Useful Notes / Brazil

A vast place.

The Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: República Federativa do Brasil) is, by far, the largest country in Latin America and South America. It is also the world's fifth largest country by area^note after Russia, Canada, China, and the United States and sixth largest by population^note after India, China, the United States, Indonesia, and Pakistan.

Brazil was colonized by Portugal, and so most Brazilians speak Portuguese, unlike the rest of Latin America, which mostly speaks Spanish — though there is a Spanish-speaking minority (way less than 1%) in the west and south, and Spanish is taught at some schools (as well as English, but that's obligatory nationwide, even if not all the students reach any fluency). There are many minority languages that receive official status in some municipalities in Brazil, ranging from native indigenous languages to languages brought by immigrants.

Brazil is one of only two countries in The Americas that was once a sovereign monarchy (the other being Mexico). Today it is a republic.

Brazil's modern population descends from a mix of Portuguese colonists, African slaves, and Native Americans, plus immigrants from Europe, The Middle East, and East Asia. Although it isn't very well known, Brazil is home to not only the largest ethnic Japanese population in the world outside Japan itself, but also South America's largest East Asian population overall. The 19th century also saw the settlement of many immigrants from Germany and Italy in the southeastern/southern states, where to this day there's still a lot of German and Italian influence in the culture and architecture, with people occasionally speaking dialects on the streets, especially in the smaller towns.

What is the capital of Brazil? The capital of Brazil is not Buenos Aires. It is not Rio de Janeiro either, but it used to be before 1960; it has been Brasília since 1960 — a planned city built specifically for this purpose. There are about ten major political parties in Brazil, with PSDB (nominally social democrats), PT (nominally labour) and PMDB (unabashed populists) being the largest and more important. All of them have been involved in political scandals of all sorts, and no wonder; the political system tends to lead very easily to corruption. This is because all sorts of high-ranking jobs in the government are directly or indirectly nominated by politicians, with the nominees tending to 'share' their gains with those who put them there. To make things worse, the people who nominate are usually power-brokers in either chamber of Congress, who themselves can only be tried by Brazil's highest court and/or by their peers. Combine this with inefficient oversight from the judiciary branch directly responsible for monitoring government spending^note the TCU, the members of which are directly nominated by the same politicians they monitor, all sorts of problems with the police, the absurdly long time (i.e., more than a decade) for the judiciary to finish trying a case^note in no small part due to the amazing number of appeals anyone can make, it being not rare at all for a mundane case to reach the Supreme Court, and other problems, and the results are plain to see.

But one tip though: despite most Brazilians acknowledging all this, they tend to be a little defensive towards outside criticism, in part due to the perception that such criticism may be masking "imperialistic intentions".^note This perception does have some historical basis as the military coup in Brazil in 1964 and the horrid dictatorship that followed did receive tacit support from the US government, although the level of direct intervention never reached that in Central America countries. And, to be fair, not all politicians are bad and, after decades of severe problems, Brazil was finally enjoying a good period up to 2016, thanks mainly to the successive PSDB and PT governments since 1994 not screwing up too badly. Recently, the president suffered an Impeachment, which several people consider groundless and refer to it as a Coup, while some consider it fair based on fiscal responsibility crimes the former president supposedly commited. It finally culminated in the 2018 Presidential election which placed a controversial far-right candidate in power. This debate is very long and very polarizing for the Brazilian populace; with multiple people calling him the Brazilian version of Donald Trump.

Like most other Latin American states, Brazil is officially a secular state, and Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion (many non-practitioners merely declare themselves Catholic), with a growing Protestant neo-Pentecostal (Evangelical) population. Particularly in the northeastern states, various syncretic religions which mix Roman Catholic saints and African deities are also practiced, including candomblé and umbanda. Spiritism and Judaism are minority faiths, but not that uncommon. Atheists and agnostics are also minorities, but seem to be growing. According to the 2010 census, the Brazilian population was composed of Roman Catholics (64,6%), Protestants (22.2%), non-religious people (8%), spiritists (2%) and others (3%) by then.

Brazilian television consists of seven main open networks; (TV Globo, Record, Band, Cultura, SBT, RedeTV!, Gazeta) one state-run public channel (TV Brasil) and many minor networks, cable TV is also available, for a fee, and lots of people pirate it. The most popular shows are daily telenovelas^note not soap operas as many English-speaking Brazilians tend to translate; they don't quite have the same format, news, variety shows (run non-stop at weekends, and very frequent in weekday afternoons), (previously) Association Football (soccer) matches (twice a week at least, on Wednesday night and Sunday afternoon), Jerry Springer clones (which have become less common over the years), and the occasional reality show. Popular presenters will often get two, three or four-hour weekly shows. Weekly serials in the popular American format are rare. Cartoons are seen as kid stuff, but were frequently aired in the mornings (sometimes being dubbed anime); by-and-large they had been phased out of open TV channels' programming, with only one channel, SBT (Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão^note Brazilian Television System), still broadcasting them with relative regularity.

Brazilian literature and cinema is practically devoid of the Fantasy genre, and is mostly composed of dramas and comedies centered on one of Brazil's major cities (São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Salvador). Magical Realism is common, and very popular in the local telenovelas. Also popular in telenovelas are stereotyped versions of foreign countries for some extra exoticism in the plot. This has began to change as Globo made fantasy-themed telenovelas that follow popular series such as Game of Thrones, while Evangelist-controlled network RecordTV has produced big-budget Biblical-themed shows to rival them.

Brazil's climate is quite varied. Most of its territory is in the tropics, which means there are no clear equinoxes and solstices. The northern half of the country can be roughly considered to be warm year-round. The southern half sees winter and summer only as a difference in temperature (and rainfall), as deciduous trees are an underwhelming minority of the everyday vegetation (even though most trees do look like deciduous trees — in summer, that is). Yearly temperature variation is usually limited; in southern urban areas, temperatures usually vary by about 35°C (2°C~37°C). Sub-zero temperatures are extremely localized and brief, and snow flurries are even more so and very much newsworthy. Keep in mind this is a country with no mountains to speak of.

Brazil is famous for:

• Sporting achievements:
  • Its excellent football players. Brazil has won the FIFA World Cup five times (1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002), more often than any other country. Pelé, who is known worldwide as perhaps the greatest football player ever, and who was elected the "Athlete of the Century" by the International Olympic Committee in 1999, is Brazilian. Speaking of the Olympics, Brazil also sent medal-contender teams that finally won its first gold medal in 2016 (and on home soil in Rio de Janeiro, no less), in addition to two bronzes in 1996 and 2008, and silver in 1984, 1988 (whose team had idols of the sport like Careca and Romário) and 2012 (the latter which saw the debut of rising star Neymar, who four years later would also score Brazil's gold-winning penalty kick). The women have yet to achieve such success on the world stage, but they keep trying against all odds. That said, they have one player in the conversation as the greatest ever on the women's side—Marta, who's claimed FIFA's women's player of the year award six times.
  • Brazil has had some famous Formula One drivers. These include Ayrton Senna, a three-time champion and one of the greatest Formula One drivers of all time, and whose fatal crash at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix forced extensive safety reforms to the sport; Nelson Piquet Sr., who is a three-time champion; Emerson Fittipaldi, a two-time champion and the first Brazilian to do so; Rubens Barrichello, the driver with most starts in Formula One; and Felipe Massa, the driver who was beaten by Lewis Hamilton for the championship in the very last corner of the 2008 season.
  • Not to mention some famous IndyCar drivers. Fittipaldi also has two Indy 500 wins and a series title to his credit; Gil de Ferran has won two series titles and one Indy 500; Tony Kanaan has won one of each; and although Hélio Castroneves hasn't won a series title, he has won a record-tying four Indy 500s.
  • Brazil is the origin of the martial art capoeira, used in a variety of martial arts films from the 1980s and 1990s for its photogenic spinning attacks.
  • The nation is the origin and namesake of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ). The Ultimate Fighting Championship was founded to promote BJJ, and the sport of Mixed Martial Arts has BJJ as one of its three core disciplines. Brazil is second only to the United States in providing notable mixed martial artists to the highest levels of the sport.
• Its beautiful seashores. As the country only has an eastern coast, it doesn't have as much shoreline as, say, the US - but almost all of its shoreline is beach, tectonic plates in the area being more or less dead, so erosion has been working its magic for millions of years.
• Its beautiful women, known for their bundas (large posteriors - a generalization popularized by the media; the women in real life run the gamut as much as anywhere else).
• Its beautiful men, who wear beautifully-tight speedos on the beaches (ditto on running the gamut. Speedos are ubiquitous though, to the point where using other forms of swimwear as men would be weirder. Yes, even the ugliest of men).
• Its beautiful Carnivals, where said beautiful women don't wear very much at all.
  • And other popular festivals/holidays as well, such as St. John's Day^note which is typicaly commemorated on June 24th, but popular consciousness extends the celebrations throughout the entire month of June, due to St. Anthony's Day (June 13, a major festival in the Lusophone world because St. Anthony is a major saint worldwide but happened to be from Lisbon) and St. Peter's Day (June 29) being close together with St. John's in the calendar, where Brazilians, especially those from the Northeast, make bonfires and dance forró.
• Its equally beautiful but unfortunately threatened Amazon Rainforest.^note Which, while not confined to Brazil, has about 60% of its territory within it. Although according to estimates from the '90s, that should be completely depleted by now.
  • The Atlantic Rainforest, on the other hand, was almost completely destroyed during the colonial period, and now exists almost exclusively in parks and nature reserves.
• Its very varied and beautiful music, such as forró, samba, MPB, frevo, maracatu, choro, caipira, axé, Bossa Nova, mangue beat, funk carioca, etc.
  • "The Girl From Ipanema" popularised bossa nova so much, it spawned its own trope.
  • One of the most famous and prolific musicians is Sergio Mendes, along with his band Brasil 66. In other countries, anyway. In Brazil he's nearly unknown, except to music critics and scholars.
  • Not to mention the one and only Sepultura, one of metal music's biggest, longest-running, and most respected bands. Their most Brazilian album is without a doubt Roots, which incorporates sounds of traditional Brazilian music in their songs.
• Its not-so-beautiful poverty, inequality and violence. Rio de Janeiro's war between police and drug cartels is legendary.
  • On their side, the police (specifically, the BOPE) use APCs equipped with speakers to warn people of their coming, full of elite soldiers called Caveirão ("Big Skull"), which make FBI and SWAT vans look like cardboard boxes.
  • Crime has, however, been going down in almost all large cities. São Paulo, the largest city on the continent, no longer sends its inhabitants into fits of paranoid panic, and even Rio de Janeiro seems to be escaping this sad state at last, with a harsher security policy and expanding, more efficient police deployment in violent areas.
• Its beautiful membership of the Mercosur (Mercado Común del Sur^note The English language uses the Spanish acronym; in Brazil it's Mercosul., or Southern Common Market), the most powerful Latin American economic bloc, centered around Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. Within the country, this organization is regarded more or less favorably depending on whether the Argentines and Uruguayans are behaving themselves.
• Its beautiful advanced research in biology and medicine (you know, high biodiversity). Ironically, though, public health services aren't beautiful. The doctors working for them are underpaid, and people who don't have insurance and can't directly pay a doctor spend a lot of time waiting, but this seems to be changing, if very slowly.
• Its beautiful, though only technical, self-sufficiency regarding oil — not really, because the only kind of oil so far exploited is the crude variety, which can only make up about 3/4 of actual petrol. This makes it necessary to import higher-grade oil. New deposits have been found recently. This is helped both by having almost no thermoelectric power (see below), and by a good portion of cars running on ethanol since the 1980s. Almost all newer cars are flex-fuel, able to run on either gasoline, ethanol, or any mix of both.
  • Flex-fuel cars were a big help in encouraging ethanol consumption instead of gasoline; the original ethanol-fueled engines took longer to warm up. By 2003, when the first flex-fuel cars were introduced, the electronics needed to make ethanol work perfectly had been developed, but perceived reliability of ethanol cars seemed beyond the possibility of recovery. Thus, even availability suffered, which didn't help. The possibility of using gasoline if worse came to worse fixed both problems and turned out to bring about the renaissance of ethanol. Brazilian ethanol is also mostly derived from inedible by-products of the sugar refining process, unlike US ethanol which mostly comes from the same part of corn that people actually eat.^note However, the spent grains from corn ethanol production make for excellent livestock feed, and have potential for human use. See "distillers grains" at The Other Wiki.
• Its beautiful diversity: Brazil is a melting pot of many cultures. On top of being colonized by Portuguese and settled by Italian, German, and East Asian immigrants, it hosts a Lebanese diaspora with a larger population than Lebanon itself, one of the largest Jewish communities in the Americas, and descendants of ex-Confederates. Of course, this diversity has not led to Brazil being a multiracial paradise, with racial discrimination, xenophobia, and the mistreatment of immigrant labor persisting into the present
• Being a beautifully diplomatic country in international relations. Brazil thinks of itself as the cornerstone of stability in South America, and sometimes it might even be right. It has generally seen getting a permanent seat in the UN security council as a long-term foreign policy goal. That is not to say diplomatic incidents do not happen from time to time such as the case of Iran, Israel and Indonesia, but they never really escalate into actual enmity. If Brazil has any "enemies" to speak of, they are merely sport rivals.
• Being the place of origin for the World Social Forum.
• For its beautiful mostly clean energy.
  • Around 64% of all electric power in Brazil is hydroelectric; thermoelectric plants are either used to make up the deficit during droughts, as back-up systems, or as experiments using biomass instead of natural gas. Brazil has no coal power plants, but its third nuclear reactor plant has now gone online; those plants are more experimental than practical, but they do produce some (very expensive) energy. Unfortunately, the heavy abuse of the rain forests and the practice of slash-and-burn agriculture — which are illegal, but government agencies are underfunded — somewhat makes up for this, slinging Brazil higher in pollution ratings. Regardless, the country makes money by selling carbon credits, and has signed the Kyoto Protocol.
  • However, one of the most polluted cities in the world, Cubatão, is located in the state of São Paulo. Then again, most of the damage has now been reversed, and mostly the "smoke" you see from the factory chimneys is water. Nowadays Rio de Janeiro is first in Brazilian rankings regarding air pollution.
• Also, it is very possible that Brazil was discovered before the USA not only officially (by Portugal; if this is the case, the Portuguese then decided to keep it secret, until Christopher Columbus ruined their plans), but "extra-officially" (i.e. according to legend); it may have been discovered time and again by the Vikings, Romans, Greeks, Phoenicians, Malians^note That's the Mali Empire, not the current landlocked Republic of Mali. and even the Irish! All thanks to an ocean current that runs from the exit of the Mediterranean straight to Brazil's coast.
• Also noteworthy is that Brazil is the only independent American country that became an Empire for a lasting period of time^note Mexico was an empire 1821-23 and 1864-67, and Haiti 1804-06 and 1849-59, but as you can see, they didn't exactly stick.. Its empire lasted more than half a century (1822-89) and is partially responsible for its large territory (Portugal ensured most of it by aggressive colonization and quite a bit of treaty-breaking). Brazil had two Emperors; the second, Pedro II, is one of the most well-regarded monarchs in history. He was responsible for the modernization of his country, decades of constitutional government and the rule of law ^note  which was remarkable in a Latin America that was dominated by military dictators and caudillos , and literally starting Brazil's abolition movement by refusing to keep slaves. However, his lack of a surviving male heir and the incredibly exhausting task of ruling meant that when overthrown in a coup, he chose a quiet exile despite having more than enough support to stay in power. In recent years, there have been calls by some Brazilians to restore the monarchy.
• In recent years, Brazilians have become somewhat known for their fondness for Sega (sometimes to Germans Love David Hasselhoff levels).
  • While Nintendo fans only had access to Famiclones^note Nintendo would not have official representation in Brazil until 1993, and actually pulled out of the country between 2015 and 2020 citing high importing taxes, all of the Sega consoles were published in Brazil by Tectoy with great marketing strategies. They also ported Game Gear games to the Master System and made translations of some games, such as the Phantasy Star series. They also made their own games and made hacks of others. Because of this, Sega consoles and games were always very successful — so much so that, to this day, the Sega Master System and Sega Genesis are still regularly sold (only they come in X-in-1 game paks with many of the consoles' past hits). One wonders, though, why someone decided to give the Master System a Genesis-like six-button controller...
  • In recent years, other game marketing reentered Brazil, thanks to benefits given to the industry and consumer pressure. As a result, lots of recent next-gen games have been localized, some even with Brazilian Portuguese voiceovers (like Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Injustice: Gods Among Us).
• During the 2010 FIFA World Cup, a number of Brazilians started to tweet "Cala Boca Galvao" ("Shut up Galvao") as a criticism of Brazilian commentator Galvão Bueno. Non-Portuguese speakers misinterpreted this as meaning "Save the Galvao" and assumed it was some sort of environmentalist campaign. Brazilians decided to perpetuate this misconception, up to Memetic Mutation status, and spread rumors that Lady Gaga was releasing a song titled "Cala Boca Galvao".
  • Actually, this went beyond just spreading rumors, to the point of creating this "official-sounding ad of the campaign".
  • "Twitter is free. Seeing the foreigners asking 'Who is Cala Boca Galvao': Priceless."
  • Brazilians are fond of spreading any and every misconception about their own culture and language, if the Rule of Funny applies. Take everything a Brazilian says about the meaning of some obscure Portuguese word with a grain of salt. If the said Brazilian insists that some string of words is a very polite way to introduce yourself to strangers, take note; actually it's a very offensive curse. Maybe this trope was born in an old routine of a famous TV show, A Praça é Nossa, where a poor German (played by Jô Soares) with a poor grasp of Portuguese was made the butt of the joke. Kelly Key, a Brazilian pop singer, has admitted doing the same with her North American manager on the same talk show.
• Its beautiful names: one of the main things about Brazil is that many people have informal nicknames. For example, former president Luiz Inácio da Silva, who returned to that office after the 2022 election, is generally just "Lula". Even the press will call him just "President Lula" (he actually had it legally incorporated into his name), and his successor Dilma Rousseff is just "Dilma". Also, Brazilian names tend to go to three or more words, because as a rule of thumb both parents pass their last names on to the child, not only the father — and the mother can register a child in her name only too.
  • Calling people by surnames is almost never indicative of being formal or polite. Most often, this happens because there are more people who go by the same given name, and surnames are used as surrogate names to avoid ambiguity when a nickname can't be earned.
  • But some of these, like "da Silva" and "de Oliveira" are composed surnames, directly correlating to German "von" and Dutch "van"/"van der" (as in "von Braun" or "van Helsing"). Unlike those counterparts, they're stripped down when out of context: "Mr. Silva" is valid, "Mr. Da Silva" is not.
    • Literally, in archaic and modern Portuguese respectively, "da Silva" and "de Oliveira" mean "of the forest" and "of the olive tree", and aren't related to land ownership or specific places. Often, they're "generic" Christian names given to slaves in place of their original African names. And going even deeper, the same surnames were given to converted Jews in Portugal back in the Middle Ages, so expect many people with these surnames to have Jewish features.
    • A relatively new trend (mostly shared by poor families) is to give their children "exotic" names. Most consist of poorly spelled American names (with as many doubled consonants, w's and y's as can be thrown in), such as the not so uncommon “Maicon” (inspired by Michael Jackson), but there are also the Brazilian and American celebrity stage names.
• Brazil is known for being "perpetually the power of the future that never seems to come." Despite its vast resources and population, several structural issues have held back Brazil and its potential:
  • Its continental size: Brazil is a rather formidable nation to traverse due to its sheer extension, the 5th largest in the world: a series of highlands separate the populated coastline from the interior, meaning transporting raw materials across the country often requires the construction of expensive roads. While there are sixty three thousand kilometers of navigable rivers, only about 31% of them are used for transport of cargo and passengers, especially in the Northern region. This geography makes the construction of a centralized nation-state a bit more difficult. It isolates significant metropolises like São Paulo and Rio from being markets for Brazil's mineral and agricultural wealth and from hosting large ports.
  • Poor soils: Much of Brazil's land is only farmable with intense fertilizer and terraforming. For farming to be profitable, landowners stick to high-return cash crops rather than grow grains or invest in industrial development. This contributes to Brazil's inequality and cycles of boom and bust and traps Brazil in a resource curse.
  • The lack of the rule of law and corruption. One unfortunate legacy of the 1889 coup is Brazil's occasional political instability and periods of military power. None of the various republics have lasted longer than the Constitution of the Empire, which has contributed to a legacy. While modern Brazil is democratic, it struggles with a sclerotic legislative process and an inefficient bureaucracy.
  • Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery in 1888, which meant a landowning elite that relied on unfree laborers had never been too sympathetic on the issue of workers' rights. The loss of their slaves was one of the reasons the landowners supported the abolition of the monarchy. Still, even Brazil's agricultural workers suffered abuse and exploitation for decades afterward. Any politician who tried to push some labor reform was denounced by the elite as a "communist" and threatened by the military.
• Brazilians mostly see Alberto Santos Dumont as the inventor of the airplane, the rest of the world less so (except perhaps for the French, as his aircraft, the 14-Bis, was publicly demonstrated at the Bagatelle Field in Paris).
• Placing some beautiful cultural value on lateral thinking and the harmless bending of rules. Brazilians are fond of a mix of ingenuity and trickery known as the "gambiarra". This actually saved lives during the Brazilian participation in WWII — Brazilian soldiers learned to coat their boots with newspaper and straw, preventing hypothermia, while soldiers of other countries paid much more for (or went without) special equipment that delivered much less. The figure of the '40s "Malandro" (Scoundrel) is romanticized in several works (even by Disney; José Carioca was originally a representation of this specific subculture) and, in the Brazilian works that have a law enforcement agent as the protagonist, pretty much none is a By-the-Book Cop.
• Being highly susceptible to mockery on the internet due to a reputation for Griefing incidents, especially among the communities of MOBAs. They already have a Hair-Trigger Temper as it is, but there is no more guaranteed way to start a flame war than to say you are Brazilian. Want to watch a bunch of MOBA players devolve into an Unstoppable Rage? Just say "BR"^*To ask if any Brazilians are playing on the server. or "huehuehue"^*An infamous laughter that is used sarcastically by everyone nowadays.. It is not recommended that you take a drink whenever they start screaming racist comments, unless you are suicidal.
• If you live in Florida, then Brazilian tourists, of all things, are an increasingly common sight. Unlike most, they are drawn less by Florida's famous theme parks, beaches, NASA launch sites, and cruise ship ports (though they're there for that too) than for more humble destinations: its malls. This is due to Brazil's high tariffs on imported products, which have protected Brazilian industry but have also made certain exotic consumer items (particularly the latest electronic gadgets) frighteningly expensive, leaving the country with a large and growing middle class that doesn't have anything to spend its money on. Easier to just go to America and get what you want at their discounted prices. And since Florida is the closest part of the US to most parts of Brazil...

Brazilian law is alternately liberal and conservative: the death penalty is unconstitutional (except during warfare), but abortions are restricted; gun possession is heavily regulated ^note Though a thriving black market keeps local drug cartels and criminal empires supplied with all kinds of heavy weaponry, and the country has the single highest rate of firearm homicides per year; same-sex marriage was legalized in 2013; and you get to go to special (much less screwed up) prisons if you've got a college degree. Laws in Brazil change very slowly, as they have to move their way through Congress like molasses running uphill in July (which, of course, is winter in Brazil^note Well, most of Brazil. But the parts where it's technically summer are equatorial and really don't count.). Also, while Brazil is a federal republic much like the US, the states have much more limited legislative powers. Brazil is mostly a civil law country, unlike the US. Interpretation of the law or judicial custom is not binding; only a few decisions made by the constitutional court are.

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Brazilian works in this wiki:

• The Alchemist
• Angra
• Bacurau
• A Batalha do Apocalipse
• Black Orpheus (a French production, but in Portuguese with an all-Brazilian cast)
• City of God, and its Spin-Off series, City of Men.
• Combo Rangers
• Cupcake & Dino: General Services
• The Devil to Pay in the Backlands
• Dom Casmurro
• Duke of Caxias
• The Elite Squad
• Fishtronaut
• Fudêncio e Seus Amigos
• Getúlio Vargas
• Holy Avenger
• João Gilberto
• Jorel's Brother
• Jorge Ben Jor
• Krisiun
• Lampião
• Luis Fernando Verissimo
• Massacration
• Monica's Gang
• Novas Aventuras de Megaman
• Oniken
• Oswaldo
• Pabllo Vittar
• Paranormal Order
• Pato Fu
• Road47
• Sandy & Junior
• Sepultura
• SocietyOfVirtue
• Trail of Lies
• Vídeo Brinquedo
• Yoruba Mythology

See also

• Brazilian Media
• Brazilian Folklore
• Brazilian Military Regime
• Brazilian States
• Brazilians with Bazookas
• The Empire of Brazil
  • Pedro II

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The Brazilian flag

The green field and yellow rhombus were retained from the 1822 flag of the Brazilian Empire, and respectively represented the Houses of Bragança and Habsburg, the ancestral lineages of Dom Pedro I and his wife Maria Leopoldina. Following Brazil's transition into a republic in 1889, the aforementioned elements were retained while the royal arms at the center were replaced with a blue circle littered with 27 stars—each representing a specific state plus the Federal District—arranged to resemble the starry array as it would have appeared over the skies of Rio de Janeiro on the morning of 15 November 1889, the moment Brazil was declared a republic; streaking across the sky is the positivist motto "Ordem e Progresso" (Portuguese, "Order and Progress").

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Coat of arms of Brazil

The coat of arms are surrounded by coffee and tobacco branches (two of the most important crops). The Southern Cross and the ring of 27 stars (representing the states and the Federal District). The blue ribbon contains the official name of Brazil (República Federativa do Brasil — Federative Republic of Brazil) in its first line and the date of the federative republic's establishment (15 November 1889). The coat of arms was adopted on 19 November 1889 (four days after the country became a republic).

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The Brazilian national anthem

Ouviram do Ipiranga as margens plácidas

De um povo heróico o brado retumbante,

E o sol da liberdade, em raios fúlgidos,

Brilhou no céu da pátria nesse instante.

Se o penhor dessa igualdade

Conseguimos conquistar com braço forte,

Em teu seio, ó liberdade,

Desafia o nosso peito a própria morte!

Ó Pátria amada,

Idolatrada,

Salve! Salve!

Brasil, um sonho intenso, um raio vívido

De amor e de esperança à terra desce,

Se em teu formoso céu, risonho e límpido,

A imagem do Cruzeiro resplandece.

Gigante pela própria natureza,

És belo, és forte, impávido colosso,

E o teu futuro espelha essa grandeza.

Terra adorada,

Entre outras mil,

És tu, Brasil,

Ó Pátria amada!

Dos filhos deste solo és mãe gentil,

Pátria amada,

Brasil!

Deitado eternamente em berço esplêndido,

Ao som do mar e à luz do céu profundo,

Fulguras, ó Brasil, florão da América,

Iluminado ao sol do Novo Mundo!

Do que a terra, mais garrida,

Teus risonhos, lindos campos têm mais flores;

"Nossos bosques têm mais vida",

"Nossa vida" no teu seio "mais amores."

Ó Pátria amada,

Idolatrada,

Salve! Salve!

Brasil, de amor eterno seja símbolo

O lábaro que ostentas estrelado,

E diga o verde-louro dessa flâmula

"Paz no futuro e glória no passado."

Mas, se ergues da justiça a clava forte,

Verás que um filho teu não foge à luta,

Nem teme, quem te adora, a própria morte.

Terra adorada,

Entre outras mil,

És tu, Brasil,

Ó Pátria amada!

Dos filhos deste solo és mãe gentil,

Pátria amada,

Brasil!

—

They heard, on placid shores of the Ipiranga river,

the resounding shout of a heroic folk

And the sun of Liberty in shining beams

shone in the homeland's sky at that instant

If the pledge of this equality

we managed to conquer with strong arm

In thy bosom, O Freedom,

our chest defies death itself!

O beloved,

idolized homeland,

Hail, hail!

Brazil, an intense dream, a vivid ray

of love and hope descends to earth

If in thy beautiful, smiling and limpid sky

the image of the (Southern) Cross blazes.

Giant by thine own nature

Thou art beautiful, strong, a fearless colossus

And thy future mirrors that greatness

Adored Land

Amongst thousand others

art thou, Brazil,

O beloved homeland

Of the sons of this ground

Thou art kind mother

Beloved homeland, Brazil

Eternally lying on splendid cradle

to the sound of sea and under deep sky light

Thou flashest, Brazil, crocket of America,

illuminated by the sun of New World

Than the more garish land,

thy smiling, pretty prairies have more flowers

"Our groves have more life"

"Our life" in thy bosom "more loves"

O beloved,

idolized homeland,

hail, hail!

Brazil, of eternal love be a symbol

the starred labarum which thou displayst

And say the laurel-green of this pennant

"Peace in the future and glory in the past"

But if thou raisest the strong mace of justice,

thou wilt see that a son of thine flees not from battle,

nor do those who love thee fear their own death

Adored Land

Amongst thousand others

art thou, Brazil,

O beloved homeland

Of the sons of this ground

thou art kind mother

Beloved homeland, Brazil

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Government

• Federal presidential constitutional republic
  • President: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
  • Vice President: Geraldo Alckmin
  • President of the Chamber of Deputies: Arthur Lira
  • President of the Federal Senate: Rodrigo Pacheco
  • President of the Supreme Federal Court: Luís Roberto Barroso

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Miscellaneous

• Capital: Brasília
• Largest city: São Paulo
• Population: 210,147,125
• Area: 8,515,767 km

(3,287,956 sq mi) (5th)

• Currency: Brazilian real (R$) (BRL)
• ISO-3166-1 Code: BR
• Country calling code: 55
• Highest point: Pico da Neblina (2995 m/9,826 ft) (65th)
• Lowest point: Atlantic Ocean (3,646 m/11,962 ft) (-)

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