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Brazilian People and Colors
"Brazilians are black, brown, white,
yellow and all shades in between."
The Portuguese
They were the colonizers and they gave Brazil their language, the Portuguese.
In the beginning only men came to Brazil and they liked it. The tropical
climate of Brazil was not a problem for the Portuguese because Portugal
climate has a tendency to be closer to the African climate than to the
European. Diverse people came to settled in the New Land. They were
exiles that had violated the law in Portugal, sailors, nobles, affluent
and provincial people.
The Portuguese men have always worshipped the beauty of
the Moorish woman- long-haired, dark skinned and erotic charmer. To
them the uncoverded natives that they found in Brazil was the personification
of beauty. One early Portuguese wrote: "Their body are so clean
and so plump and so beautiful they could not be more so".
The first Brazilians were the mamelucos- descendants of
Portuguese with native woman.
The Afro-Brazilians
In the colonizing days millions of Africans were brought to Brazil as
slaves. They were forced to work in plantations, exploitation of mines
and in the conquest of the interior until the slavery was abolished
in 1888. Today their influence is obvious felt in every aspect of Brazilian
society. In Brazilian cuisine, visual arts, religions and, of course,
Brazilian music and dance. As the great Brazilian sociologist put it
in his classic book of 1936, Casa Grande and Senzala, "Every Brazilian
even the light skinned and fair-haired one , carries about with him
in his soul, when not in soul and body alike, the shadow, or even the
birth mark, of the aborigine or the negro, the influence of the African,
either direct or remote, is everything that is sincere reflection of
our lives, We, almost all of us, bear the mark of that influence."
The Afro-Brazilian land is Bahia, on the Northeast of
the Country. It's said that in "Bahia, Africa remains."
The Indians
It's ironic to think that in the beginnig of the exploration of Brazil
the Portugueses were so enchanted by the natives that they called them
"noble savages". On those first contacts the Brazilians natives
were relatively well treated. This picture changed when the colonizers
in need of labor started to capture those same "noble savages"
to work in their sugar plantations, cattle ranches and gold mines. The
natives did not adjust easily to forced labor. They were free spirited
people that lived as nomads. The Bandeirantes (Raiders) went to the
interior bringing back with them the natives that they captured as slaves.
The Jesuits established missions in Brazil and helped to protect the
natives against slavery but at the same time they attempted to Europeanize
natives, replacing Indian culture with European.
Today, the influence of the natives in Brazilian culture
is remarkable. In Brazilian cuisine, Brazilian carnival together with
the Africans and European elements, Brazilian faith in the supernatural,
the use of hammocks and many others contributions. The colonizers and
explorers would never have reached the Amazon Basin and the interior
without the help (most of the time as slaves) of the native population.
The European and Asian
Immigrants
The German were one of the first to come to Brazil. In 1820 and 30s
seven thousand of them came to Brazil and settled in the South were
the climate it is the most like Europe. They came as an answer for the
request of emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro that were in need of labor force.
But only with the abolition of slavery that happened in 1888 that Brazil
opened wide doors for immigrants
Natives of Germany, Switzerland,
Italy, Spain, The Middle East, Japan and others have produced an amazing diversity of culture in Brazil. Communities today,
especially in Southern Brazil, bear the mark of this heritage in the
architecture, cuisine and vocabulary.
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