Founded in 1934, the University of São Paulo was energized in the social sciences by the arrival of a group of gifted young French scholars, nearly all of whom were to achieve world-wide reputation. Among them was historian Fernand Braudel, geographer Pierre Monbeig and “sociologist” Claude Lévi-Strauss. Lévi-Strauss taught for only one year and does not seem to have left positive memories in academic circles. Bastide was selected to succeed him and in June 1938 arrived with his family in São Paulo. They were to stay until 1954 (Bastide returned afterward for shorter stays.)

World War II probably influenced Bastide's decision to remain in Brazil. Like De Gaulle, Bastide was aware of the visibility of Nazis in Argentina and of the authority of Vichy in the French Embassies in the Americas, so he wrote to defend the cause of the Free French. But sheer intellectual excitement in the discovery of the new country must have also loomed large in the mind of the expatriate. He taught and wrote in French, but he quickly understood Portuguese. His attempts to speak it were said to reflect rather a variety of Languedocien.

Bastide promptly read everything that was written on the sociology of Brazil. By 1939 articles and book reviews begin to pour forth from his pen. But his social immersion was mainly among artists, and his first lectures were on the aesthetics and the philosophy and sociology of art.