LAND & PEOPLE

If you could choose only one word to describe Brazil, it would be diversity. The variety of landscape, climate, flora, fauna, racial types, and lifestyles is enormous.

Brazilians tend to think of their country as some sort of continent within South America. The reason may be that its land mass represents nearly half (47.3%) of the territory. Looking at the map, we can see that the entire east side of Brazil is coastline (Atlantic Ocean), while the west side borders almost all the other South American countries, except for Chile and Ecuador.

Since Brazil is mostly situated south of the equator, the seasons are the reverse of those in Europe and the USA. Officially, summer lasts from December 22 to March 21, fall from March 22 to June 21, winter from June 22 to September 21, and spring from September 22 to December 21. In parts of the country, however, notably the Amazon region, seasonal divisions are less clearly marked and tend to be classified as "wet" and "dry."

Brazil has four time zones. Brasília time is the nation's official standard, three hours behind Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), London.

The equator crosses the north of the country, near the city of Macapá. The Tropic of Capricorn passes through the south, near the city of São Paulo. This means that most of the country is within the tropical zone and characterized by a hot and humid climate. However, tropical does not necessarily mean that every region is hot all year-round, nor that the countryside is filled with lush vegetation. Altitude, proximity to the sea, soil fertility, and prevailing winds and weather fronts all have an effect on the different regions of the country.

The north is hotter and the south cooler (temperatures in some parts can fall below zero and snow is even seen occasionally in some cities). Generally speaking, cities on the coast are more humid, while those located on plateaus inland, such as Brasilia, São Paulo, and Belo Horizonte, have more temperate climates.

More specifically, Brazil can be divided into six climate zones: equatorial, tropical, Atlantic tropical, semiarid, highland tropical, and subtropical, according to location and terrain.

THE REGIONS

Brazil is divided into five administrative regions. The characteristics of their inhabitants are highly influenced by their geographic and economic situations.

North

Amazonas – Pará – Acre – Rondônia – Roraima – Amapá – Tocantins

Also known as the Amazon region, the North region is mainly covered by rain forest and is sparsely populated. It rains often and so regularly that the locals tend to organize their day and even arrange meetings and appointments for "before the rain" or "after the rain."

Despite recent deforestation, there are still large areas where, if you fly over the jungle, all you can see is an immense green carpet from horizon to horizon, with hardly a sign of human habitation.

Reservations have been set up for different tribes of Native Indians (índios) and most of the larger groups live in these areas. Most maintain contact with Brazilian institutions, and just a few do not welcome strangers. It is thought that there are still more groups that have yet to come into contact with outsiders.

The Amazon is the world's largest river in volume and its annual outflow accounts for one-fifth of the world's fresh water entering the sea. It is not surprising, then, that much of the transport in the region is by boat.

Given the difficulty in policing such a vast area, some illegal settlers, traders, and even drug traffickers have taken advantage and there have sometimes been violent clashes with the indigenous groups. Nowadays there is an integrated mapping system linked to satellite photography (imazongeo) to monitor the whole area and identify illegal use of land.

The harvesting of Brazil nuts and rubber latex are still the main economic activities, together with manufacturing, mining, and logging. Industry, farming, and ecotourism play only a small role.

Originally agriculture and mining were encouraged, although this resulted in jungle-sized environmental problems and the deforestation of about 14 percent of the rain forest (an area about the size of France). The government has since launched a series of policies to control development, such as the prohibition of timber export. This has managed to halve the pace of deforestation, and the vast majority of the rain forest is still preserved undamaged.

The Amazon forest contains the largest single reserve of biological organisms in the world. Even though nobody knows how many different species inhabit it, scientists estimate that they represent 15–30 percent of all species on the planet.

The region has powerful folklore traditions, mainly with indigenous origins, that are kept alive by the caboclos — mixed descendants of Portuguese and Native Indians.

The two main cities in the North are Manaus and Belém do Pará.

The state of Acre and the western corner of the state of Amazonas are five hours behind GMT and two hours behind Brasília Time, while the rest of Amazonas, and the states of Rondônia, Roraima, and the western half of the state of Pará are four hours behind GMT or one hour behind Brasília Time. The eastern half of Pará and the state of Tocantins are three hours behind GMT at standard Brasília Time.

Northeast

Maranhão – Piauí – Ceará – Rio Grande do Norte – Paraíba – Pernambuco – Bahia – Alagoas – Sergipe – Fernando de Noronha (island territory)

Perhaps the biggest contrasts within any region can be found in the Northeast. Nearly 30 percent of Brazilians live here, and the difference between rich and poor is very marked.

The coast is beautiful, with palm beaches and warm waters that attract considerable domestic and foreign tourism. The number of visitors to the island of Fernando de Noronha is severely restricted because of its status as an ecological sanctuary where research and conservation projects are carried out all year. The land on the coastal plain is very fertile and devoted mainly to sugar plantations.

In the interior, however, lie the drylands, or sertão. This area suffers regular and lengthy droughts, resulting in large-scale misery and migration. The people of this area (sertanejos) leave their homes either to work in the sugar plantations during the drought period, or for good, heading to big urban centers within the Northeast or in the Southeast, where they often end up unemployed and homeless.

The transitional zone between the coastal plain and the sertão is called the agreste and is...