Brazil

The largest country in South America, Brazil takes up about half of the continent. Brazil’s Amazon River basin, including the Amazon rain forest, is one of Earth’s richest areas of plant and animal life. The capital is Brasília.

Geography

Brazil shares borders with every South American nation except Ecuador and Chile. The Atlantic Ocean lies to the east. Brazil’s two main geographical regions are the Amazon River basin in the

north and the Brazilian Highlands in the center, east, and south. The north eastern coast is flat and dry. The south eastern coast includes narrow plains and mountains. In the west central part of Brazil is a vast wetland called the Pantanal.

Brazil is the world’s largest tropical country. It is hot year-round in much of the country, but temperatures are cooler along the coast and in the south.

Plants and Animals

The Amazon rain forest has the most varied plant life on Earth. Animals living in the trees include tree frogs, salamanders, monkeys, and swarms of insects, including many butterflies. Parrots, macaws, and hummingbirds are common birds. Larger animals in the rain forest include jaguars, tapirs, pumas, and sloths. Along the riverbanks are found capybaras (the world’s largest rodents), as well as alligators, boa constrictors, and turtles. The Amazon River itself contains electric eels, catfish, piranhas, manatees, and freshwater dolphins.

Grasslands cover most of the Brazilian Highlands. In the Pantanal wetland are great numbers of birds, reptiles, insects, and such larger animals as anteaters and armadillos. In the drier northeast the plant cover is low and spread out.

Thicker woodlands of thorny trees grow in moister areas.

People

Brazil’s population is a mix of several different ethnic groups. The country was a colony of Portugal for more than 300 years. Today, more than half of the people are white, descendants of the Portuguese colonists or other European immigrants. About 40 percent of the people have a mixture of white and American Indian or black roots. Small ernumbers of people have mainly African, Asian, or American Indian ancestors. Most Brazilians speak Portuguese. Roman Catholicism is the main religion, though many Indian and African beliefs are also practiced.

More than 80 percent of Brazil’s people live in cities or towns, and 13 of those cities have more than 1 million inhabitants each. São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are two of the world’s largest cities.

 Economy

Services—including education, government, banks, hospitals, restaurants, and the military—are the largest part of Brazil’s economy. Manufacturing is the second most important area of the economy. The country mainly produces foods, petroleum products, cars and trucks, electrical equipment, steel, and chemicals. Brazil’s industries use its reserves of iron, silicon, clay, quartz, gold, coal, petroleum, natural gas, and wood.

Farmers use less than 10 percent of Brazil’s land, mostly in the south. However, Brazil is one of the world’s top producers of oranges and coffee. Farmers also grow sugarcane, soybeans, corn, cassava, rice, bananas, tomatoes, and many other crops. They raise great numbers of cattle and hogs.

History

Before the Portuguese arrived in what is now Brazil, at least 2 million American Indians lived there. Many were hunters and gatherers. Others lived in large villages and were expert farmers and fishermen.

See Also : Abidjan

In 1500 the navigator Pedro Alvares Cabral claimed the land for Portugal after landing near what is now Porto Saguaro, Brazil. Portuguese settlers soon began bringing in Africans to work as slaves on plantations and, later, in mines. By 1822, when the slave trade ended, about 4 million Africans had been brought to Brazil.

When the French emperor Napoleon I threatened to invade Portugal in 1808, the Portuguese royal family fled to Brazil. They ruled from there and made Brazil equal with Portugal in the new United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves. The king returned to Portugal in 1821, but his son, Dom Pedro, stayed in Brazil. The next year Dom Pedro declared Brazil’s independence from Portugal and became emperor of the new nation. In 1889 the emperor Pedro II was forced to give up his power, and the monarchy came to an end. Brazil became a federal republic with an elected government.

Since its independence, Brazil has been one of Latin America’s most stable nations, though dictators and the military have ruled at times. Since 1985 civilian (nonmilitary) presidents have led Brazil. In 1988 the country adopted a new constitution that guaranteed basic social and labor rights. Brazil continued to struggle to strengthen its economy, which has suffered from long periods of rising prices.