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Corrupt politicians, wealth wasted, Soccer, Girl from Ipanema, Bossa Nova, very poor/very rich, Amazon, beaches, Carnival, weird looking capital Brasilia, Corcovado, Sugar Loaf...
But believe me, there´s so much more to it.
Brazil is the 8th economy in the world, the 5th largest country, the biggest spread between the poor and the rich, one of the top 10 in Burocracy, top 10 in corruption, number #1 interest rates.
It was discovered in 1500 by a portuguese, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, was a portuguese colony until 1822 when it became a kingdom, afterwards it became a repulic in 1889.
Slavery was abolish by law in 1888 by Princess Isabel.
According to some sources, in 1500 when the portuguese arrived, with them the Catholic church, there were some 5million native brazilian indians. Nowadays that number is reduced to aproximatly 500.000.
In the 1937 Getulio Vargas overtrow the government and became a dicator, that lasted until 1945.
At the beginning of WW2, Vargas had sympanthy for Germany and that included deportation and non accetance of jewish immigrants, later on, pressure from both the people of Brazil and the US government lead to Brazil joining the alies and fighting the nazys.
Vargas came back to power in 1951/54 this time by actual vote.
He was responsible for many laws that help the poor citizens, in particular labour laws.
Created the brazilian social security laws among others.
He also created some laws that are in practice until today that are obsolete and very protective of the employee.
He commited suicide in 1954 while still in power.
In 1964 the military took over the government and their dictatorship lasted until 1985.
Diferently from other latin american dictatorships they took over congress and "elected" trhu their assigned congressmen and senators a president, therefore manipulating the results legaly.
Also diferently from other latin american countries once an armey general became president he authomatly resigned his position in the army. That was created to the effect that the president was never in uniform, like Pinochet in Chile and the Argentinian generals.
The hard years of the military were between 1970 and 1975, but even still.
After that general Geisel begun the so called Overture.
First president elected after the militaries was Tancredo Neves who died before taking power, vice president Sarney became president.
After him Fernando Collor de Mello became president, he was young, won by a landslide (was at one point called by George Bush senior : Indiana Collor).
He was impeached for corruption. His vice president finsihed his term.
After him Fernando Henrique Cardoso was elected for 2 terms and he was responsible not only for ending years of huge inflation but for many privatizations of government companies. (in my modest opinion he was the best president we ever had)
After him Luis Ignacio "Lula" da Silva became president and is not in his second term.
He was the founder of the Labour party, had a history of being to the left, way to the left, but after arriving in power shifted to the centre very conveniently, some say even a bit to the right.
Several corruption scandals surround him, but he is a very keen political organizer and managed to stop all actions against him in congress trhu aliances with other dirty politicians...
Pretty sad. |
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