Brasilien

Brazil is the biggest country in South America. It is the fifth country in the world both in terms of size and population, more than 209 millions. The country is divided into five regions and twenty-seven states, included the small Federal District with the capital Brasilia in the interior of the country.

The landscape and climate vary greatly, from the tropical rainforest Amazonas in the north to the differentiated agriculture in the south, with an enormous diversity of vegetation and animal life.

It is estimatited that there were around five millions Indians in the country when the first foreigners landed around five hundred years ago. When the colonizers, mostly Portuguese but also Englishmen and Dutchmen, didn´t succeed to domesticate the Indians with their brutal methods, they started to transport slaves from Africa. From 1531 until 1855 around four millions slaves were shipped over the Atlantic to the Brazilian coast towns.
From the very beginning the Jesuits preached Christianity to the Indians and the African slaves. Nowadays one third of the world´s Catholics live in Brazil, making it the biggest Catholic country in the world. Both Indians and Africans managed to maintain much of their native traditions, which now contribute richly to the Brazilian culture.

Brazil was a Portuguese colony until 1822, when it turned into an independent empire that lasted until the proclamation of the Brazilian Republic in 1889.

Slavery wasn´t abolished by law before 1888 (while Sweden already had a law of compulsory elementary school for more than thirty years).

During the twentieth century many Italians, Germans, Arabs, Japanese and others emigrated trying their luck mainly in the south of Brazil, where the large scale agriculture and then the industry developed earlier than in the rest of the country.

Between 1964 and 1984 Brazil was governed by a military dictatorship which tortured and forced many critical citizens to exile. Democratic elections of president and government weren´t established until 1985. The current president Luiz Ignácio “Lula” da Silva was elected for the first time in 2002 and reelected in 2006. He is a “son of the people”. His family moved from the poor northeast of Brazil to the big industrial city of São Paulo, where he worked as a metal worker and was engaged in the trade union. He is trying both to handle the poverty on a wide-scale basis and the vast disparities in education and income, and to improve the position of Brazil in an international perspective. This is not at all an easy mission in this country, which has a deeply rooted system of corruption and paternalism, a very high level of violence and a governmental education system that is quite deficient.

In the year of 2010 he was followed by a member of his own party, Dilma Rouseff, who was reelected in 2014, but removed already in 2016 through a coup d´état, led by the reactionary vice president Michel Temer, who, in order to raise the salaries and other benefits for himself and all the other powers of government to among the highest in the world, since then devotes himself to sell out all the richnesses of Brazil; oil, forest, minerals, etc, without the slightest consideration of neither nature or culture, and to reductions with among other results, decay of schools and hospitals and increased unemployment, and with that increased violence och drugtrafic. And people get scared and wants mote security and weapons, without understanding that the real cause of the bad times is the increased unequality between poor and rich. April 2018 these powers suceeded put Lula in jail, without proofs, just ”convictions”, and in october 2018 there is elections to a new president, with 13 candidates. The investigations of the public opinion two weeks before the election shows that an extremist to the right, Jair Bolsonaro, leads, ex-militar, who among other horrible things wants no restrictions over weapons, followed by another from the party PT of Lula, Fernando Haddad, a former professor of history. Very exciting. There will probably be another election after more three weeks, just between these two candidates.

Since 1995 the currency is called Real (one Real, two or more Reais) and is written R$. Its value has been rather steady since then. Brazil is severely tied up to the international debt system, which complicate both private investments and social development projects. In January 2008 the Brazilian external debt was 196,207 billion dollars (US).
“The problem of the governmental debt is at first hand not the size but the high interest. During the ten years till 2005 the country paid debt interests equivalent to 88% of the whole debt. If the payment had been installments, the debt had been almost totally paid” as Lennart Kjörling writes in his book “Lula, Brazil – hope and fear”, (Ordfront, Stockholm 2005).

 

Nowadays Brazil is self-sustaining when it comes to petroleum. The Brazilian energy requirements are mainly satisfied with waterpower, but a lot of investment is going into developing other forms such as heat-water power and biodiesel.

From the very beginning Brazil was a country that provided the European continent with gold and precious stones and also the red wood, “pau brasil”, which gave name to the country. Now you can divide the foremost Brazilian export products in three categories; basic products such as soy, corn, chicken, bovine and pork meat, coffee beans, tobacco and iron ore; semi-manufactured products such as cast iron and other iron and steel articles, leather and fur articles and sawn wood; finished products such as refined sugar, orange juice, aluminum oxides, plastic polymers, furniture, shoes, electric motors, gasoline, motorcar covers, cars and car peaces.

Brazil has a very rich and manifold cultural life. Besides music, dancing and popular festivals (bossa nova, samba and carnival as the most well known) there is a great production of films and TV novellas, art and handicraft art, literature and architecture, all at an international level.
The official language is Portuguese. It´s easier to make oneself understood with Spanish than with English.
Everybody knows that Brazil has world renowned football teams, but Brazilians are also among the bests regarding tennis, volleyball, gymnastics, swimming and car sports.

The ecological consciousness is growing slowly. Even though Brazil is a very great consumer of commercial medicine and cosmetics, the revival and use of medicine plants and natural medicines is becoming more recognized and accepted.

The original inhabitants have been forced back and exterminated so much that nowadays there are only around 320,000 Indians left. African descendents haven´t succeeded in improving their living conditions very much since the abolition of the slavery. Both Indians and Africans descendents were excluded from all civil rights for a long time. Only after a long popular struggle the country was declared in the Federal Constitution of 1988 as a nation with  manifold cultures and different ethnicities. The Constitution provided the first protective laws with full civil rights for everyone. Today racism is a crime, which you can´t pay to get free of. The people of the Indian tribes have begun to grow in numbers. They vote and can campaign for elections and have started to win attention to their rights for a differentiated education for their children.

In Brazil the people drink beer (as cold as possible) and “cachaça”(a sugar cane aquavite).
You can also find a drinkable national wine. There are many refreshing drinks and juices of all kinds of exotic fruits. The coffee is strong and sweet. The main food is meat and chicken, fish and shrimp, with rice, beans, macaroni and “farinha de mandioca”. There is a very big variety of fine vegetables and fruits.

For sure I´ve forgotten and excluded much information, but something has to be left to the traveler to discover and learn.
Welcome to a journey full of new experiences and adventures. The one who goes to Brazil has first of all to be prepared for the unprepared. A mind both flexible and watchful is a good thing to bring in the mental luggage.

 

 

 

Brasilien  
Brasilien  
Brasilien  
Brasilien  
Brasilien  
Brasilien  
Brasilien  
Brasilien  
Brasilien  
Brasilien  
Brasilien  
Brasilien  
Brasilien  
Brasilien  
Brasilien