SÃO PAULO — In the early 1970s, construction began on a metro station in the Ponte Pequena district of São Paulo, Brazil. An Armenian civil engineer was among those involved in the project. The station, originally named Ponte Pequena when it opened in 1975, was renamed Armenia in 1985 to honor São Paulo’s Armenian community.
That Armenian engineer was Vahan Agopyan. Over the decades, he advanced from overseeing major infrastructure projects to becoming one of Brazil’s most distinguished academics and public officials. Today, he serves as the Secretary for Science, Technology and Innovation of the State of São Paulo. Along the way, he held a number of prestigious positions, including serving as president of the University of São Paulo, one of Latin America’s leading universities.
“I was born in Istanbul in 1951,” Agopyan said in a recent interview in his office.
His rise to one of the highest positions in the São Paulo state government as an immigrant is an extraordinary achievement.
With his maternal family originating from Tekirdağ and his paternal family from Van, Agopyan describes himself as the son of Armenian Genocide survivors. Yet his family also witnessed another tragic chapter in the history of Turkey’s Armenian and Greek communities — the anti-Christian pogroms of 1955.
“My parents decided to leave the country,” he recalled. “My mother had a sister and cousins in São Paulo, so they decided to come to Brazil. We arrived in 1956.”
