BRASIL

Get ready. You're about to find out a bit about Brazil. Sure, it's Brazil in photographs, Brazil on paper. Colorful, brilliant, beautiful, well-presented, but Brazil on paper nevertheless. One that you can take home, leave on the shelf, on the desk at the office, in a place where it stands out. One you can 'visit' from time to time by leafing through this book, or show your family and friends. It might be simply Brazil on paper, but this is certainly an unforgettable souvenir of a unique country. Of course you can rest assured that all this wealth and beauty that you hold in your hands is just the briefest sample of what exists in reality. And however good it may be, it can only offer a mere taste of the exuberance and enormity of Brazil. Because the real Brazil, with thousands of different landscapes, a huge blend of colors, sounds, smells, and above all people, is so much more than this. There is simply no comparison. For a start, Brazil is very, very, big. The fifth largest country in the world in area, the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. Just have a look at a map. It's practically a continent. Do you have any idea how large 8,547,403 square kilometers is? It's almost inconceivable. It's so big that if you take line from end to end - from the capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, to thecapital of the state of Roraima, Boa Vista, in the extreme north, a commercial flight takes more than 9 hours! By way of comparison, it's worth remembering that a commercial flight from New York to Paris takes 8 hours, but with one small detail; you're flying between two continents. In Brazil you can fly for 9 hours and never leave the country. Think about it.

Within this area approximately 170 million Brazilians live, work, dream and create a dynamic society, in a constant state of transformation, progress and modernization. The history, the customs and the culture allow for the harmonious coexistence of the highest industrial technology alongside the remotest indigenous traditions, the most innovative architecture alongside the secular art of local potters. Unifying these 170 million Brazilians living in total ethnic, religious and expressive liberty, is a single language: Portuguese. With innumerous and creative regional differences, the Portuguese spoken in Brazil incorporates thousands of terms of indigenous origin (the Tupi-Guarani language group), and of African origin (Iorubá). The Portuguese language was fundamental in the construction of the nation, of the civilization. In the consolidation of the identity of Brazil.

Brazil started to speak Portuguese on April 22, 1500, a Wednesday. On that day, 9 warships (one was lost on the voyage) and 3 caravels, carrying 1350 men and commanded by the Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral, dropped anchor about 36 km from the coast of Brazil. They landed in Porto Seguro, on the south coast of Bahia, 45 exhausting days on the Atlantic Ocean after setting sail from Lisbon. This was the first group of Europeans to set foot in Brazil, hitherto inhabited solely by indigenous tribes. Although some historians have put forward the hypothesis that other explorers had already landed in Brazil, the fact is that, officially, Pedro Álvares Cabral was its discoverer, and in the year 2000, exactly at the start of the new millenium, the country celebrated its 500th anniversary. Among Cabral's men was Pero Vaz de Caminha, who despite not being the expedition's official diarist, wrote a long letter to the King of Portugal, Manoel I, relating details of the voyage, the discovery, the first contact with the native Brazilian indians and the numerous natural wonders. The letter is the first document about Brazil, and its final passage reveals the awe that Caminha felt in the face of the size and beauty of this new land: "This land, Lord, it seems to me, from the southernmost point within my sight, to the northernmost point that can be seen from this port, is so vast that there must be 20 or 25 leagues of coast. Along the sea, in some parts there are great barriers, some red and others white, and the land above with plains covered in large trees. From one end to the other, it is all beach....very level and most pleasant. From the sea, the remote and arid interior seems very large; as far as the eye can see there is tree-covered land - land which seems to us to be very extensive." But Brazil wasn't born Brazil. Its first name was Ilha de Vera Cruz, because Cabral thought that the land he had discovered was an island. A year later, certain that in fact it was not, the name was changed to Terra de Vera Cruz. Then followed Terra de Santa Cruz (by order of King Manoel I), Terra dos Papagaios - The Land of Parrots (the name chosen by the sailors, who were astonished by the number of these birds) and finally, Brazil. Brazil - as in Brazil-wood (Redwood). The first sign of the close relationship with nature. This is because 'pau-brasil' is the name of a tree with a reddish trunk which exists in abundance in the Atlantic Rainforest, much in demand in Europe for its strong, red extract, used for dying, especially of cloth.

From one end to the other, it is all beach....very level and most pleasant. With the beginning of Portuguese domination and the arrival of slaves from Africa, there began a rare blending of races, bringing together native indians, white Europeans and black Africans. Touched with other colors - French and Dutch - adding further depth to the picture of the Brazilian soul. This is because expeditions from these two nations temporarily occupied part of the country, until being permanently expelled by the Portuguese. Despite their short stay, they left lasting impressions on Brazilian culture. Historians, anthropologists and academics have long sought, in all the subtle nuances of the original racial mix, and in the influences of the foreign invaders, all subject to the natural intensity of the tropics, a reason for the uniqueness of Brazil. Because all things considered, 500 years is not a long time when compared to other countries and civilizations. But certainly enough to reveal a different and special way of living, of thinking, of feeling and of acting. A remarkable, characteristic way. Unforgettable in fact. A way that defies words, lengthy explanation or analysis. It is revealed as much in the shrewd look of the country-dweller who surveys the sky on a day of scorching sun and guarantees that it will rain, and it does, as in the cunning of the retired card player as he bluffs in a card game in a suburban, public square. It is revealed in the camaraderie, the friendship made for life but born just 3 minutes earlier, in the complicity of those who look each other in the eye, point and say:

- I know you. I don¹t know where from, but I swear I know you.

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General Aspects

Brazil is the biggest country in Latin America. It covers almost the half of Latin America Continent (47.3%) with an area of 8.5 millions of km². It is the fifth biggest country in the world coming first Russia, Canada, China and The United States. Except for a small amount of islands, Brazil is constituted by a whole and continuous territorial extension. On the world map you can observe that the shape of the east contour of Brazil is in conformity of the concave curve of west of Africa. The Equator Line crosses the North region of the country, next to Macapá; the Tropic of Capricorn crosses the South of the country, next to Sao Paulo.
Its extension on the east-west direction (4,319.4Km) is almost equivalent to its major distance on the north-south direction (4,394.7Km). Brazil has its frontier with ten countries: French Guiana, Suriname, Guiana, Venezuela and Colombia north frontier; Uruguay and Argentine, on south; Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru, on west. The Ecuator and Chile are the only countries, of South American Continent, Brazil has no frontiers with. The Atlantic Ocean extends for all its east coast coming up with 7,367Km of coastal waters.

Language
Portuguese is the national language, but the Portuguese spoken in Brazil is different, from the one spoken in Portugal and Old Portuguese Colonies when it refers to differences of the intonation and accents.

Some people use to say that Brazilians, nowadays, speak “brasileiro”, the same way Americans could say they speak “American” and not English. There are Brazilians who speaks German and Italian, mainly on the south cities of Brazil, because of the colonization influences.

A Country Open to What Is New
Few places in the world have the grade of openness and for innovation like Brazil has. The motive of all of this is just the fact that we built a democratic racial system through the years. Nevertheless, there is still the occult type of prejudice demonstrated in a subtile way by a part of the elite group. Occult by the racial discrimination by some parts of the elite. However, it vigorates in a much mitigated way (if we compare to The United States of Europe for instance). There has been a culture that helped to build an effective political democracy in a country that had everything not to have it, as a matter of fact.

On the basis of the initial population was built a slave society, which has never left the tradition of a particular way of miscegenation through the years, since its discovery in 1500. This miscegenation generated children from White people with African American, African American with Indians, mulattos with White people, and White people with Indians. From this racial mixture, it happens to appear an identity so strong that managed to keep the integrity of the territory. The nation was built on the basis of settlements that many times seemed weird to the eyes of the Europeans – and at the same time to most of Brazilians too – but that worked well then and nowadays still works in its singular way.

The democracy in Brazil translates itself into the distribution of power and from mechanisms of political representation, since the XIX century. Since 1823 there are national elections in the country, with a progressive openness to the inclusion of voting population, uncommon fact for the patterns of the European democracy. The National Congress works with the regularity of a watch, since its first elections. Only on three occasions, in all Brazilian history, elected deputes didn’t complete their mandates. The Congress force is so huge that not even the military dictatorship, which was vigorating from 1964 to 1985, could dispense it. The dictators knew that Brazil is ungovernable without elected representatives

The power of National Legislative Authority exists because is anchored in a great social force. The society of slaves was able to transform themselves, absorbing an immense quantity of immigrants and, above all, mixing with them. The habit of considering attractive any possibility of marriage, independently of the ethnical origin, got to prevail on the tendency of closure, which was a characteristic of the major part of immigrant groups. The way Brazil absorbs people from outside country without losing its identity, Brazil absorbs companies. The first foreign company had established in Brazil in 1825 and works here since then. A foreign company never had any alteration of its regimen of property outside the strict terms of law.

These are only some consequences of the fundamentally democratic structure of the country. Brazil is one of the last provinces of the earth where nobody is a foreign, where it is possible to change a destiny without losing its identity. For this characteristic many people use to call it “country of the future”: since the Colony (1500-1822), going through the Empire (1822-1889) and during the Republic (1889 until nowadays), the openness to the exterior and to the different is part of the nature of each Brazilian. Maybe now Brazil could be seen like a seed to a cultural reality where the community pride is not above the possibility of accepting the newness.

Text by:
Embratur Brazilian Tourist Authority