About Brazil


Brazil is the largest country in Latin America. It spreads across almost half (47.3%) of South America, and occupies a total area of 8,547,403.5 km2. It is the fifth largest country in the world after Canada, the Russian Federation, China and the United States.

Brazil's figures are impressive: its population is just over 180 million inhabitants; and it has 5,658 municipal districts. Although 92% of Brazilian territory is located in an inter-tropical zone and warm weather predominates (with average temperatures above 20o C), the country also sees occasional snow and has semi-arid regions.

Language

The official language is Portuguese; the accent and the intonation, however, are very different from what one hears in Portugal and other former Portuguese colonies.

Some people say that Brazilians speak "Brazilian", just like Americans can say they speak "American'", and not English. And there are also many Brazilians who are descendants of immigrants and who speak German and Italian, especially in towns in southern Brazil.

Brazil - a country which greets visitors with a huge smile

The mixture of races has made Brazil a culturally rich and at the same time unique country. This miscegenation began with the Indian, the African and the Portuguese, but soon after, immigrants from around the world began to arrive: Europeans, Asians, Jews and Arabs. The result is a happy people, open to everything new, a people one can only find in Brazil.

Because of this massive diversity, Brazil is one of the last places on Earth where no one is a foreigner, where one can change one's destiny without losing one's identity and where each and every Brazilian has a little of the entire world in his or her blood. This may be the reason why Brazilian's welcome people from another land so openly. According to surveys carried out with foreign tourists who visited the country, 97.2% intend to return soon; 56.5% had their expectations completely satisfied; and, for 31.7%, it exceeded their expectations in every way. As you can see, those who come to Brazil become fans on their first visit.

Brazilian democracy

Brazil has been a Republic since 1889. Throughout this entire period, the country actually experienced little more than thirty years of democracy (1946-1964 and from 1985 to the present). Nevertheless, it is one of the most democratic nations on Earth. Brazilian democracy, which was won back after 21 years of a military dictatorship, proved to be vigorous and became an important part of the life of its people.

The National Congress has been operating like clockwork for 175 years. In the entire history of the country, only on three occasions did the elected representatives not complete their terms. The strength of the Congress is actually so great that not even the military dictatorship of the 1960s could do without it. There have been national elections in Brazil since 1823.

Biodiversity

The Pantanal marshland is the biggest floodplain in the world.

The Amazon is the biggest tropical rainforest in the world with the greatest biodiversity on Earth, comprising 34 different ecosystems. A single hectare of forest may have up to 300 types of trees. One in every five plant species in the world grows in the Amazon Rainforest. Some estimates reckon there are more than 10 million living species in the Amazon, but the actual number is incalculable.

The Amazon River has more than 1,000 tributaries. Brazil has 53 National Parks. As much as 8.13% of its territory is protected in the form of conservation units.

The Brazilian Tourism Ministry keeps a frequently updated site in 8 languages (Portuguese from Brazil and from Portugal, Spanish, American and British English, French, German and Italian) with touristic information overall in Brazil.