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$Unique_ID{bob00126}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Brazil
Chapter 2B.   Population}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{P. A. Kluck}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{population
percent
portuguese
brazil
immigrants
slaves
growth
brazilian
government
racial
see
pictures
see
figures
}
$Date{1982}
$Log{See Age-Sex Pyramid, 1980*0012601.scf
}
Title:       Brazil
Book:        Brazil, A Country Study
Author:      P. A. Kluck
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1982

Chapter 2B.   Population

     The 1980 decennial census reported the number of Brazilians at 119
million, making Brazil the world's sixth most populous country. This figure
compared with 93 million counted in 1970 and 71 million in 1960, and it
represented about one-third of the total population of Latin America. On
the basis of reported data, the average annual rate of growth during the
1970s was 2.4 percent, reduced from 2.8 percent during the previous decade
and 3.1 percent in the 1950s. The effect of a sharp decline in the birth
rate in reducing the rate of increase still further is offset, however, by
a significant rise in life expectancy and by an expanding number of women
of childbearing age, estimated to reach 35 million in the 1980s. Projections
indicate that Brazil's population will pass the 200 million mark by the turn
of the century and that growth will continue at a gradually slowing rate,
eventually stabilizing, according to the minimum estimates, at about 300
million.

Structure and Dynamics

     Brazil's population in 1980 was characterized by its youth, but a decline
was noted from the 1970 census in the percentage of Brazilians under the age
of 20 in the country's total population. About 37 percent of those counted in
the 1980 census were under the age of 15 and 48 percent under the age of 20,
compared with figures of 43 percent and 53 percent for the same age brackets
reported in 1970. More than 12 percent of the total were 50 years old and
over, and 6.4 percent were over 60, representing increases in those categories
from the previous census (see fig. 5). The changes reflected a dramatic
lowering of official birth and death rates, which were calculated at 34 per
1,000 and 7.3 per 1,000, respectively, in 1980. During the same decade, life
expectancy rose from 59 years to an estimated 63 years, 60 for men and 65 for
women. A particularly impressive increase in female life expectancy has been
credited to the substantial reduction in deaths related to childbirth. The
IBGE pointed out, however, that the incompleteness of birth and death
registrations, particularly in the more remote areas of the country, has been
such that considerable allowance must be made for margins of error in reported
data.

[See Age-Sex Pyramid, 1980: Source: Based on information from Brazil,
Secretaria de Planejamento da Presidencia da Republica, Fundacao Instituto
Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatista, IX Recenseamento Geral do Brasil-1980, 1,
Pt. 1, Rio de Janeiro, 1981, 12.]

     Brazil's population doubled in size during the three decades 1930 to
1959, and it increased from 50 million in 1949 to an estimated 100 million by
1972. The best indicator that the rate of population growth has passed the
peak registered during that period is the sharp reduction in fertility among
women of potential childbearing age sustained during the 1970s. Estimates made
in 1976 showed that an average of 2.4 offspring had been born to each woman in
the 15-to-49 age bracket; an average of two children survive the first year of
life. Of greater consequence, the projected total fertility rate dropped from
5.3 children per woman reported for 1970 to a figure estimated at between 3.9
and 4.3 children per woman in 1980, depending on reports from various sources.
Studies also concluded that women were having their first child at a later age
in the 1970s than in the previous decade. It is expected, however, that the
optimum effect of the trend toward fewer offspring per childbearer on reducing
the rate of population growth will be offset for some years by the greater
numbers of women entering the birth cohort in the 1980s, as a result of the
considerably higher birth rate that prevailed in the 1960s.

     Overall population density in 1980 was calculated at a relatively sparse
13 persons per square kilometer, but 90 percent of Brazilians were
concentrated in three regions-the Southeast, the Northeast, and the
South-which together constitute only 35 percent of the country's total area.
Several underpopulated areas-Parana in the South, the states in the
Center-West, and the remote Amazon region in the North-have been especially
targeted for new settlements and more intensive development. Despite
government-backed projects to attract settlers to these areas, internal
migration has been characterized principally by population transfers from a
rural to an urban setting, and the greatest rate of growth has occurred in the
urban centers of the Southeast (see Urbanization, this ch.).

Population Problems and Policy

     Traditionally, Brazilians have looked favorably on rapid population
expansion, and official policy, insofar as one existed, was defined as
pronatalist. Tax incentives and maternity bonuses encouraged large families.
Sustained population growth was deemed essential for the settlement and
development of the "new lands" on the Brazilian frontier. Furthermore, the
effective occupation of that sparsely populated area was linked to Brazil's
ability to maintain sovereignty there and, thereby, to considerations of
national security. As industrialization progressed, political and business
leaders cited a close correlation between income growth and population growth,
and the perception was commonly stated that a reduction in the population
growth rate during a time of rapid economic development would not be
desirable. Popular resistance to population planning was also related to the
status derived from producing big families. The Roman Catholic Church opposed
contraceptive birth control on theological grounds, although in practice
the church in Brazil gave greater emphasis to other issues. Brazilian
attitudes toward population growth and opposition to population control,
therefore, were based to varying degrees on political, economic, cultural and
moral grounds. By the 1960s, however, a small but growing number of critics
were arguing that unrestrained population growth was impairing the quality of
life.

     Limited support for the introduction of population measures surfaced in
1965 when members of the medical profession took the lead in urging family
planning as an alternative to the widespread incidence of induced abortion.
The following year medical groups cooperated in founding a private
organization, the Family Welfare Society (Sociedad de Bem Estar
Familiar-BEMFAM), to publicize the need for family planning and to sponsor
birth control clinics. By 1978 BEMFAM was assisting 280,000 women annually in
adopting and maintaining birth control regimens through community-based
programs operated in several states with government cooperation. In addition,
it concluded both formal and informal agreements with government agencies and
other private groups to provide advice in organizing family planning services.
BEMFAM clients, who in 1978 represented about 1 percent of all married
Brazilian women of childbearing age, came largely from upper and middle-class
backgrounds. Outreach to women in the lower socioeconomic strata was hampered
by the magnitude of the problem in relation to BEMFAM's resources. There
nonetheless were some indications in the early 1980s that the poor were having
fewer children.

     In 1973 a working group composed of representatives of various government
ministries prepared for the first time a definite national population policy
statement in preparation for Brazil's participation in the United
Nations-sponsored World Conference on Population, held the following year in
Bucharest. Although strongly denouncing foreign-inspired population control
as a means of dealing with social and economic problems in underdeveloped
countries, the Brazilian delegate to the conference conceded in an address
that it was the responsibility of government to provide birth control
information and means to families of limited income. Significantly, Brazilian
presence at the conference coincided with the drafting of the Second National
Development Plan (II Plano Nacional de Desenvolvimento), for the period
1980-85, which confirmed the correlation between population and economic
growth but added that it was the government's policy "to respect the right of
each family to decide how many children they want," "Families have complete
freedom," the statement concluded, "to choose the number of children they
desire." This marked a move from an implicit pronatalist position to one of
laissez-faire on the question of population control, and it was widely
interpreted as benevolent toleration of private and government family planning
activities.

     The world recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s and the surge in
energy costs confronted government planners with the prospect of leveling off
of economic growth while population continued to increase, despite the
reported decline in the birth rate. In 1977 the federal government introduced
a new national health plan that included provisions to make contraceptives
available to prevent "high risk" pregnancies. Overriding economic concerns
were later cited, however, to explain the government's failure to follow up
with further expenditures on family planning programs. On the official level,
Brazil in the early 1980s still resisted macroeconomic arguments for
population control on the grounds that current economic underdevelopment and
not projected overpopulation lay at the roots of the country's problems.
Population growth, according to government sources, had not been demonstrated
to be detrimental to economic growth.

Cultural Regions

     Pronounced regionalism has long characterized Brazilian culture; numerous
barriers discourage communication among the far-flung settlements of
colonial-era Brazil. The captaincies (colonial administrative units) were
virtually autonomous entities subordinate only to Lisbon (see Portuguese
Exploration and Settlement, ch. 1). The country's varied history and diverse
geography are reflected in contemporary social, political, and economic
cleavages.

     Although federal legislation divides Brazil into five main regions,
social scientists suggest other relevant divisions. Anthropologist Charles
Wagley, for example, delineates six cultural regions: the Northeast coast
(part of Rio Grande do Norte, eastern Paraiba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe,
and Bahia); the sertao (large amounts of Maranhao, Piaui, Ceara, Pernambuco,
Rio Grande do Norte, Sergipe, Alagoas, and Bahia); the eastern highlands
(most of Minas Gerais and western Espirito Santo); the South (Rio de Janeiro,
Sao Paulo, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, and part of Parana); the Amazon
Basin (most of Amazonas, Roraima, Amapa, Para, Acre, and part of Rondonia);
and the Far West (Mato Grosso, western Parana, parts of Goias, and part of
Rondonia).

     Most of the regions are associated with a specific "boom-bust" cycle of
the economy. The Northeast coast came to the fore during the
sixteenth-century sugar boom only to be eclipsed by the rise of the Caribbean
sugar producers in the next century. Settlers flocked to the eastern highlands
after the discovery of gold and diamonds in the 1700s, but the gold was played
out by the early 1800s and the diamonds faced an uncertain market. The South
was the scene of the coffee boom (mid-nineteenth to early twentieth
centuries); and the Amazon Basin gained world notoriety during the rubber boom
(ca. 1850-1910). The far South and the sertao were regions of large-scale
cattle ranches; small farmers dominated the mountainous areas of the South.
Neither area enjoyed the prominence of other regions associated with "boom"
prosperity. Each boom had slightly different beneficiaries; each regional
economy gave rise to a slightly different elite and social institutions.
Brazil entered the modern era with sugar, cotton, coffee, rubber, and cattle
"aristocracies."

     The regions' varied economic histories combine with the inhabitants'
diverse ethnic background to create a cultural mosaic. The northeastern coast
was settled principally by Portuguese and Africans. The region's dominant
social institution was the sugar plantation and mill, tied to export markets
and relying on slave labor. Towns and commercial centers were the
appurtenances of the plantation; in terms of social relations the plantation
was a world unto itself with its own artisans, carpenters, smiths, and
frequently its own chaplain. The plantation owners of a given neighborhood
were often a tightly knit group bound by ties of blood and marriage. The sugar
plantation established the pattern of landholding and land use characteristic
of contemporary Brazil; large plantations (fazendas) monopolize the best land
while small landholders are relegated to the fringes. The northeastern coast
remains heavily marked by the heritage of its African slaves (see
Afro-Brazilians, this ch.).

     The sertao, by contrast, was a region of mestizos (a mixed population of
Portuguese and Amerindian descent). Here, too, large fazendas were the rule,
and a few "territorial magnates" held the most desirable holdings.
Nonetheless, cattle ranching relied on a regime of free labor; the cowboy
(vaqueiro) who tended the owner's herds received a portion of each year's
calves, and some vaqueiros managed to accumulate their own herds and become
independent ranchers. The sertao is subject to periodic droughts that can be
appalling in their impact (see Geography, this ch.). The late 1870s drought,
for example, decimated virtually the entire livestock herd and, from the
combined effects of starvation and disease, nearly half the region's human
population. Migration is the Nordestino's (inhabitant of the Northeast)
primary adaptation to drought; droves leave in bad years only to return at
the first rumor of rain in the sertao. The government began organizing public
works projects to relieve drought-stricken areas in the 1950s; the ideal
landowner assures his workers either employment on these projects or makeshift
work on his fazenda.

     During the colonial period armed explorers (bandeirantes) tracking
westward from the region of present-day Sao Paulo discovered the placer gold
and diamonds of the southeastern highlands. The bandeirantes, Luso-Brazilians
heavily influenced by and miscegenated with Amerindians, were the region's
initial settlers. They were supplanted by newly arrived Portuguese (many of
them from the Azores) and by Afro-Brazilian slaves as word of gold spread.
No export crop took the place of gold as the mines played out, and the area
never became a region of vast landholdings dedicated to monocultural
production. Mixed agricultural production on mid-sized commercialized farms
remains the rule in these rural areas (see Agriculture, ch. 3.). Perhaps
because the highlands lacked the disruptive influence of plantation
agriculture and export-crop "boom-bust" cycles, the region remained a bastion
of traditional Luso-Brazilian culture through the 1960s. Religious practices
of Iberian origin, such as the religious brotherhoods (irmandades), persisted
longer than in most of the country. In remoter areas artisans and craftsmen,
as well as small-scale itinerant traders, held their own against industrial
manufacturers and large-scale commercial enterprises well into the 1950s.

     The Amazon Basin, locale of the world's largest tropical forest, has
since its discovery offered Europeans a tantalizing vision of ready wealth
and natural bounty. Until the mid-nineteenth century, however, the region
languished as an economic backwater. Colonial era settlement was limited to
the lower reaches of the Amazon, where the Portuguese set up stations for
slaving expeditions against the Amerindians of the region, while the Jesuits
organized missions in the hinterland in an effort to protect the Indians from
the slavers. As the Indian population declined, an extractive economy
furnishing cacao, cinnamon, vanilla, cloves, and the like took the place of
slaving. Culturally, the basin was and is an Indian and Luso-Brazilian mix.
Amazonian Portuguese is marked by borrowings from Tupi-Guarini (the Amerindian
language used by the Jesuits as a lingua france). Local place-names, plants,
and animals are largely of Tupi derivation. Likewise, religious practices
include all the standard Iberian trappings combined with a variety of Indian
customs.

     The Amazon boomed with rising demand for rubber in the late nineteenth
century. Population grew more than six times and regional income some 12 times
between 1850 and 1910 (when the market collapsed). The "rubber barons" relied
on Indians and Nordestinos imported from the drought-stricken sertao to tap
the dispersed rubber trees; both groups suffered from a labor regime that was
little better than slavery. Those who survived formed the nucleus of the
Amazon's peasant population. In the wake of the rubber boom, the Amazonian
peasant earned a livelihood through mixed horticulture, hunting, fishing, an
trading.

     There was renewed interest in the Amazon's mineral wealth and
agricultural potential in the 1960s and 1970s. Changes in the legislation
governing mineral concessions and the readiness of state companies to form
joint ventures with foreign corporations increased exploration and mining
(see Mining, ch. 3). There were a variety of colonization schemes, the notion
being that the unpeopled reaches of the Amazon forest were a safety valve to
absorb the land-hungry peasants of the Northeast. Amazonian peasants and
small farmers from the South responded to government incentives to colonize
the region as frequently as did the landless Nordestino. Colonists from
within the region itself had the advantage of a detailed knowledge of local
soil types, plant life, and crop conditions. (One study showed that the
yields of local peasants plots were double that of the newcomers.) Those with
previous farm management experience tended to outperform landless laborers.
In the mid-1970s the government changed the structure of incentives to
encourage larger holdings, particularly cattle ranches.

     The Far West, i.e., the western part of the North, is Brazil's frontier
zone and bears some resemblance to the current settlement of the Amazon. In
both areas there is a characteristic "frontier mentality" most often compared
to that of the Old West of the United States. Both regions pit settlers
against each other in virtually chronic conflicts; land disputes permeate
every level of society. A measure of lawlessness surrounds land possession,
and arguments are frequently settled violently (see Rural Society, this ch.).
The sheer numbers of settlers have meant problems; Rondonia's population grew
more than twelve and one-half times in the 1970s alone. The region tend to be
ethnically diverse. Wagley describes a settlement in western Parana founded
in 1945 that, by the early 1970s, had eight Protestant churches, a Roman
Catholic cathedral, and a Buddhist temple. Its population included Luso-
Brazilians, as well as descendants of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese,
German, and Polish immigrants.

     The South is both culturally diverse and economically differentiated. Rio
de Janeiro grew as a port during the Gold Rush. Sao Paulo was originally
settled by bandeirantes who ranged through the interior in search of gold or,
failing that, Indian slaves. The region languished until the rise of coffee
production.

     The coffee boom gave the country not only a new set of wealthy plantation
owners but also substantial numbers of Italian and Japanese immigrants brought
to Brazil following the abolition of slavery (see Immigrants of the Nineteenth
and Twentieth Centuries, this ch.). Cattle ranches and, more recently, rice
plantations cover the pampas of the far south; the mountainous regions of
Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul were settled by European immigrants in
the nineteenth century and remain the dominion of small farmers.

     A sense of well-being increases from the Northeast to southern Brazil.
The Northeast as a whole accounts for half of Brazil's poor; it represents
the single largest concentration of poverty in the Western Hemisphere. The
Southerner can expect to eat better (in terms of both calories and protein)
and live longer. The South and Southeast enjoy a substantially greater share
of national income. In the late 1970s the Nordestino earned less than 40
percent the income of his or her counterpart in Sao Paulo (paulista). Even the
lower 50 percent of the economically active population of the South earned
more than double the Nordestinos as a whole. Illiteracy rates in the Northeast
are 30 to 40 percentage points higher than in the South. Nearly 100 percent
of primary-school-age children in the South are enrolled, two-thirds in the
Northeast.

Ethnic Patterns

Luso-Brazilians

     Lusitanian influence in Brazil is disproportionate to both the absolute
numbers of Portuguese immigrants and Portugal's international influence
even in the sixteenth century. If only because of crown policy, Portuguese
predominated among colonial immigrants. They were a motley crew: Madeirans
and Azoreans, having experience with sugar plantations, came early on,
accompanied by nobles and soldiers (who frequently received immense land
grants), order priests, "New Christians" (formerly Jews, usually forcibly
converted), and a variety of exiled criminals. They shared the stage with the
French, Spanish, Dutch, Africans, and Indians. Colonial Brazil was an ethnic
hodgepodge with a distinctly Portuguese cultural backdrop (see Portuguese
Exploration and Settlement, ch. 1).

     It was the Portuguese who left their mark on the social institutions and
political system of the country. Language, kinship, and religion reflect
Lusitanian influence. Both the Portuguese and Brazilians faithfully revere
many of the same saints. The religious festivals (festas), so prominent a
feature of colonial and modern Brazil, are Iberian transplants. Colonial
cities followed a peculiarly Portuguese model in their lack of planning.
Bahia, Olinda, and Rio de Janeiro, observers note, were similar to Lisbon
and Porto.

Amerindians

     In the early 1500s Brazil's indigenous population numbered roughly 4
million. Most were concentrated along major rivers and a few strips of
fertile coastal land. The Amazonian floodplain and the varzeas required
careful management but were the most productive lands available. The river
itself furnished a supply of large aquatic animal protein. Population
density reached moderate levels, and social differentiation among the
riverine villagers was marked. Away from the larger rivers were scattered
groups of swidden (slash-and-burn) horticulturists and nomadic hunters
and gatherers. Both groups were dispersed. Even horticulturists relied
on game for protein; neither forest nor stream afforded a supply to support
a dense population.

     In the early 1980s there remained roughly 200,000 Amerindians. Colonial
contact brought smallpox, whooping cough, yellow fever, and malaria. The
rubber boom took a toll on many tribes previously spared. Roger Casement, a
British civil servant who investigated charges against a company particularly
active in the rubber trade, found that the number of Indians along the Rio
Putumayo dropped from 50,000 to 8,000 from 1900 to 1910; each ton of rubber
produced cost seven Indian lives.

     In the decades following the rubber boom, most contact that Indians had
with outsiders was limited to the occasional missionary or trader. The 1960s-
1970s push westward and into the Amazon Basin changed this. Both the volume
of migration and the kind of regional development posed problems for the
Indians. Measles, influenza, and respiratory ailments decimated tribes
lacking resistance to these and similar diseases. Roadbuilding, colonization
projects, and mining all posed a threat to Amerindians, whose traditional
means of subsistence demanded large reserves of land.

     The National Indian Agency (Fundacao Nacional do Indio-FUNAI) is charged
with safeguarding Amerindians. The agency took over in the wake of a 1968
government investigation that charged that FUNAI's predecessor had massacred
Indians and embezzled their lands. FUNAI itself, many critics argued, was
unable adequately to protect tribes from the predations of outside mining and
agricultural interests. Indeed, there were confrontations between Indians and
settlers and roadbuilding crews in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1982
FUNAI set up a Nambikawa Indian reserve in Bahia and interdicted 7.7 million
hectares of Yanomamo land in Roraima.

Afro-Brazilians

     "The Negro," commented a nineteenth-century British traveler, "is not
only the field labourer, but also the mechanic; not only hews the wood and
draws the water but by the skill of his hands contributes to fashion the
luxuries of civilized life. The Brazilian employs him on all occasions and in
every possible way ...." His remarks were echoed by Brazilians and visitors to
the country alike. Brazilian society without a secure and plentiful supply of
African slaves simply could not have existed. All but the poorest Portuguese
immigrants to the country soon acquired slaves. The slaves themselves served
as collateral for their own purchase; their labor repaid their owners' loans
at the same time it provided their livelihood. "Work is for dogs and blacks"
was a common saying in colonial Brazil.

     Slaves enjoyed legal guarantees: they could marry freely, seek different
owners, acquire property, and buy their own freedom. These rights were,
however largely unenforced and, in any event, far beyond the reach of the
average field hand. The system of plantation agriculture where most slaves
spent their lives was almost routinely brutal. An eighteenth-century Jesuit
commented that although some owners would kill their slaves for minor
infractions, rational plantation owners would "when a slave deserves it ...
tie him to a cart and flog him. After being well flogged, he should be pricked
with a sharp razor or knife, and the wounds rubbed with salt, lemon juice, and
urine, after which he should be put in chains for some days." Female slaves,
in the interest of decorum, were to be flogged in private.

     Slaves resisted as they might; they proved, as one owner ruefully
commented, most "inconstant property." Slave revolts were almost yearly
affairs; runaways amounted to some 1 percent of the total slave population.
Slave catchers did a thriving business. Settlements of fugitive slaves
(quilombos) dotted the remoter regions. The most famous settlement, Palmares,
survived for over 50 years (see The African Presence, ch. 1).

     Miscegenation was a common and freely acknowledged practice and
contributed to contemporary attitudes on racial categories. To encourage
marriage between white men and women, colonial legislation barred mulattoes
from administrative posts, but to no avail: wealth rather than color was the
main criterion in awarding offices. From a relatively early date there were
wealthy and influential mulattoes at the highest levels of society. These, of
course, were the fortunate few; most formed an intermediate class performing
those tasks for which slaves were inefficient and whites unwilling. Mulattoes
were overseers, soldiers, vaqueiros, and farmers.

     In the mid-1970s census takers counted roughly one-third of the
population as mulatto and another 8 percent as black. The 1980 census reported
over 38 percent as mulatto and almost 6 percent as black (see table 2,
Appendix). The figures should be taken only as the roughest estimates.
Brazilian racial categories are anything but unambiguous. Descent is not
considered an overriding criterion in assigning individuals to racial groups;
Brazilians see nothing unusual in thinking of parents and children, as well as
brothers and sisters, as representatives of widely disparate racial groups.
Anthropologist Marvin Harris, for example, showed a picture of three sisters
to a number of Brazilians. Only 6 percent of his respondents identified all
three sisters as belonging to the same racial group; 14 percent identified
them as members of three different racial groups. There is frequently little
agreement about the racial classification of an individual; pictures shown to
various Brazilians will elicit a variety of racial classifications.

     There is a general consensus that, as the saying goes, "money lightens."
When shown pictures of various-hued individuals with purported incomes shown
beneath each picture, respondents classified individuals with higher incomes
as lighter colored. Beyond the ambiguity surrounding an individual's race
there is little agreement about the precise meaning of the society's elaborate
vocabulary relating to racial classification. There are some 40 different
racial categories commonly used, but little consensus about who belongs to
what group or how the groups themselves might be organized as racial
designations. The notion of a biracial classification scheme of the sort North
Americans are accustomed to is simply incomprehensible to Brazilians.

     Race in and of itself is not a socially significant category for most
members of society. The rich (os ricos) and the poor (os pobres) are the more
pervasive and relevant social groupings. This does not mean that Brazilians do
not have racial stereotypes. There are a plethora of racial terms in Brazilian
Portuguese, and many are used derogatorily. Most regard Afro-Brazilians
negatively. White is perceived as more desirable than black, but the
intermediate steps between the two extremes are vague and obscure. Further,
ideal perceptions of race do not define actual behavior. A relatively
light-skinned poor Brazilian would not insult a darker skinned educated or
rich Brazilian in racial (or any other) terms. It is equally true that skin
color continues to be a good general predictor of social status. As a rule the
darker the skin the poorer the Brazilian. Anthropologist Robert Shirley noted
that in the rural municipality he studied, Afro-Brazilians were nearly half
the landless laborers and unskilled workers but only 5 percent of the large
landowners and 9 percent of the small businessmen.

     The highest concentrations of Afro-Brazilians are in the Northeast, where
they constitute nearly two-thirds of the total population. There are African
influence is readily apparent in dialect, children's stories, nursery rhymes,
folklore, and cuisine. Syncretic Afro-Brazilian religious cults are common in
the Northeast. The cults are known by a variety of names: candomble, xango,
macumba. They mix West African and Iberian Catholic religious traditions and
practices and bear a striking resemblance to Haitian voodoo (vodun) (see
Religion, this ch.). African influence is also apparent in the Northeast's
music (the samba is related to the batuque danced by slaves) and in men's
clubs specializing in displays of dance and defense similar to jujitsu,
elaborated from a form of combat brought by Angolan slaves (capoeira).

Immigrants of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

     Immigrants came in significant numbers only after the abolition of
slavery: there were sporadic efforts to initiate colonies of small farmers in
the South, but most potential immigrants rejected a country dominated by
plantation agriculture and slave labor. Immigration peaked between 1888 and
1929, when more than 100,000 immigrants entered Brazil annually, except during
World War I. More than half went to Sao Paulo where the coffee boom drew not
only agricultural laborers but also a diverse group of entrepreneurs seeking
their share of the coffee wealth. After World War II there was a renewed spurt
of immigration when the society absorbed some 50,000 to 80,000 foreigners
annually.

     Italians and Portuguese were the largest national groups within the
stream of migrants. Roughly 30 percent of all immigrants between 1884 and 1933
came from Portugal; Italian immigration peaked between 1884 and 1903 when it
constituted nearly 60 percent of all immigration. Spaniards came in steady
numbers, though a 1911 prohibition against emigration to Brazil by the Spanish
government limited their numbers in the years before World War I. Germans and
Japanese arrived in substantial numbers, and there was a steady flow of Middle
Easterners as well as smaller numbers of Slavs from Eastern Europe and Russia.

     Portuguese entered in a steady trickle throughout the nineteenth century;
they were primarily Azoreans who entered under indentured labor contracts. The
numbers of immigrants grew in the 1900s and peaked in 1912 and 1913 when more
than 76,000 Portuguese arrived each year. Between 1908 and 1929 the number of
Portuguese immigrants topped 30,000 every year except during World War I. Most
were urban-bound immigrants; Rio, Sao Paulo, and their satellite cities were
the principal destinations. Portuguese have tended to congregate in the lower
middle-class service sector occupations; they are shopkeepers, taxi drivers,
and seamstresses.

     A few Italians came as settlers to the small agricultural colonies in the
South; most, however, were recruited as replacements for slaves on coffee
plantations after abolition. They represented the owner's first large-scale
experience with free labor and, to judge from contemporary accounts, learning
to deal with workers who could not be treated as chattel was not easy for
owners. Complaints about the treatment of the immigrants reached such a pitch
that in 1902 the Italian government prohibited its citizens from accepting
free passage to Brazil, an inducement frequently used by labor recruiters.

     Italian immigrants had an immense impact on the society. Urban migrants,
many of whom arrived with small amounts of capital, became a critical
component in Sao Paulo's industrial bourgeoisie. They had both the
entrepreneurial talent and the overseas contacts to take full advantage of a
domestic market that was expanding as a result of the coffee boom. The Italian
agricultural laborers were, in comparison with ex-slaves, a favored segment of
the rural work force. The typical coffee worker would have been hard pressed
to accumulate the capital necessary to purchase land, but most were able to
pay off their debts to planters within three to seven years. Early contracts
permitted the immigrants to plant subsistence crops between coffee trees, a
practice that not only provided the family's sustenance but also generated a
surplus that contributed added income.

     Colonization efforts, begun in 1824 under imperial aegis, brought roughly
50,000 Germans to Brazil by 1914. Royal patronage did little, however, to
assure the immigrants a warm welcome in a milieu dominated by plantation
agriculture. Settlers were to receive land, cash grants, and tax concessions,
but the program was inconsistently implemented. Nonetheless, the colonists
prospered after a fashion. They were active in industry and commerce and in
rural areas set up small family-run farms engaged in mixed crop and livestock
production. German immigrants resisted assimilation so tenaciously that on the
eve of World War II expanses of southern Brazil were exclusively German
speaking. German-Brazilians learned Portuguese in the army and, more recently,
through public education and radio and television programs.

     Approximately 230,000 Japanese immigrated in the 1920s and 1930s; Brazil
has the largest Japanese community in the world outside of Japan itself. Like
Italians, the Japanese were recruited as laborers for plantations in Sao
Paulo, Minas Gerais, Parana, Goias, and Amazonas. Most rejected work on
plantations, however; instead they bought abandoned coffee lands and prospered
as truck farmers for growing urban centers. By the 1970s more than half of all
Japanese-Brazilians were city dwellers, virtually all spoke Portuguese, and a
substantial minority of marriages were interethnic. The first generation of
rural-urban migrants specialized in retail trade, but younger
Japanese-Brazilians chose careers in the professions.