History UsefulNotes / Brazil

[[AC: the Brazilian flag - The writing on the white stripe means "order and progress". Brazil can seemingly only achieve one of them at a given time. It was a BananaRepublic when the former was last achieved (1964-1984). Luckily, right now, it is achieving the latter. [[ChaoticNeutral Order is overrated anyways]].]]

[[AC: the Brazilian flag - The writing on the white stripe means "order and progress". Brazil can seemingly only achieve one of them at a given time. It was a BananaRepublic when the former was last achieved (1964-1984). Luckily, right now, it is achieving the latter.]]

* {{YMMV}}: Let me count the nothings: bureaucracy, police abuse, torture, authoritarian government (in 1985, during the Brazilian dictatorship), inefficient public service, persecution of free enterprise, sexuality as a tool for conformity, plastic surgeries. Yeah, nothing in common.

* Its beautiful men (who wear beautifully tight speedos on said beaches.

* Its beautiful men.

* Its beautiful women.

** Actually it went ahead of only spreading some rumors about it to the point of this [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdTadK9p14AL "official ad of the campaign"]].

One of the main things about Brazil is that many people have informal nicknames. For example, current president Luiz Inácio da Silva is generally just "Lula"; even the press will call him just "Presidente Lula" (he actually had it legally incorporated into his name). Also, Brazilian names tend to go to three or more words, because as rule of thumb both parents pass their last names forward with the child, not only the father - and the mother can register only in her name too.
* But some of these, like "da Silva" and "de Oliveira", or are composed surnames, with "de" and "da" being possessives, but have nothing to do with land ownership at all. They are directly correlate to German "von" and Dutch "van"/"van der" as in "von Braun" or "van Helsing", nothing else.
** Literally, in archaic and modern Portuguese, respectively, "da Silva" and "de Oliveira" literally mean "of the forest" and "of the olive tree," and aren't so much related to land ownership or specific places. Often, they're "generic" Christian names given to slaves in substitution for their original African names.
*** And to an even deeper root, they gave the same surname for converted Jews in Portugal back in the Middle Ages, so, expect many people with these surnames, but Jewish features.
** Unlike in German and Dutch, however, they're not part of the word they refer to (it's a complicated, but, basically, you wouldn't call Lula "Mr. Da Silva"; the correct usage would be "Mr. Silva").
*** Brazilians, of course, do not use surnames like that - in Portuguese, it's usually "Senhor Luiz Inácio," not "Senhor Silva."
** A relatively new trend (mostly shared by poor families) is to give their children "exotic" names. Mostly consist of poorly spelt American names (with as many double consonants, w's and y's that can be thrown in), but there are also the Brazilian and American celebrity stage names.

One of the main things about Brazil is that many people have informal nicknames. For example, current president Luiz Inácio da Silva is generally just "Lula"; even the press will call him just "Presidente Lula" (he actually had it legally incorporated into his name). Also, Brazilian names tend to go to four or more words, because as rule of thumb both parents pass their last names forward with the child, not only the father - and the mother can register only in her name too.

But one tip though: despite most Brazilians acknowledging all this, we [[BerserkButton tend to be a little defensive from outside criticism]]. And, to be fair, not all politicians are bad and, after decades of severe problems, Brazil is finally enjoying a good period, thanks mainly to the successive PSDB and PT governments since 1994 not screwing up... at least, no too badly. {{YMMV}}, of course.

Like most other Latin American states, it's a Roman Catholic country (although with many non-practicioners self declared Roman Catholics) with a growing Protestant neo-Pentecostal (Evangelical) population. Particularly amongst the north-eastern states, various syncretic religions which mix Roman Catholic saints and African deities together are also practised, including candomblé, macumba and umbanda.

Brazil's television is composed by five or six public channels (cable TV is available for a fee, but lots of people pirate it). The most popular shows are daily soap operas, news, variety shows (run non-stop on weekends), [[strike: soccer]] football matches (twice a week, at least), Jerry Springer clones and the occasional reality show. Popular presenters will often get two, three or four-hour weekly shows. Weekly serials in the popular American format are rare. Cartoons? Kid's stuff, but frequent in the mornings (with uncensored dubbed anime, sometimes).

* Its excellent [[strike:soccer]] football players. Brazil has won the FIFAWorldCup five times, more often than any other country.
** Pelé, which is know worldwide [[strike:except in Argentina]] as the greatest football player ever, and was elected the "Athlete of the Century" by the International Olympic Committee in 1999, is Brazilian.

* Its beautiful women. Although {{YMMV}} like any other country with and an, allegedly, large number of beautiful women.

* Its also beautiful, but unfortunately threatened rainforest.
** The Amazon is tougher than you think. According to estimates of the nineties, it should be completely depleted by now.
*** The Atlantic Rainforest, on the other hand, was almost completely destroyed during the colonial period, and now exists almost exclusively in parks and nature reserves.
* Its very varied and [[YourMileageMayVary beautiful music]], such as: forró, samba, MPB, frevo, maracatu, choro, caipira, axé, bossa nova, mangue beat, etc.

*** Flex-fuel cars was a big help in ethanol consumption instead of gasoline, due to the original ethanol-fueled cars takind longer to "warm the engine" and be usable with no problem, something fuel-flex cars fixed by adding a second, smaller gasoline tank to start it.

*** This troper remembers the ads in the 80s for promoting ethanol-fueled cars. "Ethanol-fueled cars: someday you will have one, too". Not that inviting...
**** It should be noted that today most of us ''do'' have one - Those of us who have cars, anyway.

* For its [[OverusedRunningGag beautiful]] mostly clean energy. Around 95% of all electric power in Brazil is hydroelectric; thermoelectric plants are either used to make up the deficit during droughts, as back-up systems, or as experimental plants using biomass instead of natural gas. Brazil has no coal power plants, but its third nuclear reactor plant just went online; those plants are more [[ForScience experimental]] than practical, but they do produce some (very expensive) energy. Unfortunately, the heavy abuse of the rainforests and the practice of slash-and-burn agriculture - which are illegal, but go over underfunded government agencies - somewhat makes up for it, slinging Brazil higher into the pollution rating. Regardless, the country makes money by selling carbon credits, and just like [[strike:sane]] many nations has signed into the Kyoto Protocol.

*** A friend of mine lives there, and she doesn't recommend it either.
**** They have done a great work in diminishing the polution in Cubatão. Most of the damage is reversed, and mostly all the smoke you see from the factories' chimmeys comes from water.

** Is above troper aware of how offensive that out-dated terminology is? Apparently discovered means 'discovered by white people'.
* Also noteworthy is that it is the only American country which became an Empire for a lasting period of time[[hottip:* :Mexico was an empire 1821-23 and 1864-67, and Haiti 1804-06 and 1849-59, but as you can see, they didn't exactly stick]]. It even lasted more than half a century (1822-89) and is partially responsible for its large territory (Portugal ensured most of it by aggressive colonization and quite a bit of treaty-breaking). Brazil had two Emperors, and the monarchy is often fondly remembered as a better, more innocent time...
** ...by crazy people.

** You see, all of the Sega consoles were published in Brazil by Tectoy. They also ported Game Gear games to the Master System, and made translations to some games, among them, the PhantasyStar series. They also made their own games, and made hacks to others. Because of this, Sega consoles and games were always very successful in Brazil - so much so, to this day, the MasterSystem and SegaGenesis are still regularly commercialized (only they come in [=X-in-1=] game paks with many of the consoles' past hits). One wonders, though, why they decided to give the Master System a Genesis-like six-button controller...
* During the 2010 [[TheWorldCup FIFA World Cup]], a number of Brazilians started to [[{{Twitter}} tweet]] Cala Boca Galvao ("Shut up Galvao") as a criticism to Brazilian commentator Galvão Bueno. Non-Portuguese speakers misinterpreted this as meaning "Save the Galvao" and assumed it was some sort of environmentalist campaign. Brazilians decided to perpetuate this misconception, up to MemeticMutation status, and spread rumors that Lady Gaga was releasing a song titled "Cala Boca Galvao". The episode provided incontrovertible proof in confirming the theory that Brazil is a country of giggling prepubescent little girls. [[YourMileageMayVary Or]] {{Magnificent Bastard}}s.

** Brazilians are fond to spread every misconception and false information about theirs own culture and language if the rule of funny aplies. Take everything a brazilian taughts about the meaning of some obscure portuguese word with a grain of salt. If the said brazilian insists that some string of words is a very polite way to introduce yourself to strangers, take note; actually is a very offensive curse idiom. Maybe this trope born in an old routine in a famous TV show, "A praça é nossa", where a poor German (played by Jô Soares), with a poor grasp of the portuguese, are made the butt of the joke. Kelly Key, a brazilian pop singer, has admited doing the same with her north american manager, on the tlak show of the same Jô Soares.

Brazilians don't know anything about the Wright brothers. To us, the inventor of the airplane is Alberto Santos Dumont!
* Its not that we don't know about the Wright brothers. We know them. We just knew they're not THE inventors. The French also weren't fooled.
** Specifically: The Wright brothers' flyer was catapulted into flight, and the only documentation of its flight was their own account. Santos Dumont's flight was in a self-powered craft, and had many viewers. It was also photographed. Since the flight took place in France, the French are also aware of this - Dumont spent many years in France constructing various types of balloons and airships, as well as the first commercially produced aircraft, the ''Demoiselle''.

[[AC: the brazilian flag - The writing on the white stripe means "order and progress". Brazil can seemingly only achieve one of them at a given time. It was a BananaRepublic when the former was last achieved (1964-1984). Luckily, right now, it is achieving the latter.]]

* Its beautiful women.
** Actually, {{YMMV}}.

The most important thing to know about its culture, before anything else, is that in Brazil people speak Portuguese, different from the rest of Latin America, where they mostly speak Spanish, though there is a Spanish speaking minority in the west and south, and Spanish is taught in schools (but again, so is English). Furthermore, Brazil's population is a mix of Portuguese, European immigrants, African slaves and a just touch of natives, making for a gene pool different from the rest of the continent - For example, "Hispanic" is not a very well-known group, and more people have skin tones between white and black than of either extreme. Though this is not well known, Brazil contains the most Japanese (and descendants) of any nation outside of Japan. The Southern state of Rio Grande do Sul was colonized by Germans, and there's a lot of German influence in the culture and architeture, with people ocasionally speaking Deutsch on the streets, specially in the smallest towns.

[[AC: the brazilian flag - The writing on the white stripe means "order and progress". Brazil can seemingly only achieve one of them at a given time, and, luckily, right now is achieving the latter.]]

[[AC: the brazilian flag]]

* Also noteworthy is that it is the only American country which became an Empire for a lasting period of time[[hottip:* :Mexico was an empire 1821-23 and 1864-67, and Haiti 1804-06 and 1849-59, but as you can see, they didn't exactly stick]]. It even lasted more than half a century (1822-89) and is partially responsible for its large territory (Portugal ensured most of it by aggressive colonization and quite a bit of treaty-breaking). Brazil had two Emperors, and the monarchy is often fondly remembered as a better, more innocent time.

* ''CityOfGod''

** Which has been going down in almost all large cities; São Paulo, the largest city in the continent, no longer leads its inhabitants into fits of paranoid panic and even Rio de Janeiro seems to be averting this sad state at last, with a harsher security policy and spreading of more efficient police centers in violent areas.

There are about ten major political parties in Brazil, with PSDB, PT, PMDB and Democratas being the bigger and more important parties. All of them have been involved in political scandals of all sorts and no wonder too, as the political system tends to lead to corruption very easily. This is because all sorts of high ranking jobs in the government are directly or indirectly nominated by politicians, with the nominees tending to '[[IfYouKnowWhatIMean share]]' their gains with those who put them there. [[ItGotWorse To make things worse]], the people who nominate are usually power-brokers in either chambers of congress, who themselves can only be tried by Brazil's highest court and/or their peers. Combine this with inefficient oversight from the judiciary branch directly responsible for monitoring government spending [[hottip:* :the TCU, the members of which are directly nominated by the [[WhatAnIdiot same politicians they monitor]]!]], all sorts of problems with our police, the absurdly long time (i.e., more than a decade) for the judiciary to finish trying a case [[hottip:* : no small part due to the amazing amounts of appeals anyone can have, it being not rare at all for a mundane case to reach the Supreme Court!]] and other problems, and the results are plain to see.

** In their aid, the Police (most specifically, the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOPE BOPE]]) uses [[ObviouslyEvil main battle tanks equipped with speakers to warn people of its coming and full of elite soldiers, called Caveirão ("Big Skull")]], which makes FBI and SWAT vans look like cardboard boxes.

* CityOfGod
* TheDevilToPayInTheBacklands
* TheEliteSquad
* [[MonicasGang Monica's Gang]]

One of the main things about Brazil is that many people have informal nicknames. For example, current president Luiz Inácio da Silva is generally just "Lula"; even the press will call him just "Presidente Lula" (he actually had it legally incorporated into his name). Also, Brazilian names tend to go to four or more words, because as rule of thumb both parents pass their last names forward with the child, not only the father.

There are about ten major political parties in Brazil. Politicians behave mostly the same on each, though, since any group with an actual ideology gets crushed in elections. Government workers are often caught for corruption and arrested not nearly enough for it. The system mostly keeps itself upright on good governmental decisions of the 90s/00s and people not relying much on them anyway.

Brazil's television is composed by five or six public channels (cable TV is available for a fee, but lots of people pirate it). The most popular shows are daily soap operas, news, variety shows (run non-stop on weekends), Soccer matches (twice a week, at least), Jerry Springer clones and the occasional reality show. Popular presenters will often get two, three or four-hour weekly shows. Weekly serials in the popular American format are rare. Cartoons? Kid's stuff, but frequent in the mornings (with uncensored dubbed anime, sometimes).

** Which has been going down in almost all large cities; São Paulo, the largest city in the continent, no longer leads its inhabitants into fits of paranoid panic. Rio de Janeiro being the notable exception, in that it seems to get worse every year.
*** Gladly, Rio de Janeiro seems to be averting this sad state, with a harsher security policy and spreading of more efficient police centers in violent areas.

* For its [[OverusedRunningGag beautiful]] mostly clean energy. Around 95% of all electric power in Brazil is hydroelectric; thermoelectric plants are either used to make up the deficit during droughts, as back-up systems, or as experimental plants using biomass instead of natural gas. Brazil has no coal power plants, but its third nuclear reactor plant just went online; those plants are more [[ForScience experimental]] than practical, but they do produce some (very expensive) energy. Unfortunately, the heavy abuse of the rainforests and the practice of slash-and-burn agriculture - which are illegal, but go over underfunded government agencies - somewhat makes up for it, slinging Brazil high into the pollution rating. Regardless, the country makes money by selling carbon credits, and just like sane nations has signed into the Kyoto Protocol.

* Also noteworthy is that it is the only American country which briefly became an Empire. It even lasted more than half a century (1822-89) and is partially responsible for its large territory (Portugal ensured most of it by aggressive colonization and quite a bit of treaty-breaking). Brazil had two Emperors, and the monarchy is often fondly remembered as a better, more innocent time.
** Mexico was an empire 1821-23 and 1864-67, and Haiti 1804-06 and 1849-59, but as you can see, they didn't exactly stick.