O BRASIL / EL BRASIL / BRAZIL
NAME: República
Federativa do Brasil
The generally accepted etymology of the name is the
"brazilwood" tree because of the reddish color of its wood, which
color reminded the first Portuguese explorers of reddish embers (>
Port. brasil ). The Tupi people of the pre-Columbian region of Brazil
called their land ibirapitanga ('red
wood').
POPULATION: 193,000,000
(2011)
ETHNIC
GROUPS: Mulatto (38%); African
(6%); European origin (55%); Amerindian (0.5%)
CAPITAL: Brasilia
(1,500,000)
Other
major cities: Rio de Janeiro (6,100,000); São Paulo (23,000,000);
Salvador da Bahia (2,700,000); Belo Horizonte (2,400,000)
LANGUAGES: Portuguese
(official)
RELIGION: Roman
Catholic (73%); Protestant (15%); other (12%)
LIFE
EXPECTANCY: 1997: men,
57; women, 67; 2007: men, 68; women 76
LITERACY: 1997,
83%; 2007, 88%
GOVERNMENT: democratic
federal republic; representative democracy; 26 states; 1 federal district
(Brasília)
President:
Dilma Rousseff
MILITARY: 295,000
active troops
ECONOMY: steel,
autos, textiles, shoes, chemicals, gems, computers, coffee, beef, minerals,
petroleum
MONEY: real
(BRL). 1997: 1.1 BRL = $1.00US; 2007: $1.00 US = 2.2 BRL
GEOGRAPHY: largest
country in all Western Hemisphere; Atlantic coast; Amazon region known as the
Earth's lungs
HISTORY:
31,000-10,000
B.C. NE Brazil: cave
paintings, fireplaces, tools (perhaps as early as 43,000 B.C.)
Thinly
settled with hunter-gathering peoples
1492 Vicente
Yáñez Pinzón (with Colón in 1492) discovered
Río Marañón, later called the Río Amazonas
1500 Discovered
by Pedro Alvares Cabral and claimed
by Portugal
1501 Amerigo
Vespucci visited Brazil
1502 Jan.
1: Vespucci found Rio de Janeiro
1532 First
permanent Portuguese settlements
1549-1763 Bahia made
first colonial capital (Tomé de Souza)
1554 São
Paulo founded
1567 Rio
de Janeiro founded
1693 Gold
found in Ouro Preto in the province of Minas Gerais: beginning of bandeirantes (adventurers, gold seekers).
1730-1814 (alternate
birth, 1738) Aleijadinho (Antônio Francisco Lisboa), genius baroque
sculptor and architect, especially in Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais.
1758 Jesuits
expelled from Brazil
1763 Capital
moved from Bahia to Rio de Janeiro
1807 João
VI moves Portuguese monarchy from Portugal to Brazil making Brazil a kingdom
1821 João
VI returns to Portugal and leaves Brazilian government to son Pedro I
1822 Sept.
7: Pedro I declares Brazilian independence and turns Brazil into an empire
1822-1831 Emperor
Pedro I ruler
1824 New
Constitution
1831-1840 Regency for
Pedro II
1840-1889
Pedro II
king of Brazil
1852 Pedro
II helped overthrow dictator Rosas of Argentina
1864-1870 Pedro
II waged successful war against dictator Solano López of Paraguay
1870-1888 Slaves
emancipated
1889
Brazil
becomes republic
Brazil
renamed: United States of Brazil
1889-1890 Military
Dictatorship
1891 New
Constitution
1891-1893 Chaotic
governments: Marshals Manuel Deodoro da Fonseca, Floriano Peixoto
1894-1898 President
Prudente Morais Barros (republican)
1897 Civil
War in Northeast lead by Antônio Conselheiro
1902-1906 Pres. Paulo
Rodrigues Alves transformed Rio de Janeiro into major city
1930-1945 Getulio
Vargas, autocratic president: dictatorial powers by new constitution
1940 Pelé
(Edison Arantes do Nascimento) was born: he has been rated as the greatest
footballer (soccer player) of all time, and he was named Athlete of the Century
by the International Olympic Committee.
1942-1945 Brazil
fought in World War II: battle of Monte Cassino
1950-1954 Vargas elected
president again (suicide 1954)
1955-1961 Juscelino
Kubitschek, president
1960 Capital
moved from Rio de Janeiro to Brasília
1960-1961 President
Janio Quadros resigns (mayor of São Paulo 1985-)
1961-1964 President
João Belchoir Marques Goulart (Goulart) overthrown by military coup
1964-1985 Military
dictatorship (Gen. João Baptista Figueiredo until 1985)
Dictatorships
carried out torture and assassinations against what it saw as leftist
subversives
1967 Brazil
renamed República Federativa do Brasil
1970 Brazil
had become largest economic power in Latin America
1985 Return
to democracy with interim presidency of José Sarney and bicameral
congress
After
Tancredo Neves died shortly after being elected by Electoral College
1988 Interim
presidency of Sarney extended until 1990
1989 Fernando
Collor de Mello elected president
1992 Brazil
restructured its massive foreign debt
Collor
de Mello indicted for corruption
Itamar
Franco (former VP) new president
Brazil
hosted Earth Summit on international environmental concerns
1994 Fernando
Henrique Cardoso elected president (sociology professor; neoliberal)
1998-2003 Cardoso
re-elected as president.
2003-2011 Jan. 1;
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva elected president: campaign for social and
economic changes.
2007-2011 Petrobras
discovered the Tupi oil field, one of the largest oil and natural gas field in
the world (in the Atlantic near Rio de Janeiro), raising Brazil's petroleum
reserves by 62%.
2008 Petrobras
announced the discovery of another huge oil field, Jupiter. The Jupiter field
is located nearly 17,0000 ft below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean,
again, near Rio de Janeiro.
2011–2015 Dilma Vana
Rousseff (b. 1947-present; daughter of Bulgarian entrepreneur and Brazilian
school teacher mother) succeeds Lula da Silva as 36th president of
Brazil and first woman president; 1964-1970 she was active in urban resistance
groups fighting against the military dictatorship (see 1964-1985 above); from
1970 to 1972 she was jailed and tortured by various members of the military; by
profession she is an economist; she graduated from Rio Grande do Sul University
in 1977; later she took doctoral level courses in economics; from 1979 to the
present she has been active in progressive politics; her party is the Workers
Party; she has one child with her partner Carlos Araújo.
|
2014 Dilma
Rousseff re-elected president for new four-year term.
2016 (May)
President Rousseff suspended from presidency for six months while Senate
debates impeachment proceedings against her due to criminal charges of
corruption. Vice President Michel Temer becomes Acting President of Brazil.
(August
5 to August 21) Brazil hosted the “Games of the XXXI Olympiad”
(popularly known as “Rio 2016”).
(August
31): The Brazilian Senate removed Dilma Roussef from office (61-20) after
finding her guilty of breaking Brazilian budgetary laws (i.e., “fiscal
peddling” involving illegal funds of Petrobras, the Brazilian state oil
company).
Simultaneously,
Michel Temer (b. 1940), a center-right politician (with his own cloud of
suspected illegalities to face), assumed the office of president.
MAJOR
POLITICAL PARTIES and POWER BLOCKS:
Workers
Party
Social Democratic Party
Partido
do Movimento Democrâtico Brasileiro
Democratic
Labor Party
Brazilian
Labor Party
Brazilian
Communist Party
Military
PRINCIPAL
MEMBERS OF THE INTELLIGENTSIA:
Euclides da Cunha, Os Sertões (1905)
Jorge
Amado (1916-present), novelist from Bahia: Tocaia
Grande ; Gabriela, Cravo e Canela (1958)
Leonardo Boff,
theologian of liberation theology: Vida
para além da morte (1973)
Clarice
Lispector (1921-77), The Hour of the Star
Nélida Piñon, A República sos Sonhos
(1984)
Joaquim
Maria Machado de Assis (1838-1908), novelist
Mário de
Andrade (1893-1945), Macunaima (1938)