Brazilians often say they live in a continent rather than a
country, and that's an excusable exaggeration. The landmass is
bigger than the United States if you exclude Alaska; the journey
from Recife in the east to the western border with Peru is longer
than that from London to Moscow, and the distance between the
northern and southern borders is about the same as that between New
York and Los Angeles. Brazil has no mountains to compare with its
Andean neighbours, but in every other respect it has all the scenic
- and cultural - variety you would expect from so vast a
country.
Despite the immense expanses of the interior, roughly two-thirds
of Brazil's population live on or near the coast; and well
over half live in cities - even in the Amazon. In Rio and São
Paulo, Brazil has two of the world's great metropolises, and nine
other cities have over a million inhabitants. Yet Brazil still
thinks of itself as a frontier country, and certainly the deeper
into the interior you go, the thinner the population becomes.
Nevertheless, the frontier communities have expanded relentlessly
during the last fifty years, usually hand in hand with the planned
expansion of the road network into remote regions.
Other South Americans regard Brazilians as a race apart,
and language has a lot to do with it - Brazilians understand
Spanish, just about, but Spanish-speakers won't understand
Portuguese. More importantly, though, Brazilians look different.
They're one of the most ethnically diverse peoples in the world: in
the extreme south, German and Italian immigration has left
distinctive European features; São Paulo has the world's largest
Japanese community outside Japan; there's a large black population
concentrated in Rio, Salvador and São Luís; while the Indian
influence is most visible in the people of Amazônia and the
Northeastern interior.
Brazil is a land of profound economic contradictions.
Rapid postwar industrialization made Brazil one of the world's ten
largest economies and put it among the most developed of Third
World countries. But this has not improved the lot of the vast
majority of Brazilians. The cities are dotted with favelas,
shantytowns which crowd around the skyscrapers, and the contrast
between rich and poor is one of the most glaring anywhere. There
are wide regional differerences , too: Brazilians talk of a
"Switzerland" in the Southeast, centred along the Rio-São Paulo
axis, and an "India" above it; and although this is a
simplification, it's true that the level of economic development
tends to fall the further north you go. This throws up facts which
are hard to swallow. Brazil is the industrial powerhouse of South
America, but cannot feed and educate its people. In a country
almost the size of a continent, the extreme inequalities in land
distribution have led to land shortages but not to agrarian reform.
Brazil has enormous natural resources but their exploitation so far
has benefited just a few. The IMF and the greed of First World
banks must bear some of the blame for this situation, but
institutionalized corruption and the reluctance of the country's
large middle class to do anything that might jeopardize its
comfortable lifestyle are also part of the problem.
These difficulties, however, rarely seem to overshadow everyday
life in Brazil. It's fair to say that nowhere in the world do
people know how to enjoy themselves more - most famously in the
annual orgiastic celebrations of Carnaval , but reflected,
too, in the lively year-round nightlife that you'll find in any
decent-sized town. This national hedonism also manifests itself in
Brazil's highly developed beach culture ; the country's
superb music and dancing; rich regional cuisines ;
and in the most relaxed and tolerant attitude to sexuality -
gay and straight - that you'll find anywhere in South America. And
if you needed more reason to visit, there's a strength and variety
of popular culture , and a genuine friendliness and humour
in the people that is tremendously welcoming and infectious.