Facts & Figures

Population: 175 million (Sept. 2003)
Area: 8,514,215 sq km (3,286,487 sq mi)
Government: Federal republic
Religion: oficially 70% Roman Catholic; also significant proportions who either belong to various cults or practice Indian animism. New
People: 55% European descent, 38% mulatto, 6% African descent (according to the 1980 census). In reality, these figures are skewed by whiteness being equated with social stature in Brazil.
Capital: Brasilia, created in 1950ths in the then empty inland territories. Every corner of the city has been planned on paper. In 1987 it was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites, being considered one of the major examples of the 20th century's modern movement in architecture and urban planning. Being build for cars, with enormous inner-city distances and no real heart, Brasilia is not very much visited by foreign tourists.
Population: approximately 2.5 million.
Official language: Portuguese
Major industries: Textiles, shoes, chemicals, lumber, iron ore, tin, steel, motor vehicles and parts, arms, soybeans, orange juice, beef, chicken, coffee, sugar
Political Geography: Brazil is generally divided into five regions:

• The Southeast, the economic motor of the country, with the states Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and Espiritu Santo;
  
• The South, with a European feel, consisting of the states Parana, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul;
  
• The Central West, covering almost one forth of the total territory, with the sparsely populated states of Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Goiás and the federal district of Brasilia;
  
• The Northeast, where most of Brazil's colonial past has been retained. Also the poorest region of the country, consisting of the states of Bahia, Sergipe, Alagoas, Pernambuco, Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte, Ceará, Piauí and Maranhao;
  
• The North, covering the Amazon basin, the country's least populated area, roughly 40% of Brazil's land and including the states of Amazonas, Pará, Rondônia, Acre, Tocantins, Amapá and Roraima.

Climate

Although 90 percent of the country is within the tropical zone, more than 60 percent of the population lives in areas where altitude or sea winds moderate the temperature. The geographical location of Brazil is reflected in its climatic diversity; the northern most region is on the Equator and the southern most region is below the Tropic of Capricorn. Basically one can describe five different climatic regions throughout the country: equatorial, tropical, semi arid, highland tropical, and subtropical. Temperatures range from very hot and dry in the northeast, humid and rainy in the Amazon to snow in some extreme cases (in winter), in the southwest interior of Brazil.

In general, most of Brazil can be visited comfortably throughout the year, it's only the south - which can be unbearably sticky in summer (December-February) and chilly in winter (June-August) - that has large seasonal changes. The rest of the country experiences brief tropical rains throughout the year, which rarely affect travel plans.

A more specific description of the climate in the most important tourist regions:

• Amazon
  Contrary to popular belief that the Amazon is blistering hot, the average annual temperature is around 25°C (77°F) and rarely exceeds 32°C (90°F), with little variation throughout the year. Humidity can be high and heavy rains can occur depending on the season. This area is the rainiest and most humid in Brazil.
  
• Pantanal
  The Pantanal has two distinct seasons: the rainy season (December to March) and the dry season (July to October). Temperatures range from very hot and humid to 10°C (50°F) in winter (June to August).
  
• Iguazu Falls
  The climate is humid subtropical with over 1700mm of annual rainfall and no dry season. Relative humidity is between 80-90%. Annual mean temperature of 21°C (70°F), which decreases to 19°C (66°F) above about 500m.
  
• Bahia
  Temperatures in Bahia vary according to whether you're on the coast or inland, but it is sunny and warm almost all year round. On the coast it rarely drops below about 24°C (75°F), however inland, in areas such as Chapada Diamantina, evenings can be chilly and warm clothes are required. There is a distinct rainy season from May to September. Occasionally cold fronts from the south follow the coast up to the northeast and the weather will suddenly change and the temperature drops.
  
• Rio de Janeiro
  Temperatures in summer can be up to 40°C (104°F) with high rains and humidity, in winter it rarely gets colder then 18°C (64°F). In areas close to the mountains, such as for example Paraty, temperatures are much cooler and there is less of a dry season. Cold fronts sometimes occur.

History

In contrast to the Tiwanacus in the Bolivian Highlands or the Incas in Peru, the Brazilian Indians never developed a centralized civilization. The pre-Columbian indigenous Indian population in Brazil was widely scattered and probably numbered no more than 1 million when Pedro Cabral, the Portuguese explorer, reached the coast of Brazil on April 22, 1500. Today there are fewer than 200,000, most of them in the hidden jungles of the Brazilian interior.
The first permanent Portuguese settlement was founded at Sao Vicente, in the state of Sao Paulo (1532). Initially, development was slow, based upon a feudal system in which favored individuals received title to large blocks of land called capitanias. Because of the great demand for sugar in Europe, the first major economic cycle in Brazil was based upon the sugarcane, grown in plantations along the northeast coast.
To work the fields, the early settlers used native labor, often furnished by the Bandeirantes, as the pioneers from the state of Sao Paulo were known. When the Indians proved insufficient in numbers, or unable to withstand the hard labor, depending upon the story, the importation of millions of slaves from African began

In the 1690s, gold was discovered in Minas Gerais and the rush was on. Brazilians and Portuguese flooded into the territory and countless slaves were brought from Africa to dig and die in the mines.
In 1807-08, during the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, King John VI of Portugal took refuge in Rio de Janeiro. Brazil, now the seat of government for its mother country, witnessed tremendous economic growth. Life was so pleasant in Rio that after Napoleon had been defeated, the Royal family stayed on until a threatened revolt in Portugal forced John VI to return to Lisbon. In 1822 the Prince Regent's son, Pedro, who had stayed behind in Rio to rule the colony when his father returned to Portugal, pulled out his sword and yelled the battle cry 'Independência ou morte!' (Independence or death). Portugal was too weak to fight its favorite son, so Brazil became an independent empire without spilling a drop of blood.
During the 19th century, coffee replaced sugar as Brazil's major export. At first the coffee plantations used slave labor, but with the abolition of slavery in 1888, thousands of European immigrants, mostly Italians, poured in to work on the coffee estates, called fazendas. In 1889, a military coup, supported by the powerful coffee aristocracy, toppled the Brazilian Empire, and for the next 40 years, Brazil was governed by a series of military and civilian presidents supervised, in effect, by the armed forces.

At the end of the 19th century the rubber cycle started, which produced great profits, an opera house and the great Caruso singing in the middle of the Amazon jungle. The invention of vulcanization turned rubber into an important industrial material. Rubber trees are native to the Amazon basin, but, as every Brazilian schoolboy knows, an English rascal stole a rubber plant and started to plant rubber in Malaysia. The Brazilian rubber boom soon collapsed, unable to complete with the cheaper fabricated rubber from Asia.

The next cycle was that of the coffee bean, and for more than 50 years politics was expressed in terms of cafe com leite, or coffee and milk, representing the coffee growers from Sao Paulo and the cattle ranchers from Minas Gerais.

In 1929, the global economic crisis weakened the coffee planters' hold on the government and an opposition Liberal Alliance was formed with the support of nationalist military officers. When the Liberal Alliance lost the election in 1930, the military seized power on their behalf and installed the Liberal leader, Getúlio Vargas, as president. Vargas, whose regime was inspired by Mussolini's and Salazar's fascist states, dominated the political scene for the next 24 years, until he was forced out of office in 1954.
His replacement, Juscelino Kubitschek, was the first of Brazil's big spenders; he built Brasília, the new capital, which was supposed to catalyze the development of the interior. By the early 1960s, the economy was battered by inflation, partly because of the expense of building the new capital, and fears of encroaching communism were fueled by Castro's victory in Cuba. Again, Brazil's fragile democracy was squashed by a military coup in 1964. The military rulers then set about creating large-scale projects that benefited a wealthy few, at the expense of the rest of the population.

In the mid-1980s, Brazil's economic miracle, supported largely by loans from international banks, petered out and the military handed power back to a civilian government. In November 1988 Brazil got a new constitution and in October 1989, Brazilians had their first opportunity to elect a president by popular vote in almost 30 years, and elected Fernando Collor de Mello, ex-karate champion, over the socialist by a narrow but secure majority. Collor gained office promising to fight corruption and reduce inflation, but people soon found that Collor was highly corrupt, and for the first time in Brazilian history a president had been impeached.
Vice President Itamar Franco became president in December 1992 on Collor's resignation, and with the introduction of a new currency, the real, stabilized the economy. In November 1994, Fernando Cardoso, architect of the Plano Real (Real Plan) was elected president. Through the mid-1990s Cardoso presided over a Brazil with a growing economy, stable currency and record foreign investment. These achievements were offset by the legacy of longstanding problems: the loss of two million jobs between 1989 and 1996 and ongoing problems with agrarian reform; a 1996 United Nations report showed that Brazil had the world's most unequal distribution of wealth. Over 50 million Brazilians remain truly poor, corruption in Brazil remains a way of life, despite the beginnings of attempts to tackle it.
In 2002 the socialist president Luiz da Silva, Lula, won the elections. For the first time in Brazilian history the country is governed by a socialist government.