Abstract
Brazil is one of the world’s largest and most populous countries. It is the largest country in South America, occupying almost half of the continent and extending from north of the equator to south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Its largest city is São Paulo, and its capital is Brasília. Brazil’s large size and diverse population provide great variety in the natural environment, culture, and economy.
The nation’s natural beauty is reflected in a wide variety of geographic locations, from the distinctive dome shape of Sugar Loaf Mountain in the city of Rio de Janeiro, to the magnificent Iguaçu Falls in the far south, to the strange limestone formations in the state of Minas Gerais in the Southeast region.
Introduction
A broad contrast exists between the nation’s two main physical features: the densely forested lowlands of the Amazon Basin in the north and the generally open uplands of the Brazilian Highlands to the south. The climate is generally tropical, but areas located at higher elevations or farther from the equator tend to be more temperate (Page, 1995). Vegetation varies from rain forests to pine forests to savannas and semiarid scrub. The forests are a rich source of timber, and the country sustains a diverse agriculture, producing tropical crops such as sugar and coffee. In recent years environmentalists have become increasingly concerned over the future of the Amazon region, where human encroachment has threatened the world’s largest intact rain forest.
Brazil’s population is very diverse. This diversity is the result of intermingling between Native Americans, Portuguese settlers, and African slaves, which produced a society of racial and ethnic complexity. Brazil is the only Latin American country settled by the Portuguese. Before the Portuguese arrived in 1500, many Native American tribes sparsely populated the country (Page, 1995). In the mid-16th century the Portuguese began to import African slaves to work on agricultural production....................
