Brazil Essay Research Paper Brazil

Brazil Essay, Research Paper

Brazil

The name Brazil comes from Pau Brasil. There are around 145 million

people living in Brazil, most of them near the coast. The population is

growing rapidly and half of all Brazilians are under the age of 20. By

the end of the century, it is estimated that Brazil.s population will

have reached 180 million. Brazil borders on ten other Latin American

countries. Most of the northern part of Brazil is low-lying and veined

by the mighty Amazon River and its tributaries. The Amazon is the

largest river in the world. The native peoples of Brazil lived in the

forests and along the rivers, hunting, fishing, and gathering fruits and

nuts. When the Portuguese arrived early in the 16th century, it is

estimated that there were between 1 and 2 million native Amerindian

people. They were used as slaves, and many thousands died from

diseases brought by the Europeans. Recently Amerindians have been

exploited and killed as land speculators and highways go farther into

the rain forest. There are probably less than 150,000 Indians now.

Portuguese settlers developed vast sugarcane estates in the Bahia

region, and for 150 years these estates were in the world.s main

source of sugar. To work the estates, the owners used salves from

Africa. Today there is still an African tradition in Brazil.

Modern immigration began early in the 19th century. Only about 4.5

million foreigners, mostly from Europe, settled in Brazil after then.

Most were Italians and Portuguese, but there were also Spaniards

and Germans, and later Slavs from Poland, Russia, and the Ukraine,

and Arabs from the Middle East. In this century the most significant

immigrants have been Japanese. They have become the most

prosperous ethnic group in Brazil, growing a fifth of the coffee, a third

of the cotton, and all the tea. Traditionally the majority of Brazilians

settled near the coast, but in the last 30 years the rapid movement

from rural areas to urban centers has led to a very uneven

distribution of the population. In parts of the interior there is an

average of just two people per square mile. More than 75 percent of

the people live in towns. Half of these are in just two cities. Sao

Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

People have moved from rural areas to the towns to seek work and

better medical and educational facilities for their families. But the

reality has been very different. Tens of thousands of people now live

in shantytowns or Favelas, on the outskirts of the cities, with little

hope of ever getting a decent job. One of the features of Brazil is

that many different races and peoples intermarry, making Brazilians

one of the most varied peoples in the world. The average Brazilian

has a fascinating family tree which may include a Portuguese

great-grandfather, a native Indian grandmother, a slave grandfather,

a German father, and so on.

Family ties are strong in Brazil. Three generations, including

grandparents and young married couples, often live together in one

house. Poorer families are frequently large, with five or six children,

and grandparents look after the very young while the rest of the

family work.

There is a wide gap between rich and poor. The wealthy live in luxury

mansions or on vast estates, employ maids and gardeners, and enjoy

the same consumer goods as any family in the developed world.

Homes for the poor are shacks of cardboard and corrugated iron,

furnished with the barest essentials and mostly without water, light,

or sanitation.

The extreme poverty in the urban slums, the high unemployment, and

the increasing numbers leaving rural areas for the cities have led to

serious problems. The poorest people suffer most because the state

cannot provide for them, but children who About 90 percent of

Brazil.s population belong to the Roman Catholic Church. The Catholic

Church has gone through a great transformation in the last 20 years.

Most young Catholic priests and many bishops are .progressives..

They believe that society should be more like Christ himself wanted it

to be. The great injustices that exist in Brazil have made many

Catholic priests and bishops ally themselves with the poor. Many

have been persecuted and murdered for this, especially for defending

the poor squatter farmers. Although Brazilian Christians are

traditionally Roman Catholics, the religion that is growing fastest is

the Pentecostal branch of Protestantism. These days, often the first

church to be built in the new towns that spring up overnight in the

North and Amazon regions belongs to one of the Pentecostal

religions. Since their ministers do not have to go through years of

training like the Roman Catholics, these religions can expand much

more quickly. Pentecostal ministers can be ordinary people, with

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