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Brazil

 
Dictionary: Bra·zil   (brə-zĭl') pronunciation
Brazil
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Brazil
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A country of eastern South America. The largest country in the continent, it was ruled by Portugal from 1500 to 1822, when it became a separate empire ruled by Pedro I, son of King John VI of Portugal. A republic was established in 1889. Brasília has been the capital since 1960; São Paulo is the largest city. Population: 190,000,000.

Brazilian Bra·zil'i·an adj. & n.

WORD HISTORY   The name Brazil is derived from the Portuguese and Spanish word brasil, the name of an East Indian tree with reddish-brown wood from which a red dye was extracted. The Portuguese found a New World tree related to the Old World brasil tree when they explored what is now called Brazil, and as a result they named the New World country after the Old World tree. The word brasil is cognate with French brésil, Old French berzi and bresil, Old Italian verzino, and Medieval Latin brezellum, brasilium, bresillum, braxile. The many Latin forms suggest a non-Latin, non-Romance origin, as in an East Indian term.

 

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Country, east-central South America. Area: 3,287,612 sq mi (8,514,877 sq km). Population (2005 est.): 184,016,000. Capital: Brasília. Most Brazilians are of European or mixed (Indian-European, European-African) ancestry. Brazil's ethnic groups have intermixed since the earliest days of its colonial history; Indian peoples who have experienced no mixing with immigrants are restricted to the most remote parts of the Amazon River basin. Language: Portuguese (official). Religions: Christianity (predominantly Roman Catholic; also Protestant); also traditional beliefs. Currency: real. Brazil may be divided into many regions, but the Amazon lowlands and the Brazilian Highlands (often called the Central Highlands or Central Plateau) dominate the landscape. The highlands, a plateau with an average elevation of 3,300 ft (1,000 m), are primarily in the southeast, while the Amazon lowlands, with elevations below 800 ft (250 m), are in the north. The Amazon River basin, with its more than 1,000 known tributaries, occupies nearly half of the country's total area. Brazil's other rivers include the São Francisco, Parnaíba, Paraguay, Alto Paraná, and Uruguay. Except for the islands of Marajó and Caviana at the mouth of the Amazon and Maracá to the north, there are no large islands along the roughly 4,600 mi (7,400 km) of Brazil's Atlantic Ocean coast. There are good harbours at Belém, Salvador, Rio de Janeiro, Santos, and Porto Alegre. The country's immense forests are a source of many products, while its savannas support cattle raising. Agriculture is important, and mineral reserves are large. Brazil has a developing market economy based mainly on manufacturing, financial services, and trade. It is a federal republic with two legislative houses; its chief of state and government is the president. Little is known about Brazil's early indigenous inhabitants. Though the area was theoretically allotted to Portugal by the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, it was not formally claimed by discovery until Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral accidentally touched land in 1500. It was first settled by the Portuguese in the early 1530s on the northeastern coast and at São Vicente (near modern São Paulo); the French and Dutch created small settlements over the next century. A viceroyalty was established in 1640, and Rio de Janeiro became the capital in 1763. In 1808 Brazil became the refuge and seat of the government of John VI of Portugal when Napoleon I invaded Portugal; ultimately the Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and Algarve was proclaimed, and John ruled from Brazil (1815 – 21). On John's return to Portugal, Pedro I proclaimed Brazilian independence. In 1889 his successor, Pedro II, was deposed, and a constitution mandating a federal republic was adopted. Beginning in the 20th century, immigration increased and manufacturing grew, and there were frequent military coups and suspensions of civil liberties. Construction of a new capital at Brasília, intended to spur development of the country's interior, worsened the inflation rate. After 1979 the military government began a gradual return to democratic practices, and in 1989 the first popular presidential election in 29 years was held. A severe economic crisis began in the late 1990s.

For more information on Brazil, visit Britannica.com.

In 1833, Hercules Florence invented a cameraless photographic process in rural São Paulo, but was unable or unwilling to exploit it. Seven years later, in 1840, the Abbé Louis Compte, visiting South America aboard a French vessel, made the first daguerreotypes in Rio de Janeiro, thus officially introducing photography to Brazil. Fascinated, Emperor Pedro II (1831-89) acquired a camera and became a major force in photography's development. He patronized the leading Brazilian photographer of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Marc Ferrez, and was responsible for the preservation of a large part of Brazil's early photographic heritage, principally portraits and landscapes, in the Biblioteca Nacional in Rio. During the first century and more of the medium's history, hundreds of foreign photographers arrived, making important contributions in the ethnographic, documentary, and advertising fields (Pierre Verger, Marcel Gautherot, Jean Manzon, Hildegard Rosenthal, and Hans Günther Flieg).

The spread of clubs and societies stimulated the debates about photography as an art that produced pictorialism (1910s-1930s) and the formal experiments linked to the Fotocine Clube Bandeirantes in Rio in the 1940s and 1950s that led ultimately to the emergence of modern photography in Brazil (Geraldo de Barros, Ademar Manarini, and Thomas Farkas).

The illustrated press promoted photography as an authorial medium with a specifically visual language. In the 1940s the magazine O cruzeiro introduced a modern editorial concept incorporating photography as a key element of communication. Essays on indigenous peoples (Jean Manzon and José Medeiros (1921-90) ) sometimes brought to light tribes that were previously unknown. In the 1950s the illustrated journal Manchete also recorded a multifaceted country in a period of rapid development. The review Realidade (1966-76) served as a point of reference, publishing the work of foreign photographers (Cláudia Andujar (b. 1931), Maureen Bissiliat, George Love, and David Zingg), embodying a North American and European visual style and giving the photographer a role in the editorial and production process. In the 1980s a significant feature of Brazilian photojournalism was the independent photographic agency, e.g. Camera Tres founded by the photographer Walter Firmo (b. 1957) in 1973. These offered a way to the achievement of greater authorial rights, especially for photographers committed to more searching investigation of topical issues: abandoned children, the dividing up of indigenous lands, violence in the big cities, and the growth of religious sects in the country.

Compared with the 1960s and 1970s, characterized by military dictatorship, the 1980s and 1990s were a period of transition from censorship and isolation from international artistic trends back to freedom of expression. Photography became accepted as an art form, and a new generation of photographers explored fresh visual strategies that moved away from older concepts of ‘pure’ photography towards installations, self-portraiture, and the use of new supports and media. Photographers such as Miguel Rio Branco (b. 1946), Mario Cravo Neto (b. 1947), Pedro Karp Vasquez (b. 1954), and Cassio Vasconcelos (b. 1965) are notable for both their cosmopolitan training and contacts and their interest in a wide range of media, including film, sculpture, painting, and video as well as conventional photography.

Photography also increasingly entered the ambit of state and private galleries, and its value as art increased. Prestigious collectors such as Gilberto Chateaubriand, Thomas Cohn, and Joaquim Paiva entered the market, concentrating on both unique items and limited editions. Furthermore, the expansion of photographic publishing brought pictures to new sections of the public. The gallery and museum curator, charged with choosing and organizing exhibitions of historical and art photography, became a key figure.

The field of photographic criticism is quite varied. Specialist photography journals like Iris and Fotóptica, and newspapers such as Globo, Folha, and Estado de São Paulo publish articles by Paulo Herkenhoff, Moracy de Oliveira, Luis Humberto, and Stefania Bril. More analytical and historically based studies of Brazilian photography have been undertaken by scholars such as Gilberto Ferrez, Boris Kossoy, Pedro Karp Vasquez, Ricardo Mendes, Rubens Fernandes Jr., Arlindo Machado, Angela Magalhães, and Nadja Fonsêca Peregrino. Research grants are dispensed by the Fundação Vitae, and the Institutos Culturais Moreira Salles and Itaú fund the publication of books, the creation of databanks of historical and contemporary photography, and the acquisition of photographic works. This last function is also performed by the Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art and the São Paulo Museum of Art (White Martins and Pirelli photographic collections).

Most photographic courses and schools are concentrated in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Since the end of the 20th century photography has also been studied increasingly in the contexts of history and anthropology, and found a place in faculties of fine art and communication studies. Contacts between photographers take place via exhibitions, lectures, and workshops. Major examples are the International Month of Photography (Núcleo de Amigos da Fotografia/NAFOTO—Centre for the Friends of Photography) in São Paulo and the International Photography Biennale in Curitiba, which link Brazil unequivocally to the international photography scene.

— Angela Magalhāes/Nadja Fonseca Peregrino

Bibliography

  • Kossoy, B., Origens e expansão de fotografia no Brasil (1980).
  • Billeter, E., Fotografie Lateinamerika von 1860 bis heute (1981).
  • Vasquez, P., Brazilian Photography in the Nineteenth Century (1988).
  • Costa, H., and Rodrigues, R., A fotografia moderna no Brasil (1995).
  • Watriss, W., and Zamora, L. P. (eds.), Image and Memory: Photography from Latin America, 1866-1994 (1998)

Although there were visits by European dancers in the 19th century, ballet in Brazil did not really begin until 1927 when the former Pavlova dancer, the Russian ballerina Maria Oleneva, was invited to start a corps de ballet in the Teatro Municipal de Rio de Janeiro. Drawing her dancers from Brazil's ballet schools, Oleneva presented a dance company that performed in the opera seasons; a few years later her troupe was able to give complete ballet programmes. In 1934 the newly remodelled Teatro Municipal was reopened and a special season was organized that included Lifar and three of his dancers, working with Oleneva's corps de ballet. Five years later the company, the Municipal Ballet of Rio de Janeiro, gave its first official season with guest choreographer Vaslav Veltchek at the helm. Veltchek returned to Rio in 1943 to mount a new all-Brazilian dance season. At this point Yuco Lindenberg appeared on the scene, a choreographer who would later become director of the company. In 1945, with Schwezoff as artistic director, there was another major season featuring the Brazilian-born ballerinas Edith Pudelko, Rosanova, Tamara Capeller, and Vilma Lemos Cunha. The company went through hard times during Lindenberg's directorship in the late 1940s, with the director having to pay the dancers out of his own pocket. Lindenberg died in 1947 but it was not until 1950 that the company saw better days. It was in that year that Tatiana Leskova, one of the ballerinas of the Original Ballets Russes, was hired as ballet mistress, choreographer, and dancer for the Municipal Ballet of Rio de Janeiro. The classics were staged and guest choreographers like Massine, Dollar, and H. Lander were brought in to work with the company.

Meanwhile, São Paulo saw the foundation of the Ballet of the Fourth Centennial in 1953 under the direction of Milloss. In 1954 the company opened in Rio with a repertoire of Brazilian ballets. Although it survived only a few years, its influence on the dance scene was significant, with its emphasis on Brazilian designers, composers, and themes. Modern dance in Brazil was launched by Chinita Ullman, who had studied with Wigman in Germany; she later opened a school in São Paulo. In 1954 Nina Verchinina, another veteran of the Original Ballets Russes, moved to Rio. As both a choreographer, working with the Municipal Ballet, and a teacher, who had her own school for more than 30 years, she was a major influence on the development of modern dance in the country. Today Brazilian modern dance is represented by Stagium, founded and directed by Marika Gidali and Decio Otero, which tours internationally; Grupo Corpo, founded in 1975 by members of the Pederneiras family in Belo Horizonte; Cisne Negro, founded in 1977 in São Paulo by Hulda Bittencourt; and the Deborah Colker Dance Company, founded in 1993.

 
Brazil (brəzĭl'), Port. Brasil, officially Federative Republic of Brazil, republic (2005 est. pop. 186,113,000), 3,286,470 sq mi (8,511,965 sq km), E South America. By far the largest of the Latin American countries, Brazil occupies nearly half the continent of South America, stretching from the Guiana Highlands in the north, where it borders Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana, to the plains of Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina in the south. In the west it spreads to the equatorial rain forest, bordering on Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia; in the east it juts far out into the Atlantic toward Africa. Brasília is the capital; the largest cities are São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Land

Brazil's vast territory covers a great variety of land and climate, for although Brazil is mainly in the tropics (it is crossed by the equator in the north and by the Tropic of Capricorn in the south), the southern part of the great central upland is cool and yields the produce of temperate lands. Most of Brazil's large cities are on the Atlantic coast or the banks of the great rivers.

The rain forests of the Amazon River basin occupy all the north and north central portions of Brazil. With the opening of the interior in the 1970s and 80s, these rain forests were heavily cut and burned for industrial purposes, farming, and grazing land. Beginning in the late 1980s, popular international movements, along with changes in government policy, began to reduce the rate of deforestation, but by the mid-1990s extensive burning was again occurring. New policies appeared to slow deforestation in the early 21st cent., but it reemerged as a significant problem in late 2007.

The Amazon region includes the states of Amazonas, Pará, Acre, Amapá, Roraima, and Rondônia; its chief city is Manaus. Although it is not as developed as other parts of Brazil, the Amazon region produces timber, rubber, and other forest products such as Brazil nuts and pharmaceutical plants. Gold mining, ecotourism, and fishing are also important. At the mouth of the Amazon is the city of Belém, chief port of N Brazil.

Southeast of the Amazon mouth is the great seaward outthrust of Brazil, the region known as the Northeast. The states of Maranhão and Piauí form a transitional zone noted for its many babassu and carnauba palms. The Northeast proper-including the states of Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe, and the northern part of Bahia-was the center of the great sugar culture that for centuries dominated Brazil. The Northeast has also contributed much to the literature and culture of Brazil. In these states the general pattern is a narrow coastal plain (formerly supporting the sugarcane plantations and now given over to diversified subtropical crops) and a semiarid interior, or sertão, subject to recurrent droughts. This region has been the object of vigorous reclamation efforts by the government.

The "bulge" of Brazil reaches its turning point at the Cape of São Roque. To the northeast lie the islands of Fernando de Noronha, and to the south is the port of Natal. South of the "corner" of Brazil, the characteristic pattern of S Brazilian geography becomes notable: the narrow and interrupted coastal lowlands are bordered on the west by an escarpment, which in some places reaches the sea. Above the escarpment is the great Brazilian plateau, which tapers off in the southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul, where it is succeeded by the plains of the Río de la Plata country. The escarpment itself appears from the sea as a mountain range, generally called the Serra do Mar [coast range], and the plateau is interrupted by mountainous regions, such as that in Bahia, which separates E Bahia from the valley of the São Francisco River.

The chief cities of the Northeast are the ports of Recife in Pernambuco and Salvador in Bahia. There are a number of excellent harbors farther south: Vitória in Espírito Santo; Rio de Janeiro, the former capital, one of the most beautiful and most capacious harbors in the world; Santos, the port of São Paulo and the one of the greatest coffee ports in the world; and Pôrto Alegre in Rio Grande do Sul.

In the east and southeast is the heavily populated region of Brazil-the states that in the 19th and 20th cent. received the bulk of European immigrants and took hegemony away from the old Northeast. The state of Rio de Janeiro, with the great steel center of Volta Redonda, is heavily industrialized. Neighboring São Paulo state has even more industry, as well as extensive agriculture. The city of São Paulo, on the plateau, has continued the vigorous and aggressive development that marked the region in the 17th and 18th cent., when the paulistas went out in the famed bandeiras (raids), searching for slaves and gold and opening the rugged interior. They were largely responsible for the development of the gold and diamond mines of Minas Gerais state, the second most populous state in Brazil, and for the building of its old mining center of Vila Rica (Ouro Prêto), succeeded by Belo Horizonte as capital. Minas has some of the finest iron reserves in the world, as well as other mineral wealth, and has become industrialized.

Settlement also spread from São Paulo southward, particularly in the 19th and early 20th cent. when coffee from São Paulo's terra roxa [purple soil] had become the basis of Brazilian wealth, and coffee growing spread to Paraná. That state, in the west, runs out to the "corner" where Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay meet at the natural marvel of the Iguaçu Falls on the Paraná River. The huge Itaipú Dam, built from the early 1970s through the mid-1990s by Paraguay and Brazil, provides power for most of southern Brazil. The more southern states of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, developed to a large extent by German and Slavic immigrants, are primarily cattle-raising areas with increasing industrial importance. Frontier development is continuing in central Brazil. The state of Mato Grosso is still largely devoted to stock raising. The transcontinental railroad from Bolivia spans the southern part of the state. The federal district of Brasília was carved out of the neighboring plateau state of Goiás, to the east, and the national capital was transferred to the planned city of Brasília in 1960.

People

Brazil has the largest population in South America and is the fifth most populous country in the world. The people are diverse in origin, and Brazil often boasts that the new "race" of Brazilians is a successful amalgam of African, European, and indigenous strains, a claim that is truer in the social than the political or economic realm. More than half the population is of European descent, while another 40% are of mixed African and European ancestry. Portuguese is the official language and nearly universal; English is widely taught as a second language. Most of the estimated 350,000 to 550,000 indigenous peoples (chiefly of Tupí or Guaraní linguistic stock) are found in the rain forests of the Amazon River basin; 12% of Brazil's land has been set aside as indigenous areas. About 75% of the population is at least nominally Roman Catholic; there is a growing Protestant minority.

Economy

Brazil has one of the world's largest economies, with well-developed agricultural, mining, manufacturing, and service sectors. Vast disparities remain, however, in the country's distribution of land and wealth. Roughly one fifth of the workforce is involved in agriculture. The major commercial crops are coffee (Brazil is the world's largest producer and exporter), citrus fruit (especially juice oranges, of which Brazil also is the world's largest producer), soybeans, wheat, rice, corn, sugarcane, cocoa, cotton, tobacco, and bananas. Cattle, pigs, and sheep are the most numerous livestock, and Brazil is a major beef and poultry exporter. Timber is also important, although much is illegally harvested.

Brazil has vast mineral wealth, including iron ore (it is the world's largest producer), tin, quartz, chrome ore, manganese, industrial diamonds, gem stones, gold, nickel, bauxite, uranium, and platinum. Recently discovered offshore petroleum and natural gas deposits could also make the nation a significant oil and gas producer. There is extensive food processing, and the leading manufacturing industries produce textiles, shoes, chemicals, steel, aircraft, motor vehicles and parts, and machinery. Most of Brazil's electricity comes from water power, and it possesses extensive untapped hydroelectric potential, particularly in the Amazon basin.

In addition to coffee, Brazil's exports include transportation equipment, iron ore, soybeans, footwear, motor vehicles, concentrated orange juice, beef, and tropical hardwoods. Machinery, electrical and transportation equipment, chemical products, oil, and electronics are major imports. Most trade is with China, the United States, Argentina, and Germany. Brazil is a member of Mercosur.

Government

Brazil is governed under the 1988 constitution as amended. The president, who is elected by popular vote for a four-year term (and may serve two terms), is both head of state and head of government. There is a bicameral legislature consisting of an upper Federal Senate and a lower Chamber of Deputies. The 81 senators are elected for eight years and the 513 deputies are elected for four years. The president may unilaterally intervene in state affairs. Administratively, the country is divided into 26 states and one federal district (Brasília); each state has its own governor and legislature. The main political parties are the Brazilian Democratic Movement party, the Liberal Front party (now known as the Democrats party), the Democratic Labor party, the Brazilian Social Democracy party, and the Workers party.

History

Early History

There is evidence suggesting possible human habitation in Brazil more than 30,000 years ago, and scholars have found artifacts, including cave paintings, that all agree date back at least 11,000 years. By the time Europeans arrived there was a relatively small indigenous population, but the archaeological record indicates that densely populated settlements had previously existed in some areas; smallpox and other European diseases are believed to have decimated these settlements prior to extensive European exploration. The indigenous peoples that survived can be classified into two main groups, a partially sedentary population that spoke the Tupian language and had similar cultural patterns, and those that moved from place to place in the vast land. It is estimated that approximately a million indigenous people were scattered throughout the territory.

Whether or not Brazil was known to Portuguese navigators in the 15th cent. is still an unsolved problem, but the coast was visited by the Spanish mariner Vicente Yáñez Pinzón (see under Pinzón, Martín Alonso) before the Portuguese under Pedro Alvares Cabral in 1500 claimed the land, which came within the Portuguese sphere as defined in the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494). Little was done to support the claim, but the name Brazil is thought to derive from the Portuguese word for the red color of brazilwood [brasa=glowing coal], which the early visitors gathered. The indigenous people taught the explorers about the cultivation of corn, the construction of hammocks, and the use of dugout canoes. The first permanent settlement was not made until 1532, and that was at São Vicente in São Paulo. Development of the Northeast was begun about the same time under Martím Afonso de Sousa as first royal governor. Salvador was founded in 1539, and 12 captaincies were established, stretching inland from the Brazilian coast.

Portuguese claims, somewhat lackadaisically administered, did not go unchallenged. French Huguenots established themselves (1555) on an island in Rio de Janeiro harbor and were routed in 1567 by a force under Mem de , who then founded the city of Rio de Janeiro. The Dutch made their first attack on Salvador (Bahia) in 1624, and in 1633 the vigorous Dutch West India Company was able to capture and hold not only Salvador and Recife but the whole of the Northeast; the region was ably ruled by John Maurice of Nassau. No aid was forthcoming from Portugal, which had been united with Spain in 1580 and did not regain its independence until 1640. It was a naval expedition from Rio itself that drove out the Dutch in 1654. The success of the colonists helped to build their self-confidence.

Farther south, the bandeirantes from São Paulo had been trekking westward since the beginning of the 17th cent., thrusting far into Spanish territory and extending the western boundaries of Brazil, which were not delimited until the negotiations of the Brazilian diplomat Rio Branco in the late 19th and early 20th cent. The Portuguese also had ambitions to control the Banda Oriental (present Uruguay) and in the 18th cent. came into conflict with the Spanish there; the matter was not completely settled even by the independence of Uruguay in 1828.

The sugar culture came to full flower in the Northeast, where the plantations were furnishing most of the sugar demanded by Europe. Unsuccessful at exploiting the natives for the backbreaking labor of the cane fields and sugar refineries, European colonists imported Africans in large numbers as slaves. Dependence on a one-crop economy was lessened by the development of the mines in the interior, particularly those of Minas Gerais, where gold was discovered late in the 17th cent. Mining towns sprang up, and Ouro Prêto became in the 18th cent. a major intellectual and artistic center, boasting such artists as the sculptor Aleijadinho. The center of development began to swing south, and Rio de Janeiro, increasingly important as an export center, supplanted Salvador as the capital of Brazil in 1763.

Ripples from intellectual stirrings in Europe that preceded the French Revolution and the successful American Revolution brought on an abortive plot for independence among a small group of intellectuals in Minas; the plot was discovered and the leader, Tiradentes, was put to death. When Napoleon's forces invaded Portugal, the king of Portugal, John VI, fled (1807) to Brazil, and on his arrival (1808) in Rio de Janeiro that city became the capital of the Portuguese Empire. The ports of the colony were freed of mercantilist restrictions, and Brazil became a kingdom, of equal status with Portugal. In 1821 the king returned to Portugal, leaving his son behind as regent of Brazil. New policies by Portugal toward Brazil, tightening colonial restrictions, stirred up wide unrest.

Independence and the Birth of Modern Brazil

The young prince eventually acceded to popular sentiment, and advised by the Brazilian José Bonifácio, on Sept. 7, 1822, on the banks of the Ipiranga River, allegedly uttered the fateful cry of independence. He became Pedro I, emperor of Brazil. Pedro's rule, however, gradually kindled increasing discontent in Brazil, and in 1831 he had to abdicate in favor of his son, Pedro II.

The reign of this popular emperor saw the foundation of modern Brazil. Ambitions directed toward the south were responsible for involving the country in the war (1851-52) against the Argentine dictator, Juan Manuel de Rosas, and again in the War of the Triple Alliance (1865-70) against Paraguay. Brazil drew little benefit from either; far more important were the rise of postwar discontent in the military and beginnings of the large-scale European immigration that was to make SE Brazil the economic heart of the nation. Railroads and roads were constructed, and today the region has an excellent transportation system.

The plantation culture of the Northeast was already crumbling by the 1870s, and the growth of the movement to abolish slavery, spurred by such men as Antônio de Castro Alves and Joaquim Nabuco, threatened it even more. The slave trade had been abolished in 1850, and a law for gradual emancipation was passed in 1871. In 1888 while Pedro II was in Europe and his daughter Isabel was governing Brazil, slavery was completely abolished. The planters thereupon withdrew their support of the empire, enabling republican forces, aided by a military at odds with the emperor, to triumph.

In 1889 the republic was established by a bloodless revolution, with Marshal Manuel Deodoro da Fonseca as its first president. The rivalry of the states and the power of the army in government, especially under Fonseca's unpopular Jacobinist successor, Marshal Floriando Peixoto, caused the political situation to remain uneasy. The expanding market for Brazilian coffee and more particularly the wild-rubber boom brought considerable wealth as the 19th cent. ended.

Brazil in the Twentieth Century

The creation of rubber plantations in Southeast Asia brought the wild-rubber boom to a halt and hurt the economy of the Amazon region after 1912. Brazil sided with the Allies in World War I, declaring war in Oct., 1917, and shared in the peace settlement, but later (1926) it withdrew from the League of Nations. Measures to reverse the country's growing economic dependence on coffee were taken by Getúlio Vargas, who came into power through a coup in 1930. By changing the constitution and establishing a type of corporative state he centralized government (the Estado Nôvo-new state) and began the forced development of basic industries and diversification of agriculture. His mild dictatorial rule, although it aroused opposition, reflected a new consciousness of nationality, which was expressed in the paintings of Cândido Portinari and the music of Heitor Villa-Lobos.

World War II brought a new boom (chiefly in rubber and minerals) to Brazil, which joined the Allies in 1942, after coming close to backing Germany, and began taking a larger part in inter-American affairs. In 1945 the army forced Vargas to resign, and Gen. Eurico Gaspar Dutra was elected president. Brazil's economic growth was plagued by inflation, and this issue enabled Vargas to be elected in 1950. His second administration was marred by economic problems and political infighting, and in 1954 he committed suicide. Juscelino Kubitschek was elected president in 1955. Under Kubitschek the building of Brasília and an ambitious program of highway and dam construction were undertaken. The inflation problem persisted.

On Apr. 21, 1960, Brasília became Brazil's official capital, signaling a new commitment to develop the interior of the country. In 1960 Jânio da Silva Quadros was elected by the greatest popular margin in Brazilian history, but his autocratic, unpredictable manner aroused great opposition and undermined his attempts at reform. He resigned within seven months. Vice President João Goulart was his successor. Goulart's leftist administration was weakened by political strife and seemingly insurmountable economic chaos, and in 1964 he was deposed by a military insurrection. Congress elected Gen. Castelo Branco to fill out his term. Goulart's supporters and other leftists were removed from power and influence throughout Brazil and, in 1965, the president's extraordinary powers were extended and all political parties were dissolved.

A new constitution was adopted in 1967, and Marshall Costa e Silva succeeded Castelo Branco. In 1968, Costa e Silva recessed Congress and assumed one-man rule. In 1969, Gen. Emílio Garrastazú Médici succeeded Costa e Silva. Terrorism of the right and left became a feature of Brazilian life. The military police responded to guerrilla attacks with widespread torture and the formation of death squads to eradicate dissidents. This violence abated somewhat in the mid-1970s. Gen. Ernesto Geisel succeeded Médici as president in 1974. By this time, Brazil had become the world's largest debtor.

In 1977 Geisel dismissed Congress and instituted a series of constitutional and electoral reforms, and in 1978 he repealed all emergency legislation. His successor, Gen. João Baptista de Oliveira Figueiredo, presided over a period (1979-85) of tremendous industrial development and increasing movement toward democracy. Despite these improvements, economic and social problems continued and the military maintained control of the government. Civilian government was restored in 1985 under José Sarney, and illiterate citizens were given the right to vote. Sarney's reforms were initially successful, but increasing inflation brought antigovernment protests.

In 1988 a new constitution came into force, reducing the workweek and providing for freedom of assembly and the right to strike, and in 1990 President Fernando Collor de Mello was elected by popular vote. As a result of increasing international pressure, Collor sponsored programs to decrease the rate of deforestation in Amazon rain forests and to protect the autonomy of the indigenous Yanomami. In 1992, amid charges of wide-scale corruption within his government, Collor became the first elected president to be impeached by the Brazilian congress; he resigned as his trial began, to be replaced temporarily by his vice president, Itamar Augusto Franco. In 1994 the supreme court cleared Collor of corruption charges, but he was barred from public office until 2001.

Fernando Henrique Cardoso was elected president in Oct., 1994, and took office in Jan., 1995. The Cardoso government reduced state controls on the economy and privatized government-owned businesses in telecommunications, oil, mining, and electricity. With the help of a new stable currency, Cardoso was able to bring inflation under control; he also signed decrees expropriating new lands from private estates for redistribution to the landless poor.

Reelected in 1998, Cardoso was faced with an economic crisis as budget deficits and a decline in foreign exchange reserves led to currency devaluations and increased interest rates. Late in 1998, he appealed to the International Monetary Fund, which assembled a $42 billion aid package for the country. Brazil then began implementing a program of stringent economic policies that restored investor confidence by mid-1999 and led to economic growth. In May, 2000, Cardoso signed a fiscal responsibility law that limited spending by the states; the legislation was a result of fiscal crises in several Brazilian states.

A series of corruption scandals that undermined the governing coalition in early 2001 was followed by an energy crisis that led the government to order widespread cuts in electrical consumption from May until Mar., 2002; the crisis resulted from a drought that reduced the water available to produce hydropower and a decade-long increase in the demand for electricity. Popular dissatisfaction with economic austerities helped fuel the election of Lula da Silva, of the opposition Workers' party (PT), to the presidency in 2002. Da Silva's subsequent inauguration also marked the increasing stability of Brazilian democracy; it was the first transfer of power between elected presidents since 1961. The new president did not deviate greatly from his predecessor's economic program, however, which alienated many supporters on the left.

Da Silva's government was hurt by a campaign finance scandal in early 2004 and by an increase in unemployment, and suffered losses in popular and congressional support, although economic growth in 2004 was strong and unemployment subsequently decreased. In June, 2005, the president was further hurt PT officials were accused of buying the votes of some of its congressional coalition members. The charges, made by the leader of a party in coalition with the president, led to the resignation of the president's chief of staff (who was expelled from the congress late in the year) and of the Workers' party leader and treasurer and forced the president to reshuffle his cabinet to shore up coalition support for his government. A separate bribery scandal led to the resignation of the speaker of the House in September, and in Mar., 2006, the finance minister resigned when he also was ensnared in a bribery scandal. Although the president weathered the scandals, they led to the sidetracking of social-reform legislation he had proposed. Meanwhile, Amazonas state was hit by a severe drought in 2005 when the dry season saw much less rainfall than usual.

A weeklong outbreak of rampant gang violence and, in turn, police vengeance against the gangs erupted in mid-May, 2006, in São Paulo state when a gang sought revenge for a government attempt to break the influence of its imprisoned leaders and members. The violence exposed a variety of ills in Brazil criminal justice system, including corruption in the prisons and lawlessness among the police. São Paulo experienced outbreaks of criminal gang violence in July and August as well, and Rio de Janeiro experienced a series of gang attacks in late December.

The 2006 presidential election, in October, was inconclusive after the first round. Da Silva won a plurality, but failed to win the required majority; his campaign was hurt by the corruption scandals that affected the PT and a late-breaking dirty-tricks scandal involving his campaign organization. The runner-up, Geraldo Alckmin, the former governor of São Paulo state, saw his campaign hurt by the recent violence in the state. In the runoff at the end of the month, da Silva won handily, securing 60% of the vote. Corruption scandals continued to make news in 2007. The most prominent new cases occurred in May, when the energy minister resigned after corruption allegations against him became public and a major Brazilian newsmagazine reported that the Senate president had taken payoffs; toward the end of the year the Senate president resigned, though he remained a senator. In August, the supreme court voted to charge da Silva's former chief of staff and the former Workers' party treasurer with corruption. In Jan., 2008, Brazil became a net creditor nation, in large part due to debt-reduction measures undertaken by da Silva's government. Allegations that Brazil's intelligence agency had wiretapped Brazilian officials and politicians led the president to suspend the agency chief and other officials in Sept., 2008.

Bibliography

See G. Freyre, Order and Progress; Brazil from Monarchy to Republic (tr. 1970); F. de Azevedo, Brazilian Culture (tr. 1950, repr. 1971); E. B. Burns, A History of Brazil (2d ed. 1980); P. McDonough, Power and Ideology in Brazil (1981); T. C. Bruneau, The Church in Brazil: The Politics of Religion (1982); P. S. Falk and D. V. Fleischer, Brazil's Economic and Political Future (1988); R. P. Guirmaraes, Politics and Environment in Brazil (1991).


Psychoanalysis: Brazil
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Psychoanalysis aroused strong resistance when it first appeared in Brazil, provoking different reactions in different milieux. Salvador-born Julian Moreira (1873-1933) was the first to speak of Freud, in 1899. In 1903 he was appointed director of the national hospital for the insane in Rio de Janeiro, where he settled for the rest of his life. An innovative psychiatrist with an international reputation, he invited his disciples and collaborators to study psychoanalytic ideas. In 1914 Jenserico Aragão de Souza Pinto published "On Psychoanalysis. Sexuality in the Neuroses." Two conferences in 1919 awoke the interest of future psychoanalysts: Franco da Rocha's "On delusion in general" (at São Paulo) and "Psychology of a neurologist—Freud and his sexual theories" by Medeiros e Albuquerque in Rio de Janeiro.

In the 1920s, physicians in São Paulo and Rio sometimes criticized psychoanalysis in a Manichean fashion: on the one hand it was labeled charlatanesque while being enthusiastically hailed on the other. It must also be said that psychoanalytic ideas arrived at a time of great effervescence that saw the publication of "modernist" literary reviews and the Semana de Arte Moderna in 1922. Influenced by the European avant-garde, this atmosphere facilitated the acceptance of psychoanalytic ideas in São Paulo.

It was there that Durval Marcondes published several articles and Osorio Cesar wrote about the artistic productions of the mentally ill. Among Juliano Moreira's disciples in Rio, Antonio Austregesilo produced somewhat superficial work but others, such as Neves Manta, Carneiro Ayrosa, and Murilo de Campos, were doing more important work, and Deodato de Morais was busy producing his excellent book A psicanálise na Educacao (1927), while J. P. Porto-Carrero continued to work on many books and articles.

Again in Rio but outside Moreira's entourage, Henrique Roxo was quoting Freud as early as 1905 but he proved to be very organicistic in his views. During the 1930s Aloysio de Paula wrote on applied psychoanalysis and Gastão Pereira da Silva, a physician and journalist, contributed to propagating psychoanalytic ideas. Mauricio de Medeiros, who occupied the chair of psychiatry in the 1950s institution, supported the psychoanalytic approach.

Although born at Alagoas, Arthur Ramos, physician and psychiatrist, was considered to be a citizen of Bahia. His thesis Primitivo e locura (1925) was widely commented on and, between 1930 and 1932, he studied Freud's work with a small group. He settled in Rio in 1934. A professor of anthropology and ethnography, he became a renowned specialist on Africa and wrote some psychoanalytic works. At Porto Alegre in 1924, João Cesar de Castro wrote Concepcao Freudiana das Psiconeuroses and in France Martim Gomes published Les Rêves (1928). Ulisses Pernambucan came under the influence of Juliano Moreira while studying medicine in Rio. He went on to become a pioneer of social psychiatry in Brazil and considered psychoanalysis as the subtlest means of penetrating the human mind.

In 1927 Marcondes founded the first Sociedade brasiliera de psicanálise in São Paulo. Although it had no training section it was nevertheless recognized by the International Psychoanalytic Association with a view to propagating Freud's ideas. In 1928 Marcondes gave his blessing to the setting up of a subsidiary branch in Rio (V. Rocha, Marcondes, and Porto-Carrero).

Thanks to Marcondes's persistent pressure on Ernest Jones, the Jewish German psychoanalyst Adelheid L. Koch, who had been analyzed by Otto Fenichel, emigrated to São Paulo with her husband in 1936, and in 1937 began to analyze Durval Marcondes, Darcy Mendonça Uchôa, Virginia Bicudo, Flavio Dias, and Frank Philips, soon to be joined by three more patients. Because she was the only qualified analyst, she singlehandedly conducted analyses, gave seminars and acted as supervisor. The first São Paulo Grupo psicanalítico, which she founded in 1944 with her first analysands, was provisionally accepted in 1945 as the Sociedade brasileira de psicanálise de São Paulo (SBPSP). It received definitive recognition at the Amsterdam Congress (1951).

The early days in Rio de Janeiro were not so easy. Dissatisfied with the official teaching of psychiatry, a group of young physicians founded the Centro de estudos Julian Moreira in 1944 and envisaged two possible hypotheses for the formation of a future psychoanalytic group: either to invite training analysts or seek training elsewhere. Intense correspondence with foreign analysts bore no fruit. Thus, from 1945 to 1947, Alcyon Baer Bahia, Danilo Perestrello, Marialzira Perestrello, and Walderedo Ismael de Oliveira began training at the Asociación Psicoanalítica Argentina (APA) with analysts who had qualified in Berlin, Paris, Vienna, and Buenos Aires.

In 1947 the Instituto brasileiro de psicanálise was founded in Rio in order to facilitate the legal arrival of foreign analysts. Mark Burke, analyzed by James Strachey and a member of the British Psycho-Analytic Society (BPS), arrived in February 1948. He was followed in December 1948 by Werner Kemper, a German psychoanalyst analyzed by Carl MüllerBraunschweig and who had worked during World War II in the Göring Institute before joining the DPG (Deutsche Psycoanalytische Gesellschaft). They both commenced training analyses almost immediately. In the beginning Burke and Kemper worked in collaboration with each other but in 1951 they separated amidst serious mutual reproaches. Kemper was expelled from the institute and, along with his analysands, founded the Centro de estudos psicanalíticos.

The four physicians who had gone to Buenos Aires returned between 1949 and 1950, both Perestrello and Walderedo having become associate members of the APA. Three groups were then formed: "the Argentineans," Burke's group, and Kemper's group. The "Argentine" group formed no alliances with either of the other two. When Burke suddenly left Brazil before his group had completed their training, three of his students left for London and the others completed their supervisions at São Paulo.

During the 1953 international conference in London, Kemper's group was recognized as a study group under the sponsorship of the SBPSP, and as the Sociedade psicanalítica do Rio de Janeiro (SPRJ) at the 1955 international conference in Geneva. Its founders included seven full members (Werner Kemper, Kattrin Kemper, Fabio Leite Lobo, Gerson Borsoi, Inaura Carneiro Leão Vetter, Luiz Guimarães Dahlheim, Noemy Rudolfer) and four associate members.

Three Brazilians arrived from London in 1954 and 1956 (two of them as associate members of the BPS). They became known as "the English." After a series of agreements and disagreements, the "Argentineans," the "English," and the "Burkians" finally accepted the sponsorship of São Paulo and were recognized as study groups at the Paris congress in 1957. The founders were the full members A. A. Bahia, D. Perestrello, and Walderedo I. de Oliveira (of the APA) and Henri-que Mendes (SBPSP), with, as associate members, Decio Sobres de Souza and Edgar Guimarães de Almeida (of the BPS), M. Perestrello (APA), Mario Pacheco de Almeida Prado (SBPSP), and three physicians who were finishing their training at São Paulo.

At the Copenhagen congress in 1959, the group was recognized as the Sociedade brasileira de psicanálise do Rio de Janeiro (SBPRJ), with fourteen founders from different backgrounds: the eight previously mentioned, along with Luiz L. Werneck, Joáo Côrtes de Barros, and Pedro Ferreira (already qualified with the SBPSP), M. T. Lyra (associate member of the BPS), Inaura Carneiro Leáo Vetter and Zenaira Aranha (SPRJ), analyzed by Kemper. In Rio Grande do Sul, Mario Martins, Zaira Martins (1945), and José Lemmertz (1947) began their analytic training with the APA. The Martins couple returned in 1947 and Lemmertz in 1949. They qualified a few years later.

During the Edinburgh congress in 1961, the Porto Alegre study group was accepted under the sponsorship of the SPRJ. And the Sociedade Psicanalítica de Porto Alegre (SPPA) was recognized at the Stockholm conference in 1963 with, as founders, the three previously mentioned members, along with Cyro Martins (APA), Celestino Prunes, and Ernesto La Porta (SPRJ), together with José Maria Santiago Wagner (already in training at Porto Alegre). In 1946 Iracy Doyle Ferreira left for the United States and trained at the William Alanson Institute of Psychiatry (WAIP). Upon returning she spread the contributions of Harry Stack Sullivan, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Abram Kardiner. Around 1950 she started several training analyses and, in 1952, founded the Instituto de Medicina Psicológica (IMP), which received WAIP authorization in 1953.

On May 6, 1967, the Associacão Brasileira de Psicanálise (ABP) was founded with a view to uniting the four societies recognized by the IPA in order to foster and provide assistance for future core and study groups and to publish a joint review. In 1975 the ABP created the Recife psychoanalytic core group and the Pelotas core group in 1987. Having met all the requirements of the IPA, these two groups were admitted as study groups. The Sociedade Psicanalítica de Recife and the Sociedade Psicanalítica de Pelotas became provisional study groups at the San Francisco congress in 1995. Three new study groups were recognized: the Porto Alegre group in 1992, the Ribeirão Preto group in 1993, and the Brasília group in 1994. During the Barcelona congress in 1997, the first of these groups was admitted as the Sociedade brasileira de Psicanálise de Porto Alegre. In 2005 four other core groups, located at Belo Horizonte, Campo Grande, Curitiba, and Espírito Santo were working with a view to being recognized as study groups.

Durval Marcondes, Mario Martins, and Danilo Perestrello were posthumously named honorary presidents of the ABP.

The military dictatorship (1964 to 1985) affected not only political life but also, in a direct and particularly harsh manner, the cultural life of the country. Ideas were suppressed and censorship was openly practiced in university, literary, artistic, and scientific circles, as witnessed by the events at the famous Instituto Oswaldo Cruz. The atrocities committed by groups and individuals in the name of "Institutional Acts" are known throughout the world. The psychoanalytic milieu also suffered an unhealthy influence. Although some candidates and analysts took an active part in the struggle for the redemocratization of the country, others proved to be full of anti-communist prejudice. However, some of these same colleagues, while being politically to the right, maintained a psychoanalytic position in their consulting rooms without blindly submitting to their political ideology.

In 1973 the clandestine newspaper Voz Operária denounced Amilcar Lobo Moreira da Silva, a candidate for the SPRJ (Rio I), as a member of the military police's torture squad. An analyst from the other Rio society, SBPRJ (Rio II), Helena Besserman Vianna, sent the press cutting to Argentina, where it was published in the review Questionamos, directed by Maria Langer. The denouncement was communicated to the IPA and other psychoanalytic societies, along with the name of the candidate and his analyst, Leáo Cabernite.

This courageous denouncement was not taken seriously by Serge Lebovici, president of the IPA, or by David Zimmermann, president of the Coordinating Committee for Psychoanalytic Organizations in Latin America (COPAL), nor was it credited by the managing council for Rio I, with Leáo Cabernite as its president. It was considered to be a "rumor" and "calumny" against Amilcar Lobo. A persecution campaign was started against the person who made the denunciation (who suffered the consequences in her society) and not against its subject.

An IPA committee visiting Rio came to no firm conclusion, but in October 1980 Amilcar Lobo was definitively excluded from the SPRJ as a trainee candidate. In 1981 ex-prisoners identified Amilcar Lobo before the Commission for the Rights of Man of the Brazilian Bar Association. When questioned, the ex-prisoners provided the following statements: "Lobo did not torture people directly but he supervised prisoners' health to determine whether they could continue to be tortured or not." Sometimes "Lobo acted in two stages: firstly he evaluated vital data and checked their capacity to resist torture, then he administered medicines intravenously in order to make it easier to acquire information." In 1986 a group of prisoners appeared at an assembly of the SPRJ to confirm these accusations. In 1988, when Lobo's guilt had been proven, the regional medical council struck him off the register of physicians. The federal council later amended the suspension to thirty days. Informed of this situation, the IPA wrote to the SPRJ stating the necessity of expelling Cabernite. Cabernite had resigned not long before in "disgust" at the IPA's attitude and now asked to be reinstated. In the course of an assembly in 1993 he was reinstated by vote. Disturbed by this resolution, which they considered to be contrary to the statutes, the president of Rio I, Claudio de Campos, and his colleagues in the managing council resigned from their positions. An ethics commission was formed to study the Cabernite case. After a two-year study, a long report recommended expelling Cabernite from the society and suspending another incriminated member, La Porta, for one year. At the end of 1995 an assembly of Rio I discussed the report and refused to accept the recommendations of the ethics commission. Six members resigned immediately. This was followed by a controversial debate, many members of the SPRJ being unable to accept this "lack of respect" for the study and efforts of the ethics commission. To highlight their difference from the leadership of Rio I without however resigning from it, they founded the Groupo Pró-Etica and published a small journal, Destacamento.

Other societies manifested their discontent when Cabernite was granted an amnesty, speaking of a possible sanction for the SPRJ. For several years the executive council of the IPA had not considered the Besserman-Lobo-Cabernite problem in an impartial fashion. In 1995, however, during the presidency of Horacio Etchegoyen, the executive committee rehabilitated Helena Besserman Vianna and in 1997 appointed an ad hoc investigating commission consisting of members from Europe and North and South America to study all the documents and present a report that would be available to all IPA members at Barcelona. Having heard all parties in the dispute, the executive council was to elucidate the problem in an objective manner.

In March, 1997, Cabernite resigned definitively from the SPRJ. The report considered him guilty of unethical and morally reprehensible conduct and concluded that he could not be admitted under any circumstances into any IPA-affiliated psychoanalytic society. During the Barcelona congress in July 1997, the executive council unanimously accepted and ratified the ad hoc commission's report.

Psychoanalytic ideas were first introduced at a university level by Marcondes, Bicudo, Danilo Perestrello, and Oliveira, and later by Mendonça Uchôa, Renato Mezzan, Portella Nunes, Prunes, P. Guedes, and Zimmermann. Medical (non-psychiatric) circles were pervaded with a dynamically charged atmosphere under the influence of Danilo Perestrello, Gernandes Pontes, Miller de Paiva, and Capizano, who inculcated psychosomatic concepts and accorded great importance to the physician-patient relationship, with the help of Mario and Cyro Martins, J. Mello Filho, A. Eksterman, and others. With regard to the relationship between psychoanalysis and the arts, literature, and mythology, it is essential to mention the contributions of Bahia, Cyro Martins, Meneghini, Hermann, Marialzira Perestrello, Nosek, Oliveira, Honigsztejn, David Azoubel, and many more. Nise da Silveira conducted research into the artistic production of mental patients and created the "Museu do Inconsciente." Some articles by these authors have become known abroad.

In 1928 Marcondes published the first and only issue of Revista brasileira de psicanálise, although the review reappeared in 1967 with the BPA. The SBPSP publishes the IDE review and its Institute publishes the Jornal de psicanálise. For two years the two Rio societies published the Revista de psicanálise do Rio de Janeiro. The SBPSP publishes TRIEB and the SPPA publishes the Revista de psicanálise de Porto Alegre.

It must be said that the country has other societies in addition to those affiliated with the IPA. The short-lived Sociedade de psicologia individual (Adlerian) was founded in the 1930s. In 1994, during the presidency of Horus Vital Brazil, the IMP took on the name Sociedade psicanalítica Iracy Doyle and was affiliated with the International Federation of Psychoanalytical Societies (IFPS). It publishes Tempo psicanalítico and Cadernos do Tempo psicanalítico. The Sociedade brasileira de psicoterapia de grupo was founded in December 1958 with twenty-six members and Walderedo de Oliveira as president. Following the foundation of the Associação brasileira de psicoterapia analítica de grupo, the affiliated societies changed their name to "Analytic group psychotherapy." The Rio de Janeiro society is currently called GRADIVA. The Círculo brasileiro de psicanálise, founded in 1956 in southern Brazil, is affiliated to the IFPS and comprises about ten sections scattered over several cities. The Recife society publishes two reviews: Revista psicanalítica and Cadernos de psicanálise. In 1963, in Belo Horizonte, Father Malomar Lund Edelweiss founded the Círculo psicanalítico de psicologia profunda (Igor Caruso), affiliated with the IFPS, which in turn led to the founding of other societies.

Because the two Rio IPA-affiliated societies refused to accept non-physicians, a group of nine psychologists founded the Sociedade de psicologia clínica in Rio in 1971 with Maria Regina Domingues de Morais as president. In 1989 it changed its name to Sociedade de psicanálise da cidade and published Foco and Cadernos de psicanálise. In 1967 Werner Kemper returned to Germany leaving his wife Kattrin and two sons in Brazil. In 1968 she left the SPRJ, followed by several of her analysands. In 1969 four of them along with four people linked to Father Malomar founded the Círculo psicanalítico do Rio de Janeiro (affiliated to the IFPS), which Kattrin Kemper joined in 1972.

In São Paulo the Sedes Sapientiae, founded in the 1970s, took an active interest in social problems, organized specialist courses, a psychoanalysis department from 1985, and published Percurso. With a Jungian orientation, the Sociedade brasiliera de psicologia analítica (founded in São Paulo in 1975) and the Associação jungiana brasileira operate in São Paulo and Rio. They are both affiliated with the International Association for Analytic Psychology.

There are many Lacanian societies. The Campo freudiano was dissolved after operating for fifteen years and, spurred on by Jacques-Alain Miller, eleven founders created the Escola Brasileira de Psicanálise do campo freudiano (EBP) in Rio de Janeiro in June 1995. The EBP is a member of the World Association of Psychoanalysis and numbers five sections and three secretariats. It would be impossible to mention all the societies and groups in the different schools: It is currently essential to maintain a certain pluralism in terms of ideas.

Following the IFPS 1989 congress, a Forum brasileiro de psicanalíse was opened up to all societies with a view to reconciling different theories. Emilio Rodrigué, a former full member of the APA, has lived at Salvador (Bahia) for more than twenty years. Without belonging to any society, he is respected for his profound humanistic culture and his independent spirit.

Freud's work has been and still continues to be the basic subject of study in the majority of Brazilian societies. As early as 1950, Kleinian ideas enjoyed great popularity in Rio and São Paulo, thanks to Decio de Souza, V. Bicudo, Philips, and Lyra, and thanks to the couple Mario and Zaira Martins at Porto Alegre. Some Rio and São Paulo analysts underwent a second analysis and attended seminars and supervisions at the British Society. Several Kleinians visited Brazil. For several years the founders and members of societies not affiliated to the IPA attended courses by Arminda Aberastury and Mauricio Knobel. Sándor Ferenczi, Karl Abraham, Wilhelm Reich, and William Fairbairn were studied in turn. Donald Winnicott has been taught since 1970. Bahia and Philips, and then León Grinberg, introduced Wilfred Bion in the 1970s, and his theories continue to receive widespread dissemination. Heinz Kohut's self psychology has been taught since 1980. Many societies not affiliated to the IPA conduct in-depth studies of Lacanian thought, which was not introduced in IPA societies until the end of the twentieth century. The different schools are involved in disputing the right to dispense training in a more democratic manner than formerly.

Bibliography

Besserman-Vianna, Helena. (1997). Politique de la psychanalyse faceà la dictature età la torture. N'en parlezà personne. Paris: L'Harmattan.

Galvão, Luis Almeida Prado. (1967). "Notas para a história de psicanálise em São Paulo." In Revista brasileira psicanálítica, 1 (1), 46-68.

Perestrello, Marialzira. (1992). Histoire de la psychanalyse au Brésil des origines à 1937. Frénésie, 2 (10), 283-304.

——. (1992). A Psicanálise no Brasil. Encontros: psicanálise. Rio de Janeiro: Imago.

Perestrello, Marialzira, et al. (1986). História da Sociedade brasileira de psicanálise do Rio de Janeiro: suas origens e fundação. Rio de Janeiro: Imago.

Sagawa, Roberto Yutaka. (1980). Durval Marcondes e o início do movimento psicanalítico brasileiro. Cadernos Freud-Lacan, 2.

—MARIALZIRA PERESTRELLO

History 1450-1789: Portuguese Colonies: Brazil
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This entry is a subtopic of Portuguese Colonies.

On 22 April 1500 Pedro Álvares Cabral (1467 or 1468–1520), commander of the thirteen-ship fleet that was following up Vasco da Gama's (c. 1460–1524) epoch-making voyage to India (1497–1498), sighted Brazil or, more accurately, Portuguese America. In 1501 Gonçalo Coelho led an expedition that explored almost two thousand miles of Brazil's coastline. The following year Brazil was leased to brazilwood interests, and over the next few decades several trading posts (feitorias) were established. By 1516 King Manuel (1469–1521; ruled 1495–1521) was sending small coast guard fleets to patrol against French and Spanish interlopers in the region. On 3 December 1530 Martim Afonso de Sousa and his brother Pero Lopes de Sousa, with a fleet of five ships carrying almost four hundred settlers, sailed from Portugal to explore and colonize Portuguese America. They set up a colony at São Vicente in 1532. In 1534 King John (João) III (1502–1557; ruled 1521–1557) divided Brazil into fifteen captaincies stretching from the Amazon in the north to Sant'Ana in the south and granted them to twelve lord proprietors (donatários). The two most successful of these captaincies were Pernambuco in the northeast and São Vicente in the south.

In 1548 the administration of Portuguese America was placed in the hands of a governor-general. The first governor-general arrived the following year and made Salvador in Bahia his capital shortly after that captaincy came under royal control. As time went by an increasing number of other captaincies also became royal colonies. By 1540 there were an estimated two thousand Portuguese settlers in Brazil. By 1600 the number had risen to twenty-five thousand. By the middle of the seventeenth century the Portuguese population had probably reached fifty thousand.

In 1551 Portuguese America's first bishopric also was established in Bahia. It remained Portuguese America's only diocese until 1676–1677, when three new dioceses—Rio de Janeiro, Olinda, and Maranhão—were created and Bahia was raised to the status of an archdiocese. In the eighteenth century another three dioceses were created: Pará (1719), Mariana (1745), and São Paulo (1745). Though these dioceses had parish priests under their jurisdictions, members of the regular orders probably played a more important role in Brazil's religious life. The Jesuits, who began arriving in 1549, were the most important order until their expulsion in 1759. Franciscans, Benedictines, and Carmelites also played important roles beginning in the late sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century they were joined by the Capuchins, Mercedarians, and Oratorians. Because of crown prohibitions, Brazil was slow in establishing convents for women, the first one not being founded until 1677. A tribunal of the Inquisition was never established in Brazil, though there were visitations in 1591–1595 (Bahia and Pernambuco), 1618 (Bahia), and 1763–1769 (Pará).

In 1549 a chief justice official—the ouvidorgeral—was appointed for all of Portuguese America (there were also justice officials for each of the captaincies). It was not until 1609 that judges of Brazil's first High Court (Relação) arrived in Brazil's capital. The High Court was disbanded in 1626 but was revived in 1652.

Toward the end of the sixteenth century the most important captaincies in Brazil, ranked by wealth, mostly from sugar production, were Pernambuco and Bahia (the two having more than 80 percent of the wealth). The other captaincies included Itamaracá, Ilhéus, Espírito Santo, Rio de Janeiro, São Vicente, Porto Seguro, and Paraíba. Paraíba had been occupied by the Portuguese in 1584 as they expanded northward from Pernambuco. In 1599 Natal was founded in what became Rio Grande do Norte.

The late sixteenth century and the seventeenth century were the age of sugar in Brazil. The sugar industry required large amounts of capital and credit. One of its greatest demands was labor. Initially American Indians made up the workforce, but they were soon replaced by African slaves, who quickly became the most numerous part of Brazil's population. The best estimate is that during the years 1500–1800 more than 2.5 million African slaves arrived in Portuguese America, 1.7 million during the eighteenth century.

By the middle of the seventeenth century tobacco had become another important crop for local consumption, for export to Europe, and for use in the African slave trade. Cattle raising for food, transportation, and hides was another important part of the colonial Brazilian economy, especially on the various frontier regions.

In 1612 a fort was established in Ceará. By 1615 the French were ousted from Maranhão, and the following year the town of Belém do Pará was founded. In 1621 the state of Maranhão was created. Including Maranhão, Pará, and Ceará, this state was separated from the jurisdiction of the governor general in Bahia, and it remained separate for more than a century and a half. However, the European population remained sparse even into the eighteenth century. The economy depended heavily on Indian labor, and there were frequent clashes between missionaries (especially the Jesuits) and the colonists for such labor. Cacao, which grew wild, became an important product in Pará. Other extractive forest products contributed to the region's economy.

In the meantime, in the south São Paulo, founded in 1554 by the Jesuit Manuel da Nóbrega (1517–1570), became an important center for expansion into land on the Spanish side of the line of the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494). By the seventeenth century bandeirantes were radiating from São Paulo, looking for precious minerals or for Amerindians to enslave or both. These bandeirantes, or Paulistas, pushed southward, reaching the province of Guairá and raiding Spanish Jesuit mission villages. They also pushed westward and northward, following the many tributaries of the Paraná-Paraguay and Amazon River systems.

In 1624 the Dutch captured the city of Bahia and held it for a year before being ousted by a joint Spanish-Portuguese armada. In 1630 the Dutch attacked and captured Recife and Olinda in Pernambuco and gradually expanded southward to Sergipe and northward to Maranhão. However, Brazilian and Portuguese resistance foiled Dutch efforts to establish themselves permanently in Portuguese America. In 1654, with the surrender of Recife, the Dutch presence in Brazil came to an end. Zumbi, head of the runaway slave community of Palmares, south of Pernambuco, was defeated and killed in 1695, bringing an end to almost a century of efforts to destroy the largest refuge of runaway slaves in the Americas.

Though some alluvial gold had been found in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was not until the early 1690s that major gold discoveries began to be made in what became the captaincy of Minas Gerais. In 1709 the captaincy of São Paulo and Minas Gerais was established in an attempt to bring order to that region and to better collect the crown's share of mining revenues. In 1722 gold was discovered further west in Goiás and Cuiabá. In 1729 diamonds were discovered in Serro do Frio in Minas Gerais, about 150 miles north of the first gold discoveries. The precious stones soon became a royal monopoly. Large numbers of slaves were imported into the mining regions from Africa, and by 1750 Minas Gerais was the most heavily populated captaincy in Portuguese America.

In 1680 Colônia do Sacramento on the east bank of the Río de la Plata was founded. An important center for contraband, it was frequently captured and later returned by Spaniards until it was ceded to them by the Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1777. In 1737 colonization of Rio Grande do Sul was begun. In 1748 the captaincy of Mato Grosso was created as the Portuguese sought to consolidate territory on what had originally been designated as being on the Spanish side of the line drawn by the Treaty of Tordesillas.

During the years (1750–1777) that the marquês of Pombal, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello (1699–1782), was in power as Portugal's chief minister, the remaining captaincies under private control were royalized and absorbed by nearby crown captaincies. Brazil's second High Court (Relação) was established in Rio de Janeiro (1751). In 1763 the capital of Portuguese America was moved to Rio de Janeiro, and Brazil was raised to the status of a viceroyalty. The captaincy of São José do Rio Negro was founded in 1755. In the early 1770s the state of Grão Pará and Maranhão was incorporated into the state of Brazil, and in 1772 Brazil was divided into nine captaincy generals, some of them with subordinate captaincies.

Estimates of Brazil's population by the end of the eighteenth century vary greatly. An oft-cited statistic points to approximately 1 million whites, 1.5 million slaves, 400,000 free persons of African heritage, and several hundred thousand Brazilian Indians. Subsequent studies, however, suggest lower figures. What is clear, however, is that Brazil's population increased significantly during the last half of the eighteenth century.

Bibliography

Alden, Dauril. Royal Government in Colonial Brazil, with Special Reference to the Administration of the Marquis of Lavradio, Viceroy, 1769–1779. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1968.

Bethell, Leslie, ed. Colonial Brazil. Cambridge, U.K., 1987.

Boxer, C. R. The Golden Age of Brazil, 1695–1750: Growing Pains of a Colonial Society. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1962.

——. Salvador de Sá and the Struggle for Brazil and Angola, 1602–1686. London, 1952.

Diffie, Bailey W. History of Colonial Brazil, 1500–1792. Malabar, Fla., 1987.

Schwartz, Stuart B. Sovereignty and Society in Colonial Brazil: The High Court of Bahia and Its Judges, 1609–1751. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1973.

——. Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550–1835. Cambridge, U.K., 1985.

—FRANCIS A. DUTRA

The only Portuguese-speaking country in South America and the largest Portuguese-speaking country in the world, Brazil has been called "a country without a memory" by one of the leading guidebooks. Lack of memory, though, should not be interpreted as lack of history, as the mix of cultures in the country's gene pool is rich indeed, with a complexity and variety that show nowhere more than in the food.

Portuguese seaman Pedro Alvares Cabral was thousands of miles from his stated destination of the Cape of Good Hope when he arrived on 22 April 1500 and became the first European to walk on the land that would be named Brazil in 1511. The treaty of Tordesillas, signed in 1494, had divided up the globe and given all lands known and unknown east of an imaginary north-south line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands to the Portuguese. By 1532, when the first substantial Portuguese settlement was founded, the die had been cast based on Portuguese experiences in Asia and in Africa. Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre notes in The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization that Brazil was "a society agrarian in structure, slave holding in its technique of economic exploitation, and hybrid in composition, with an admixture of Indian and later of the Negro." Almost five hundred years later, these three major groups—Indian, Portuguese, and African—continue to form the matrix threads of Brazil's culinary culture.

Native Influences

French chronicler Jean de Lery's 1770 Histoire d'un voyage fait en terre du Bresil offers insights into the daily life of the native peoples and reminds readers that the women were responsible for much of the agriculture, the management of the entire house, and all of the cooking. Many of these culinary creations are still a vital part of the country's menu. Manioc or cassava (Manhiot esculenta, Manhiot aipi, or Manhiot dulcis) remains a major staple. The bitter cassava tuber, which required time-consuming preparation to remove the prussic acid (also known as hydrocyanic acid), was processed into a meal, which formed the basis of the diet. The liquid was also used and became the basis for tucupi, a condiment of cassava water, garlic, chili, chicory, and seasonings that is still prized today in the Amazon region. The Portuguese colonists at first confused the manioc with the true yam that they were familiar with from Africa. Soon, though, they were eating such Indian dishes as a form of cassava cake known as mbeieu or beiju, a cassava porridge or paste known as mingau, and pacoka or pacoca, a pulverized fish and cassava meal that has given its name to a popular contemporary pulverized peanut and sugar candy. Maize (Zea mays) was known, but never assumed the importance in Brazil that it had in other parts of Central and South America. Fish was also abundant and played a major role in the diet, with the pirarucu (Arapaima gigas) having the place of primacy. Fish was frequently prepared by roasting it in its own fat over a slow fire, then sealing it in earthenware jars. Other varieties of Amazon fish were prepared in this manner as was manatee, which was called peixe boi or ox fish.

Green vegetables were scarce, but nuts were consumed, particularly the cashew, as were the sweet potato, peanut, and cacao. Papaya (Carica papaya) and guava were eaten, as were pineapples. When the Portuguese brought bananas and citrus fruits, they were immediately adopted by the natives. Ripe fruit was eaten raw and green fruits grilled or roasted. Seasoning was done with chili; in fact the Indians were known for their overuse of the fiery capsicum as well as their abundant use of ginger and of lemon. Freyre cites a Jesuit account that cautions that excessive usage of the three resulted in frequent attacks of dysentery. Another of the lasting contributions of the native Brazilians to the cooking of today's Brazil has been the cooking utensils. The mortar, earthenware water jug, and wicker sieve, along with calabash utensils large and small, all hark back to the first Brazilians.

Portuguese Colonization

Portugal at the time of the colonization of Brazil was a nation recovering from a lengthy period of Moorish occupation. Old Portuguese cookbooks like Arte de Cozinha, published in 1692 by "a royal cook," list numerous recipes for "Moorish lamb," "Moorish fish," and the like. The everyday diets of the Portuguese in the years after the Moors fluctuated between feast and famine. The upper classes hovered between the excesses required on religious feast days, when meals had to be provided to royal retainers, rent collectors, and religious persons for show and status, and the far more frequent days when bread and radishes were the norm. For the poor, bread and onions were typical fare, and meals of sardines or other fish were a treat; meat was rarely tasted. Much of the agricultural wealth of the country was maintained in the convents and monasteries.

In the new land, the colonists began to shape their diet with the foods they knew either in their Iberian home or in the Asian and African colonies. They brought figs, citrus fruits, coconuts, rice, watermelon, the pumpkin called Guinea pumpkin (West Indian cooking pumpkin or Cucurbita maxima Duchtre), mustard, cabbage, lettuce, coriander, cucumbers, watercress, eggplant, carrots, and more. Gabriel Soares de Sousa, in his Tratado descriptivo do Brasil em 1587, offers a seemingly exhaustive listing of the plants brought. He adds that a green belt of one to two leagues encircled Salvador and provided much of the fruits and vegetables for the capital. Olive oil, butter, chickens, and eggs all arrived, as did pigs and the art of preserving pork and other meats.

Although the colonists brought an abundance of ingredients with them, they were so preoccupied with acquiring fortunes in the new land that their diets did not markedly improve. All was sacrificed to King Sugar. Cattle were banished because they destroyed the cane, and domestic agriculture was neglected. By the seventeenth century, travelers were astonished to note that large cities had no slaughterhouses as there were no cattle to send to them. The colonists, though, did have a major influence on the cooking pots of contemporary Brazil, not only by transporting and acclimatizing countless plant species, but also by establishing a countrywide culture—that of Portugal, with its abundant use of cabbage and kale, its hearty soups and rich stews, its traditions of grilling, and the Iberian fondness for sweets. (The Iberian "sweet tooth" combines the North African love for sugar and a tradition of intricate confections developed in Roman Catholic convents.) It is to the mother country that Brazil owes dishes such as the dense, rice-filled chicken soup known as canja, the strips of leafy kale greens that accompany the feijoada that is the national dish, and a national taste for meat and potatoes.

African Influence

The African hand in the Brazilian cooking pot completes the triptych, most noticeably in the northeastern states, where the plantation system held greatest sway. There, from virtually the inception of colonization, Africans were in control of the kitchens of the Big Houses. In Bahia, they were from the Bight of Benin and the Sudanese regions of West Africa. In Rio and Pernambuco, they were mainly Bantu. All brought their own tastes in food. The religious traditions of the African continent crossed the Atlantic as well, and in the hands of the Big House cooks, many ritual dishes were secularized and joined the culinary repertoire. The akara, a bean fritter fried in palm oil by the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria, was transformed into the Brazilian black-eyed pea fritter, or acaraje; fon akassa changed only its spelling to become the acaca, and the Angolan cornmeal porridge known as funji kept its name and its spelling as the dishes of the African continent were turned into Brazilian standbys.

African cooks embellished dishes with ginger, chilies, and pulverized cashew nuts and maintained the tastes of coastal Africa in the continued use of dried smoked shrimp and palm oil. They adapted recipes and adopted the ingredients of the new land to create a cooking so unique that the food of the state of Bahia is considered by many the linchpin that connects the cooking of Africa with that of the Western Hemisphere.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, new immigrants joined the cultural mix that is Brazil: Japanese arrived to work on the coffee plantations, Syrians and Lebanese arrived and became shopkeepers and merchants, German and Swiss farmers settled in the southern states, and Italians established themselves in São Paulo. Each group brought its own dishes, and soon stroganoff and sushi, risotto and sauerbraten could claim pages in any Brazilian cookbook. The result is a country where the regional cuisine is as distinctive as it is varied.

Regional Cuisines

The Amazon region still recalls the country's first inhabitants in dishes like beijus, cassava flour crackers that are sometimes flavored with coconut, and pato no tucupi, duck cooked with tucupi, a condiment prepared from cassava liquid with garlic, chicory, and the leaves of the jambu plant, which produce a slight numbing effect on the tongue. The condiment also turns up in tacaca, a soup that also contains dried shrimp and tapioca. Fish from the river abound, with the enormous pirarucu and the flavorful tuncare. Tropical fruits range from the little known, like the guarana (the seeds of which make a highly caffeinated beverage), cupuacu, a relative of cacao, and the fragrant jambo, or rose apple, to the more familiar maracudja, or passion fruit, and cashew. There are also Brazil nuts, called castanha do para.

Culinary historian Luís da Câmara Cascudo claims that the food of the country's northeast region can be broken down into that of Bahia and the rest of the region. The tastes of the rest of the region are simple ones, featuring dried meats called charque, carne seca, or carne do sol. Stewed with beans and served with rice and abundant sprinklings of cassava meal, the meals are as stripped of pretense as the cowboys and hard-scrabble farmers who inhabit the arid inland region known as the Sertao. The rich tastes of Bahia reflect the area's exuberance. The tastes of sugar, coconut, cachaca, chili, and orange-hued palm oil called dende abound in dishes where the African hand is evident. Dishes with the gustatory complexity of vatapa, a puree of dried, smoked shrimp, ground peanuts and cashews, bread crumbs, ginger, chilies, coconut milk, and palm oil, are popular. The acaraje, or black-eyed pea fritter, is traditional street food, often slathered with vatapa, and sweets prepared from coconut, sugar, and tropical fruits are traditional.

The two major cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro revel in international dining that knows few borders, with restaurants owned by three-starred Michelin chefs and local notables. Specialties include Rio's Saturday feijoada, the country's national dish of black beans, rice, stewed meats, greens, and sliced oranges. São Paulo offers Japanese fare in the Liberdade district as well as German-style beer halls and rodizio-style churrascarias (Brazilian barbecue), where waiters circulate constantly with a never-ending procession of skewers of meat that is sliced at the table.

The heartlands of Minas Gerais and Goiás are marked by their love of beans. They celebrate with dishes like Tutu a Mineira, mashed black beans served with pork chops and kale, and a version of feijoada prepared with pink beans instead of black ones. Mineros pride themselves on their wood-burning ovens called fogao de lenha and their cheeses, which are prized throughout the country.

The southern states are more European in focus, with large settlements of Italians and Germans. They are also the home of Brazil's gauchos and boast a meat culture centered on spit-roasting meat churrasco-style. The prairies of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul are made up of huge ranches called estancias or fazendas, where cattle farming is a major industry. Beef, pork, and fish dominate the regional menu, and as settlement increases there, the newcomers are sure to add another chapter to the rich and ongoing history of the food culture of Brazil.

Bibliography

Cascudo, Luís da Câmara. História da Alimentação no Brasil. 2 vols. São Paolo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 1967–1968.

Freyre, Gilberto. The Masters and the Slaves (Casa-Grande & Senzala): A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization. 2d English Edition. Trans. Samuel Putnam. New York: Knopf, 1964.

Harris, Jessica B. Tasting Brazil: Regional Recipes and Reminincences. New York: Macmillan; Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan Canada, 1992.

Peterson, Joan B., and David Peterson. Eat Smart in Brazil: How to Decipher the Menu, Know the Market Foods, and Embark on a Tasting Adventure. Madison, Wisc.: Ginkgo, 1995.

—Jessica B. Harris

Geography: Brazil
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Republic in eastern South America. It borders on every South American country except Chile and Ecuador. Its capital is Brasilia, and its largest city is São Paulo.

  • The largest of the Latin-American countries, Brazil occupies almost half of South America.
  • It is the world's leading coffee exporter.
  • The only country in South America whose history was dominated by Portugal; it is the largest Portuguese-speaking country in the world.

Dialing Code: Brazil
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The international dialing code for Brazil is:   55


Maps: Brazil
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Local Time: Brazil
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It is 12:46 AM, January 7, in the following region(s) of Brazil:
Fernando de Noronha.


It is 11:46 PM, January 6, in the following region(s) of Brazil:
Sao Paulo, Tocantins, Rio de Janeiro, Paraiba, Goias, Para (eastern), Maranhao, Para (western), Rio Grande do Sul, Bahia, Parana, Amapa, Pernambuco, Ceara, Distrito Federal, Sergipe, Piaui, Espirto Santo, Santa Catarina, Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Norte, Alagoas.


It is 10:46 PM, January 6, in the following region(s) of Brazil:
Mato Grosso, Amazonas, Mato Grosso do Sul, Roraima, Rondonia, Acre.


Currency: Brazil
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Statistics: Brazil
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Click to enlarge flag of Brazil
Introduction
Background:Following more than three centuries under Portuguese rule, Brazil peacefully gained its independence in 1822, maintaining a monarchical system of government until the abolition of slavery in 1888 and the subsequent proclamation of a republic by the military in 1889. Brazilian coffee exporters politically dominated the country until populist leader Getulio VARGAS rose to power in 1930. By far the largest and most populous country in South America, Brazil underwent more than half a century of populist and military government until 1985, when the military regime peacefully ceded power to civilian rulers. Brazil continues to pursue industrial and agricultural growth and development of its interior. Exploiting vast natural resources and a large labor pool, it is today South America's leading economic power and a regional leader. Highly unequal income distribution and crime remain pressing problems.
Geography
Map of Brazil
Location:Eastern South America, bordering the Atlantic Ocean
Geographic coordinates:10 00 S, 55 00 W
Map references:South America
Area:total: 8,511,965 sq km
land: 8,456,510 sq km
water: 55,455 sq km
note: includes Arquipelago de Fernando de Noronha, Atol das Rocas, Ilha da Trindade, Ilhas Martin Vaz, and Penedos de Sao Pedro e Sao Paulo
Area - comparative:slightly smaller than the US
Land boundaries:total: 16,885 km
border countries: Argentina 1,261 km, Bolivia 3,423 km, Colombia 1,644 km, French Guiana 730 km, Guyana 1,606 km, Paraguay 1,365 km, Peru 2,995 km, Suriname 593 km, Uruguay 1,068 km, Venezuela 2,200 km
Coastline:7,491 km
Maritime claims:territorial sea: 12 nm
contiguous zone: 24 nm
exclusive economic zone: 200 nm
continental shelf: 200 nm or to edge of the continental margin
Climate:mostly tropical, but temperate in south
Terrain:mostly flat to rolling lowlands in north; some plains, hills, mountains, and narrow coastal belt
Elevation extremes:lowest point: Atlantic Ocean 0 m
highest point: Pico da Neblina 3,014 m
Natural resources:bauxite, gold, iron ore, manganese, nickel, phosphates, platinum, tin, uranium, petroleum, hydropower, timber
Land use:arable land: 6.93%
permanent crops: 0.89%
other: 92.18% (2005)
Irrigated land:29,200 sq km (2003)
Total renewable water resources:8,233 cu km (2000)
Freshwater withdrawal (domestic/industrial/agricultural):total: 59.3 cu km/yr (20%/18%/62%)
per capita: 318 cu m/yr (2000)
Natural hazards:recurring droughts in northeast; floods and occasional frost in south
Environment - current issues:deforestation in Amazon Basin destroys the habitat and endangers a multitude of plant and animal species indigenous to the area; there is a lucrative illegal wildlife trade; air and water pollution in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and several other large cities; land degradation and water pollution caused by improper mining activities; wetland degradation; severe oil spills
Environment - international agreements:party to: Antarctic-Environmental Protocol, Antarctic-Marine Living Resources, Antarctic Seals, Antarctic Treaty, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Desertification, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Marine Dumping, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Tropical Timber 94, Wetlands, Whaling
signed, but not ratified: none of the selected agreements
Geography - note:largest country in South America; shares common boundaries with every South American country except Chile and Ecuador
People
Population:198,739,269
note: Brazil conducted a census in August 2000, which reported a population of 169,872,855; that figure was about 3.8% lower than projections by the US Census Bureau, and is close to the implied underenumeration of 4.6% for the 1991 census (July 2009 est.)
Age structure:0-14 years: 26.7% (male 27,092,880/female 26,062,244)
15-64 years: 66.8% (male 65,804,108/female 67,047,725)
65 years and over: 6.4% (male 5,374,230/female 7,358,082) (2009 est.)
Median age:total: 28.6 years
male: 27.8 years
female: 29.3 years (2009 est.)
Population growth rate:1.199% (2009 est.)
Birth rate:18.43 births/1,000 population (2009 est.)
Death rate:6.35 deaths/1,000 population (2008 est.)
Net migration rate:-0.09 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2009 est.)
Urbanization:urban population: 86% of total population (2008)
rate of urbanization: 1.8% annual rate of change (2005-10 est.)
Sex ratio:at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.04 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 0.98 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.73 male(s)/female
total population: 0.98 male(s)/female (2009 est.)
Infant mortality rate:total: 22.58 deaths/1,000 live births
male: 26.16 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 18.83 deaths/1,000 live births (2009 est.)
Life expectancy at birth:total population: 71.99 years
male: 68.43 years
female: 75.73 years (2009 est.)
Total fertility rate:2.21 children born/woman (2009 est.)
HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate:0.6% (2007 est.)
HIV/AIDS - people living with HIV/AIDS:730,000 (2007 est.)
HIV/AIDS - deaths:15,000 (2007 est.)
Nationality:noun: Brazilian(s)
adjective: Brazilian
Ethnic groups:white 53.7%, mulatto (mixed white and black) 38.5%, black 6.2%, other (includes Japanese, Arab, Amerindian) 0.9%, unspecified 0.7% (2000 census)
Religions:Roman Catholic (nominal) 73.6%, Protestant 15.4%, Spiritualist 1.3%, Bantu/voodoo 0.3%, other 1.8%, unspecified 0.2%, none 7.4% (2000 census)
Languages:Portuguese (official and most widely spoken language); note - less common languages include Spanish (border areas and schools), German, Italian, Japanese, English, and a large number of minor Amerindian languages
Literacy:definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 88.6%
male: 88.4%
female: 88.8% (2004 est.)
School life expectancy (primary to tertiary education):total: 14 years
male: 14 years
female: 15 years (2005)
Education expenditures:4% of GDP (2004)
Government
Country name:conventional long form: Federative Republic of Brazil
conventional short form: Brazil
local long form: Republica Federativa do Brasil
local short form: Brasil
Government type:federal republic
Capital:name: Brasilia
geographic coordinates: 15 47 S, 47 55 W
time difference: UTC-3 (2 hours ahead of Washington, DC during Standard Time)
daylight saving time: +1hr, begins third Sunday in October; ends third Sunday in February
note: Brazil is divided into four time zones, including one for the Fernando de Noronha Islands
Administrative divisions:26 states (estados, singular - estado) and 1 federal district* (distrito federal); Acre, Alagoas, Amapa, Amazonas, Bahia, Ceara, Distrito Federal*, Espirito Santo, Goias, Maranhao, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, Para, Paraiba, Parana, Pernambuco, Piaui, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Norte, Rio Grande do Sul, Rondonia, Roraima, Santa Catarina, Sao Paulo, Sergipe, Tocantins
Independence:7 September 1822 (from Portugal)
National holiday:Independence Day, 7 September (1822)
Constitution:5 October 1988
Legal system:based on Roman codes; has not accepted compulsory ICJ jurisdiction
Suffrage:voluntary between 16 and 18 years of age and over 70; compulsory over 18 and under 70 years of age; note - military conscripts do not vote
Executive branch:chief of state: President Luiz Inacio LULA DA SILVA (since 1 January 2003); Vice President Jose ALENCAR (since 1 January 2003); note - the president is both the chief of state and head of government
head of government: President Luiz Inacio LULA DA SILVA (since 1 January 2003); Vice President Jose ALENCAR (since 1 January 2003)
cabinet: Cabinet appointed by the president
elections: president and vice president elected on the same ticket by popular vote for a single four-year term; election last held 1 October 2006 with runoff 29 October 2006 (next to be held 3 October 2010 and, if necessary, 31 October 2010)
election results: Luiz Inacio LULA DA SILVA (PT) reelected president - 60.83%, Geraldo ALCKMIN (PSDB) 39.17%
Legislative branch:bicameral National Congress or Congresso Nacional consists of the Federal Senate or Senado Federal (81 seats; 3 members from each state and federal district elected according to the principle of majority to serve eight-year terms; one-third and two-thirds elected every four years, alternately) and the Chamber of Deputies or Camara dos Deputados (513 seats; members are elected by proportional representation to serve four-year terms)
elections: Federal Senate - last held 1 October 2006 for one-third of the Senate (next to be held in October 2010 for two-thirds of the Senate); Chamber of Deputies - last held 1 October 2006 (next to be held in October 2010)
election results: Federal Senate - percent of vote by party - NA; seats by party - PFL 6, PSDB 5, PMDB 4, PTB 3, PT 2, PDT 1, PSB 1, PL 1, PPS 1, PRTB 1, PP 1, PCdoB 1; Chamber of Deputies - percent of vote by party - NA; seats by party - PMDB 89, PT 83, PFL 65, PSDB 65, PP 42, PSB 27, PDT 24, PL 23, PTB 22, PPS 21, PCdoB 13, PV 13, PSC 9, other 17; note - as of 1 January 2009, the composition of the entire legislature is as follows: Federal Senate - seats by party - PMDB 21, DEM (formerly PFL) 12, PSDB 13, PT 12, PTB 7, PDT 5, PR 4, PSB 2, PCdoB 1, PRB 1, PP 1, PSC 1, PSOL 1; Chamber of Deputies - seats by party - PMDB 95, PT 79, PSDB 59, DEM (formerly PFL) 53, PR 44, PP 40, PSB 29, PDT 25, PTB 19, PPS 14, PV 14, PCdoB 13, PSC 11, PMN 5, PRB 4, PHS 3, PSOL 3, PTC 1, PTdoB 1
Judicial branch:Supreme Federal Tribunal or STF (11 ministers are appointed for life by the president and confirmed by the Senate); Higher Tribunal of Justice; Regional Federal Tribunals (judges are appointed for life); note - though appointed "for life," judges, like all federal employees, have a mandatory retirement age of 70
Political parties and leaders:Brazilian Democratic Movement Party or PMDB [Federal Deputy Michel TEMER]; Brazilian Labor Party or PTB [Roberto JEFFERSON]; Brazilian Renewal Labor Party or PRTB [Jose Levy FIDELIX da Cruz]; Brazilian Republican Party or PRB [Vitor Paulo Araujo DOS SANTOS]; Brazilian Social Democracy Party or PSDB [Senator Sergio GUERRA]; Brazilian Socialist Party or PSB [Governor Eduardo Henrique Accioly CAMPOS]; Christian Labor Party or PTC [Daniel TOURINHO]; Communist Party of Brazil or PCdoB [Jose Renato RABELO]; Democratic Labor Party or PDT [Carlos Roberto LUPI]; the Democrats or DEM (formerly Liberal Front Party or PFL) [Federal Deputy Rodrigo MAIA]; Freedom and Socialism Party or PSOL [Heloisa HELENA]; Green Party or PV [Jose Luiz de Franca PENNA]; Humanist Party of Solidarity or PHS [Paulo Roberto MATOS]; Labor Party of Brazil or PTdoB [Luis Henrique de Oliveira RESENDE]; Liberal Front Party or PFL (now known as the Democrats or DEM); National Mobilization Party or PMN [Oscar Noronha FILHO]; Party of the Republic or PR [Sergio TAMER]; Popular Socialist Party or PPS [Federal Deputy Fernando CORUJA]; Progressive Party or PP [Francisco DORNELLES]; Social Christian Party or PSC [Vitor Jorge Abdala NOSSEIS]; Workers' Party or PT [Ricardo Jose Ribeiro BERZOINI]
Political pressure groups and leaders:Landless Workers' Movement or MST
other: labor unions and federations; large farmers' associations; religious groups including evangelical Christian churches and the Catholic Church
International organization participation:AfDB (nonregional member), BIS, CAN (associate), CPLP, FAO, G-15, G-20, G-24, G-77, IADB, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICC, ICCt, ICRM, IDA, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS, IHO, ILO, IMF, IMO, IMSO, Interpol, IOC, IOM, IPU, ISO, ITSO, ITU, ITUC, LAES, LAIA, Mercosur, MIGA, MINURCAT, MINURSO, MINUSTAH, NAM (observer), NSG, OAS, OPANAL, OPCW, PCA, RG, UN, UNASUR, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNFICYP, UNHCR, UNIDO, Union Latina, UNITAR, UNMIL, UNMIS, UNMIT, UNOCI, UNWTO, UPU, WCL, WCO, WFTU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WTO
Diplomatic representation in the US:chief of mission: Ambassador Antonio de Aguiar PATRIOTA
chancery: 3006 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20008
telephone: [1] (202) 238-2700
FAX: [1] (202) 238-2827
consulate(s) general: Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco
Diplomatic representation from the US:chief of mission: Ambassador Clifford M. SOBEL
embassy: Avenida das Nacoes, Quadra 801, Lote 3, Distrito Federal Cep 70403-900, Brasilia
mailing address: Unit 3500, APO AA 34030
telephone: [55] (61) 3312-7000
FAX: [55] (61) 3225-9136
consulate(s) general: Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo
consulate(s): Recife
Flag description:green with a large yellow diamond in the center bearing a blue celestial globe with 27 white five-pointed stars (one for each state and the Federal District) arranged in the same pattern as the night sky over Brazil; the globe has a white equatorial band with the motto ORDEM E PROGRESSO (Order and Progress)
Economy
Economy - overview:Characterized by large and well-developed agricultural, mining, manufacturing, and service sectors, Brazil's economy outweighs that of all other South American countries and Brazil is expanding its presence in world markets. From 2003 to 2007, Brazil ran record trade surpluses and recorded its first current account surpluses since 1992. Productivity gains coupled with high commodity prices contributed to the surge in exports. Brazil improved its debt profile in 2006 by shifting its debt burden toward real denominated and domestically held instruments. LULA DA SILVA restated his commitment to fiscal responsibility by maintaining the country's primary surplus during the 2006 election. Following his second inauguration in October of that year, LULA DA SILVA announced a package of further economic reforms to reduce taxes and increase investment in infrastructure. Brazil's debt achieved investment grade status early in 2008, but the government's attempt to achieve strong growth while reducing the debt burden created inflationary pressures. For most of 2008, the Central Bank embarked on a restrictive monetary policy to stem these pressures. Since the onset of the global financial crisis in September, Brazil's currency and its stock market - Bovespa - have significantly lost value, -41% for Bovespa for the year ending 30 December 2008. Brazil incurred another current account deficit in 2008, as world demand and prices for commodities dropped in the second-half of the year.
GDP (purchasing power parity):$1.99 trillion (2008 est.)
$1.892 trillion (2007)
$1.795 trillion (2006)
note: data are in 2008 US dollars
GDP (official exchange rate):$1.665 trillion (2008 est.)
GDP - real growth rate:5.2% (2008 est.)
5.4% (2007 est.)
4% (2006 est.)
GDP - per capita (PPP):$10,100 (2008 est.)
$9,800 (2007 est.)
$9,400 (2006 est.)
note: data are in 2008 US dollars
GDP - composition by sector:agriculture: 5.5%
industry: 28.5%
services: 66% (2008 est.)
Labor force:100.9 million (2008 est.)
Labor force - by occupation:agriculture: 20%
industry: 14%
services: 66% (2003 est.)
Unemployment rate:8% (2008 est.)
Population below poverty line:31% (2005)
Household income or consumption by percentage share:lowest 10%: 0.9%
highest 10%: 44.8% (2004)
Distribution of family income - Gini index:56.7 (2005)
Investment (gross fixed):18.6% of GDP (2008 est.)
Budget:revenues: NA
expenditures: NA
Fiscal year:calendar year
Public debt:40.7% of GDP (2008 est.)
Inflation rate (consumer prices):5.8% (2008 est.)
Central bank discount rate:17.85% (31 December 2007)
Commercial bank prime lending rate:43.72% (31 December 2007)
Stock of money:$131.1 billion (31 December 2007)
Stock of quasi money:$792.8 billion (31 December 2007)
Stock of domestic credit:$1.377 trillion (31 December 2007)
Market value of publicly traded shares:$1.37 trillion (31 December 2007)
Agriculture - products:coffee, soybeans, wheat, rice, corn, sugarcane, cocoa, citrus; beef
Industries:textiles, shoes, chemicals, cement, lumber, iron ore, tin, steel, aircraft, motor vehicles and parts, other machinery and equipment
Industrial production growth rate:4.4% (2008 est.)
Electricity - production:437.3 billion kWh (2007 est.)
Electricity - consumption:402.2 billion kWh (2007 est.)
Electricity - exports:2.034 billion kWh (2007 est.)
Electricity - imports:40.47 billion kWh; note - supplied by Paraguay (2007 est.)
Electricity - production by source:fossil fuel: 8.3%
hydro: 82.7%
nuclear: 4.4%
other: 4.6% (2001)
Oil - production:2.277 million bbl/day (2007 est.)
Oil - consumption:2.372 million bbl/day (2007 est.)
Oil - exports:481,100 bbl/day (2005)
Oil - imports:648,800 bbl/day (2005)
Oil - proved reserves:12.18 billion bbl (1 January 2008 est.)
Natural gas - production:9.8 billion cu m (2007 est.)
Natural gas - consumption:19.8 billion cu m (2007 est.)
Natural gas - exports:0 cu m (2007 est.)
Natural gas - imports:10 billion cu m (2007 est.)
Natural gas - proved reserves:347.7 billion cu m (1 January 2008 est.)
Current account balance:-$27.33 billion (2008 est.)
Exports:$200 billion f.o.b. (2008 est.)
Exports - commodities:transport equipment, iron ore, soybeans, footwear, coffee, autos
Exports - partners:US 16.1%, Argentina 9.2%, China 6.8%, Netherlands 5.6%, Germany 4.6% (2007)
Imports:$176 billion f.o.b. (2008 est.)
Imports - commodities:machinery, electrical and transport equipment, chemical products, oil, automotive parts, electronics
Imports - partners:US 15.7%, China 10.5%, Argentina 8.6%, Germany 7.2%, Nigeria 4.4% (2007)
Reserves of foreign exchange and gold:$197.4 billion (31 December 2008 est.)
Debt - external:$236.6 billion (31 December 2008 est.)
Stock of direct foreign investment - at home:$280.9 billion (2008 est.)
Stock of direct foreign investment - abroad:$119.1 billion (2008 est.)
Currency (code):real (BRL)
Currency code:BRL
Exchange rates:reals (BRL) per US dollar - 1.8644 (2008 est.), 1.85 (2007 est.), 2.1761 (2006), 2.4344 (2005), 2.9251 (2004)
Communications
Telephones - main lines in use:39.4 million (2007)
Telephones - mobile cellular:120.98 million (2007)
Telephone system:general assessment: good working system; fixed-line connections have remained relatively stable in recent years and stand at about 20 per 100 persons; less expensive mobile cellular technology is a major driver in expanding telephone service to the low-income segment of the population with mobile-cellular telephone density reaching nearly 65 per 100 persons
domestic: extensive microwave radio relay system and a domestic satellite system with 64 earth stations; mobile-cellular usage has more than tripled in the past 5 years
international: country code - 55; landing point for a number of submarine cables, including Atlantis 2, that provide direct links to South and Central America, the Caribbean, the US, Africa, and Europe; satellite earth stations - 3 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean), 1 Inmarsat (Atlantic Ocean region east), connected by microwave relay system to Mercosur Brazilsat B3 satellite earth station (2007)
Radio broadcast stations:AM 1,365, FM 296, shortwave 161 (of which 91 are collocated with AM stations) (1999)
Radios:71 million (1997)
Television broadcast stations:138 (1997)
Televisions:36.5 million (1997)
Internet country code:.br
Internet hosts:9.573 million (2008)
Internet Service Providers (ISPs):50 (2000)
Internet users:50 million (2007)
Transportation
Airports:4,176 (2008)
Airports - with paved runways:total: 734
over 3,047 m: 7
2,438 to 3,047 m: 26
1,524 to 2,437 m: 169
914 to 1,523 m: 476
under 914 m: 56 (2008)
Airports - with unpaved runways:total: 3,442
1,524 to 2,437 m: 85
914 to 1,523 m: 1,541
under 914 m: 1,816 (2008)
Heliports:16 (2007)
Pipelines:condensate/gas 62 km; gas 9,892 km; liquid petroleum gas 353 km; oil 4,517 km; refined products 4,465 km (2008)
Railways:total: 29,295 km
broad gauge: 4,932 km 1.600-m gauge (939 km electrified)
standard gauge: 194 km 1.440-m gauge
narrow gauge: 23,773 km 1.000-m gauge (581 km electrified)
dual gauge: 396 km 1.000 m and 1.600-m gauges (three rails) (78 km electrified) (2006)
Roadways:total: 1,751,868 km
paved: 96,353 km
unpaved: 1,655,515 km (2004)
Waterways:50,000 km (most in areas remote from industry and population) (2008)
Merchant marine:total: 136
by type: bulk carrier 19, cargo 22, carrier 1, chemical tanker 7, container 11, liquefied gas 12, passenger/cargo 12, petroleum tanker 45, roll on/roll off 7
foreign-owned: 25 (Chile 1, Denmark 2, Germany 6, Greece 1, Mexico 1, Norway 5, Spain 9)
registered in other countries: 8 (Argentina 1, Bahamas 2, Ghana 1, Liberia 3, Marshall Islands 1) (2008)
Ports and terminals:Guaiba, Ilha Grande, Paranagua, Rio Grande, Santos, Sao Sebastiao, Tubarao
Transportation - note:the International Maritime Bureau reports the territorial and offshore waters in the Atlantic Ocean as a significant risk for piracy and armed robbery against ships; numerous commercial vessels have been attacked and hijacked both at anchor and while underway; crews have been robbed and stores or cargoes stolen
Military
Military branches:Brazilian Army (Exercito Brasileiro, EB), Brazilian Navy (Marinha do Brasil (MB), includes Naval Air and Marine Corps (Corpo de Fuzileiros Navais)), Brazilian Air Force (Forca Aerea Brasileira, FAB) (2009)
Military service age and obligation:21-45 years of age for compulsory military service; conscript service obligation - 9 to 12 months; 17-45 years of age for voluntary service; an increasing percentage of the ranks are "long-service" volunteer professionals; women were allowed to serve in the armed forces beginning in early 1980s when the Brazilian Army became the first army in South America to accept women into career ranks; women serve in Navy and Air Force only in Women's Reserve Corps (2001)
Manpower available for military service:males age 16-49: 52,449,957
females age 16-49: 52,375,921 (2008 est.)
Manpower fit for military service:males age 16-49: 38,043,555
females age 16-49: 44,267,520 (2009 est.)
Manpower reaching militarily significant age annually:male: 1,690,031
female: 1,630,851 (2009 est.)
Military expenditures:2.6% of GDP (2006 est.)
Transnational Issues
Disputes - international:unruly region at convergence of Argentina-Brazil-Paraguay borders is locus of money laundering, smuggling, arms and illegal narcotics trafficking, and fundraising for extremist organizations; uncontested boundary dispute with Uruguay over Isla Brasilera at the confluence of the Quarai/Cuareim and Invernada rivers, that form a tripoint with Argentina; the Itaip� Dam reservoir covers over a once contested section of Brazil-Paraguay boundary west of Guaira Falls on the Rio Parana; an accord placed the long-disputed Isla Su�rez/Ilha de Guajar�-Mirim, a fluvial island on the R�o Mamor�, under Bolivian administration in 1958, but sovereignty remains in dispute
Illicit drugs:second-largest consumer of cocaine in the world; illicit producer of cannabis; trace amounts of coca cultivation in the Amazon region, used for domestic consumption; government has a large-scale eradication program to control cannabis; important transshipment country for Bolivian, Colombian, and Peruvian cocaine headed for Europe; also used by traffickers as a way station for narcotics air transshipments between Peru and Colombia; upsurge in drug-related violence and weapons smuggling; important market for Colombian, Bolivian, and Peruvian cocaine; illicit narcotics proceeds are often laundered through the financial system; significant illicit financial activity in the Tri-Border Area (2008)


Local Cuisine: Brazil
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Recipes

Ambrosia
Feijoada (Meat Stew)
Orange Salad
Polenta (Fried Corn Mush)
Pepper-Scented Rice
Corn Cake
Banana Frita (Fried Bananas)
Pudim (Thick Custard)
Pineapple-Orange Drink
Quejadinhas (Coconut and Cheese Snacks)

Geographic Setting and Environment

Brazil is the largest country in South America, and the fourth-largest country in the world. It lies on the East Coast of South America. Because Brazil lies in the Southern Hemisphere, the seasons are reversed from those in North America: the winter months are May through August, and the warmest summer month is January. The mighty Amazon River, the world's second-longest river after the Nile in Egypt, flows across northern Brazil. The area around the Amazon River is known as one of the world's largest rainforests. About one-fourth of all the world's known plants are found in Brazil. In the latter part of the 1900s, logging and other commercial industries were damaging the rainforest of Brazil. Dozens of animal and plant species became extinct in Brazil during the 1900s. The destruction of the rainforest environment has slowed a little, however. Brazil's soil is not fertile enough for agriculture in most areas, but it does produce large quantities of cocoa (it ranks third in cocoa production after Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana, both in Africa). River water that flows near cities is polluted by industrial waste.

History and Food

Brazil is a large country that is made up of many different cultures. Each region has a different food specialty. The Portuguese arrived in Brazil in 1500 and brought their tastes and styles of cooking with them. They brought sugar, citrus fruits, and many sweets that are still used for desserts and holidays. The Brazilian "sweet tooth" was developed through the influence of the Europeans. Brazilians use many eggs, fruits, spices (such as cinnamon and cloves), and sugar to make sweet treats, such as ambrosia. They also use savory (not sweet) seasonings such as parsley and garlic. Other nationalities that settled in Brazil were Japanese, Arabs, and Germans. More than one million Italians had migrated to Brazil by 1880. Each immigrant group brought along its own style of cooking.

Long before the Europeans arrived, however, the Tupí-Guaraní and other Indian groups lived in Brazil. They planted manioc (a root vegetable like a potato) from which Brazilians learned to make tapioca and farofa, ground manioc, which is similar to fine breadcrumbs. It is toasted in oil and butter and sprinkled over rice, beans, meat, and fish. As of 2001, farofa was still used as the Brazilians' basic "flour" to make cookies, biscuits, and bread.

See Ambrosia recipe.

Foods of the Brazilians

Rice, black beans, and manioc (a root vegetable like a potato) are the main foods for many Brazilians. The national dish is feijoada, a thick stew of black beans and pieces of pork and other meats. It is usually served with orange salad, white rice, farofa (ground manioc), and couve (kale), a dark green leafy vegetable that is diced and cooked until slightly crispy.

See Feijoada (Meat Stew) recipe.

See Orange Salad recipe.

See Polenta (Fried Corn Mush) recipe.

Foods for Religious and Holiday Celebrations

Although Brazil has no national religion, the Portuguese who arrived in Brazil in 1500 brought their Roman Catholic religion with them. About 75 percent of Brazilians consider themselves Roman Catholic. Those who do not follow the Roman Catholic religion still enjoy the world-renowned Brazilian Carnival tradition. During Carnival, colorful parades are held on the streets, and children and adults dress in costumes, dancing and celebrating in the streets all day and all night. People eat and drink continuously during Carnival, enjoying spice dishes, such as pepper-scented rice and feijoada, and sweets. Carnival is a week-long party that ends on Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the 40-day religious period of Lent before the Christian celebration of Easter. During Lent, it is a Roman Catholic tradition not to eat meat.

See Pepper-Scented Rice recipe.

See Corn Cake recipe.

See Banana Frita (Fried Bananas) recipe.

Mealtime Customs

Because Brazil is the world's largest producer of coffee, a typical pequeno almoço (breakfast) consists of a cup of café come leite (a hot milk and coffee mixture) and a piece of French bread. Many Brazilian children also drink a coffee and milk mixture for breakfast.

Lunch, usually the biggest meal of the day, consists of rice, beans, salad, meat, or other dishes, depending on where the family lives and what they can afford to buy. Between lunch and supper some Brazilians have midmorning and midafternoon café, which includes coffee, hot milk, and cookies. Pastels and empadas, little pastries filled with any combination of shrimp, meats, and cheeses that are either fried or baked, are a favorite snack. These can be purchased by street vendors (Brazilian "fast food") or made at home.

In the late evening, many Brazilians eat a light supper. Children enjoy desserts such as pudim or churros, fried dough rolled in sugar and filled with caramel, chocolate, or sweetened condensed milk.

See Pudim (Thick Custard) recipe.

See Pineapple-Orange Drink recipe.

See Quejadinhas (Coconut and Cheese Snacks) recipe.

Politics, Economics, and Nutrition

About 10 percent of the population of Brazil is classified as undernourished by the World Bank. This means they do not receive adequate nutrition in their diet. Of children under the age of five, about 6 percent are underweight, and over 10 percent are stunted (short for their age).

According to the Brazilian government, child poverty is one of the country's most serious concerns. About one-third of the children in Brazil live in poverty. Thousands of children spend their days on the streets of Brazil's cities; many abuse drugs and resort to crime and prostitution to get money to live. Many shopkeepers consider these street children a nuisance and ask police to keep the children away from their stores. International observers consider the child poverty in Brazil to be a human-rights issue, but many Brazilians see the children as a threat to security in the cities.

Further Study

Books

Brazil. Boston, MA: APA Publications, 1996.

Carpenter, Mark L. Brazil, An Awakening Giant. Parsippany, NJ: Dillon Press, 1998.

Ferro, Jennifer. Brazilian Foods and Culture. Vero Beach, FL: Rourke, 1999.

Harris, Jessica B. Tasting Brazil: Regional Recipes and Reminiscences. New York: Macmillan, 1992.

Idone, Christopher. Brazil: A Cook's Tour. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1995.

Serra, Mariana. Brazil. Austin, TX: Raintree Steck-Vaughn, 2000.

Web Sites

LIMIAR. [Online] Available http://www.limiar.org/brazil/recipes (accessed February 22, 2001).

Recipe Xchange. [Online] Available http://www.recipexchange.com/recipexchange_cfmfiles/recipes.cfm/2660 (accessed February 26, 2001).

SOAR: Searchable Online Archive of Recipes. [Online] Available http://soar.berkeley.edu/recipes (accessed February 28, 2001).



Brazil is a huge country, but, relatively speaking, it doesn't make much wine. The wine it does make is fairly ordinary, and most of it is consumed locally. A majority of the wines are made from native american grapes, hybrids or crosses. Some of the more popular are concord, isabella, niagara and seyval blanc. However, now being planted are vitis vinifera vines such as barbera, cabernet sauvignon cabernet franc chardonnay merlot, muscat, nebbiolo, pinot blanc, riesling, sémillon and trebbiano. They do best in areas far from the Equator, where the climate is cooler. Brazil's biggest growing region is in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil's southernmost state.

Brazil has always been a vast melting-pot of various Spiritist and psychic traditions, from the shamanistic magic of the original Tupi Indians, to the mixture of the beliefs of many different African tribes brought to Brazil as slaves by Portuguese settlers, to the French Spiritism that developed from circulation of the works of Allan Kardec in the nineteenth century.

Through the twentieth century, there have been two main strands of occult religion in Brazil: the magical Afro-Brazilian groups, Umbanda and Macumba, both analogous to Haitian voudou, and Kardec-style Spiritism. Both have possession by spirits as central to their practice. Brazil is officially a Roman Catholic country. Still it is estimated that there are nearly four million people following these various alternative religions, many continuing to regard themselves as nominal Catholics. The complex interchange of religious and cultural traditions over the centuries makes precise distinctions difficult, since many nominally non-Christian blacks incorporate the figure of Jesus into tribal magic, while many Christians have fused tribal magic with Catholicism.

One of the most striking developments of the last few decades has been the emergence of a form of psychic surgery in which it is claimed that psychic healers without medical training perform surgical operations, sometimes with their bare hands, or with such primitive instruments as old penknives. The wounds, it is claimed, are paranormally closed and healed. Two of the most famous Brazilian psychic surgeons are Edivaldo Oliveira Silva and Jose Arigó, who performed thousands of operations. Although psychic surgery remains a controversial subject and there have been accusations of fraud, there is also strong evidence of genuine operations, endorsed by competent American and European investigators.

Psychic healing has flourished in Brazil, in spite of the fact that both the Roman Catholic Church and the medical society have brought lawsuits for witchcraft or for illegal practice of medicine. Many high officials believe in the efficacy of such healing, a fact illustrated by former Brazilian president Juscelino Kubitschek's bringing his daughter to Arigó for psychic healing. Arigó has also successfully treated statesmen, lawyers, scientists, and doctors from many countries.

A Brazilian of Italian parentage, Carlos Mirabelli, emerged in the 1920s and 1930s as the most remarkable physical medium in the world. Due to the Roman Catholic state, Mirabelli was brought to court 15 times to answer charges that were raised against him. Because of his extroverted behavior and ways that were considered wildly Bohemian, even Brazilian Spiritists often avoided him. Yet documentation of his remarkable gifts and the phenomena that surrounded him—he was reported to be able to literally light up a room as he glowed in the darkness of a seance—was respected by researchers and investigators worldwide.

In 1939, the São Paulo State Spiritist Federation was founded to provide information and assistance to those in need. It has 200 unpaid volunteers and deals with some 1000 individuals daily. In 1963, Hernani Guimàraes Andrade, a São Paulo engineer and civil servant, founded the Brazilian Institute for Psycho-Biophysical Research. Since then, the institute has collected many case histories, conducted research, and published theoretical papers. Unfortunately most of Andrade's writings have yet to be translated into English. Andrade has been joined by Waldo Vieira, who concentrated his study on out-of-the-body travel. Today, the Institutio de Pesquisas, Interdisciplinares das Areas, Fronteiricas ca Psicologia (Rua Vicente Jose de Almeida 226, Jardin Cupece-Sao Paulo/SP, CEP: 04652-140) is an active if not overwhelming presence in Brazil. The population at large remains hesitant to engage in practices so long associated with the superstitions of the uneducated, and the unorthodox practices of the Spiritists.

Sources:

Andrade, Hernani Guimàraes. A material psi. Matao: Clarim, 1972.

——. Novos rumos à experimentacao espiritica. São Paulo: Livraria Batuira, 1960.

——. Parapsicologia experimental. São Paulo: Calvario, 1967.

——. A teorià corpuscular do espirito. São Paulo: The Author, 1958.

Berger, Arthur S., and Joyce Berger. The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. New York: Paragon House, 1991.

Fuller, John G. Arigó, Surgeon of the Rusty Knife. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1972. Reprint, London: Panther, 1975.

Kardec, Allan [H. L. D. Rivail]. The Book of Spirits. N.p., 1893.

Langguth, A. J. Macumba: White & Black Magic in Brazil. New York: Harper and Row, 1975.

McGregor, Pedro. Moon and Two Mountains. London, 1966.

Noah's Ark Society (Great Britain). "The Mediumship of Carlos Mirabelli." http://home.freeuk.net/noahsark/mirab.htm. June 6, 2000.

Playfair, Guy Lyon. The Flying Cow. London, 1975. Reprinted as The Unknown Power. New York: Pocket Books, 1975.

St. Clair, David. Drum and Candle. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971.

National Anthem: National Anthem of: Brazil
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Music: Francisco Manuel da Silva (1795-1865)

Verses: Joaquim Osório Duque Estrada (1870-1927)

Ouviram do Ipiranga às margens plácidas
De um povo heróico o brado retumbante,
E o sol da liberdade, em raios fúlgidos,
Brilhou no céu da Pátria nesse instante.

Se o penhor dessa igualdade
Conseguimos conquistar com braço forte,
Em teu seio ó liberdade,
Desafia o nosso peito a própria morte!

Ó Pátria amada
Idolatrada
Salve! Salve!

Brasil de um sonho intenso, um raio vívido,
De amor e de esperança à terra desce
Se em teu formoso céu risonho e límpido
A imagem do Cruzeiro resplandece

Gigante pela própria natureza
És belo, és forte, impávido colosso,
E o teu futuro espelha essa grandeza,

Terra adorada!
Entre outras mil
És tu, Brasil,
Ó Pátria amada

Dos filhos deste solo és mãe gentil,
Pátria amada
Brasil!

II

Deitado eternamente em berço esplêndido,
ao som do mar e à luz do céu profundo,
Fulguras, ó Brasil, florão da América,
Iluminado ao sol do Novo Mundo!

Do que a terra mais garrida
Teus risonhos lindos campos tem mais flores,
"Nossos bosques tem mais vida"
"Nossa vida" no teu seio "mais amores"

Ó Pátria amada
Idolatrada
Salve! Salve!

Brasil, de amor eterno seja símbolo
O lábaro que ostentas estrelado,
E diga o verde-louro dessa flâmula
- paz no futuro e glória no passado -

Mas se ergues da justiça a clava forte,
Verás que um filho teu não foge à luta,
Nem teme, quem te adora, a própria morte,

Terra adorada!
Entre outras mil
És tu, Brasil,
Ó Pátria amada

Dos filhos deste solo és mãe gentil
Pátria amada Brasil!

Wikipedia: Brazil
Top
Federative Republic of Brazil
República Federativa do Brasil (Portuguese)
Flag Coat of arms
Motto"Ordem e Progresso"
(Portuguese)
"Order and Progress"
AnthemHino Nacional Brasileiro
(Portuguese)
"Brazilian National Anthem"

National seal
Selo Nacional do Brasil National Seal of Brazil (color).svg
(Portuguese)
"National Seal of Brazil"
Capital Brasília
15°45′S 47°57′W / 15.75°S 47.95°W / -15.75; -47.95
Largest city São Paulo
Official languages Portuguese
Demonym Brazilian
Government Presidential Federal republic
 -  President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Worker's Party)
 -  Vice-President José Alencar (Brazilian Republican Party)
 -  President of the Chamber of Deputies Michel Temer (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party)
 -  President of the Senate José Sarney (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party)
 -  Chief Justice Gilmar Mendes
Legislature National Congress
 -  Upper House Federal Senate
 -  Lower House Chamber of Deputies
Independence from Portugal 
 -  Declared 7 September 1822 
 -  Recognized 29 August 1825 
 -  Republic 15 November 1889 
 -  Current constitution 5 October 1988 
Area
 -  Total 8,514,877 km2 (5th)
3,287,597 sq mi 
 -  Water (%) 0.65
Population
 -  2009 estimate 192,272,890[1] (5th)
 -  2007 census 189,987,291 
 -  Density 22/km2 (182nd)
57/sq mi
GDP (PPP) 2008 estimate
 -  Total $1.984 trillion[2] (9th)
 -  Per capita $10,465[2] (77th)
GDP (nominal) 2008 estimate
 -  Total $1.612 trillion (2008)[3] (8th[3])
 -  Per capita $8,295[2] (63rd)
Gini (2009) 49.3[4] 
HDI (2007) 0.813[5] (high) (75th)
Currency Real (R$) (BRL)
Time zone BRT[6] (UTC-2 to -4[6])
 -  Summer (DST) BRST (UTC-2 to -4)
Date formats dd/mm/yyyy (CE)
Drives on the right
Internet TLD .br
Calling code +55

Brazil (Portuguese: Brasil), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil[7] (Portuguese: República Federativa do Brasil) About this sound listen , is the largest country and the only Portuguese-speaking country in South America.[8]

Brazil was a Portuguese colony from the landing of Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500 until 1815 when it became an united kingdom with Portugal. The country became later independent as the Brazilian Empire in 1822, but has been a republic since 1889, although the bicameral legislature, now called Congress, dates back to 1824, when the first constitution was ratified.[9] Its current constitution defines Brazil as a Federal Republic.[10] The Federation is formed by the "indissoluble union of the States and Municipalities and the Federal District"[10].

In 2008 Brazil was the world's eighth largest economy by GDP[3] and the ninth largest by purchasing power parity.[11] It is a founding member of the United Nations and the Union of South American Nations. Brazil is also home to a diversity of wildlife, natural environments, and extensive natural resources in a variety of protected habitats.[8]

Contents

History

Portuguese colonization and territorial expansion

The land now called Brazil (the origin of whose name is disputed), was claimed by the Portuguese in April 1500, at the arrival of the Portuguese fleet commanded by Pedro Álvares Cabral.[12] The Portuguese encountered its stone age inhabitants[12] who were divided into several tribes that fought among themselves,[13] most of which shared the same Tupi-Guarani linguistic family.[12] Colonization was effectively started in 1534, when King Dom João III divided the territory into twelve hereditary captaincies[14][15] but this proved an utter disaster, and in 1549 the king assigned a Governor-General to administer the entire colony.[15][16] The Portuguese assimilated some of the native tribes[17] while others were enslaved[18][19] or mostly exterminated in long wars and mainly by European diseases to which they had no immunity.[18][20] By the mid 16th century, sugar had become the most important export from Brazil.[13][21] This made the Portuguese import African slaves[22][23] to cope with the increasing international demand.[18][24]

The first Christian mass in Brazil, 1500.

Through wars against the French, the Portuguese slowly expanded their territory to the southeast, taking Rio de Janeiro in 1567, and to the northwest, São Luís in 1615.[25] They sent military expeditions to the Amazon rainforest that conquered British and Dutch strongholds, founding villages and forts from 1669.[26] In 1680 they reached the far south and founded Sacramento on the bank of the Rio de la Plata, in the Eastern Strip region (present-day Uruguay).[27] At the end of the 17th century sugar exports started to decline[28] but the discovery of gold by explorers in the region that would later be called Minas Gerais (General Mines) around 1693 and in the following decades in current Mato Grosso and Goiás saved the colony from imminent collapse.[29] From all over Brazil, as well as from Portugal, thousands of immigrants departed toward the mines.[30]

The Spanish tried to prevent Portuguese expansion into the territory belonging to them according to the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 and succeeded in conquering the Eastern Strip in 1777. All was in vain as the Treaty of San Ildefonso, signed in the same year, confirmed Portuguese sovereignty over all lands proceeding from its territorial expansion, thus creating most of the current Brazilian borders.[31] In 1808, the Portuguese royal family, fleeing the troops of the French Emperor Napoleon I that were invading Portugal and most of Central Europe, established themselves in the city of Rio de Janeiro, which thus became the seat of the entire Portuguese Empire.[32] In 1815 King Dom João VI, then regent on behalf of his incapacitated mother, elevated Brazil from colony to sovereign Kingdom united with Portugal.[32] In 1809 the Portuguese invaded French Guiana (returned to France in 1817)[33] and in 1816 the Eastern Strip, subsequently renamed Cisplatina.[34]

Independence and empire

Declaration of the Brazilian independence by Emperor Pedro I in September 7, 1822.

King João VI returned to Europe on 26 April, 1821, leaving his elder son Prince Pedro de Alcântara as regent to rule Brazil.[35] The Portuguese government attempted to turn Brazil into a colony once again, thus depriving it of its achievements since 1808.[36] The Brazilians refused to yield and Prince Pedro stood by them declaring the country's independence from Portugal on September 7, 1822.[37] On October 12, 1822, Pedro was declared first Emperor of Brazil (as Dom Pedro I) and crowned on 1 December 1822.[38] In 1822 almost all Brazilians were in favor of a monarchy: Republicanism was an ideal supported by few.[39][40] The subsequent Brazilian War of Independence spread through almost its entire territory, with battles in the northern, northeastern, and southern regions.[41] The last Portuguese army surrendered on March 8, 1824[42] and independence was recognized by Portugal on August 29, 1825.[43]

Emperor Dom Pedro II. For "the longevity of his government and the transformations that occurred in its course, no other Head of State has marked more deeply the history of the country."[44]

The first Brazilian constitution was promulgated on March 25, 1824, after its acceptance by the municipal councils across the country.[45][46][47][48] Pedro I abdicated in 7 April 1831 and went to Europe to reclaim his daughter’s crown leaving behind his son and heir who became Dom Pedro II.[49] As the new emperor could not exert his constitutional prerogatives until he reached maturity, a regency was created.[50] Disputes between political factions led to rebellions and an unstable, almost anarchical, regency.[51] The rebellious factions, however, were not in revolt against the monarchy,[52][53] even though some declared the secession of the provinces as independent republics (but only so long as Pedro II was a minor).[54]

Thus, Pedro II was prematurely declared of age and "Brazil was to enjoy nearly half a century of internal peace and rapid material progress."[55] Brazil also won three international wars during his long reign of 58 years (Platine War, Uruguayan War and War of the Triple Alliance.[56]) and witnessed the consolidation of representative democracy mainly due to successive elections and unrestricted freedom of the press.[57] Most importantly, slavery was extinguished after a slow but steady process that went from the end of international traffic in 1850[58] up to the complete abolition in 1888.[59] It had been in decline since the country's independence: in 1823, 29% of the Brazilian population were slaves while in 1887 this had fallen to 5%.[60]

When the monarchy was overthrown on November 15, 1889[61] there was little desire in Brazil to change the form of government[62] and Pedro II was at the height of his popularity among his subjects.[63][64] However, he "bore prime, perhaps sole, responsibility for his own overthrow."[65] After the death of his two male sons, he believed that "the imperial regime was destined to end with him."[66] The emperor did not care about its fate,[67][68] did nothing, and allowed no one to do anything[69] to prevent the military coup[70] that was backed by former slave owners who resented the abolition of slavery.[71]

Old republic and Vargas era

The Brazilian coup d'état of 1930 raised Getúlio Vargas (center with military uniform but no hat) to power. He would rule the country for fifteen years.

The early republican government "was little more than a military dictatorship. The army dominated affairs both at Rio de Janeiro and in the states. Freedom of the press disappeared and elections were controlled by those in power."[61] In 1894 the republican civilians rose to power, opening a "prolonged cycle of civil war, financial disaster, and government incompetence."[72] By 1902, the government "began a return to the policies pursued during the Empire, policies that promised peace and order at home and a restoration of Brazil's prestige abroad."[72] and was successful in negotiating several treaties that expanded (with the purchase of Acre) and secured the Brazilian boundaries.[73] In the 1920s the country was plagued by several rebellions caused by young military officers.[74][75] By 1930, the regime was weakened and demoralized, which allowed the defeated presidential candidate Getúlio Vargas to lead a coup d'état and assume the presidency.[76] Vargas was supposed to assume the presidency temporarily, but instead closed the National Congress, extinguished the Constitution, ruled with emergency powers and replaced the states' governors with his supporters.[77][78]

In 1935 the Communists rebelled all over the country and tried to take power, but were defeated.[79] The communist threat served as an excuse for Vargas to launch another coup d'état in 1937, making Brazil a full dictatorship.[80][81] The repression of the opposition was brutal, with more than 20,000 people imprisoned, internment camps for political prisoners created in distant regions of the country, censorship of the press, and widespread torture by the government's agents of repression.[82][83]

Brazil remained neutral at the early years of World War II until the government declared war against the Axis powers in 1942.[84] After that Vargas forced Germans, Japanese and Italians immigrants into concentration camps,[85] and sent troops to the battlefields in Italy in 1944.[86][87] With the end of the Nazi-fascist regimes in Europe after the allied victory in 1945, Vargas's position became unsustainable and he was swiftly overthrown by a military coup.[88] Democracy was reinstated and General Eurico Gaspar Dutra was elected president and took office in 1946.[89] Vargas returned to power in 1951, this time democratically elected, but he was incapable of both governing under a democracy and of dealing with an active opposition and committed suicide in 1953.[90][91]

Military regime and contemporary era

Several brief interim governments succeeded after Vargas's suicide.[92] Juscelino Kubitscheck became president in 1956 and assumed a conciliatory posture[vague] that allowed him to govern without major crises.[93] The economy and industrial sector grew remarkably.[94] But his greatest achievement was the construction of Brasília, the new Brazilian capital inaugurated in 1960.[95] His successor was Jânio Quadros, who resigned in 1961, less than a year after taking office.[96] His vice-president, João Goulart, assumed the presidency, but aroused strong opposition[97] and was deposed in April 1964 by a coup that resulted in a military regime[98] intended to be transitory,[99] but that gradually closed itself until it became a full dictatorship with the promulgation of the Fifth Institutional Act in 1968.[100] The repression of the dictatorship's opponents and also of the communist terrorists[101] was harsh but not nearly as brutal as in other Latin American countries.[102] Due to the extraordinary economic growth, known as an "economic miracle", the regime reached its highest level of popularity in those years of repression.[103]

The transition from Fernando Henrique Cardoso to Luís Inácio Lula da Silva revealed that Brazil had finally succeeded in achieving its long-sought political stability.

General Ernesto Geisel became president in 1974 and began his project of re-democratization through a process that Geisel said would be "slow, gradual and safe."[104][105] Geisel ended the military indiscipline that had plagued the country since 1889,[106] as well as the torture of political prisoners and censorship of the press,[107] and finally, the dictatorship itself after he extinguished the Fifth Institutional Act.[100] However, the military regime continued under his chosen successor to accomplish the transition to full democracy, General João Figueiredo.[108]

The civilians fully returned to power in 1985 when José Sarney assumed the presidency[109] but he ended his term extremely unpopular due to the uncontrollable economic crisis and unusually high inflation.[110] That allowed the election in 1989 of the almost unknown Fernando Collor, who was impeached by the National Congress in 1992.[111] He was succeeded by his Vice-President Itamar Franco, who called Fernando Henrique Cardoso to become Minister of Finance. Cardoso was highly successful with his Plano Real (Royal Plan)[112] that granted stability to the Brazilian economy[113] and his efforts were recognized by the Brazilians who elected him president in 1994 and again in 1998.[114] The peaceful transition of power to Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, elected in 2002 (and re-elected in 2006), revealed that Brazil had finally succeeded in achieving its long-sought political stability.[115]

Government and politics

The National Congress in Brasília, the capital of Brazil.

The Brazilian Federation is the "indissoluble union" of three distinct kinds of political entities: the States, the Municipalities and the Federal District[10]. The Union, the states and the Federal District, and the municipalities, are the "spheres of government". The Federation is set on five fundamental principles:[10] sovereignty, citizenship, dignity of human beings, the social values of labour and freedom of enterprise, and political pluralism. The classic tripartite branches of government (executive, legislative, and judicial under the checks and balances system), is formally established by the Constitution.[10] The executive and legislative are organized independently in all three spheres of government, while the judiciary is organized only at the federal and state/Federal District spheres.

All members of the executive and legislative branches are directly elected.[116][117][118] Judges and other judicial officials are appointed after passing entry exams.[116] Voting is compulsory for the litterate between 18 and 70 years old and optional for illiterates and those between 16 and 18 or beyond 70.[10] Together with several smaller parties, four political parties stand out: Workers' Party (PT), Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), and Democrats (DEM). Almost all governmental and administrative functions are exercised by authorities and agencies affiliated to the Executive.

The form of government is that of a democratic republic, with a presidential system.[10] The president is both head of state and head of government of the Union and is elected for a four-year term,[10] with the possibility of re-election for a second successive term. The current president is Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He was elected on October 27, 2002,[119] and re-elected on October 29, 2006.[120] The President appoints the Ministers of State, who assist in governing.[10] Legislative houses in each political entity are the main source of laws in Brazil. The National Congress is the Federation's bicameral legislature, consisting of the Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate. Judiciary authorities exercise jurisdictional duties almost exclusively.

Law

Interior of the Brazilian Supreme Court.

Brazilian law is based on Roman-Germanic traditions.[121] Thus civil law concepts prevail over common law practice. Most of Brazilian law is codified, although non-codified statutes also represent a substantial part, playing a complementary role. Court decisions set out interpretive guidelines; however, they are seldom binding on other specific cases. Doctrinal works and the works of academic jurists have strong influence in law creation and in law cases.

The legal system is based on the Federal Constitution, which was promulgated on 5 October 1988, and is the fundamental law of Brazil. All other legislation and court decisions must conform to its rules.[122] As of April 2007, there have been 53 amendments. States have their own constitutions, which must not contradict the Federal Constitution.[123] Municipalities and the Federal District have "organic laws" (leis orgânicas) which act similar to constitutions.[10][124] Legislative entities are the main source of statutes, although in certain matters judiciary and executive bodies may enact legal norms.[10] Jurisdiction is administered by the judiciary entities, although in rare situations the Federal Constitution allows the Federal Senate to pass on legal judgments.[10] There are also specialized military, labor, and electoral courts.[10] The highest court is the Supreme Federal Tribunal. This system has been criticised over the last decades for the slow pace at which final decisions are issued. Lawsuits on appeal may take several years to resolve, and in some cases more than a decade elapses before definitive rulings are made.[125]

Nevertheless, the Supreme Federal Tribunal is the first court in the world to transmit its sessions on television, and more recently also via Youtube.[126][127] More recently, in December 2009, the Supreme Court adopted Twitter to display items on the day planner of the ministers, to inform the actions that arrive daily to the Court, and the most important decisions made by them.[128]

Foreign relations and military

States hosting a diplomatic mission of Brazil.

Brazil is a political and economic leader in Latin America.[129][130] However, social and economic problems prevent it from becoming an effective global power.[131] Between World War II and 1990, both democratic and military governments sought to expand Brazil's influence in the world by pursuing a state-led industrial policy and an independent foreign policy. More recently, the country has aimed to strengthen ties with other South American countries, and engage in multilateral diplomacy through the United Nations and the Organization of American States.[132]

Aircraft carrier NAE São Paulo of the Brazilian Navy.

Brazil's current foreign policy is based on the country's position as a regional power in Latin America, a leader among developing countries, and an emerging world power.[133] In general current Brazilian foreign policy reflects multilateralism, peaceful dispute settlement, and nonintervention in the affairs of other countries.[134] The Brazilian Constitution also determines that the country shall seek the economic, political, social and cultural integration of the nations of Latin America.[10][135][136][137]

The armed forces of Brazil consist of the Brazilian Army, the Brazilian Navy, and the Brazilian Air Force with 371,199 active personnel.[138] The Military Police (States' Military Police) is described as an ancillary force of the Army by the constitution, but is under the control of each state's governor.[10] The armed forces are the largest in Latin America. The Air Force is the aerial warfare branch of the Brazilian armed forces, and the largest air force in Latin America, with about 700 manned aircraft in service.[139] The Navy is responsible for naval operations and for guarding Brazilian territorial waters. It is the oldest of the Brazilian armed forces and the only navy in Latin America to operate an aircraft carrier, the NAe São Paulo (formerly FS Foch of the French Navy).[140] The Army is responsible for land-based military operations and has 235,978 active personnel.[141]

States and municipalities

Brazil is a federation composed of twenty-six States, one federal district (which contains the capital city, Brasília) and municipalities.[10] States have autonomous administrations, collect their own taxes and receive a share of taxes collected by the Federal government. They have a governor and a unicameral legislative body elected directly by their voters. They also have independent Courts of Law for common justice. Despite that, states have much less autonomy to create their own laws than in the United States. For example, criminal and civil laws can only be voted by the federal bicameral Congress and are uniform throughout the country.[10]

In turn, the states and the federal district may be grouped into regions: Northern, Northeast, Central-West, Southeast and Southern. The Brazilian regions are merely geographical, not political or administrative divisions, and do not have any specific form of government. Although defined by law, Brazilian regions are useful mainly for statistical purposes, and sometimes to define the application of federal funds in development projects.

Municipalities, as the states, have autonomous administrations, collect their own taxes and receive a share of taxes collected by the Union and state government.[10] Each has a mayor and an elected legislative body, but no separate Court of Law. Indeed, a Court of Law organized by the state can encompass many municipalities in a single justice administrative division called comarca (county).

Geography

Topography map of Brazil.

Brazil occupies a large area along the eastern coast of South America and includes much of the continent's interior,[142] sharing land borders with Uruguay to the south; Argentina and Paraguay to the southwest; Bolivia and Peru to the west; Colombia to the northwest; and Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana and the French overseas department of French Guiana to the north. It shares a border with every country in South America except for Ecuador and Chile. A few oceanic archipelagos are also part of Brazil, such as Fernando de Noronha, Rocas Atoll, Saint Peter and Paul Rocks, and Trindade and Martim Vaz[8]. Its size, relief, climate, and natural resources make Brazil geographically diverse.[142] Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world, after Russia, Canada, China and the United States, and third largest in the Americas; with a total area of 8,511,965 square kilometers (3,286,488 sq mi), including 55,455 square kilometers (21,411 sq mi) of water.[8] It spans three time zones; from UTC-4 in the western states, to UTC-3 in the eastern states (and the official time of Brazil), and UTC-2 in the Atlantic islands.[6]

Brazilian topography is also diverse, including hills, mountains, plains, highlands, and scrublands. Much of Brazil lies between 200 metres (660 ft) and 800 metres (2,600 ft) in elevation.[143] The main upland area occupies most of the southern half of the country.[143] The northwestern parts of the plateau consist of broad, rolling terrain broken by low, rounded hills.[143] The southeastern section is more rugged, with a complex mass of ridges and mountain ranges reaching elevations of up to 1,200 metres (3,900 ft).[143] These ranges include the Mantiqueira and Espinhaço mountains and the Serra do Mar.[143] In the north, the Guiana Highlands form a major drainage divide, separating rivers that flow south into the Amazon Basin from rivers that empty into the Orinoco River system, in Venezuela, to the north. The highest point in Brazil is the Pico da Neblina at 3,014 metres (9,890 ft), and the lowest is the Atlantic Ocean.[8] Brazil has a dense and complex system of rivers, one of the world's most extensive, with eight major drainage basins, all of which drain into the Atlantic.[144] Major rivers include the Amazon, the largest river in terms of volume of water and the second-longest in the world; the Paraná and its major tributary, the Iguaçu River, where the Iguazu Falls are located; the Negro, São Francisco, Xingu, Madeira and the Tapajós rivers.[144]

Climate

Snow in São Joaquim, Santa Catarina (South) and tropical climate in Cabedelo, Paraiba (Northeast).

The climate of Brazil comprises a wide range of weather conditions across a large area and varied topography, but the largest part of the country is tropical.[8] According to the Köppen system, Brazil hosts five major climatic subtypes: equatorial, tropical, semiarid, highland tropical, and temperate; ranging from equatorial rainforests in the north and semiarid deserts in the northeast, to temperate coniferous forests in the south and tropical savannas in central Brazil.[145] Many regions have starkly different microclimates.[146][147]

An equatorial climate characterizes much of northern Brazil. There is no real dry season, but there are some variations in the period of the year when most rain falls.[145] Temperatures average 25 °C (77 °F),[147] with more significant temperature variations between night and day than between seasons.[146] Over central Brazil rainfall is more seasonal, characteristic of a savanna climate.[146] This region is as large and extensive as the Amazon basin but, lying farther south and being at a moderate altitude, it has a very different climate.[145] In the interior northeast, seasonal rainfall is even more extreme. The semiarid climate region generally receives less than 800 millimetres (31 in) of rain,[148] most of which falls in a period of three to five months[149] and occasionally even more insufficiently, creating long periods of drought.[146] South of Bahia, near São Paulo, the distribution of rainfall changes, with rainfall in all months.[145] The south has temperate conditions, with average temperatures below 18 °C (64 °F) and cool winters;[147] frosts are quite common, with occasional snowfall in the higher areas.[145][146]

Flora and fauna

The Macaw is a typical animal of Brazil. The country has one of the world's most diverse populations of birds and amphibians.
Amazon Rainforest, the largest tropical forest in the world.

Brazil's large territory comprises different ecosystems, such as the Amazon Rainforest, recognized as having the greatest biological diversity in the world;[150] the Atlantic Forest and the Cerrado, which together sustain some of the world's greatest biodiversity.[151] In the south, the Araucaria pine forest grows under temperate conditions.[151] The rich wildlife of Brazil reflects the variety of natural habitats. Much of it, however, remains largely unknown, and new species are found on nearly a daily basis.[citation needed]

Scientists estimate that the total number of plant and animal species in Brazil could approach four million.[151] Larger mammals include pumas, jaguars, ocelots, rare bush dogs, and foxes. Peccaries, tapirs, anteaters, sloths, opossums, and armadillos are abundant. Deer are plentiful in the south, and monkeys of many species abound in the northern rain forests.[151][152] Concern for the environment has grown in response to global interest in environmental issues.[153]

The natural heritage of Brazil is severely threatened by cattle ranching and agriculture, logging, mining, resettlement, oil and gas extraction, over-fishing, expansion of urban centres, wildlife trade, fire, climate change, dams and infrastructure, water contamination, and invasive species.[150] In many areas of the country, the natural environment is threatened by development.[154] Construction of highways has opened up previously remote areas for agriculture and settlement; dams have flooded valleys and inundated wildlife habitats; and mines have scarred and polluted the landscape.[153][155]

Economy

Soybean fields in Brazil.

Brazil is the largest national economy in Latin America, the world's tenth largest economy at market exchange rates[156][157] and the ninth largest in purchasing power parity (PPP),[156][158] according to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Its GDP (PPP) per capita is $10,200, putting Brazil in the 64th position according to World Bank data. It has a large and developed agricultural, mining, manufacturing and service sectors, as well as a large labor pool.[11] Brazilian exports are booming, creating a new generation of tycoons.[159] Major export products include aircraft, coffee, automobiles, soybeans, iron ore, orange juice, steel, ethanol, textiles, footwear, corned beef and electrical equipment.[160] The country has been expanding its presence in international financial and commodities markets, and is regarded as one of a group of four emerging economies called BRIC.[161]

Brazil pegged its currency, the real, to the U.S. dollar in 1994. However, after the East Asian financial crisis, the Russian default in 1998[162] and the series of adverse financial events that followed it, the Brazilian central bank temporarily changed its monetary policy to a managed-float scheme while undergoing a currency crisis, until definitively changing the exchange regime to free-float in January 1999.[163] Brazil received an International Monetary Fund rescue package in mid-2002 of $30.4 billion,[164] then a record sum. Due in 2006, the IMF loan was paid off early by Brazil's central bank in 2005.[165] One of the issues the Brazilian central bank recently dealt with was an excess of speculative short-term capital inflows to the country, which might explain in part a fall of the U.S. dollar against the real during that period.[166] Nonetheless, foreign direct investment (FDI), related to long-term, less speculative investment in production, is estimated to be $193.8 billion for 2007.[167] Inflation monitoring and control currently plays a major role in Brazil's Central Bank activity in setting out short-term interest rates as a monetary policy measure.[168]

Components and energy

Itaipu Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric plant by energy generation and second-largest by installed capacity.

Brazil's economy is diverse,[169] encompassing agriculture, industry, and many services.[159][170][171][172] The recent economic strength has been due in part to a global boom in commodities prices with exports from beef to soybeans soaring.[171][172] Agriculture and allied sectors like forestry, logging and fishing accounted for 5.1% of the gross domestic product in 2007.[173] A performance that puts agribusiness in a position of distinction in terms of Brazil's trade balance, in spite of trade barriers and subsidizing policies adopted by the developed countries.[vague][174][175] The industry — from automobiles, steel and petrochemicals to computers, aircraft, and consumer durables — accounted for 30.8% of the gross domestic product.[173] Geographically, industry is highly concentrated, particularly in metropolitan São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Campinas, Porto Alegre, and Belo Horizonte. Technologically advanced industries are also highly concentrated there.[176]

Brazil is the world's tenth largest energy consumer. Its energy comes from renewable sources, particularly hydroelectricity and ethanol; and nonrenewable sources, mainly oil and natural gas.[177] A global power in agriculture and natural resources, Brazil witnessed tremendous economic growth over the past three decades.[178] It is expected to become a major oil producer and exporter, having recently made huge oil discoveries.[179][180][181] The governmental agencies responsible for the energy policy are the Ministry of Mines and Energy, the National Council for Energy Policy, the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels, and the National Agency of Electricity.[182][183]

Science and technology

Technological research in Brazil is largely carried out in public universities and research institutes. But more than 73% of funding for basic research still comes from government sources.[184] Some of Brazil's most notable technological hubs are the Oswaldo Cruz Institute, the Butantan Institute, the Air Force's Aerospace Technical Center, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation and the INPE. The Brazilian Space Agency has the most advanced space program in Latin America, with significant capabilities[vague] to launch vehicles, launch sites and satellite manufacturing.[185]

Uranium is enriched at the Resende Nuclear Fuel Factory to fuel the country's energy demands. Plans are on the way to build the country's first nuclear submarine.[186][187] Brazil is one of the three countries in Latin America[188] with an operational Synchrotron Laboratory, a research facility on physics, chemistry, material science and life sciences.

Transport

BR-116 highway in the outskirts of Fortaleza.
An aerial view of Congonhas-São Paulo Airport.

Brazil has a large and diverse transport network. Roads are the primary carriers of freight and passenger traffic. The road system totaled 1.98 million km (1.23 million mi) in 2002. The total of paved roads increased from 35,496 km (22,056 mi) in 1967 to 184,140 km (114,425 mi) in 2002.[189]

Brazil's railway system has been declining since 1945, when emphasis shifted to highway construction. The total length of railway track was 30,875 km (19,186 mi) in 2002, as compared with 31,848 km (19,789 mi) in 1970. Most of the railway system belongs to the Federal Railroad Corp., with a majority government interest; there are also seven lines which the government privatized in 1997.[190] The São Paulo Metro was the first underground transit system in Brazil. The other metro systems are in Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Recife, Belo Horizonte, Brasília, Teresina, Fortaleza, and Salvador.

There are about 2,500 airports in Brazil, including landing fields: the second largest number in the world, after the United States.[191] São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport, near São Paulo, is the largest and busiest airport, handling the vast majority of popular and commercial traffic of the country and connecting the city with virtually all major cities across the world.[192]

Coastal shipping links widely separated parts of the country. Bolivia and Paraguay have been given free ports at Santos. Of the 36 deep-water ports, Santos, Itajaí, Rio Grande, Paranaguá, Rio de Janeiro, Sepetiba, Vitória, Suape, Manaus and São Francisco do Sul.[vague][193]

Demographics

The population of Brazil as recorded by the 2008 PNAD was of about 190 million people[194] (22.31 inhabitants per square kilometer), with a ratio of 0.95 men per woman.[195] 83.75% of the population was urban.[196] The population is heavily concentrated in the Southeastern (79.8 million inhabitants) and Northeastern (53.5 million inhabitants) regions, while the two most extense[vague] regions, the Center-West and the North, which together make 64.12% of the Brazilian territory, have together only 29.1 million inhabitants.

Population increased strongly between 1940 and 1970, due to the decline of mortality rates (even though natality rates also underwent a slight decline). In the 40s the annual growth rate was of 2.4%, rising to 3.0% in the 50s and remaining at 2.9% in the 60s, as life expectancy rose from 44 to 54 years.[197] During the 70s, natality rates also declined strongly, bringing the annual growth rate down to 2.4%. This process continued during the 80s, when the annual growth rate fell to 1.9%, completing the demographic transition.[198]

According to the National Research by Household Sample (PNAD) of 2008, 48.43% of the population (about 92 million) described themselves as White; 43.80% (about 83 million) as Brown (Multiracial) (about 80 million); 6.84% (about 13 million) as Black; 0.58% (about 1.1 million) as Yellow; and 0.28% (about 536 thousand) as Amerindian, while 0.07% (about 130 thousand) did not declare their race.[199]

In 2007, the National Indian Foundation reported the presence of 67 different uncontacted tribes, up from 40 in 2005. Brazil is believed to have the largest number of uncontacted peoples in the world.[200]

Race/Colour (2007)
White 49.4%
Brown (Multiracial) 42.3%
Black 7.4%
Yellow (Asian) 0.5%
Native Brazilian 0.4%

Most Brazilians descend from the country's indigenous peoples, Portuguese settlers, and African slaves.[201] From 1500, with the arrival of the Portuguese, miscegenation between these three groups took place. The brown population (as multiracial Brazilians are officially called)[202][203] is a broader category that includes Caboclos (descendants of Whites and Indians), Mulattoes (those of Whites and Blacks) and Cafuzos (those of Blacks and Indians).[201][202][203][204][205][206] Caboclos form the majority of the population in the Northern, Northeastern and Central-Western regions.[207] A large Mulatto population can be found in the eastern coast of the northeastern region from Bahia to Paraíba[206][208] and also in northern Maranhão,[209][210] southern Minas Gerais[211] and in eastern Rio de Janeiro.[206][211] From the 19th century, Brazil opened its borders to immigration. About five million people from over 60 countries migrated to Brazil between 1808 and 1972, most of them from Portugal, Italy, Spain, Germany, Japan and the Middle-East.[212]

Christ the Redeemer, symbol of Brazilian Christianity.

In 2008, the literacy rate was 88.52%[213] and the youth literacy rate (ages 15–19) was 98.26%. Illiteracy is highest (20.30%) in the Northeast, which has a high proportion of rural poor.[214] It is also higher (24.18%) among the rural population; among the urban population it is 9.05%.[215]

Catholicism is dominant, making Brazil the largest Catholic nation in the world.[216] According to the 2000 Demographic Census (the PNAD survey does not inquire about religion), 73.57% of the population followed Roman Catholicism; 15.41% Protestantism; 1.33% Kardecist spiritism; 1.22% other Christian denominations; 0.31% Afro-Brazilian religions; 0.13% Buddhism; 0.05% Judaism; 0.02% Islam; 0.01% Amerindian religions; 0.59% other religions, undeclared or undetermined; while 7.35% have no religion.[217]

The largest metropolitan areas in Brazil are São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Belo Horizonte - all in the Southeastern Region - with 19.5, 11.5, and 5.1 million inhabitants respectively.[218] Almost all of the state capitals are the largest cities in their states, except for Vitória, the capital of Espírito Santo, and Florianópolis, the capital of Santa Catarina. There are also non-capital metropolitan areas in the states of São Paulo (Campinas, Santos and the Paraíba Valley), Minas Gerais (Steel Valley), Rio Grande do Sul (Sinos Valley), and Santa Catarina (Itajaí Valley).[219]

Largest cities of Brazil

São Paulo
São Paulo
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Salvador
Salvador
Brasília
Brasília
Fortaleza
Fortaleza

Rank Municipality Federative unit Population

Belo Horizonte
Belo Horizonte
Curitiba
Curitiba
Manaus
Manaus
Recife
Recife
Porto Alegre
Porto Alegre

1 São Paulo São Paulo 10,990,249
2 Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro 6,161,047
3 Salvador Bahia 2,948,733
4 Brasília Federal District 2,557,158
5 Fortaleza Ceará 2,473,614
6 Belo Horizonte Minas Gerais 2,434,642
7 Curitiba Paraná 1,828,092
8 Manaus Amazonas 1,709,010
9 Recife Pernambuco 1,549,980
10 Porto Alegre Rio Grande do Sul 1,430,220
11 Belém Pará 1,424,124
12 Guarulhos São Paulo 1,279,202
13 Goiânia Goiás 1,265,394
14 Campinas São Paulo 1,056,644
15 São Luís Maranhão 986,826
16 São Gonçalo Rio de Janeiro 982,832
17 Maceió Alagoas 924,143
18 Duque de Caxias Rio de Janeiro 864,392
19 Nova Iguaçu Rio de Janeiro 855,500
20 São Bernardo do Campo São Paulo 801,580
Source: Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (2008 Population Estimates)

Culture

The core culture of Brazil derived from Portuguese culture, because of strong colonial ties with the Portuguese empire. Among other inheritances, the Portuguese introduced the Portuguese language, the Roman Catholicism and colonial architectural styles.[220] This culture, however, was strongly influenced by African and indigenous, and non-Portuguese European cultures and traditions.[221] Some aspects of Brazilian culture are the contributions of Italian, German and other European immigrants; these came in large numbers to and their influences are more apparent in the South and Southeast of Brazil.[222] Amerindian peoples influenced Brazil's language and cuisine; and the Africans influenced language, cuisine, music, dance and religion.[223]

Coffee has been one of the main beverages among Brazilians since the beginning of the 19th century.

Brazilian cuisine varies greatly by region, reflecting the country's mix of native and immigrants. This has created a national cuisine marked by the preservation of regional differences.[224] Examples are the Feijoada, considered the country's national dish;[225][226] and regional foods such as vatapá, moqueca, polenta and acarajé. Brazil has a variety of candies like brigadeiros ("brigadiers") and beijinhos ("kissies"). Nationwide beverages are coffee and cachaça, Brazil's native liquor, distilled from sugar cane and the main ingredient in the national cocktail, the Caipirinha.

Brazilian art has developed since the 16th century into different styles that range from Baroque (the dominant style in Brazil until the early 19th century)[227][228] to Romanticism, Modernism, Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism and Abstractionism.

Football (soccer) is the most popular sport in Brazil.[224]

Brazilian cinema dates back to the birth of the medium in the late 19th century, and gained a new level of international acclaim in recent years.[229]

Brazilian music encompasses various regional styles influenced by African, European and Amerindian forms. It developed distinctive styles, among them samba, Música Popular Brasileira, choro, sertanejo, brega, forró, frevo, maracatu, Bossa nova, Brazilian rock, and axé.

The most popular sport in Brazil is soccer. The Brazilian national football team is usually ranked among the best in the world according to the FIFA World Rankings and won the World Cup tournament five times.[230] Basketball, volleyball, auto racing, and martial arts also attract large audiences. Though not as regularly followed or practiced as these, tennis, team handball, swimming, and gymnastics have found a growing number of enthusiasts over the last decades. Some sport variations have their origins in Brazil: beach football,[231] futsal (indoor football)[232] and footvolley emerged in Brazil as variations of football. In martial arts, Brazilians developed Capoeira,[233] Vale tudo,[234] and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.[235] In auto racing, Brazilian drivers have won the Formula One world championship nine times.[236][237][238]

Brazil has hosted several high-profile international sporting events, including the 1950 FIFA World Cup[239] and has been chosen to host the 2014 FIFA World Cup.[240] The São Paulo circuit, Autódromo José Carlos Pace, hosts the annual Grand Prix of Brazil.[241] São Paulo organized the IV Pan American Games in 1963,[242] and Rio de Janeiro hosted the XV Pan American Games in 2007.[242] On 2 October 2009, Brazil was selected to host the 2016 Olympic Games, the first to be held in South America.[243]

Language

Museum of the Portuguese Language in São Paulo, the first language museum in the world.

Portuguese is the official language of Brazil.[244] It is spoken by almost all of the population and is virtually the only language used in newspapers, radio, television, and for business and administrative purposes, with the exception of Nheengatu, an indigenous language of South America granted co-official status alongside Portuguese in the municipality of São Gabriel da Cachoeira.[245] Moreover, Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas, making the language an important part of Brazilian national identity and giving it a national culture distinct from those of its Spanish-speaking neighbors.[citation needed]

Brazilian Portuguese has had its own development, influenced by the Amerindian and African languages.[246] As a result, the language is somewhat different, mostly in phonology and orthography, from that in Portugal and other Portuguese-speaking countries. These differences are somewhat greater than those between American and British English.[246] In 2008, the CPLP (Community of Portuguese Language Countries) reached an agreement in the reform of Portuguese as one international language, as opposed to two diverged dialects of the same language, in which all countries with Portuguese as the official language participated. All CPLP countries were given from 2009 until 2014 to adjust to the necessary changes.[247]

Minority languages are spoken throughout the nation. One hundred and eighty Amerindian languages are spoken in remote areas. Other languages are spoken by immigrants and their descendants.[246] There are important communities of speakers of German (mostly the Hunsrückisch, part of the High German languages) and Italian (mostly the Talian dialect, of Venetian origin) in the south of the country, both largely influenced by the Portuguese language.[citation needed]

See also

Bibliography

Notes

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  13. ^ a b Boxer, p.100.
  14. ^ Boxer, pp.100-101.
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  16. ^ Boxer, p.101.
  17. ^ Boxer, p.108
  18. ^ a b c Boxer, p.102.
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  20. ^ Skidmore, p.30.
  21. ^ Skidmore, p.36.
  22. ^ Boxer, p.110
  23. ^ Skidmore, p.34.
  24. ^ Skidmore, pp. 32-33.
  25. ^ Bueno, pp. 80-81.
  26. ^ Calmon, p.294.
  27. ^ Bueno, p.86.
  28. ^ Boxer, p.164.
  29. ^ Boxer, pp. 168, 170.
  30. ^ Boxer, p.169.
  31. ^ Boxer, p.207.
  32. ^ a b Boxer, p.213.
  33. ^ Bueno, p.145.
  34. ^ Calmon (2002), p.191.
  35. ^ Lustosa, pp.109-110
  36. ^ Lustosa, pp.117-119
  37. ^ Lustosa, pp.150-153
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  42. ^ Diégues 2004, pp. 179–180
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  48. ^ Vainfas, p.170
  49. ^ Lyra (v.1), p.17
  50. ^ Carvalho 2007, p.21
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  52. ^ Carvalho (2007), p.43
  53. ^ Souza, p.326
  54. ^ Janotti, pp.171-172
  55. ^ Munro, p.273
  56. ^ Lyra (v.1), pp. 164, 225, 272
  57. ^ Carvalho (2007), pp. 9, 222
  58. ^ Lyra (v.1), p.166
  59. ^ Lyra (v.3), p.62
  60. ^ Vainfas, p.18
  61. ^ a b Munro, p.280
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  63. ^ Schwarcz, p.444
  64. ^ Vainfas, p.201
  65. ^ Barman (1999), p.399
  66. ^ Barman (1999), p.130
  67. ^ Lyra (v.3), p.126
  68. ^ Barman (1999), p.361
  69. ^ Ricardo Salles, Nostalgia Imperial (Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks, 1996), p.194 - However, the monarchist reaction after the fall of the empire and the subsequent exile of the Imperial Family "was not small and even less was its repression".
  70. ^ Lyra (v.3), p.99
  71. ^ Schwarcz, pp. 450, 457
  72. ^ a b Barman (1999), p.403
  73. ^ Barman (1999), p.404
  74. ^ Skidmore, p.153
  75. ^ Bueno, pp.296-301
  76. ^ Skidmore, p.154
  77. ^ Skidmore, pp.155-156
  78. ^ Bueno, pp.328 and 331
  79. ^ Fausto (2005), p.249
  80. ^ Fausto (2005), p.267
  81. ^ Skidmore, p.162
  82. ^ Bueno, p.336
  83. ^ Skidmore, p.164
  84. ^ Fausto (2005), p.272
  85. ^ Dietrich, Ana Maria in História Viva magazine, issue 67, year VI, 2009, p.61
  86. ^ Bueno, pp.343-344
  87. ^ Skidmore, p.173
  88. ^ Fausto (2005), p.281
  89. ^ Skidmore, pp.182-183
  90. ^ Bueno, pp.346-347
  91. ^ Skidmore, pp.188-194
  92. ^ Skidmore, p.201
  93. ^ Skidmore, pp. 202-203
  94. ^ Skidmore, p.204
  95. ^ Skidmore, pp.204-205
  96. ^ Skidmore, pp. 209-210
  97. ^ Skidmore, p.210
  98. ^ Fausto (2005), p.397
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  105. ^ Fausto (2005), p.455.
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  107. ^ Gaspari, A Ditadura Envergonhada, pp. 35-36.
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  111. ^ Fausto (2005), pp. 465, 475.
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  114. ^ Fausto (2005), p.474.
  115. ^ Fausto (2005), p.502.
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  217. ^ Census 2000, IBGE. "População residente por cor ou raça e religião".
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  220. ^ "15th-16th Century". History. Brazilian Government official website. http://www.brasil.gov.br/ingles/about_brazil/history/xvi_cent/. Retrieved 2008-06-08. 
  221. ^ "People and Society". Encarta. MSN. http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761554342_3/Brazil.html. Retrieved 2008-06-10. [dubious ]
  222. ^ "Population". Encarta. MSN. http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761554342_3/Brazil.html. Retrieved 2008-06-10. [dubious ]
  223. ^ Freyre, Gilberto (1986). "The Afro-Brazilian experiment: African influence on Brazilian culture". UNESCO. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1310/is_1986_May-June/ai_4375022. Retrieved 2008-06-08. 
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  225. ^ Roger, "Feijoada: The Brazilian national dish" braziltravelguide.com.[dubious ]
  226. ^ "Brazil National Dish: Feijoada Recipe and Restaurants". Visited on November 8, 2009.[dubious ]
  227. ^ Leandro Karnal, Teatro da fé: Formas de representação religiosa no Brasil e no México do século XVI (São Paulo, Editora Hucitec, 1998; available here.
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  233. ^ "The art of capoeira". BBC. 2006-09-20. http://www.bbc.co.uk/northyorkshire/content/articles/2005/09/13/capoeira_feature.shtml. Retrieved 2008-06-06. 
  234. ^ "Brazilian Vale Tudo". I.V.C. http://valetudo.com.br/. Retrieved 2008-06-06. 
  235. ^ "Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Official Website". International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation. http://www.ibjjf.org/index.htm. Retrieved 2008-06-06. 
  236. ^ Donaldson, Gerald. "Emerson Fittipaldi". Hall of Fame. The Official Formula 1 Website. http://www.formula1.com/teams_and_drivers/hall_of_fame/282/. Retrieved 2008-06-06. 
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  238. ^ Donaldson, Gerald. "Ayrton Senna". Hall of Fame. The Official Formula 1 Website. http://www.formula1.com/teams_and_drivers/hall_of_fame/45/. Retrieved 2008-06-06. 
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References

  • Azevedo, Aroldo. O Brasil e suas regiões. São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 1971. (Portuguese)
  • Barman, Roderick J. Citizen Emperor: Pedro II and the Making of Brazil, 1825–1891. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. ISBN 0804735107 (English)
  • Boxer, Charles R.. O império marítimo português 1415-1825. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2002. ISBN 8535902929 (Portuguese)
  • Bueno, Eduardo. Brasil: uma História. São Paulo: Ática, 2003. (Portuguese) ISBN 8508082134
  • Calmon, Pedro. História da Civilização Brasileira. Brasília: Senado Federal, 2002. (Portuguese)
  • Carvalho, José Murilo de. D. Pedro II. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2007. (Portuguese)
  • Coelho, Marcos Amorim. Geografia do Brasil. 4th ed. São Paulo: Moderna, 1996. (Portuguese)
  • Diégues, Fernando. A revolução brasílica. Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, 2004. (Portuguese)
  • Enciclopédia Barsa. Volume 4: Batráquio – Camarão, Filipe. Rio de Janeiro: Encyclopaedia Britannica do Brasil, 1987. (Portuguese)
  • Fausto, Boris and Devoto, Fernando J. Brasil e Argentina: Um ensaio de história comparada (1850-2002), 2nd ed. São Paulo: Editoria 34, 2005. (Portuguese)
  • Gaspari, Elio. A ditadura envergonhada. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2002. ISBN 8535902775 (Portuguese)
  • Janotti, Aldo. O Marquês de Paraná: inícios de uma carreira política num momento crítico da história da nacionalidade. Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia, 1990. (Portuguese)
  • Lyra, Heitor. História de Dom Pedro II (1825 – 1891): Ascenção (1825 – 1870). v.1. Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia, 1977. (Portuguese)
  • Lyra, Heitor. História de Dom Pedro II (1825 – 1891): Declínio (1880 – 1891). v.3. Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia, 1977. (Portuguese)
  • Lustosa, Isabel. D. Pedro I: um herói sem nenhum caráter. São Paulo: Companhia das letras, 2006. ISBN 8535908072 (Portuguese)
  • Moreira, Igor A. G. O Espaço Geográfico, geografia geral e do Brasil. 18. Ed. São Paulo: Ática, 1981. (Portuguese)
  • Munro, Dana Gardner. The Latin American Republics; A History. New York: D. Appleton, 1942. (English)
  • Schwarcz, Lilia Moritz. As barbas do Imperador: D. Pedro II, um monarca nos trópicos. 2nd ed. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1998. ISBN 8571648379 (Portuguese)
  • Skidmore, Thomas E. Uma História do Brasil. 4th ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2003. (Portuguese) ISBN 8521903138
  • Souza, Adriana Barreto de. Duque de Caxias: o homem por trás do monumento. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2008. (Portuguese) ISBN 9788520008645
  • Vainfas, Ronaldo. Dicionário do Brasil Imperial. Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, 2002. ISBN 8573024410 (Portuguese)
  • Vesentini, José William. Brasil, sociedade e espaço – Geografia do Brasil. 7th Ed. São Paulo: Ática, 1988. (Portuguese)
  • Vianna, Hélio. História do Brasil: período colonial, monarquia e república, 15th ed. São Paulo: Melhoramentos, 1994. (Portuguese)

Further reading

  • Alves, Maria Helena Moreira (1985). State and Opposition in Military Brazil. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. 
  • Amann, Edmund (1990). The Illusion of Stability: The Brazilian Economy under Cardoso. World Development (pp. 1805–1819). 
  • "Background Note: Brazil". US Department of State. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35640.htm. 
  • Bellos, Alex (2003). Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life. London: Bloomsbury Publishing plc. 
  • Bethell, Leslie (1991). Colonial Brazil. Cambridge: CUP. 
  • Costa, João Cruz (1964). A History of Ideas in Brazil. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. 
  • Fausto, Boris (1999). A Concise History of Brazil. Cambridge: CUP. 
  • Furtado, Celso. The Economic Growth of Brazil: A Survey from Colonial to Modern Times. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 
  • Leal, Victor Nunes (1977). Coronelismo: The Municipality and Representative Government in Brazil. Cambridge: CUP. 
  • Malathronas, John (2003). Brazil: Life, Blood, Soul. Chichester: Summersdale. 
  • Martinez-Lara, Javier (1995). Building Democracy in Brazil: The Politics of Constitutional Change. Macmillan. 
  • Prado Júnior, Caio (1967). The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. 
  • Schneider, Ronald (1995). Brazil: Culture and Politics in a New Economic Powerhouse. Boulder Westview. 
  • Skidmore, Thomas E. (1974). Black Into White: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
  • Wagley, Charles (1963). An Introduction to Brazil. New York, New York: Columbia University Press. 
  • The World Almanac and Book of Facts: Brazil. New York, NY: World Almanac Books. 2006. 

External links

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Misspellings: Brazilian
Top

Common misspelling(s) of Brazilian

  • Brasillian

Translations: Brazil
Top

Dansk (Danish)
n. - Brasilien

Français (French)
n. - Brésil

Deutsch (German)
n. - Brasilien

Português (Portuguese)
n. - Brasil

Español (Spanish)
n. - Brasil

中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
巴西

中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 巴西

한국어 (Korean)
브라질(연방 공화국) (정식 명칭은 the Federative Republic of ~; 수도 Brasilia), Brazilwood, 그곳에서 채취되는 적색 염료

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮ברזיל‬


 
 
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