honey flow”. But their expectations were disappointed, because transforming the plots of virgin forest obtained into cultivable land proved laborious.
In Solothurn, the Brazilian Minister of Foreign Affairs met the historian Martin Nicoulin. The latter carried out research on the history of Swiss emigration to Brazil and on the founding of the city of Nova Friburgo.
KEYSTONE/© KEYSTONE / ANTHONY ANEX
The Solothurn emigrant colony therefore turned to Switzerland to ask for help. “The Solothurn government reacted with restraint. He ordered the churches to donate the following Sunday’s collection to the Solothurn settlers. And the pastors were invited to preach for the colony,” reports Tobias Berger, scientific collaborator at the Solothurn State Archives, based on archived documents.
Later, the canton would have sent money. But according to Tobias Berger, we do not know whether the money arrived safely.
What we do know, however, is that Agatha Jeker remained in Brazil. The surname Jeker became Ieker there. The Brazilian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mauro Luiz Ieker Vieira, his full name, declared during his visit to Solothurn that it was moving to visit the region of origin of his family.
