ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to explore, through the study of a poor community of rural migrants from the northeast of Brazil living on the outskirts of Sao Paulo and the history of its own independent radio station, the much broader theme of the nature and experience of the modern in Brazil. This is a vast topic and the subject of considerable and fascinating debate. Here, however, I would like to illuminate only a particular facet as it relates to specific questions concerning the identity and integration of rural migrants in an urban context. In a society which is marked by uneven development, by the coexistence of ways of life relating to disparate epochs and economic structures, and in which a large percentage of the population has migrated to the cities in search of the fruits of 'development', the ways in which rural migrants negotiate their insertion in the urban context is a rich source of information on the ways in which modernity is experienced and constructed.
