A brief history 
Portuguese navigator Pedro Alvares Cabral discovered Brazil in 1500. From then on, various export cycles dominated Brazil's economic development. The first of these cycles was based on the exportation of brazilwood, used to make dyes and paints. During the 17th century, Brazil became the world's largest producer of sugar. In this period, a large number of African slaves were brought to Brazil to work in the sugar cane plantations. Gold and diamonds eventually replaced sugar as the country's major export product. By the second half of the 19th century, Brazil was deep in a new cycle with coffee as the major export. Today, coffee is still one of Brazil's major sources of income. The late 19th-century rubber boom also brought prosperity and development to the north of Brazil, previously ignored by the international economy. When Napoleon invaded Portugal in the early 1800's, Dom João VI King of Portugal, fled to Brazil where the Portuguese court continued to run the empire. Ports were opened to international (mostly British) commerce, and the colony grew substantially. In 1789, one of Brazil's first movements for independence from Portugal was crushed. Its hero, Tiradentes, became a national symbol of liberty. Independence was finally proclaimed by Dom Pedro I (Dom João's son) in 1822. He became Brazil's first Emperor. His son, Dom Pedro II. reigned for 49 years until 1889 when the country became a Republic. In 1888, slavery was abolished. In 1940 Brazil began a new phase characterized by industrial development.

At the same time, agricultural technology advanced giving further impetus to the industrial surge and accelerating financial expansion. In spite of a large and ever growing internal domestic market. Brazil continues to be a major exporter of agricultural products as well as manufactured items such as heavy machinery, shoes and steel products. 

    The People 
Brazil's inhabitants are descendants of a mixture of people. Portuguese colonizers mixed with the native Indians and African slaves (mostly of Yoruba and Quimbundu origin, corresponding to modern-day Nigeria Benin and Angola). Dutch and French colonization also took place in the Northeast. In the 19th century, waves of German, Italian, Polish and Japanese immigrants added new elements to the mixture. Brazilians are perhaps one of the most racially mixed peoples in the world. Portuguese is the national language, but Brazilian Portuguese is very different in accent and intonation from the language spoken in Portugal or in other former Portuguese colonies. Some people suggest that Brazilians actually speak ''Brazilian" much in the same way that Americans might be said to speak ''American" rather than English. 

 Culture 
Brazilian culture has been shaped not only by the Portuguese, who gave the country its most common religion and language, but also by the country's native Indians, the considerable African population, and other settlers from Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Brazilian music has always been characterized by great diversity and, shaped by musical influences from three continents, is still developing new and original forms. The samba, which reached the height of popularity in the 1930s, is a mixture of Spanish bolero with the cadences and rhythms of African music. Its most famous exponent was probably Carmen Miranda, known for her fiery temperament and fruity headdresses. The more subdued bossa nova, popular in the 1950s and characterized by songs such as 'The Girl from Ipanema', was influenced by North American jazz. Tropicalismo is a mix of musical influences that arrived in Brazil in the 1960s and led a more electric samba. More recently, the lambada, influenced by Caribbean rhythms, became internationally popular in the 1980s.

Among Brazil's writers of fiction, Machado de Assis stands out with his terse, ironic style. The son of a freed slave, Assis worked as a typesetter and journalist in 19th-century Rio. Brazil's most famous 20th-century writer is the regionalist Jorge Amado, whose tales are colorful romances of Bahia's people and places.

Brazil is officially a Catholic country, but in practice the country's religious life incorporates Indian animism, African cults, Afro-Catholic syncretism and Kardecism, a spiritualist religion embracing Eastern mysticism, which is gaining popularity with Brazilian Whites. Portuguese, infused with many words from Indian and African languages, is spoken by all Brazilians. Accents, dialects and slang vary regionally.

The staples of the Brazilian diet are arroz (white rice), feijão (black beans) and farinha (manioc flour), usually combined with steak, chicken or fish. Brazilian specialties include moqueca, a seafood stew flavored with dendê oil and coconut milk; caruru, okra and other vegetables mixed with shrimp, onions and peppers; and feijoada, a bean and meat stew. On many street corners in Bahia, women wearing flowing white dresses sell acarajé, beans mashed in salt and onions, fried in dendê oil and then filled with seafood, manioc paste, dried shrimp, pepper and tomato sauce.



"Sonho de Carnaval" 
Every year, seven weeks before Easter, Brazil stops. It is Carnaval time. For four days from Saturday through Tuesday, as a climax to the Southern Hemisphere summer, the country sings and dances in dance halls and clubs, on the streets and beaches, or wherever there are people and music. In cities like Salvador, the celebration may go on for seven or eight days. 

The music may be provided by a three-hundred-piece escola-de-samba drum section, a horn-and-percussion band, or a spontaneous group of people beating cans and bottles. Some wear special outfits for the occasion, some don't. You'll see clowns, pirates, sheiks, Indians, and lots of men dressed up as women. On display are as many different costumes as the imagination can conjure. Women dress in sophisticated costumes or in very little at all-sometimes just shoes, miniscule bikinis, and some body paint. Carnaval is a hedonistic party in which all that counts is joy and pleasure. As an office clerk told us, "During Carnaval the devil is on the loose. Nobody belongs to anybody." 

Not every city in Brazil has an intense street Carnaval. In some all you'll find are relatively well-behaved indoor balls. People with less carnavalesco souls use the holidays to travel to places where they can relax far from the drums during the day and, if they feel like it, go dancing at night. But between New Year's Eve and Carnaval nothing really important is decided in Brazil. Quoting a popular Chico Buarque song, most people will say, "I'm saving myself for when Carnaval comes." The weather is hot, people become more outgoing, and sensuality is in the air. But amidst all the craziness and frivolity, Carnaval serves the important purpose for Brazilians of maintaining cultural traditions-encoded in the music, dance, and costumes of the celebrations across the country. 

Carnaval is a pre-Lent celebration (like Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Carnival in many Spanish-speaking countries) that has its roots in pre-Christian festivities held by the ancient Greeks, Romans, and others. Around the sixth century B.C., the Greeks held spring festivals in honor of Dionysus, the god of wine and the power of wild nature. Often, merrymakers would parade down the streets of their towns, sometimes with floats. The Romans carried on the seasonal celebration, expanding it into Saturnalia, wherein slaves and masters would exchange clothes and engage in orgiastic behavior, and Bacchanalia, drunken feasts in honor of Bacchus, the Roman version of Dionysus. It was, and is, a time to make merry, to drink, dance, and be crazy. The normal social order is turned upside down and mocked, and anything goes. 

Despite their pagan origins, these festivities were assimilated into the traditions of Roman Catholic countries in Europe. As Carnaval evolved, it retained some of the characteristics of the ancient celebrations, such as the use of masks and the time of year-generally February-but started losing its orgiastic features. It remained an important societal safety valve, a time to vent pent-up frustrations.