Following more than three centuries under Portuguese rule, Brazil gained its independence in 1822, maintaining a monarchical system of government until the abolition of slavery in 1888 and the subsequent proclamation of a republic by the military in 1889. Brazilian coffee exporters politically dominated the country until populist leader Getúlio Vargas rose to power in 1930. Vargas governed over various versions of democratic and authoritarian regimes from 1930 to 1945. Democratic rule returned (including a democratically elected Vargas administration from 1951 to 1955) and lasted until 1964, when the military overthrew President João Goulart. The military regime censored journalists and repressed and tortured dissidents in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The dictatorship lasted until 1985, when the military regime peacefully ceded power to civilian rulers, and the Brazilian Congress passed its current constitution in 1989.
By far the largest and most populous country in South America, Brazil continues to pursue industrial and agricultural growth and development of its interior. Having successfully weathered a period of global financial difficulty in the late 20th century, under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010) Brazil was seen as one of the world’s strongest emerging markets and a contributor to global growth – member of BRICS and leading partner of the Global South. The awarding of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympic Games, the first ever to be held in South America, was symbolic of the country’s rise. However, from about 2013 to 2016, Brazil was plagued by a sagging economy, high unemployment, and high inflation, only emerging from recession in 2017. Former President Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016) was removed from office in 2016 by Congress for having committed impeachable acts against Brazil’s budgetary laws, and her vice president, Michel Temer, served the remainder of her second term. A money-laundering investigation, Operation Lava Jato, uncovered a vast corruption scheme and prosecutors charged several high-profile Brazilian politicians with crimes. Former-President Lula was convicted of accepting bribes and served jail time (2018-19), although his conviction was overturned in early 2021. Lula’s revival became complete in October 2022 when he narrowly defeated incumbent Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) in the presidential election. However, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is back in power in Brazil.
Economy
Industrial-led economic growth model; recovering from 2014-2016 recession when COVID-19 hit; industry limited by Amazon rainforest but increasing deforestation; new macroeconomic structural reforms; high income inequality; left UNASUR to join PROSUR.
Population
The population of Brazil is 218,689,757 (2023 est.) which consists of White 47.7%, mixed 43.1%, Black 7.6%, Asian 1.1%, Indigenous 0.4% (2010 est.)
Afro-Brazilians represent 45% of the population of Brazil but constitute 64% of the poor and 69% of the extremely poor. With respect to education, 18% of Afro-Brazilians have completed secondary school as compared to 38% of those who self-identify as white. Afro-Brazilians have, on average, roughly five years of schooling, whereas whites have completed nine years of school. They earn, on average, some 44% less than non-blacks. Some 41% of Afro-Brazilians live in houses without adequate sanitation and 21% lack running water, versus 18% and 7% of white households. The maternal mortality rate of Afro-Brazilian women is three times that of their white counterparts. Afro-Brazilians have lower life expectancies than whites (66 years as compared to 71.5 years) and nearly twice the homicide rate of whites. One study found that violence is becoming the leading cause of death for Afro-Brazilian men.16
In Brazil, a person’s race is based primarily on physical appearance. It is possible for two siblings of different colors to be classified as people of different races. Children who are born to a black mother and a European father would be classified as black if their features read as African, and classified as white if their features appeared more European.
Brazil, which was colonized by the Portuguese, was the primary destination of enslaved Africans in South America. More than four million African people were taken to Brazil, representing approximately 40% of all enslaved people trafficked to the Americas. In 1888, Brazil’s “Golden Law” was passed, which abolished all forms of slavery according to Ancestry.com. Today, Brazil has the largest African diasporic population–over 50% of contemporary Brazilians have African ancestry. When Brazil finally abolished slavery in 1888 – becoming the last country in the western hemisphere to do so – it had enslaved more Africans than any other country in the history of the world, 10 times more than were brought to the United States.
While large numbers of people were taken from the region which is now Angola, the ethnic group that arguably has the most visible impact on Brazilian society was the Yoruba from Nigeria, whose religious traditions are still practiced today.
Afro-Brazilians are Brazilians who have predominantly sub-Saharan African ancestry. Most members of another group of people, multiracial Brazilians or pardos, may also have a range of degrees of African ancestry. Depending on the circumstances (situation, locality, etc.), the ones whose African features are more evident are always or frequently seen by others as “africans” – consequently identifying themselves as such, while the ones for whom this evidence is lesser may not be seen as such as regularly. It is important to note that the term pardo, such as preto, is rarely used outside the census spectrum. Brazilian society has a range of words, including negro itself, to describe multiracial people.
Preto and pardo are among five ethnic categories used by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, along with branco (“white”), amarelo (“yellow”, East Asian), and indígena (Native American). In 2010, 7.6% of the Brazilian population, some 15 million people, identified as preto, while 43% (86 million) identified as pardo. Brazilians have a complex classification system based on the prominence of skin and hair pigmentation, as well as other features associated with the concept of race (raça).
Since the early 21st century, Brazilian government agencies such as the Special Secretariat for Policies to Promote Racial Equality (SEPPIR) and the Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada (IPEA), have considered combining the categories preto and pardo (individual with varied racial ancestries) into a single category called negro (Black), because both groups show socioeconomic indications of discrimination. They suggest doing so would make it easier to help people who have been closed out of opportunity. This proposal has caused much controversy because there is no consensus about it in Brazilian society.
Brazilians rarely use the American-style phrase “African Brazilian” as a term of ethnic identity and never in informal discourse: the IBGE’s July 1998 PME shows that, of Black Brazilians, only about 10% identify as being of “African origin”; most identify as being of “Brazilian origin”. In the July 1998 PME, the categories Afro-Brasileiro (Afro-Brazilian) and Africano Brasileiro (African Brazilian) were not chosen at all; the category Africano (African) was selected by 0.004% of the respondents. In the 1976 National Household Sample (PNAD), none of these terms was used even once.
Brazilian geneticist Sérgio Pena has criticized American scholar Edward Telles for lumping pretos and pardos in the same category. According to him, “the autosomal genetic analysis that we have performed in non-related individuals from Rio de Janeiro shows that it does not make any sense to put pretos and pardos in the same category”. An autosomal genetic study of students in a school in the poor periphery of Rio de Janeiro found that the pardos among the students were found to be on average more than 40% European in ancestry. Before testing, the students identified (when asked) as ⅓ European, ⅓ African and ⅓ Native American.
According to Edward Telles, three different systems related to “racial classification” along the White-Black continuum are used in Brazil. The first is the Census System, which distinguishes three categories: branco (White), pardo, and preto. The second is the popular social system that uses many different categories, including the ambiguous term moreno (literally meaning “tanned”, “brunette”, or “with an olive complexion“). The third is the Black movement, which distinguishes only two categories, summing up pardos and pretos (“blacks”, lowercase) as negros (“Blacks”, with capital initial), and putting all others as “whites”. More recently, the term afrodescendente has been adopted for use, but it is restricted to very formal discourse, such as governmental or academic discussions, being viewed by some as a cultural imposition from the “politically correct speech” associated with the United States.
The first system referred to by Telles is that of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). In the Census, respondents may identify their ethnicity or color from five categories: branca (white), parda (brown), preta (black), amarela (yellow) or indígena (indigenous). The term parda needs further explanation; it has been systematically used since the Census of 1940. In that census, people were asked for their “color or race”; if the answer was not “White”, “preta” (black), or “Yellow”, interviewers were instructed to fill the “color or race” box with a slash. These slashes were later summed up in the category pardo. In practice this means answers such as pardo, moreno, mulato, caboclo, etc., all indicating mixed race. In the following censuses, pardo was added as a category on its own, and included Amerindians. The latter were defined as a separate category only in 1991. It is a term for people of color who are lighter than blacks, and does not imply a black-white mixture, as there are some entirely indigenous persons.
Telles’ second system is that of popular classification. Two IBGE surveys made more than 20 years apart (the 1976 National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) and the July 1998 Monthly Employment Survey (PME) have been analyzed to assess how Brazilians think of themselves in racial terms. The IBGE thought the data might be used to adjust classifications on the census (neither survey, however, resulted in changes to the Census classifications). DataFolha has also conducted research on this subject. The results of these surveys are somewhat varied, but seem to coincide in some fundamental aspects. First, a great number of racial terms are in use in Brazil, indicating a flexibility in thinking about the topic. The 1976 PNAD found that people responded with a total of 136 different terms to the question about race; the July 1998 PME found 143. However, most of these terms are used by small numbers of people. Telles notes that 95% of the population used one of 6 different terms for people of color and at least some African ancestry (branco, moreno, pardo, moreno-claro, preto and negro). Petruccelli shows that the 7 most common responses (the above plus amarela) sum up 97% of responses, and the 10 most common (the previous plus mulata, clara, and morena-escura – dark brunette) make up 99%.
Petruccelli, analysing the July 98 PME, finds that 77 denominations were mentioned by only one person in the sample. Twelve are misunderstandings, as respondents used terms of national or regional origin (francesa, italiana, baiana, cearense). Many of the racial terms are (or could be) remarks about the relation between skin colour and exposure to sun (amorenada, bem morena, branca-morena, branca-queimada, corada, bronzeada, meio morena, morena-bronzeada, morena-trigueira, morenada, morenão, moreninha, pouco morena, queimada, queimada de sol, tostada, rosa queimada, tostada). Others are clearly variations of the same idea (preto, negro, escuro, crioulo, retinto, for black, alva, clara, cor-de-leite, galega, rosa, rosada, pálida, for White, parda, mulata, mestiça, mista, for parda), or refinements of the same concept (branca morena, branca clara), and can be grouped together with one of the chiefly used racial terms without falsifying the interpretation. Some responses seem to express an outright refusal of classification: azul-marinho (“navy blue”), azul (“blue”), verde (“green”), cor-de-burro-quando-foge. In the July 1998 PME, the categories Afro-Brasileiro (“Afro-Brazilian”) and Africano Brasileiro (“African Brazilian”) were not used at all; the category Africano (“African”) was used by 0.004% of the respondents. In the 1976 PNAD, none of these terms was used even once.
The notable difference in the popular system is the widespread use of the term moreno. This is difficult to translate into English, and carries a few different meanings. Derived from Latin maurus, meaning inhabitant of Mauritania, it has traditionally been used to distinguish White people with dark hair, as opposed to ruivo (“redhead”) and loiro (“blonde”). It is also commonly used as a term for people with an olive complexion, a characteristic that is often found in connection with dark hair. In this connection, it is applied as a term for suntanned people, and is commonly opposed to pálido (“pale”) and amarelo (“yellow”), which in this case refer to people who are not frequently exposed to sun. Finally, it is also often used as a euphemism for pardo and preto.
Finally, the Black movement has combined the groups pardos and pretos as a single category of negro (it does not use Afro-brasileiro or any other hyphenated form). This appears to be similar to the Black Power movement in the United States, or, historically, the discriminatory one drop rule. But in Brazil, the Black movement understands that not everybody with some African ancestry is Black. It knows that many White Brazilians have African (or Amerindian, or both) ancestries – so a “one drop rule” isn’t what the Black movement envisages, as it would make affirmative action impossible. Second, the main issue for the Black movement is not cultural, but rather economic: its members are not seeking a supposed cultural identification with Africa, but rather to rectify a situation of economic disadvantage, common to those who are non-White (with the exception of those of East Asian ancestry), that groups them into a negro category.
However, this effort to divide Brazilians between brancos and negros is seen as influenced by American one-drop rule, and attracts much criticism. For instance, sociologist Demétrio Magnoli considers classifying all pretos and pardos as Blacks as an assault on the racial vision of Brazilians. He believes that scholars and activists of the Black movement misinterpret the ample variety of intermediate categories, characteristic of the popular system, to be a result of Brazilian racism, and that causes Blacks to refuse their identity and hide in euphemisms. Magnoli refers to a survey about race, conducted in the town of Rio de Contas, Bahia, in which the choice of pardo was replaced by moreno. The town has about 14,000 people, 58% of whom White. Not only pardos chose the moreno category, but also almost half of the people who previously had identified as white, and half the people previously identified as pretos also chose the moreno category.
In recent years, the Brazilian government has encouraged affirmative action programs for persons considered to be “African-descendant” and also for Amerindians. This is happening, in part, through the created systems of preferred admissions (quotas) for racial minorities. Other measures include priority in land reform for areas populated by remnants of quilombolas. The government notes that these groups have historically been discriminated against because of slavery and the Portuguese conquest of the indigenous peoples. They became landless and are represented among the poorest segments of Brazilian society, while the European or White population dominates the upper classes. Such efforts in affirmative action have been criticized because of the ambiguity of racial classification in Brazil. Some people have tried to use this system for personal advantage.
In 2007, the twin brothers Alex and Alan Teixeira applied for places in the University of Brasília through quotas reserved for “Black students”. In the university, a team of specialists and professors used photos of the candidates to determine who was Black or not. The Teixeira brothers were identical twins, but in this process, only Alan was classified as Black, while his identical brother Alex, whose application was reviewed by different people, was not accepted in this program.
Since that case, governmental affirmative action programs have been widely criticized. Given the high degree of miscegenation of the Brazilian people, critics say the definition of who is Black or not is very subjective. Magnoli describes Brazilian society as not divided between races, but between the poor and the rich, while acknowledging that it is widely agreed that people of darker skin color have suffered an “additional discrimination”.