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United under the motto “Order and Progress” displayed on its famous green, yellow and blue flag, Brazil is a federal republic, presided over since 2003 by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Spread over 8,511,965 km² - that is more than seventeen times the size of France – the Brazilian landmass developed from east to west. The first Portuguese colonists in the 16 th century progressed from the coast into the interiors of South America. Brazil has a common border with Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay in the south, with Bolivia and Peru in the west and Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam and French Guyana in the north.
Without knowing that it was nearly half of the South American sub-continent, the first Portuguese colonists (Pedro Alvarès Cabral in 1500, followed by Gonçalo Coelho) called their colony “Ilha de Vera Cruz”, then “Terra de Vera Cruz”; finally, it was the ember coloured wood found in abundance along the coast (the pau brasil – or the ember coloured tree – used as a dye by the Indians) that gave the country its name. Thus “Brazil” appeared under the pen of the very first French ethnographers like Jean de Léry in 1578.
The vast expanse of the country remains more or less the same since the 18 th century. 26 Brazilian states and the federal district of Brasilia are distributed today between five regions : North, Northeast, Southeast, Central-West and South. This huge country has great climatic diversity from the Amazon to the southern regions, ranging from a tropical climate to a climate that is temperate or very cool in winter (which corresponds to the summer months in Europe). All along the Atlantic coast (7,408 km) the climate varies significantly.
The Brazilian population (estimated to be 182.8 million inhabitants in January 2005 with a density of about 21.5 inhab./km²) is mainly distributed in cities that are home to 78% of Brazilians. The capital of the country, Brasília (2 million inhabitants), is less populated than the metropolises São Paulo (18.9 million inhabitants), Rio de Janeiro (11.7 million inhabitants) or Salvador de Bahia (2.5 millions inhabitants). Concentrated on the Atlantic coast, this mainly urban population is a melting pot of cultures&. The Brazilian people are a product of the intermingling of the native Indian (the Tupi immortalised by the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss), the Portuguese colonist (who imparted his language and his mainly Catholic though syncretic faith), the black slave (slavery was abolished in 1888 in Brazil) and Japanese, Lebanese, Italian and German immigrants who landed in successive waves at the end of the 19 th century and the beginning of the 20 th century to settle mainly in the southern part of the country (São Paulo has the largest Japanese community outside Japan). Even though Brazilian society is marked by a number of inequalities (64.2% of the national income is shared by 20% of the richest…). Brazilians are united by a strong cultural identity that you are invited to discover. |
