History History

While it is difficult to quantify the precise date of arrival of the Amerindians in what was to become Brazil, or how many there were at the time of the arrival of the European colonizers, there is one assertion on which there is consensus: the Amerindians then were much more numerous than they are today. The first inhabitants of Brazil are thought to have settled in the region between 11,000 and 6,000 years ago. Franco-Brazilian archaeologist Niede has dated archaeological remains at Pedra Furada in the Piaui to 50,000 years ago, but the international scientific community has never validated this hypothesis.

The first peoples were hunter-gatherers. The remains of Lagoa Santa, in the Sumidoro cave (MG), dating from 11,000 years ago, correspond to small men with elongated skulls who painted cave paintings.

From 6000 B.C.onwards, in southern Brazil, semi-nomadic populations initiated the "sambaquis" civilization, high shell mounds 30 meters high that served as burial grounds and thus showed the beginnings of religious preoccupations. They grouped together in communities of 100 to 150 individuals.

Tupis societies or the birth of agriculture. 4000 years ago, indigenous peoples began to settle down thanks to the mastery of certain agricultural practices. At the same time, excavations have revealed the presence of ceramic pottery. A common idiom, the Tupi language, spread among these coastal and inland peoples. Subsistence farming sometimes required the displacement of communities

Tupis and Tapuia : a European vision of the first peoples. Europeans, through ignorance, reduced the indigenous population to 2 groups, thus denying its extreme diversity. The Tupis, peoples in contact with the colonizers, were considered "civilizable", while the Tapuias were reduced to savages, auguring their future fate, alas.

Constantinople was taken by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, who imposed heavy customs duties on European traders. The Spanish and Portuguese maritime and trading powers then sought a new route to the Indies. In 1492, Christopher Columbus, in the name of the Spanish crown, landed in the Caribbean islands, believing he had reached India. Portugal was to embark on this race towards the West.

In 1494, the Pope was called upon to arbitrate the disputes between the Iberian kingdoms of Portugal and Spain. It was the Treaty of Tordesillas that delimited the respective possessions of the two countries.

Pedro Álvares Cabral disembarked on an unknown land on April 22, a land he named "Land of the True Cross", on the site of present-day Porto Seguro in the southern state of Bahia.

Born in Belmonte, Portugal in 1467, the Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral was a fidalgo, from a good Portuguese family. He first sailed in the Gulf of Guinea where he carried out commercial and diplomatic missions. Unlike the Portuguese navigators who sailed along the African coast for the "volta", Cabral was to move further west on his way to Calicut in India to "catch" the trade winds, as he left in March and not in July. A stronger wind than expected will push him towards new lands.

King Manuel of Portugal, in accordance with the Treaty of Tordesillas, claims the Land of the True Cross

From the 1530s onwards, the Portuguese government decided to actively regain control of Brazil to eliminate the smuggling of firewood and the risk posed by the French and Dutch. With the decline of the Oriental trade, the Portuguese saw the potential Brazilian market as an opportunity for significant economic benefits. Five ships, each carrying 400 people, dropped anchor on the Brazilian coast. The cultivation of sugar cane quickly made its mark on the Brazilian land.

In 1534, King Manuel of Portugal divided Brazil into 15 hereditary captaincies and thus entrusted individuals with the colonization and exploitation of the lands they were given

In 1549, Salvador de Bahia became the first capital of Brazil and the seat of the colony's general government. Salvador became the only city in the New World to match the size of European metropolises

France never recognized the Treaty of Tordesillas and settled in the Bay of Rio with the aim of founding the colony of France Antarctica. Few in number, plagued by internal dissensions between Catholics and Protestants among others, the French did not manage to make this territory fruitful. The Portuguese drove them out definitively 10 years later.

The intervention of Daniel de La Touche's men in São Luís, under the banner of "Equinoxial France", was both sympathetic and unfortunate. The natives called them the yellow parrots(papagaios amarelos), because they were blond and talkative. They freed the natives from serfdom, but abandoned by the Crown, they surrendered in 1615. Their dreams of French hegemony in South America were over.

In 1650, Portuguese expeditions decimated the first peoples of Amazonia. Jesuit missionaries hunted down the pajés, indigenous sorcerers. The Bandeira is the Christian banner flown by the bandeirantes, who set out from the coast along the rivers towards the interior, bringing back into slavery the natives who had survived their massacres. Lévi-Strauss refers to the indigenous genocide carried out by the Portuguese between the ^16th and ^19th centuries.

After 30 years of occupation of part of Pernambuco by the Dutch, the Batavians were gradually expelled from the Nordeste. The defeat at the battle of Guararapes sounded the death knell of their presence. They left Brazil for good in 1654.

After having lost interest in wood in favour of spices from the other side of the planet, the Portuguese placed the 17th century under the sign of sugar. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Brazil was a sugar cane plantation, following the model of the island of Madeira. Its production was organized around engenhos (mills), whose masters exploited all or part of the estate and rented the rest to lavradores. Unfortunately, with the help of success, the experiment was extended to the West Indies and, around 1680, Brazil began to suffer seriously from this competition. The Portuguese Crown forbade the colonists to reinvest the profits from sugar in other industries, which had serious consequences for the regions that were trapped in this monoculture.

The slave trade lasted more than three centuries, from the ^16th to the ^19th century. Three million slaves were imported from Guinea, Dahomey, Angola, Sudan, Mozambique and Nigeria to replace the native workforce. In the sugar cane plantations, then in the gold mines, the slaves died, on average, eight years after their arrival. The quilombos resisted for over a century, sometimes leading punitive expeditions against the towns. The most famous quilombo, Palmares in Alagoas, held out for 90 years before falling to the Portuguese in 1694. Its king, Zumbi, still revered today, was captured two years later, and his head was displayed at the end of a pike as an example.

In 1789, the influence of the Enlightenment and the North American revolution reached Brazil thanks to some Brazilian students from the University of Montpellier or Coimbra and the "inconfidencia", a revolt in Minas Gerais, agitated the country. These enlightened nobles demanded the end of Portuguese hegemony over the Brazilian territory and the advent of a republic. The leader of the rebels, Tiradentes, was arrested and executed. His head was exposed to the public.

Born in Lisbon on May 13, 1767 and died in the same city on March 10, 1826, João VI was King of Portugal and first titular emperor of Brazil. He took refuge with his court in Rio de Janeiro to escape the Napoleonic advance. He promoted the development of Brazil by opening its ports to England and encouraging the establishment of factories. Administrative, artistic and scientific institutions were created in Rio, making it a true capital.

João VI had to leave, however, in 1820, because another revolution occurred in Lisbon. He left his son, the prince regent Dom Pedro I, in Rio. On 7 September 1822, the latter betrayed the Lusitanian royalty with cries of " Fico " (I am staying) and "independence or death! Dom Pedro, son of King João VI, refused to follow his father to Portugal and declared himself emperor of an independent Brazil. The young Dom Pedro will prefer this land where he grew up to that of his ancestors. He abdicated himself in favour of his son Dom Pedro II, "Brazilian at heart" and enlightened despot, from 1831 to 1880

The first constitution established the separation between Brazil and the former Portuguese metropolis.

Under pressure from the English, the slave trade is banned.

This war will oppose Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay to the neighbouring Paraguay. Brazil and Argentina will recover a substantial part of the Paraguayan territory. The latter will lose half of its population.

Following British pressure, which did not hesitate to occupy Brazilian ports, Brazil definitively abolished slavery after several centuries of the slave trade. This process was gradually put in place from 1810 onwards. Portugal agreed to renounce the slave trade, but its promise remained unfulfilled and the sinister trade continued. Dom Pedro^I, in 1830, confirmed this desire to abolish the slave trade in order to keep the good graces of Great Britain. Abolitionist ideas developed among the progressive bourgeoisie and in 1850, the Parliament prohibited the slave trade. In 1870, the Free Womb Law grants freedom to the unborn children of slave parents. In 1888, the Aurea law put a definitive end to slavery.

Abandoned by the nobility, the bourgeoisie and the army, where republican ideas were germinating, the empire collapsed and the Republic was established in Brazil. In 1865, the victory over Paraguay made the military aware of their strength, which sealed the advent of strong military involvement in the upper echelons of power. Using the "coffee crisis" as a pretext, the army deposed Pedro II on November 15 1889. Backed by the large landowners, who supported slavery, it decreed the "coffee republic", under the positivist banner of Ordem e Progresso. Dom Pedro, a Freemason emperor with certain progressive aspects, abdicated.

In the arid north-eastern region of the Sertão, peasants thrown out onto the roads by the drought gathered in the 19th century to live off the land, sometimes under the rule of an enlightened man, called cangaçeiros. The young republic and its positivist military will repress in blood the "mystical revolt" of Canudos, led by Antoine the Councillor, after many military campaigns and thousands of deaths. The inhabitants of Canudos were exterminated

Between 1894 and 1930, the old republic saw a succession of military officers, then oligarchs. This is known as the "café au lait republic"

Luis Carlos Prestes (1898-1990), a military engineer, rejected the oligarchy that allowed only 3% of Brazilians to vote and the unequal society it proposed. With his column, the Prestes column, composed of Marxist-influenced soldiers, he travelled the country from 1924 to 1927 in an attempt to overthrow the government in place.

Getúlio Vargas overthrew the old Republic and set up the Estado Novo. It was an authoritarian regime that gradually took hold, coupled with industrial development based on economic nationalism. A return to more democracy occurred in 1946. In 1954, forced to resign by the military, Getúlio Vargas ended his life. He remains today an important political figure for the country.

The Kubitschek and Goulart presidencies (1956-1961 and 1961-1964) were marked by a real economic development, a modernization of the Brazilian society and infrastructures. Industrial development in the "Rio-São Paulo-Belo Horizonte" triangle brought millions of "boias frias" workers to these three metropolises (including the future president Lula), profoundly changing the geography and society of Brazil. Democracy took root in Brazil and under the impetus of Goulart, deep-seated reforms (agrarian, educational, urban and electoral) seemed to gradually transform the country into a social democracy.

Brasilia was built in 1960

The military overthrew the democratic government and established an authoritarian government punctuated by IAs (institutional acts). For more than 20 years, Brazil, like the rest of Latin America, experienced the years of lead, marked by the sound of military boots. Five generals successively shared power (Castelo Branco, Costa e Silva, Médici, Geisel and Figueireido). The democratic constitution was stripped of its attributes, and normative law was replaced by arbitrariness, repression, torture and assassination. The press lost all freedom, under the grip of implacable censorship. From an economic standpoint, Goulart's reformist nationalism gave way to a system that relied heavily on international capitalism and the Brazilian entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, under the control of a bureaucratic civil and military administration. Brazil experienced a phase of unprecedented economic growth, but this "economic miracle" left behind the working classes "forgotten" by the military regime.

The first free presidential elections saw the election of Tancredo Neves who died before he could take office.

The 1988 constitution confirms the country's return to democracy. The right to vote was extended to all Brazilians, literate or not. The right to work brought substantial improvements in the living and working conditions of employees and workers, without reducing poverty.

Sarney's successor, Fernando Collor de Mello, confiscated 80% of the cash circulating in Brazil and was impeached for corruption

Fernando Henrique Cardoso is twice elected President of the Republic. FHC implements the Real Plan. The country is over-indebted and the most unequal in the world.

In an atmosphere of popular jubilation, Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, known as Lula, a former trade unionist worker, was elected President of the Republic. The people seemed to have chosen a candidate from outside a political system that had often ignored them since the country's creation. Lula was elected twice in a row.

The Lula government managed to keep inflation under control and ensured significant growth in GDP, definitively anchoring Brazil in the BRICS group, whose leader China would become an important economic partner for the country. More than 10 million jobs were created and the increase in income with the increase in the minimum wage and the creation of the bolsa familia, among other things, allowed millions of Brazilians to be lifted out of extreme poverty. The " minha casa, minha vida " (my house, my life) programme facilitates access to property for low-income people

Lula's successor, Dilma Rousseff, is the first female president of Brazil. She continues Lula's social policy. Unfortunately, her term of office began in a very difficult economic situation. The global economic crisis hit Brazil very hard and it entered a long-lasting recession.

The deterioration of living conditions will generate the ire of students and the most fragile classes who denounce the sumptuous spending of Brazil for major events such as the 2014 World Cup or the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. Many protesters were arrested. At the same time, large-scale corruption cases were brought to light as part of the "lava jato" operation. Failed by her political allies, Dilma was impeached in 2016 after a totally arbitraryimpeachment procedure led by her vice-president Michel Temer. Lula, after a pseudo-trial will be sentenced to prison for having received bribes from the oil company Petrobras. He will be declared ineligible, leaving the way clear for Bolsonaro.

Michel Temer's successor is a former captain in the Brazilian army: Jair Bolsonaro. The exasperation of a large part of Brazilians in the face of a never-ending crisis, endemic violence and widespread corruption has led to a vote motivated by "disengagement. Jair Bolsonaro, a former captain in the Brazilian army, openly nostalgic for the military regime, was elected in the second round against Lula's "foal", the Paulist academic Fernando Haddad. At the head of a government made up of eight nationalist military men, ultra-liberals such as the Chicago boy Paul Guedes, and ultra-conservative evangelists, the self-proclaimed "Trump of the tropics" implemented a liberal policy on the domestic front aimed, among other things, at limiting state spending. Close to the 3 b lobbies (bullets, the Bible, oxen), he lets the Amazon go up in smoke and opposes very little the violence committed against the indigenous people and the inhabitants of the favelas. In foreign policy, his government aligns itself with American positions. The catastrophic management of the Covid-19 crisis seems to have weakened a government that is rather poorly perceived from the outside, especially since the defeat of its main supporter, former US president Donald Trump in November 2020.

The extreme fragility of Brazilian society, with public services cut off, will overexpose the country to the pandemic, which will take on an extreme dimension in Brazil. More than 500,000 Brazilians will lose their lives. The carelessness of Bolsonaro's government has delayed vaccination against Covid-19, and social distancing measures have long been presented as useless, ineffective and economically costly. Former president Lula, after being jailed before the last election, was elected by a narrow margin, buoyed by the Brazilian people and an ever-enthusiastic Nordeste. Yet the challenges are immense. The fight against poverty and discrimination, environmental protection and support for indigenous peoples are the major projects of Lula's term of office. As always in Brazil, the road ahead will be long and difficult, but hopes are high. Beware, however, that many governorships, senatorships and federal deputies are in the hands of Bolsonaro supporters. This shows that the roots of Bolsonarism run deep, and that not all its blocking power has disappeared.