Ángela+Torres+García+3ºC

My country facts:
= = = Brazil =

__The official country name is the following:__
In portuguese: ** República Federativa do Brasil ** In English: ** Federative Republic of Brazil **



__Main cities in Brazil:__


 * ** Sao Paulo ** || ** 19.924 million ** ||
 * ** Rio de Janeiro ** || 11.96 million ||
 * ** Belo Horizonte ** || 5.487 million ||
 * ** Porto Alegre ** || 3.933 million ||
 * ** Recife ** || 3.733 million ||
 * ** BRASILIA (capital) ** || 3.813 million (2011) ||



__Main religions in Brazil:__

__Languages:__ Portuguese (Article 13 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Brazil). Brazil is the largest Portuguese -speaking country in the world, and the only one in the Americas.

Minority languages are spoken throughout the nation.

Less common languages include Spanish (border areas and schools), German, Italian, Japanese, English. These languages are spoken by immigrants and their descendants.

Additionally a large number of minor Amerindian languages, one hundred and eighty, are spoken in remote areas.

It is interesting to mention that the law mandates the use of the Brazilian Sign Language, more commonly known by its Portuguese acronym LIBRAS, in education and government services. The language must be taught as a part of the education and speech and language pathology curricula. LIBRAS teachers, instructors and translators are recognized professionals. Schools and health services must provide access (" inclusion ") to deaf people.

__Government:__ Brazil is a federal, presidential, constitutional republic based on representative democracy, whereby the President is both head of state and head of government , and of a multi-party system. General elections were held in Brazil on 5 October 2014 to elect the President, the National Congress, state governors and state legislatures. In the first round of voting Dilma Rousseff won 41.6% of the vote, ahead of Aécio Neves with 33.6% and Marina Silva with 21.3%. Rousseff and Neves contested the runoff on 26 October with Rousseff being re-elected by a narrow margin, 51.6% to Neves' 48.4%.

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3. Fauna in Brazil
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4.Indigenous people.
Indigenous peoples in Brazil Portuguese : povos indígenas no Brasil), or Native Brazilians Portuguese : nativos brasileiros), comprise a large number of distinct ethnic groups who have inhabited what is now the country of Brazil since prior to the European exploration around 1500.

The indigenous population was largely killed off by European diseases, declining from a pre-Columbian high of millions to some 300,000 (1997), grouped into some 200 tribes. However, the number could be much higher if the urban indigenous populations are counted in all the Brazilian cities today.

Since the 1980s there has been a boom in the exploitation of the Amazon Rainforest for mining, logging and cattle ranching, posing a severe threat to the region's indigenous population. Settlers illegally encroaching on indigenous land continue to destroy the environment necessary for indigenous peoples' traditional ways of life, provoke violent confrontations and spread disease.

The 1988 Brazilian Constitution recognises indigenous peoples' right to pursue their traditional ways of life and to the permanent and exclusive possession of their "traditional lands", which are demarcated as Indigenous Territories.



5.Carnival.
Carnival is the most famous holiday in Brazil and has become an event of huge proportions. The country unifies completely for almost a week and festivities are intense, day and night, mainly in coastal cities. Rio de Janeiro's carnival alone atracts more than 5 million people, with 500,000 being foreigners.

Rhythm, participation, and costumes vary from one region of Brazil to another. In the southeastern cities of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Vitória huge organized parades are led by samba schools. Those official parades are meant to be watched by the public, while minor parades ("blocos") allowing public participation can be found in other cities.

The typical genres of music of Brazilian carnival is the samba. Rio de Janeiro style originally mimicked the European form of the festival, later absorbing elements derived from Native American and African cultures.



6.Amazon Rainforest.
The Amazon rainforest, also known in English as Amazonia or the Amazon Jungle, is a moist broadleaf forest that covers most of the Amazon basin of South America. This basin encompasses 7,000,000 square kilometres (2,700,000 sq mi), of which 5,500,000 square kilometres (2,100,000 sq mi) are covered by the rainforest. This region includes territory belonging to nine nations. The majority of the forest is contained within Brazil, with 60% of the rainforest, followed by Peru with 13%, Colombia with 10%, and with minor amounts in Venezuela , Ecuador, Bolivia , Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.

Wet tropical forests are the most species-rich biome, and tropical forests in the Americas are consistently more species rich than the wet forests in Africa and Asia. As the largest tract of tropical rainforest in the Americas, the Amazonian rainforests have unparalleled biodiversity. One in ten known species in the world lives in the Amazon rainforest. This constitutes the largest collection of living plants and animal species in the world.

The region is home to about 2.5 million insect species, tens of thousands of plants, and some 2,000 birds and mammals. To date, at least 40,000 plant species, 2,200 fishes, 1,294 birds, 427 mammals, 428 amphibians, and 378 reptiles have been scientifically classified in the region. One in five of all the bird species in the world live in the rainforests of the Amazon, and one in five of the fish species live in Amazonian rivers and streams. Scientists have described between 96,660 and 128,843 invertebrate species in Brazil alone.

Deforestation is a huge problem. Deforestation is the conversion of forested areas to non-forested areas. The main sources of deforestation in the Amazon are human settlement.

Between 1991 and 2000, the total area of forest lost in the Amazon rose from 415,000 to 587,000 square kilometers (160,000 to 227,000 sq mi), with most of the lost forest becoming pasture for cattle.

Also there are many controversial transportation projects that are currently developing in the Amazon. The first two highways successfully opened up the rainforest and led to increased settlement and deforestation.

Hopefully, deforestation has declined significantly in the Brazilian Amazon since 2004.



7.History of Brazil.

 * 1501 Americo Vespucci sails to Brazil.
 * 1549 Salvador is made the capital of Brazil.
 * 1763 Rio de Janeiro is made the capital of Brazil.
 * 1500 Portuguese land in the area and claim it for the Portuguese crown.
 * 1822 Son of Portuguese king declares independence from Portugal and crowns himself Peter I, Emperor of Brazil.
 * 1888 Slavery abolished. Large influx of European immigrants over the next decade.
 * 1889 Monarchy overthrown, federal republic established with central government controlled by coffee interests. Brazil produces 65% of world's coffee by 1902.
 * 1937 Vargas leads coup, rules as dictator with military backing. Economy placed under authoritarian state control, start of social welfare revolution and reform of laws governing industry.
 * 1954 Vargas commits suicide after military gives him the options of resigning or being overthrown.
 * 1974 General Ernesto Geisel becomes president, introduces reforms which allow limited political activity and elections.
 * 1985 Tancredo Neves elected first civilian president in 21 years under the electoral college system set up by the military, but falls ill before he can be inaugurated and dies shortly afterwards. His vice president Jose Sarney becomes president at time of economic crisis.
 * 1988 New constitution reduces presidential powers.
 * 1989 Fernando Collor de Mello becomes first directly elected president since 1960. Introduces radical economic reform but promised economic improvements fail to materialise, and inflation remains out of control.
 * 2002 October - Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, popularly known as Lula, wins presidential elections. The former shoeshine boy heads Brazil's first left-wing government for more than 40 years. At his inauguration in January 2003 he promises political and economic reforms and pledges to eradicate hunger.
 * 2010 October - Dilma Rousseff, of President Lula's Workers' Party, wins second round run-off to become Brazil's first female president.
 * 2011 June - Security forces occupy one of the biggest slums in Rio de Janeiro, as part of a major crackdown on organised crime ahead of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.
 * 2015 March - Petrobras state oil company implicated in massive corruption scandal that brings hundreds of thousands onto the streets in protest at President Rousseff, who was company chairperson during the period in question.