Brazil
The Federative Republic of Brazil (República Federativa do Brasil in Portuguese) is the largest and most populous country in South America. Spanning a vast area between the Andes and the Atlantic Ocean, it borders Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru,
Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. Named after brazilwood, a local tree, Brazil is home to both extensive agricultural lands and rain forests.
History
Main article: History of Brazil
Brazil had been inhabited for at least 6,000 years by semi-nomadic populations when the first Portuguese explorers, Led by Pedro Álvares
Cabral disembarked on 1500. Over the next three centuries it was re-settled by the
Portuguese and exploited mainly for brazilwood at first, and later for sugarcane agriculture. Work on the colony was based on slavery. In 1808 King João VI of Portugal, fleeing from Napoleon, relocated to
Brazil with the royal family , nobles and government. Though they returned in 1821, the
interlude led to the opening of commercial Ports to England - at the time isolated from most European ports by Napoleon - and the
"elevation" of Brazil to the status of a United Kingdom to Portugal's Crown. In 1822 the
then prince-regent Dom Pedro I, declared independence on September 7, 1822, establishing the independent
Empire of Brazil. This lasted until the next emperor, Dom Pedro II was deposed and a republican based federation was established in November 15, 1889.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Brazil attracted over 5 million European and
Asian immigrants. That period also saw Brazil industrialise and further expand into its
interior. Brazilian democracy was replaced by dictatorship three times
— 1930–1934 and 1937–1945 under Getulio Vargas, and 1964–1985 under a succession of generals appointed by the military.
Politics
Main article: Politics of Brazil
The 1988 constitution grants broad
powers to the federal government, of which the president
and vice president are elected on the same ticket by popular vote for four-year terms. The president has extensive executive powers and is both head of
state and head of government and he also appoints the
cabinet.
The Brazilian legislature, the bicameral National Congress or
Congresso Nacional, consists of the Federal Senate or Senado Federal
of 81 seats, of which three members from each state or federal district are elected according to the principle of majority to
serve eight-year terms; one-third elected after a four-year period, two-thirds elected after the next four-year period. Beside
the Senate there is the Chamber of Deputies or Câmara dos Deputados of 513 seats, whose members are elected by proportional representation to serve four-year
terms.
See also:
- Cangaço (criminal hinterland bands in the first years of the XX century)
- Café com leite (reference to Brazil's domination by the "coffee
oligarchs" in the first years of the XX century)
- Coronelismo (reference to machine politics in the first years of the XX
century)
- Integralism (influential Brazilian fascist movement in the 1930s)
States
There are 27 States of Brazil, or Estados in Portuguese, which are the federal states of Brazil,
plus the Federal District which holds the capital city, Brasília.
The twenty-six states are:
See also: Brazil, List of subnational entities, List of capitals of subnational entities
See also: List of cities in Brazil
Geography
Main article: Geography of Brazil
Brazil is characterised by the extensive low-lying Amazon
Rainforest in the north, and a more open terrain of hills and (low) mountains to the south, home to most of Brazil's
population and its agricultural base. Along the coast of the Atlantic
Ocean are also found several mountain ranges, amongst which the highest peak is the Pico da Neblina at 3,014 m. Major rivers include the Amazon, the largest river in the world by volume, the Paraná with its impressive Iguaçu falls, the Rio Negro, São
Francisco, Xingu, Madeira and the Tapajós rivers.
Situated along the equator, Brazil's climate is predominantly tropical, with little
seasonal variation, though the subtropical south is more temperate and can occasionally experience frost and snow. Precipitation is abundant in the humid Amazon Basin, though more arid landscapes are found as well, in particular in the
northeast.
Economy
Main article: Economy of Brazil
Brazil's $558 billion economy grew 5.2 percent in 2004 as the world's biggest producer of sugar, iron ore and coffee, boosted trade with
expanding economies such as China, pushing exports to a record surplus of $96.5 billion, a 32 percent increase over 2003's $24.8 billion surplus.
The Brazilian currency is now bouncing close from new five-year highs. This year's advance extends the real's gain to 25 percent over the past 12 months,
which is also the biggest gain in any currency in the world over the last year. The currency is up 70 percent since President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took office in January 2003.
Brazil is overcoming its national debt,
which has consumed a disproportionate fraction of
its GNP.
This is due to an increase in exports the economy of Brazil is growing above expected pace and the overall
feeling is optimistic for the year 2005. The industry accumulates growth of 8.3% in the year and 7.4% in the last twelve months.
Possessing large and well-developed agricultural, mining, manufacturing, and service sectors, as well as a large labour pool, Brazil's economy outweighs
that of all other South American countries and is expanding its presence
in world markets. Major export products include coffee, soybeans, iron ore, orange juice and steel. After crafting a fiscal adjustment program and
pledging progress on structural reform, Brazil received a USD 41.5 billion IMF-led
international support program in November 1998. In January 1999, the Brazilian Central Bank
announced that the Real would no longer be pegged to the US dollar. This devaluation helped moderate the downturn in economic growth in 1999 that
investors had expressed concerns about over the summer of 1998, and the country posted moderate GDP growth ever since.
Now is the best time to invest in Brazil because of the following reasons:
- Brazilian interest rates are now falling.
- Inflation is under control.
- The trade balance is recording strong surpluses.
- The Brazilian Real is steadily growing at 25% per year against the dollar.
- The economy will continue to grow.
- Publicly-traded companies plan to invest heavily.
- Fiscal policy is showing extremely satisfactory results.
- Brazil‘s risk spread remains at under 400 basis points.
- There is excess liquidity in the world.
- Brazilian balance sheets show vigorous profits.
- Vulnerability to foreign factors is declining.
- Unemployment is falling.
- Foreign investment is plentiful.
- International credibility is high and risk is low.
See also:
Demographics
Main article: Demographics of Brazil
Ethnic groups
The only clearly separated minority ethnic groups in Brazil are the various non-assimilated indigenous tribes, comprising less than 1% of the
population, who live in officially delimited reservations and either avoid contact with "civilized" people, or have assimilated
mainstream Brazilian culture to some extent but still constitute separate social and political communities. The rest of the
population can be considered a single "Brazilian" ethnic group, with highly varied racial types and backgrounds, some broad
regional trends, but without clear ethnic sub-divisions.
Most of the population descends from early European settlers (chiefly Portuguese and Italians (Wolrd's biggest Italian community outside Italy) , but also some
French and Dutch), African slaves (Yoruba, Ewe, Bantu, and others), and assimilated indigenous peoples (mostly Tupi and Guarani, but also of many other ethnic
groups). Trans-ethnic marriages and concubinates have been common and fairly well accepted ever since the first Portuguese
settlers arrived. Starting in the late 19th century Brazil received
substantial immigration from several other countries, mainly Germany,Spain, Poland, Lebanon, Japan, China and Korea. The Japanese are the largest Asian group in
Brazil, but some Chinese and Koreans also settled Brazil. Most Chinese came from mainland
China, but others came from Taiwan, and Hong Kong, and also from Portuguese-speaking Macau. (These Chinese from
Macao could speak and understand Portuguese, and it was not hard for them to adjust to Brazilian life.) Those immigrant
populations and their descendants still retain some of their original ethnic identity, however they are not closed communities
and are rapidly integrating into mainstream Brazilian society: for instance, very few of the third generation can understand
their grandparents' languages.
Health
Both public and private sectors finance health care in Brazil. The federal government funds universal medical care through the Sistema Unico de Saude (SUS) program, which was passed into constitutional law in 1988. SUS funds public hospitals in Brazil and contracts for medical care at individual private hospitals. Because Brazilians are not required to qualify or register for SUS, any person in Brazil can receive free medical care at any hospital with a SUS contract. Although the federal constitution guarantees universal health care to all Brazilians through SUS, the actual delivery of this care is limited by insufficient government funding. Brazilian health care also is funded by private medical insurance, which both complements and, in some cases, competes with SUS. Certain national corporations and government entities provide employees' medical insurance, which is valid only at specified hospitals.
The health care system in Brazil is divided into public and private sectors, operating in parallel. Accordingly, Brazil has both public and private medical schools, hospitals, and prehospital care services. Even private hospitals with SUS contracts often divide their emergency departments (EDs) into separate areas for patients with private medical insurance and patients with SUS, creating an often jarring disparity between modern, well-equipped areas for the insured and often overcrowded, ill-equipped areas for patients with SUS.
Brazilian hospitals may specialize in specific areas of medicine such as trauma or cardiology. Trauma hospitals provide care for patients with virtually any type of trauma, including orthopedic or hand injuries, but may refuse to admit patients with medical disease. Conversely, a hospital providing internal medicine care may transfer a patient with simple orthopedic injuries.
Physicians are widely specialized in Brazil, with 63 officially recognized medical specialties, compared to 24 specialty boards in the US. Emergency medicine (EM) per se is not yet an officially recognized medical specialty.
Although the health care systems in different regions of Brazil are based upon similar law and organizational framework, facilities in southern Brazil usually are much better equipped and physicians are better trained than in northern and Amazon regions. As in the US, physicians are poorly distributed, with an overabundance of physicians in the metropolitan areas and a shortage of physicians, especially specialists, in the poorer rural areas.
Brazil's most problematic disease is AIDS. This has
resulted to the country threatening numerous time to break the AIDS drug patents in an attempt to minimise the health cost to the
country's economy. [1] (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4059147.stm)
Religion
About 74% of all Brazilians claims to be member of the Roman Catholic Church; most of the remaining 26% adhere to various Protestant faiths, Kardecism, Candomblé, Umbanda, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism.
According to IBGE 2000 Census, these are the biggest religious denominations in Brazil (only listed those with more than a
half million members):
- Its Charismatic Renewal branch is fast growing; the Progressive Branch (Liberation Theology) and the Conservative branch are
in decline. Only 15% of its membership attends the church regularly.
- Assembly of God (Assembléia de Deus): 8,418,140
- General Convention of the Assembly of God: 3.6 Million. Affiliated with the American Assemblies of God, Springfield, MO
- National Convention of the Assembly of God: 2.5 Million. A.k.a Madureira Assemblies of God
- Other independent Assemblies of God: 1,9 Million, such Bethesda Assemblies of God
- Brazilian Baptist Convention: 1,2 Million adherents.
- National Baptist Convention: 1 Million. Charismatics Baptists
- Independent Baptist Convention: 400,000. Scandinavian Baptists
- Other Baptists: 400,000
- These includes Kardec Spiritualist; Afro-Brazilian Sincretists, New Age, etc.
- Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus): 2 Millon. Neo-Pentecostal Movement.
- Foursquare Gospel Church: 1,318,805. Classic Pentocostals in US, but second-wave pentecostals in Brazil.
- Seventh-day Adventist Church:
900,000
- Promise Adventist Church: 150,000. Indigenous Pentecostal Adventists.
- Reform Seventh Day Adventist Church: 50,000
- Other Adventists: 100,000
- Evangelical Church of Lutheran Confission
- Evangelical Lutheran Church of Brazil
- Other Lutherans
- Presbyterian Church of Brazil: 450,000
- Independent Presbyterian Church: 300,00
- Congregationalists: 100,000
- Other Calvinists:150,000
- God is Love Pentecostal Church: 700,000. Divine Healing movement.
- Independent Catholics: 600,000
- Groups like Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church and many other small ones.
Languages
Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas, giving it a distinct national culture separate from its Spanish-speaking neighbors.
Portuguese is the only language with full official status in Brazil; it is virtually the only language used in schools,
newspapers, radio and TV, and for all business and administrative purposes.
However, many minority languages are spoken daily throughout the vast national territory of Brazil. Some of these minority
languages are spoken by indigenous peoples. Others yet are spoken by people who are for the most part bilingual (i.e. speakers of
Portuguese and English, French, German, and/or Italian, etc.).
Many of the indigenous people speak languages like: Mbyá-Guaraní (or simply Guaraní), Kaingang, Nadëb, Carajá, Caribe, Tucano, Arára, Terêna, Borôro, Apalaí, Canela and many others. Not all Amerindians desire to
become part of the mainstream culture of Brazil. Even though minorities are what they are, that is minorities, cultural conflicts cannot be dismissed as insignificant or
unimportant based what percentage of the national population they are.
Interestingly enough some of these minority languages recently have obtained local co-official status — e.g.
Nheengatu, Tukano, and Baniwa in São Gabriel da
Cachoeira, Amazonas (2003).
The Brazilian language Língua Geral which is now almost extinct, at
one time, until the late 1800s, was the common language used by a large number of indigenous and African and African-descendent peoples throughout the coast of Brazil - in other words, it was
spoken by the majority of the population in the land. Today, in the Amazon
Basin, political campaigning is still printed in this now rare language.
Other languages such as German, Italian, Polish and Japanese are spoken in southern Brazil. There are whole
regions in southern Brazil where people speak both Portuguese and one or more
of these languages. For example, it is reported that more than 90% of the residents of the small city of Presidente Lucena, located in
the state of Rio Grande do Sul, speak Riograndenser Hunsrückisch, a Brazilian form of the
Hunsrückisch German dialect (see this website (http://www.rotaromantica.com.br/cid_presidente_lucena01.htm)).
Although they have been rapidly replaced by Portuguese in the last few
decades, today states like Rio Grande do Sul are trying to
reverse that trend and Immigrant Languages such as German and Italian are being reintroduced into the curriculum again in communities
where they were originally thrived. Meanwhile, on the Argentine and Uruguayan border regions Brazilian students are being introduced (formally) to the Spanish language. It has spoken after the start of immigration of Spanish settlers in Brazil.
More and more people are realizing in Brazil that a person can master and carry more than one language
throughout their lives. In other words, integration into mainstream society does not mean that one has to become monolingual. More and more the reasoning is
that if languages are a human capital of great value to some, perhaps
they should be considered valuable to one all.
Some immigrant communities in southern Brazil, chiefly the German
and the Italian ones, have lasted long enough to develop distinctive dialects from
their original European sources. For example, Riograndenser Hunsrückisch or Hunsrückisch and Talian or Italiano Riograndense. These are not
languages per se but distinct dialects (from their original European counterparts).
Other transplanted German dialects to
this part of the world have not under gone the same level of changes. For example, the Austrian dialect spoken in Dreizehnlinden or Treze Tílias in the state of Santa Catarina; or the
dialect of the Donauschwaben
spoken in Entre Rios, in the state of Paraná; or the Pomeranian (Pommersch) dialect
spoken in many different parts of southern Brazil (in the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, Paraná, Espírito Santo, etc.).
Plautdietsch is spoken by the descendants of Russian Mennonites.
A Japanese-language newspaper, the São Paulo Shinbun, is
published in the city of São Paulo. There is a significant community of
Japanese speakers in
Paraná and Amazonas. Much smaller
groups exist in Santa Catarina, Riogrande do Sul and other parts
of Brazil.
Many Chinese, especially from Macao, speak a Portuguese
creole, called Macaista, aside from Portuguese, Mandarin, and Cantonese. Brazilians hear it as a surprise to them
for that unique Portuguese creole.
In São Paulo, the German-Brazilian newspaper Brasil-Post has been published for over fifty years. The Livraria Alemã of Blumenau was a fixture in the city for a long time. There are many other media
organizations throughout the land specializing either in church issues, music, language, etc. The German-Brazilian community in
Brazil is estimated to be in the millions.
The Italian online newspaper La Rena
offers Brazilian-Italian or Talian lessons... Please see here the link
here [2] (http://www.larenadomila.it/brasil/talian/talian01.htm#). Other Italian-Brazilian organizations
are listet here [[3] (http://www.lagosnet.com.br/italia/verpor/assocbra2c.htm)].
There are many other non-Portuguese publications, bilingual web sites, radio and television programs throughout the country.
For example, TV GALEGA from Blumenau shows German-language programming on their channel on a weekly basis.
The English-language daily Brazil Herald is directed mostly
to tourists, foreign executives and
expatriates.
Most major foreign newspapers can be obtained in larger Brazilian cities (Frankfurter Allgemeine; Le Monde; The New York Times; etc.)
Portuguese is the first language of almost 99% of the population but
Brazil is a very rich cultural and linguistic mosaic. There are many bilingual people in the country.
Culture
Main article: Culture of Brazil
Sports
Main Article: Sports
in Brazil
Some fight sports with Brazilian origins have become popular around the world:
Miscellaneous topics
Much of the material in these articles comes from the CIA
World Factbook 2000 and the 2003 U.S. Department of State website.
Relative pages and information:
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