Brazil

        Continuing the work of Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama [1a] Pedro Alvares Cabral [1467-1520] set sail in 1500 with 13 ships along a route laid out by his famous predecessor. He landed on the continent of South America. Thinking it was an island, he named it the Island of Vera Cruz (True Cross). Before his arrival the country was thinly settled by [1b] Yanomami and other Indian tribes. Only a few have survived to the present, mostly in the Amazon basin. The name was changed to the Land of Santa Cruz (Holy Cross) when people came to realize that it was not merely an island. Brazilwood (Pau-Brazil), a source of red dye, became such an important part of the economy, however, that the name Brazil came to represent the country, as well as the wood.
        Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro [1502-1548] returned in August 1542 from an 8-month journey up the Amazon River. He named it the ''Amazon'' because of an attack by Indian women with bows and arrows.
        French Huguenots landed near [2] Rio de Janeiro in 1555 and founded a colony named France Antarctique. The Portugese in Brazil did not pay much attention for a few years, but finally expelled them in 1567. In 1612 another French expedition started the colony of France Equinoxiale further north, but they were expelled within four years.
        Portuguese colonists gradually pushed inland, bringing along large numbers of slaves from Africa. In the 1630s thousands of the slaves in northeastern Brazil took advantage of hostilities between Dutch and Portugese settlers to run away. They moved inland and formed their own large communities. Some of these large kingdoms even had a fortified town and hundreds of buildings. Slavery was not abolished until 1888.

        Coffee was planted for the first time in Brazil in 1727. A National Coffee Department, however, was not established for more than 200 years and then only after a price collapse in the world coffee market brought economic disaster and precipitated a revolt in the southern provinces. The Coffee Department supervised the destruction of large quantities of Brazil's crop in order to maintain high prices in the world market.

        [3] King John VI of Portugal [1767-1826], fleeing from Napoleon's army, moved the seat of his government to Brazil in 1808. Seven years later Brazil lost its colonial status and became a united kingdom with Portugal. When the king returned to Lisbon, he tried to recall his son and reinstate colonial rule in Brazil. The towns refused and convinced the prince to proclaim independence and become their emperor Peter I [1798-1834]. A two-year war of independence won him the right to keep his crown.
        The second emperor, Peter ll [1825-1891], was deposed in 1889, and a republic proclaimed, called the United States of Brazil until 1967 when it was renamed the Federative Republic of Brazil.

Deodoro da Fonseca

Benjamin Constant

Rui Barbosa

Isabella (Brazil)

Floriano Peixoto

        Rio de Janeiro began having its annual Carnival in the mid-nineteenth century (Nishikawa, 1995).
        English naturalist Henry Walter Bates [1825-1892] searched the Amazon Basin from 1848 to 1859 and identified 8,000 new species of insects.
        In 1896 the [4] Manaus Opera House opened 700 miles up the Amazon River.
        In June 1908 the first Japanese immigrants--almost 800 of them--boarded the Kasato-maru in Kobe and sailed to Santos (Saito, 1989). Now there are 1.5 million Japanese Brazilians, making it the largest Japanese community outside of Japan.
        Donga and Mauro Almeida made the first popular recording of samba--Pelo Telefone (1917). In the 1930s Ismael Silva and a group of musicians founded Deixa Falar, the first samba school. They fit the music to the carnival parade, and radio spread its popularity to the point that it became Brazil's official music.

        A military junta took control in 1930; dictatorial power was assumed by Getulio Vargas [1882-1954], until finally forced out by the military in 1945. A democratic regime prevailed 1945-64, during which time the capital was moved from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia.
        Having been kicked out of his band, Joao Gilberto [1931-] created in 1957 a new style of samba with less percussion, an underlying rhythm provided by guitar, and the vocal slightly off set. The next year Elizete_Cardoso [1920-1990] the first Bossa_nova album. The style attained international recognition with The Girl from Ipanema (1962), a song inspired by Helo Pinheiro [1945-] as she strolled past Veloso bar-cafe and captured the attention of Tom Jobim [1927-1994] and Vinicius Moraes [1913-1980].
        Edson Arantes do Nascimento [1940-], better known as Pele, led Brazil's soccer team to World Cup championships in 1958, 1962, and 1970, then in 1995 became Brazil's minister of sports.
        In 1964, President Joao Goulart [1918-1976] instituted economic policies that aggravated Brazil's inflation. Afraid of a possible leftist revolution, the army overthrew him. The next five presidents were all military leaders. Censorship was imposed, and opposition suppressed. The political situation began to relax in 1974. Exploiting vast mineral resources, fertile soil in several regions, and a huge labor force, Brazil became the leading industrial power of Latin America and agricultural output soared. Sao Paulo built Brazil's first subway system.
        Civilian government returned in 1985., but Brazil's unequal income distribution and inflation have led to severe economic recession. Its foreign debt is among the largest in the world. Meanwhile ranchers burned away 80,000 square miles of Amazon rain forest in 79 days in 1987, heightening environmentalist fears that loss of oxygen from the forest will create a greenhouse effect. Rubber tapper Francisco "Chico" Mendes Filho, who rallied families to stand up against chain saws and bulldozers, was shot dead in December 1988.
        Concerned about the ongoing destruction of the Amazon ecosystem, Brazil unveiled a comprehensive environmental program for the Amazon region the next year, then in 1992 hosted delegates from 178 countries at the Earth Summit June 3-14. The 1991 census revealed that population growth dipped below 2 percent for the first time in half a century. Brazil and its principal commercial bank lenders agreed to restructure the nation's $44 billion commercial debts, July 1992. In 1994 President Fernando Henrique Cardoso [1931-] reduced high inflation by launching a new currentcy, but the Asian financial crisis led to its devaluation. In 2000 he declassified some military files concerning the political kidnappings and assassinations of Operation Condor. President [17] ''Lula'' da Silva, a former shoeshine boy and metal worker, Brazil's first left-wing president in four decades is continuing to tackle these economic and political problems.

        Brazil now has a [18] population of about 176 million people living in an [19] area of about 8.5 million square kilometers, which gives it a low population density.