Brazil

Brazil has land borders with every other country in South America, with the exception of Ecuador and Chile, so while some travelers may bus in from Uruguay, Argentina or Venezuela, others arrive via the trem da morte (death train) - named after the fate that befalls many who hitch a ride on the train's roof - from Bolivia.

By river, many travelers take a slow boat along the Amazon from Iquitos in Peru or into the Pantanal via the Rio Paraguay from Asunción, Paraguay.

It shouold be noted that domestic flights in Brazil are currently experiencing serious disruption with cancellations and severe delays common. Travelers are advised to monitor flight information with travel agents and airports, and be prepared for delays.

Except in the Amazon Basin, buses are the primary form of long-distance transport for most Brazilians, and services are generally both excellent and punctual, with all major cities linked by frequent buses. Conversely, there are very few railway passenger services in Brazil. Enthusiasts should not despair however, as some wonderful touristic railway routes remain in operation, including the Curitiba-Paranaguá run.

Although river travel in Brazil has decreased due to the construction of a comprehensive road network, it is still possible to travel by boat between some of the cities of the Rio São Francisco and along the Amazon, where road travel is generally not a practical option.

Driving around Brazil is, ahem, an experience: it's anarchic and spectacularly dangerous, particularly at night, when livestock wander onto highways and potholes cannot be spotted. Though a convenient way to get to many parts of the country, driving should only be undertaken by those with tidy documents, adequate insurance and strong nerves for dealing with police. It goes without saying that Brazil is not the ideal country for long cycling trips, though some do attempt it.

In 1500 Pedro Alvares Cabral set sail from Lisbon with 13 ships and 1200 crew, ostensibly for India, and arrived on the Brazilian coast near present-day Porto Seguro by 'accident'. Some historians say it was his intended destination all along, and it's true that his 'discovery' was reported to the king in such matter-of-fact terms that it seems that the existence of Brazil was already well-known to mariners. In 1531 King João III of Portugal sent the first settlers to Brazil and, in 1534, fearing the ambitions of other European countries, he divided the coast into 15 hereditary captaincies, which were given to friends of the Crown.

The colonists soon discovered that the land and climate were ideal for growing sugar cane, and solved the prodigious labour requirements by enslaving the Indian population, despite their resistance. The capture and sale of slaves soon became one of Brazil's most lucrative trades, and was dominated by the bandeirantes, men from São Paulo usually born of Indian mothers and Portuguese fathers. They hunted the Indians into the interior, and by the mid-1600s had reached the peaks of the Peruvian Andes. Their brutal exploits, more than any treaty, secured the huge interior of South America for Portuguese Brazil.

From the mid-16th century, and particularly during the 17th century, African slaves were compelled to replace Indians on the plantations. They were less vulnerable to European diseases, but their lives were short nevertheless. Quilombos, communities of runaway slaves, were common throughout the colonial era. They ranged from mocambos, small groups hidden in the forests, to the great republic of Palmares that survived for much of the 17th century. In the 1690s, gold was discovered in Minas Gerais and the rush was on. Brazilians and Portuguese flooded into the territory and countless slaves were brought from Africa to dig and die in the mines.

In 1807, Napoleon's army marched on Lisbon. Two days before the invasion, the Portuguese Prince Regent, later to become Dom João VI, set sail for Brazil. Soon after arriving, he made Rio de Janeiro the capital of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarve; Brazil became the only New World colony to serve as the seat of a European monarch. In 1822 the Prince Regent's son, Pedro, who had been left behind to rule the colony when his father returned to Portugal, pulled out his sword and yelled the battle cry 'Independência ou morte!' (independence or death). Portugal was too weak to fight its favorite son, so Brazil became an independent empire without spilling a drop of blood.

During the 19th century, coffee replaced sugar as Brazil's major export. At first the coffee plantations used slave labour, but with the abolition of slavery in 1888, thousands of European immigrants, mostly Italians, poured in to work on the coffee estates, called fazendas. In 1889, a military coup, supported by the powerful coffee aristocracy, toppled the Brazilian Empire, and for the next 40 years Brazil was governed by a series of military and civilian presidents supervised by the armed forces.

In the mid-1980s, Brazil's economic miracle, supported largely by loans from international banks, petered out and the military handed power back to a civilian government. In November 1989, Brazilians had their first opportunity to elect a president by popular vote in almost 30 years, and chose ex-karate champion Fernando Collor de Mello, over the socialist Luíz Inácio 'Lula' da Silva by a narrow but secure majority. Collor gained office promising to fight corruption and reduce inflation, but by the end of 1992, had been removed from office and was being indicted on charges of corruption - accused of leading a gang that used extortion and bribery to suck more than one billion US dollars from the economy.

Vice President Itamar Franco became president in December 1992 on Collor's impeachment, and with the introduction of a new currency, the real, stabilized the economy. In November 1994, Fernando Cardoso, architect of the Plano Real was elected president. Through the mid-'90s Cardoso presided over a Brazil with a growing economy, stable currency and record foreign investment. These achievements were offset by the legacy of longstanding problems: the loss of two million jobs between 1989 and 1996 and ongoing problems with agrarian reform. A 1996 United Nations report showed that Brazil had the world's most unequal distribution of wealth.

Brazil's 2002 presidential election swung the country's political agenda to the left when Workers Party (PT) candidate Luíz Inácio 'Lula' da Silva won 61% of the vote. Lula (as he's fondly called) secured the vote by promising to curb hunger and create jobs. As Lula's first term neared its end, however, scandals showed that even the PT could not avoid the taint of corruption. A cash-for-votes rumpus in Congress in 2005 was followed in 2006 by the exposure of an attempt by the PT to buy damaging information about the opposition. Lula's reelection hopes were further jeopardized by the continuing drug-gang violence in the main cities.

Nevertheless Lula's popularity and commitment to the poor carried him to a second resounding presidential victory in October 2006, over center-right challenger Geraldo Alckmin. Lula's first significant act after reelection was to raise the minimum wage by 8.5%, well above the rate of inflation. Brazil's poor were a little less desperate than four years previously, but land reform and education now have to join welfare programs as real priorities if the country's first workers' president is to narrow the wealth gap in a lasting way.