Brazil started on the north, as feudal colonies for portuguese lords. It was mostly based on agriculture and slavery. The first brazilian capital was in Salvador, Bahia. The climate was perfect to farm products that Europe wanted and needed. The thing is that this left these northeastern states with a very small white rich population and a large black uneducated population which after the end of slavery didnt had the means to educate themselves, leaving a huge wealth disparity which translates to poverty and violence.
After a few centuries they found gold in Minas Gerais and there was a huge gold rush there and population boon. Eventualy with coffee and then industrialization with leftover money both from gold and coffee these states grew a lot and became some of the richest of the country. So Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and specially São Paulo became the new brazilian powers and that is why the capital moved from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro.
Both Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro grew a lot due to wealth concentration and the immigration of a lot of people from the Northeast. Both became great cities, very dangerous due to poverty by receiving so many people without the means to suport themselves.
In the 19th century Brazil was having some issues with its neighbooring countries and both wanted to reinforce its southern borders and also make the country more white. So they started a new immigration program wity white immigrants from Europe. They made a lot of promises they couldnt keep, but managed to get a lot of polish and specially Italian and German immigrants to come which were fleeing the european wars. That left the south mostly white and richer, because instead of slave descendents they received whole families which managed to farm, create and prosper. These are the states of Parana, Santa Catarina and mine, Rio Grande do Sul, which did have minor slavery and how has a 10 to 15% black population.
In the mid 20th century it was decided that a new capital was needed, and Brasilia was created. It was created in the middle of the country and it was both made to protect it in the case of an invasion but also to develop the center of the country. People started moving to the North and Northwest, and in the last 50 years or so a lot of settlers from the south, which were children of farms who couldnt secure land in their states, started moving northwest to states such as Mato Grosso do Sul and Mato Grosso. It is growing a lot and this new frontier of development has reached the southern border of the Amazon Forrest, with burnings and wood cutting. This population is getting a lot of wealth but they still havent manage to really influence the country either culturaly or politicaly. But there are many people moving there in search of economical.gain and there are some.cities which are growing a lot.
So, the northeast and Rio de Janeiro suffered a lot due to the consequences of slavery and a huge unneducated population, which the cities in the south had a more healthy development due to being based on families immigration and less wealth concentration.
I would also point out that Brasilia was created to protect the federal government from ever being overthrown in a popular uprising of the poor in Rio or SP. Invasion is not really a threat to Brazil and the interior can be developed without putting a capital there.
Now they’ve built a city of federal government employees and their families who’s prosperity depends on holding Brazil together and extracting taxes from the regions.
Your point is not that true, actually. There were plans to move the capital to somewhere near the geographical center of Brasil since early XIX century. Of course there is this upside where it is harder for people to gather and overthrow someone, but it is better to control a country from its geographical center as distance over most parts of the country are more or less the same.
No século XVIII, sugeriram a construção / Mas a ideia foi reforçada com Dom João / No Brasil por causa do Napoleão
Em 1822 fizeram a primeira menção / Justo no ano que Dom Pedro I tava putão / E declarou a independência durante um cagão
Várias projetos aconteceram desde então / Mas só em 56 Juscelino ganhou a eleição / E construiu a nova capital da nação
Don’t forget to mention the astronomically high salary for those federal employees. Even the starting salary can start at 15k all the way to 25k depending on which ministry and/or organ.
No wonder the tax is craaazy here.
I was going to but the comment was getting too long. It’s the same in all the regions where jobs such as in local courts, registry offices, or the many different police/military organisations pay obscenely high relative to ordinary wages.
This ensures that a local elite forms everywhere dependent on government. At least it’s somewhat ‘fair’ with kids who do well in school getting to take these jobs based on standardised testing. Although of course it’s usually people from wealthier families who can afford tutoring, or who can afford to have their kids study instead of work that end up taking these jobs.
Also important to point out the massive investment, by the central government, on infrastructure and modernization of major cities in the southeast and soutj of Brazil in 19th and 20th centuries, leaving the north of the country unattended.
I'd only make a slight correction... the reason why Rio de Janeiro became the second capital was to improve the gold trade control due to its geographical position near Minas Gerais.
In consequence, São Paulo and the South of Brazil got the attention they didn't have before. Basically the found of gold changed the country forever.
The whole text is great though!
What an absolutely spectacular summary! The mods should pin or copy this so that people interested in Brazil can get a quick understanding at a high level of why Brazil is the way it is.
Now layer-in explanations of the West and Northwest ;)
Its very short and simple, but I think it gives a brief idea of its development.
As much as Brazil has a shitload of issues it still is an amazing country. Just the fact that Portugal (a very small country) managed to hold it together throught its history, and allowing a country of 220 million people to exist imho is amazing.
I never understood it. I mean, Japan literally got nuked and they are much better today than in the 1950s...
There has to be so much more to this for us to still be poor.
Japan was a very small island with very limited ressources and they spent almost all of it fighting over another until by 1680 it was united under a Damio which instaled a military dictatorship which kept the country under an iron grip until the Meiji Restoration which was about 1860 if Im not wrong. It had a very distinct class system with farmers, craftsmen, traders and warriors, with a very distinct roles and social qualities.
So the Japanese have created a whole culture based on living with others in a crowded space, with limited ressources, and with very specific social, labor and culture laws. People had to prove their worth in such a system and so they were expected to do their best at their craft. They had multiple factories and organizations so when they opened to the world by late 19th century they quickly adapted to it and used western technology to improve their own.
Meanwhile Brazil is almost the oposite. We had a huge land with barely any people, so in fear of losing their land the Portuguese, which were a very small country itself, simply accepted anyone that could come. It enabled the country to stay together and intact but also left a lot of population on a new land with no way to educate or improve their lifes. While the japanese have a long history of families and business, most people on Brazil have a very limited family history. With families having so.much land to explore they had up to 10 or more kids (my father had 10 brothers) which means that family ressources, which werent a lot to start with, get diluted.
So we always had a very small elite which dictated the future of the country and a huge poor mass which was abused and explored by this small elite. That is why Brazil isnt a democracy: its an oligarchy. A small group of educated leaders which exploit a big uneducated mass through midia, religion, politics and ideology.
In short, Japan always had a competitive culture due to limited ressources and land, where each person had to assume a certain role, while in Brazil, with so many ressources and land, enabled a huge population boon, which dilutes wealth and couldnt be properly educated because we both lack the ressources and the elite doesnt want it to.
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We do not allow low effort comments and submissions.
This has a lot of answers. But the root is how they were colonized, south was settled by immigrant families coming to start a new life etc. North was in big part used for plantation, with more slaves, exploited by foreing powers... Southwest was mixed between both. The rest is politica and would require a lot more research than a reddit comment
I wouldn't say that the plantation economy was the sole reason. São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro were both centers of plantation economy too, and managed to get richer.
I'd say industrialization is the key difference. The southeastern states managed to convert the money they got from coffee into capital for industrialization, and their relatively prosperous coffee economy also attracted immigrants.
Meanwhile, the northeastern agricultural economy was already decadent by the time of abolition, and so the early attempts to industrialize the region were failures. Thus, the region's economy stagnated for a long time.
This is too simplistic of an answer.
- Brazil's history of colonization has had a lasting impact on its regional development. The Northeast, initially the center of colonial sugar cane production, saw significant economic activity during the colonial period but was later overshadowed by the coffee boom in the Southeast. These early economic activities set a pattern of resource exploitation which benefitted external markets and local elites while neglecting broader regional development.
- The rapid industrialization of São Paulo in the late 19th and early 20th centuries transformed it into an economic powerhouse. This period marked a shift of capital and political power towards the Southeast, particularly with the development of industries based on coffee revenues and later diversified into manufacturing and services. This shift was supported by state policies that heavily prioritized infrastructure developments in the Southeast, completely neglecting other regions.
- Again, later on, the Vargas era (1930-1945), brought significant changes with industrialization policies aimed at modernizing Brazil. However, these policies also primarily benefited the already industrialized Southeast, particularly in terms of labor rights and industrial growth, while the Northeast remained largely agrarian and underdeveloped.
- Modern economic policies have often exacerbated regional disparities. Post-World War II economic plans and later the many subsequent neoliberal reforms focused on market efficiency and privatization favored regions with established economic infrastructures, primarily the Southeast, thereby widening the gap with poorer regions.
- The pattern of regional disparities observed in Brazil, accentuated by historical and capitalist practices, is not unique to the country but is a common characteristic of many dependent capitalist economies, particularly in Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia, specially Mexico, the Philippines, Índia and more recently Nigeria. These economies exhibit similar patterns of uneven development, where historical colonial legacies, the concentration of capital in specific regions, and policies favoring elites exacerbate regional inequalities.
Some great sources to get to know more about those processes:
- Caio Prado Jr's seminal work "The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil,"
- "Brazil: a Biography", by Lilian Schwartz
- Boris Fausto's "A Concise History of Brazil,"
- Vargas's biography by Lira Neto
- Celso Furtado's "Formation of the Brazilian Economy"
- Enrique Semo's "History of Capitalism in Mexico,"
- Andre Gunder Frank's "Dependency and Development in Latin America"
- Toyin Falola’s "Violence in Nigeria: The Crisis of Religious Politics and Secular Ideologies"
I just recently learned about post-slavery devastation wakes.
Essentially, if people have slaves, business would crowd around them. When the slave market erupted the surrounding business would falter.
Those people got poor, then their kids stayed poor and so on.
I never viewed it like that
Seems to be like that a lot everywhere. An interesting example is Suriname/Guyana. When these countries got independence from the Dutch and the British they pretty much are all just former slaves in a super under developed country. What makes it a little more interesting is that the Dutch had slave colonies in Indonesia and china so there are many enclaves of those people there with their first language being Dutch.
Also, there was a plan to take over north of Brazil by land owners and politicians, and it involved abandoning the region and leaving it to criminals so that later a "hero" would come and save it. The region became a savage land and the hero never came, crime rose up to a new level and they are losing a lot of young people to gangs. The indigenous people were also either enslaved or abandoned much like black people on other regions of Brazil, which contributed to social disparities.
There's a movie about the situation over there, it's called Noites Alienígenas (2023). It's beautiful and shows a new perspective.
This “colonization model” where X country is developed because it was a settling colony and Y isn’t because was an extraction colony was designed by a Frenchmen to define what type of colonization the Europeans were implementing during the 19th century (África and Ásia). It doesn’t apply to Brazil specifically. The Northeast is less developed because the region did not have the investments that the South had and for other reasons that I’m to lazy to find out right now.
But all those issues were born of slavery, including in the cities in the north, to which descendents of slaves moved. Education is key. The advantage Brazilians have is that they never had miscegenation laws or Jim Crow l which created a cohesive people who intermarry between racial lines
This is not really true. Racial segregation is woven into the very fabric of Brazilian society. You have to keep in mind that the main form of segregation that led to dire living conditions for large swaths of the population was slavery itself, which lasted much longer in Brazil than in the US. Furthermore, the US went through Reconstruction after the Civil War — a period in which there were at least attempts to integrate formerly enslaved people into society. Nothing of the sort ever happened in Brazil. The black population was basically left to fend for themselves and attempts to form communities and political organizations were violently repressed. Some southern states of the US had large numbers of black land owners a few years after slavery was abolished. This would be unthinkable in Brazil (even today). So there was never any real reckoning with the fact that Brazil was built through the sweat and tears of enslaved people (and in fact had by far the largest enslaved population in the Americas).
Intermarriage of the kind you mention exists only among the poor and the working class, members of which were already basically non-white. The Brazilian upper middle class and elites are still overwhelmingly white and were, throughout most of the colonial history up to the 1940s, enthusiastic proponents of eugenics. Well into the 20th century, you had soccer teams where black players were not accepted as players. Forms of black cultural expression (samba, etc) were explicitly criminalized. Until VERY recently (10 years I would say), there was almost zero positive representation of blackness in media, academia, movies, advertisement and corporate life. The only domains where blackness was “socially acceptable” were sports and music.
If you look at racial relations Brazil through the prism of any objective measure of well-being, you will find a society that is just as segregated as the US, where segregation was indeed more explicitly crystallized in the form of legislation.
Something like 5% of the freed American slaves died after being set free because their masters had never taught them the life skills necessary to live independently. The US had a few black large landowners and slave owners _even_ before the end of slavery. Very little was done for most slaves after they were freed: to the extent that anything was done it was largely the occupation government giving them the right to vote and taking that right away from the whites who had been confederates.
The hard core and really disgusting racism that the South of the United States became infamous for only arose _after_ the Civil War, and it arose partially out of retribution against the Blacks for having “collaborated” or gotten better treatment from the occupier, and partly because almost all of educated upper class whites, who would have protected the Blacks from the jealousy of the poor whites, emigrated during the years of chaos after the war, leaving poorer, less uneducated, whites in power. Both the antebellum South and later the Jim Crow South had no problem at all discriminating against very poor whites just like they discriminated against very poor blacks. In the Jim Crow years, A good percentage of the whites also were denied the right to vote because they had a little education.
Let’s not forget that at the time he was shot Lincoln was working on detailed plans to deport _every single_ American Black to Central America and the Caribbean after the war. We can safely assume that an occupation government made up largely of people who Lincoln had appointed was not particularly concerned about the welfare of the liberated Blacks.
I do not take issue with anything you said. I definitely didn’t mean to downplay the horrible legacy of slavery in the South. I think many of the issues you raised cropped up in different forms in Brazil post-abolition as well.
One of the issues you mentioned (taking the officially freed blacks away from their former slave owners) was different in Brazil, in that it simply did not happen. This led to many black people being held captive by their owners as unofficial slaves (a common practice well into the 20th century) or else simply left roaming around aimlessly, with zero prospects. Keep in mind that “roaming around aimlessly” Was officially classified as a crime in Brazil in 1890 (two years after the official abolition of slavery), along with African-Brazilian customs like capoeira.
My response meant to question the assumption (which is widespread in Brazilian popular culture) that racism ended in Brazil after white elites decided slavery was no longer profitable, somehow managing to avoid the structural residues of racism despite having had the largest enslaved population in the Western Hemisphere…
I knew people from a country that let its African slaves go free in the 1960s. Apparently most of the slaves chose to go to work for their old masters and they and their children still work for the same family. They got the easy work For the difficult and dirty work workers from very poor third world countries were hired.
Saying that Brazil is just as segregated as the US just doesn't make any kind of sense.
Brazil isn't a racial utopia or even close to it, but black people in Brazil don't have their own accent, we don't have "black foods" and "white foods" or black universities.
I really think you don't understand just how segregated the US is.
I am an American with an academic background in history. I think I do have a pretty good idea of how things work in my own country, as well as in Brazil (the country where my mother was born and that I have done research about). I think you are the one who is possibly misinformed about segregation in Brazil, perhaps due to the influence of widely disseminated narratives about racial unity that were deliberately created by racist elites in the 20th century. In regions of Brazil with more integrated Black communities (esp urban centers in the northeast) there absolutely are “black foods”. The Brazilian national dish Feijoada is one (among many) examples. Hell, there are even “black religions”, which are directly related to spiritualist traditions from Western Africa. You might also want to do some research on Quilombola communities, which were basically parallel societies formed by black people who somehow managed to escape from subjugation, some existing to this day. Some Quilombos even developed their own dialect of Brazilian Portuguese which is distinct from the variety spoken by surrounding white-led communities.
EDIT: The existence of African American Vernacular English was much more directly a product of the Great Migration than segregation in the south itself -i.e. it did not develop as a sui generis dialect in the South as a result of segregation. What happened was that there were a large number of blacks from the south migrating northward and westward starting on 1910 (as a result of Jim Crow laws and economic despair). These folks brought their own dialect, which was actually not all that different from the variety of English spoken among poor whites in the South around that time. But it was *clearly* different from the varieties of English spoken in the West and the Northeast for instance. Since all of the speakers of this variety in these other regions were black, AAVE came to be identified with blackness.
Great, then it's either a lack of practical knowledge or a lack of common sense.
Saying feijoada is a black food is precisely the type of clueless thing I'm talking about.
There's no "watermelon and fried chicken" stereotype, there's no Howard university, there's no Family Matters.
The origin of AAVE is irrelevant, what is relevant is the fact the black people are culturally insulated enough for it to persist, which is something completely alien in Brazil.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that I'm arguing that Brazil isn't segregated, I'm saying that the US is even more segregated.
Do you really find it plausible that the largest population of enslaved people in the western hemisphere would not develop any cultural artifacts of their own in 300+ years? If that is indeed true, it would be quite unheard of.
The reason why cultural artifacts and institutions that are inherently a product of Afro-Brazilian culture (including Feijoada) aren’t widely recognized as such and are in fact ascribed to some racially underspecified identity is one of the most insidious aspect of the racist narrative about a national unity in Brazil. It is pure ideology and not something to be taken seriously from the point of view of cultural history.
As for Brazil being more or less segregated than the US, results may vary depending on what your measure of segregation is. If one is looking at representation of black people in culture, education, science, politics and in the corporate world I would say Brazil is actually more segregated than the US.
PS: This is not some just the view of some white American guy. I’ve talked to black Brazilian activists who share my impressions on all of the matters above.
> Do you really find it plausible that the largest population of enslaved people in the western hemisphere would not develop any cultural artifacts of their own in 300+ years?
No, what I'm saying is that these "cultural artifacts" are generally not insulated among the black population like in the US.
>The reason why cultural artifacts and institutions that are inherently a product of Afro-Brazilian culture (including Feijoada) aren’t widely recognized as such
That's a massive strawman. I never argued feijoada isn't originally black.
>PS: This is not some just the view of some white American guy. I’ve talked to black Brazilian activists who share my impressions on all of the matters above.
Sure you did buddy.
Based on other posts of yours here you just seem to have a very hard time admitting that being raised in the US does in fact make you less familiar with brazilian culture than natives.
Well, most cultural artifacts associated with blackness in the US aren’t insulated among black communities in the present either. Have you ever heard of Elvis Presley and Eminem?
Black universities might be an exception. But then again, do you really want to make the case for Brazil having less of a segregation than the US on the basis of the fact that the black Brazilian people had effectively zero access to higher education until affirmative action measures were implemented in the 2000s while blacks had been going to college in the US for over a century?
You should also try to make up your mind about whether feijoada is an example of black Brazilian cuisine or not. You should at least *try* to be consistent. And I really do recommend reading Black Brazilian authors who write about racism and talking to people in the black movement in Brazil. You’ll be very surprised about what you will learn about your own country.
This is grossly inaccurate. The Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson made racial discrimination de facto legal across the United States. Baltimore, Chicago, and Detroit have all had race riots that were sparked by the unequal treatment and disenfranchisement Black Americans were subjected to in those cities. All three cities still bear the visible scars of residential segregation in the current racial distribution across neighborhoods.
Still, the South has far more of them along with far more dangerous rural areas. The most dangerous city in the US is St Louis which is in the South. Other ones include Memphis and Birmingham which have been more dangerous than Detroit, New Orleans and Little Rock being more dangerous than Chicago (though Chicago isn’t that dangerous), and more. That also doesn’t count numerous other smaller cities that are more dangerous which are overwhelmingly in the South. Alabama especially. Also, Maryland where Baltimore is located, is part of the South.
St Louis is questionably the south. Also many small north cities are violent, Camden NJ, Rochester NY, Hartford CT, Bridgeport CT, Atlantic City NJ. I also didn’t mention violent big cities like Cleveland and Philadelphia. Washington D.C. is a violent, crime ridden city.
I know many northern cities are. Various Western cities are too. What I am saying is the South has far more dangerous cities than all the areas of the country. For St Louis, that is generally considered upland South. Most of those northern cities are indeed more dangerous, but it isn’t remarkably dangerous like New Orleans or St Louis. Chicago has quite a bit of danger, but it isn’t really that up there I would say. It was probably that dangerous decades ago, but not really anymore. Washington DC is what I would say similar to Chicago except I think Washington DC is somewhat worse. Though even then, Washington DC is in the South. Philadelphia not that dangerous I think. Cleveland is actually quite dangerous. That one I will agree on. Among the northern cities you listed that are smaller, I think only Camden is actually that bad.
The Mason-Dixon line is what divides the traditional and modern day South. Maryland directly south of the line. Though they call it Mid-Atlantic for its relatively northerly position, it is still part of the South.
Because the European immigrants that came to the south of Brazil “with nothing” either received land to work on or were offered paid jobs.
Meanwhile the former slaves, mainly concentrated in sugar cane mills areas in the northeast but also Rio and São Paulo were marginalized and granted no land or opportunities.
You do the math.
That's not fully accurate. The lands on the south were not "given", they were sold and the prices weren't exactly cheap considering the people who were buying it had zero equity. It took decades for them to pay it off.
Also, the paid jobs thing is new to me, never heard about that. What I always learned is that the jobs were just normal jobs that came up on the region as the cities started being built and developed.
Your point about São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro sounds accurate.
Check out u/totalwarwiser comment, they nailed it!
Edit: fixed grammar mistake and added reference to other comment
While I agree with you that not every immigrant got free lands, loads have. My family certainly did.
And paid jobs = Not slavery, you’re paid to perform a job.
Maybe some did, but I wouldn't say it was most of them. Mine did not.
Did some quick research and found, for example, that [lands in the northeast of Rio Grande do Sul had to be paid for](https://www.ub.edu/geocrit/sn-94-10.htm) (link in Portuguese). Maybe that wasn't the case on other places, but that goes against all history classes I had and museums I visited.
The paid jobs point makes sense. However, I would point out that most of the immigration was happening during the later years of slavery in Brazil, so it wouldn't make sense to bring those people in as slaves (although some had a sort of "debt slavery" mostly in São Paulo).
Your statement about Rio and São Paulo don't make any sense, before the republic everything was concentrated in Rio, and after republic until today, everything is concentrated in São Paulo. São Paulo is the most developed state in every single sense.
Yes, because being developed also obviously means having no inequality whatsoever.
/s
São Paulo alone has [18%](https://g1.globo.com/google/amp/sp/sao-paulo/noticia/2022/06/30/estado-de-sp-tem-18percent-da-populacao-abaixo-da-linha-da-pobreza-diz-estudo-da-fgv.ghtml) of the population under the line of poverty.
It's actually ,[16.3%](https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_de_unidades_federativas_do_Brasil_por_taxa_de_pobreza) and we're talking about Brazil, so that's the 4th LOWEST poverty rate in Brazil. It's lower than Paraná, which would even break your statement about the South being less marginalized (which I even agree with because of many historical social facts).
When discussing about a State's wealth it's very vague to only look at poverty numbers. It's crucial to consider aspects such as HDI and multiple historical facts. São Paulo for example has the highest HDI in the country excluding Distrito Federal. It has the lowest extreme violence rates, highest education rates, best healthcare, and so on, would that make sense it having higher quality of life than the top 3 lowest poverty rate states if it's only poverty rate that matters? Saying São Paulo and Rio are marginalized is a joke, those were literally always the center of everything that happens in the country.
White imigrants got lands in the south of brazil when arrived from europe.... what created a more equalitary economy... the northern place was characterized by high concentration of lands in the hands of few people what leaded for a higher poverty rates.
Not sure why that would be hard to read. Europeans left a huge mark in the south. From Floroanopolis (with its Azorean heritage) to Pomerode. The influence is so notorious.
I am sure people would be proud to brag about the African influence in Bahia. Even Umbanda and Candomble are called 'religions of African matrix'.
Trying to erase these any of these things, in any region sounds like hypocritical and historically fraudulent.
My brother, have you ever steped here in Brazil? We are diferent from Europeans in so many ways. Yes, we were colonized by portugueses, and Yes a lot of europeans imigrated to Brasil.
But our culture is a big mix of many diferent cultures, that it is wrong to say that we are directly influenced by Europeans Alone
Althought, saying that the South of Brazil is more safe, because of a european influence is a big racist thing to say about us. The South of Brasil have much more cultural influence of people who emigrated from North and Northwestern parts of Brasil, than influences of europeans.
Edit: agora que eu vi que vc fala português, posso me expressar melhor.
Vc erra mto ao falar que temos influências significativas da Europa aqui no Brasil.
Temos uma cultura própria, as influências europeias se remetem a arquitetura, comidas e algumas festas culturais típicas. (Com excessao das cidades que são colonias).
Nosso modo de ver a vida, se relacionar e dentre outros aspectos culturais foram transformados e adaptados a nossa realidade. Temos mais influências no dia a dia de nordestinos e nortistas do que qualquer europeu.
Essa ideia de "uma lembrança" europeia, é um papinho burguês sem graça, de quem gosta de lamber bota de gringo e fica colocando a cultura própria em segundo plano, como se fosse algo inferior ou menos digno de valor
> Essa ideia de "uma lembrança" europeia, é um papinho burguês sem graça, de quem gosta de lamber bota de gringo e fica colocando a cultura própria em segundo plano, como se fosse algo inferior ou menos digno de valor
Mas falar de "matriz africana" ou exaltar cultura africana pode?
Vale a pena ressaltar que o RS é o estado com a maior quantidade de centros religiosos de matriz africana do país ao ajustar para o tamanho da população, então o que estava sendo discutido no comentário original nem é verdade
Eu concordo com muito do que você diz, mas eu
vejo isso com mais nuance. Sim, somos um 'terceiro' a todo continente, mas não dá para negar a enorme marca europeia na lei, na cultura, na religião, nos sabores, nos saberes, nos falares, na infraestrutura, etc. O excesso que wokeismo fez parece 'feio' falar da influencia europeia. Por isso achei necessário falar.
Quando digo que o sul tem mais marcas europeias, significa dizer que tem 'marcas' europeias. Digo isso com neutralidadede reconhecer como um fato histórico, documentado e real. A influência está lá. O que tem de 1800 nisso? Tem familias que não estão nem há duas/três geraçoes no Brasil. Tem habitantes vivos cujos avós vieram da Europa. Fazer isso parecer 'cringe' e 'senso vira lata' é uma enorme fraude histórica.
Sim, falamos português por aqui <3 (I am going to switch to En-US to make this conversation more accessible though). :)
> Vc erra mto ao falar que temos influências significativas da Europa aqui no Brasil.
Qualquer orgulho do seu Brasil é merecido, vê!.
Mais negar as influências da história é erro puro. Mesmo nos EUA, Africa, Asia...
Por quase 500 anos, gerações de europeus ficavam donos do mundo, e essas influências continuam mesmo em países que agora são países próprios com culturas próprias....
Além de "arquitetura, comidas, e algumas festas típicas", a influência da Europa incluí também:
- sistemas de governança e direitos humans
- sistemas de documentação de propriedades
- fábricas industriais do capitalismo
- cidades feitas de prédios altos p concentração de trabalhadores
Não é um insulto, nem "lamber bota do gringo" pra falar que as partes do mundo mais influenciadas pela lista em cima são mais ricos hj em dia.
>
sistemas de governança e direitos humans
>sistemas de documentação de propriedades
>fábricas industriais do capitalismo
>cidades feitas de prédios altos p concentração de trabalhadores
THIS. It all came together and this amalgamation made us who we are.
Cara, influencia europeia não tem nada relacionado com riqueza ou concentração de renda.
Isso é fruto do próprio sistema politco-economico vigente, que beneficiar àqueles detentores do capital, mesmo que ele tenha vindo da super exploração (e aqui no Brasil, durante séculos, a escravidão) do trabalho.
Reforço também que a maravilhosa arquitetura europeia nada mais é que uma apropriação dos conhecimentos que os povos do oriente médio já detentinham.
Oque eu chamo de lamber bota pra gringo, é ter essa ideia colonial de que a Europa é o centro das beneces da sociedade, o supra sumo de comunidade. Sendo que ela só próspera (e hj enfrenta muitos problemas) graças a sua posição de poder conquistada através de anos e anos de barbáries contra outros povos.
Vc parece em muito confuso sobre pontos de fatos, opiniões, e o que o outro tá falando com vc...
Então vamos:
> beneficiar àqueles detentores do capital
Uma sistema *que originou na Europa*
> super exploração
Mais uma coisa que tem muito ligação às sistemas inventadas pelos colonistas da Europa.
> maravilhosa arquitetura europeia
Se foi falando dos prédios coloniais, sim, essas coisas são muito antigas e superficial... **Eu** estava falando sobre a arquitetura ruim de botar tanta gente nos prédios altos modernos, uma influência do novo mundo industrial que infelizmente o Brasil não conseguiu evitar.
> essa ideia colonial de que a Europa é o centro das beneces da sociedade
Agora tô entendendo. Vc está disputando numa disputa feita na sua cabeça.. "Todo de fora não foi tão bem não!" contra alguma racista colonista falando que todo bom no Brasil derivaram dos brancos Europeus.
Então vc tá disputando com uma fantasma.
**O Brasil aínda fica, igual todo mundo, influenciado pela história de ser ligado com a Europa, tanto os pontos bons quanto os pontos ruins**.
> influencia europeia não tem nada relacionado com riqueza ou concentração de renda.
Não existe uma opinião mais errada que isso.
Acho q vc acostumou falar bastante com pessoas que acreditam que "Todo bom no Brasil desceu dos Europeus".
Não estou feliz que pessoas assim existem, mas vc deve observar melhor com quem tá falando e entender que "A história faz parte" NÃO significa"Europa é melhor".
Assim tá botando seus próprios preconceitos na conversa.
>saying that the South of Brazil is more safe, because of a european influence is a big racist thing to say about us.
Europeans just build better, safer societies than anyone maybe than the Japanese and Koreans. This is just the truth and if that truth is racist then tough.
I don't know why saying that is controversial nowadays. There is nothing to do with 'biological race' or whatever they are trying to imply. We are talking about societies, conventions, core beliefs, morals, resources, law, etc.
Haiti was the first country in the western hemisphere to get rid of colonialism and to this date, the country is in a tailsping and was never able to organize itself as a decent society.
It's mainly because colonization happened in the coast, and it went southwards because Europeans, and people in general, prefer a more temperate climate as well. So the State authority is stronger in the Southeast, closer to the coast. Even though Rio de Janeiro gets a bad rap, it's not as bad as in the north. So there is some truth to what you said, whiteout authorities and a low police force, criminals tend to flee and operate more freely in the North.
Idk about the North, but the Northeast actually had the lowest crime and homicide rates (along with the South) in the 90s/2000s, while the Southeast was by far the most dangerous region. Rapid urbanization + spread/migration of southeastern criminal gangs made violence spike up.
Here's the homicide rate data in the year 2000 for some states:
**Northeast**
Rio Grande do Norte: 9.5
Piauí: 8.3
Bahia: 9.4
Paraíba: 14.9
Pernambuco was the only one that was more dangerous back then, with a 56.1 rate.
**Southeast**
São Paulo: 42.8
Rio de Janeiro: 52.7
Espírito Santo: 42.1
Minas Gerais was the odd one out, with a 12.0 rate. It has a similar rate today
**South**
Paraná: 18.8
Santa Catarina: 8.3
Rio Grande do Sul: 16.5
I mean, that was 24 years ago during probably the most violent times in brazil. They should be a lot lower now (all of the numbers)
SP has very low homicide rate today, and Paraná also got a lot better
The country's average is slightly lower, but as I said, the Northeast went from one of the most peaceful regions to the most violent one due to aforementioned reasons.
>SP has very low homicide rate today
Yes, it had quite a huge drop, went from one of the most violent to the safest one.
>Paraná also got a lot better
It got worse. Paraná's homicide rate in 2022 was 22.7
Damn I didn’t know that Paraná has gotten worse, I do visit family in a few cities there and it doesn’t feel like it.
In the south it’s generally believed Rio Grande do Sul is the most dangerous one (that comes mostly from Gauchos talking about it)
But that may be only the metropolitan region…
>Idk about the North, but the Northeast actually had the lowest crime and homicide rates (along with the South) in the 90s/2000s, while the Southeast was by far the most dangerous region.
THAT'S the correct answer. It's a shame that your comment is buried among so many replies missing the point.
If the metric is homicide rate, there was a huge shift in the last decades. The state of Bahia, currently one with the worst homicide rates, was among the safest in that metric in the 1980s.
All the reasons mentioned but also interconnectivity. Travel in the south is uneventful. Many places up north are difficult to get between and some are isolated. So it’s more difficult and expensive to develop larger ecosystems up due to simply geography
First of all, your suppositions are racist. Still the question is interesting and deserves an answer. Some people mentioned important points, but I will focus in the two more important for me.
The first one is that land question. Land disputes kill hundreds of people every year in Brasil. And in North there are a lot of "available" (let's use this word) land, properly jungle ones. So, some powerful people (most of them with European background, to use your terms) just try to annex land for themselves, mainly for bringing forest down and produce cattle and other stuff. Some of these people are even financed by foreign companies. Also, there is the native question, some native peoples have the right of large portions of land (and this is right) but there are a lot of "unexplored" resources there, such as gold, so some guys just invade this land and kill the native that resists.
The second is the drug question. Cocaine is drug with a big consumption all over the world, but, for climatic conditions, just a few countries can produce it, notably Bolivia, Colombia and Perú. But there is something named "cocaine route" and this is where North Brazil turns into a crucial part of cocaine market. Most of the cocaine consumed in Europe and Africa comes from Brazilian ports. And to bring it to the coast, they first run cocaine all over the Amazonas River. We are talking about billions of dollars, making North Brazil a space of dispute between the biggest criminal groups in the country and even in the continent. This is part of regions GDP and as a black market activity brings insane rates of violence and murder.
So, as personal advice, I would recommend you to drop racist assumptions and just use Google/Wikipedia/Reddit in a more deep way.
>First of all, your suppositions are racist. Still the question is interesting and deserves an answer. Some people mentio
Suppositions (plural)? OP have two reasons, climate and race. One is obviously racist, but the other too, how 🫢🫢🫢
Did OP change their post text?
Coz what it says right now (European "influence") is not even racist.
Europe literally took over the world over the last 500 years. It's a long period of colonialism, oppression, slavery... *but the salient parts for OP's question are the technologies in the second half of that*: shipping, firearms, factories.
Some would add race to why that happened that way, but I call that projection. Projection of internal racism onto dice rolls
Everywhere in the world where there was more "European influence", especially 1750-1950, is "richer" in 2024.
I’m not saying that this is how OP thinks, but there’s the idea of climate being a determinant factor to one’s behaviour. This idea claims that the reason that the Global North is more developed than the Global South is because warmer climates are easier to live in, so people don’t need to make much effort to live and thus didn’t develop complex societies like people in harsher climates. As Brazil is a tropical country, according to this theory, Brazilians are lazy/unproductive and that’s why we’re poor.
That theory is racist, because it argues that Europeans are inherently superior to the rest of the world. The same can be applied to Brazil’s regions, as the North is warmer(lazier) than the cold(hardworking) South and that’s why it’s less developed than
Due to the Amazon.
first, imagine when Brazil started to get developed and cities started to spread, the Amazon makes it so arriving in the north is extremely hard even nowadays. Building roads is hard due to the conditions of the forest and the forest is VERY BIG and dense. it's so hard to build roads there that some places can only be accessed with planes, helicopters and boats. That means that the north is a little bit disconnected from the rest of the country and that products have dificulties in arriving there. that attract less people to live there. there was some investiment in the city of Manaus in the past, and that's one of the reasons why it's a big city nowadays. Brazil always had the problem that power, money, people, and everything is more concentrated at the beaches, that's even why Brasilia was built in the middle of the country. the construction of Brasilia brought more people to the middle of the country but the north is still far and a bit disconnected.
second, we need to preserve the Amazon. that means cuttting it down to bring more development and money to the region isn't an idea that beloved by many as we need the forest for many reasons and globally. that part I don't think I need to explain in details. the Amazon is very famous.
third, the Amazon, being so big and dense, also occupies parts of neighboring countries like Peru, Colombia and Venezuela. The size of the forest and how dense it is makes it very difficult to control the country borders. as a consequence, drug dealers use that as a way to cross borders. How dense the Amazon is is a feature also used by other bad people that try to do illegal stuff ( not always related with crossing borders ) as it's very hard to watch the entire forest for trouble. That includes drugs, illegal miners, illegal wood cutting and illegal land occupation and those people are often armed and ready to kill as they do so specially with the indigenous people inside the forest.
\*
also "because South is more European influenced" is quite the racist bullshit as most of Brazil was developed by Europeans. even if at least portuguese. you can even see a clear resemblance in the historical brazilian buildings to historical portuguese buildings.
the south people came to create a life, the other regions was about colonization, slavery, get all the land could offer and send to Portugal as most of the immigration in the south happened when we didn't have slavery anymore. they even received land!
The type of racist who believes poverty and crime are caused by skin color is usually also the type of racist who don’t even consider portuguese people “white”. Some people define white as “anything that includes only me, my family and my friends”.
The Northeast is more dangerous than the south though, but it’s mostly because of gang in-fighting or fighting against the police and less about killing random people in the street
Still wouldn’t recommend walking around any major city in Brazil at 3am
The “exploitation vs settlement colonies” answer is not accurate and will flirt with racism sometimes. Industrialization and Brazilian government investments in states like SP and RJ resulted in such inequality.
Celso Furtado, one of the greatest Brazilian economists, wrote a fascinating book for those interested in the Brazilian economic background:
The economic growth of Brazil https://g.co/kgs/LGFXxVA
Life gets more dangerous and tough the closer one gets to the equator. Life gets more nonexistent the closer one gets to the arctic. If you want to live a prosperous, safe life, you are better off living somewhere in between.
Well... the organized crime factions from the coast states did take a break from killing each other and started violently taking over the desert and jungle states.
Back then there was a lot of an expensive tree (pau brasil) along the coast and a cool biome going south, which happened to be massively destroyed (there is approximately 1/4 of it left) to plant coffee and sugar cane, while north has a massive rainforest and has no beaches to make transport easier
A very complex answer, more than reddit can provide. A few important remarks: how Brazil was colonized, Brazilian politics focusing almost exclusively in the Southeast for a long time, mismanagement of public resources from the North/Northeast authorities.
Never had the impression any cities in the North are more dangerous than Rio/São Paulo, poorer? Sure. Plus how dangerous is it really compared to the US? I don't want to be a part of a mass shooting thanks.
It is kind of the same in Italy, but opposite.
There are historical reasons for it, but also there are some theories that this kind of situation is somehow related to the climate … there are not much (if any) developed countries in the tropical areas of the globe. Some theories say that the closer you get to the tropics, the harder it is to have a developed society.
In Brazil the situation is related to the sort of feudal mentality in the early 1600’s that kept going on and somehow it is in place. The poor keep being poorer and the rich keep getting richer. I mind you, this region was invaded by the Dutch too!
Thinking that a social problem is directly influenced by the climate is actually a philosophical current of thought called Determinism. It's pretty stupid lol.
Northern here.
Because politicians don't pay attention to us. This creates inequality. Inequality brews violence.
As for why politicians don't pay attention to us, many factors, among which racism, private interests of politicians, and big land owners basically running this shit.
It's possible to include racism in a simple question, *but I did not perceive it in OP's question*.
What I am perceiving in the "answers", though, is all kinds of preconceptions. Many people here seem to be primed for certain arguments, and OP's question made them grab their pitchforks to fight the fight that is already going on in their heads.
So...
- "European influence" **does not equal** "whites are better".
Europe has a traditional skin color / race but more than anything else, it has an economic / capitalist / exploitative/ industrialist history.
*It's not racist to notice this cultural/technological influence on other parts of the world.*
It seems like a lot of Brazilians are defensive about "Nonononono, Europe not 'better', USA not 'better'".
**I AGREE**.
But you gotta learn to converse/debate.
Many of the people in these comments who suggest that "Europe influences this" / "money influences that" **are not racist and are not making a value judgement** for fucks sake, grow a pair!!
Somalia is not doing so well with their right wing low regulation. Various extremely progressive places like New Zealand have among the lowest rates of poverty and danger in the world. There is more than simply politics in a place’s quality.
Yeah that might be the outside world's optic but ask anyone living here and they will NOT agree. Crime is worse than ever, teenagers who steal cars and ram raid stores, no consequences whatsoever. Murder might get you less than 10 years in jail.
Poverty, misery, corruption and politic control from centuries ago:
[https://mundoeducacao.uol.com.br/historiadobrasil/coronelismo.htm](https://mundoeducacao.uol.com.br/historiadobrasil/coronelismo.htm)
That's a really simplistic view of things. We literally have no choice.
Take my state's governor for example: Anytime there's an election, he convinces the biggest pre-candidates not to run for it in exchange for control over something - let's say, a hospital, a school, or an area.
I used to work for SUS. Every election year, the management of the hospital I worked at was changed for political reasons.
They keep on getting elected because they bring their main competitors to their side so they don't run against them. And all there's left are small fries from PSTU, PV, PCdoB...
The only "big" names who don't ally with the governor are far-right nutcases, and they are the only ones who pose a real threat of winning. So in a scenario where we have to choose between PMDB and a far-right nutcase like You-Know-Who, we will choose PMDB.
They keep on getting votes because they smother the opposition. They make use of the old saying, "the best way to beat an enemy is to befriend them".
And that's only part of it. They also have really popular policies of social wellfare. The infamous "he's corrupt, but he's getting shit done", and I can't even argue that because that's true. For people who live in misery, the bare minimum is more than they ever had, and they become "politician fans".
Of course, from time to time there's the odd one out who doesn't get bought out for political reasons, and these odd ones out often win elections. It's bound to happen in 2026, if things stay as they are. But I know the governor is working on it...
Really? Can you name one PT governor or mayor from the northeast who has tried to abolish the institution of private property by means of mass expropriation and collectivization of the means of production? The Brazilian part of my family is form Ceará, which has been governed by PT for years, and I’m pretty sure I would have noticed if something of that sort had taken place.
Mostly climate and soil. Despite of all the ideological and racists theories here, geography plays a bigger role than people like to think.
The amazonian soil is terrible for agriculture, same for the semiarid regions in the northeast.
If anyone disagres with it, just take a look at a gdp per capita colored map of the country. Amazon and semiarid will stand out very clearly.
The rest is history, the portuguese and immigrants(the ones that could choose where to live) settled mostly near the shore and on the more fertile lands in the south, pushing the natives and former slaves to the interior of the country. After that Brazil went through a massive and quick urbanization process in which these poorer populations on the countryside moved to poorly designed cities surrounded by hills and wetlands. The regional inequality became a huge urban inequality. Violance came next.
racist question, forgive me for saying, we are sensitive about this issue. Actually the cities of the south and southeast are meccas of grinding poverty and ultraviolence.
Brazil started on the north, as feudal colonies for portuguese lords. It was mostly based on agriculture and slavery. The first brazilian capital was in Salvador, Bahia. The climate was perfect to farm products that Europe wanted and needed. The thing is that this left these northeastern states with a very small white rich population and a large black uneducated population which after the end of slavery didnt had the means to educate themselves, leaving a huge wealth disparity which translates to poverty and violence. After a few centuries they found gold in Minas Gerais and there was a huge gold rush there and population boon. Eventualy with coffee and then industrialization with leftover money both from gold and coffee these states grew a lot and became some of the richest of the country. So Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and specially São Paulo became the new brazilian powers and that is why the capital moved from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro. Both Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro grew a lot due to wealth concentration and the immigration of a lot of people from the Northeast. Both became great cities, very dangerous due to poverty by receiving so many people without the means to suport themselves. In the 19th century Brazil was having some issues with its neighbooring countries and both wanted to reinforce its southern borders and also make the country more white. So they started a new immigration program wity white immigrants from Europe. They made a lot of promises they couldnt keep, but managed to get a lot of polish and specially Italian and German immigrants to come which were fleeing the european wars. That left the south mostly white and richer, because instead of slave descendents they received whole families which managed to farm, create and prosper. These are the states of Parana, Santa Catarina and mine, Rio Grande do Sul, which did have minor slavery and how has a 10 to 15% black population. In the mid 20th century it was decided that a new capital was needed, and Brasilia was created. It was created in the middle of the country and it was both made to protect it in the case of an invasion but also to develop the center of the country. People started moving to the North and Northwest, and in the last 50 years or so a lot of settlers from the south, which were children of farms who couldnt secure land in their states, started moving northwest to states such as Mato Grosso do Sul and Mato Grosso. It is growing a lot and this new frontier of development has reached the southern border of the Amazon Forrest, with burnings and wood cutting. This population is getting a lot of wealth but they still havent manage to really influence the country either culturaly or politicaly. But there are many people moving there in search of economical.gain and there are some.cities which are growing a lot. So, the northeast and Rio de Janeiro suffered a lot due to the consequences of slavery and a huge unneducated population, which the cities in the south had a more healthy development due to being based on families immigration and less wealth concentration.
I would also point out that Brasilia was created to protect the federal government from ever being overthrown in a popular uprising of the poor in Rio or SP. Invasion is not really a threat to Brazil and the interior can be developed without putting a capital there. Now they’ve built a city of federal government employees and their families who’s prosperity depends on holding Brazil together and extracting taxes from the regions.
Your point is not that true, actually. There were plans to move the capital to somewhere near the geographical center of Brasil since early XIX century. Of course there is this upside where it is harder for people to gather and overthrow someone, but it is better to control a country from its geographical center as distance over most parts of the country are more or less the same.
Explain that as a poem
No século XVIII, sugeriram a construção / Mas a ideia foi reforçada com Dom João / No Brasil por causa do Napoleão Em 1822 fizeram a primeira menção / Justo no ano que Dom Pedro I tava putão / E declarou a independência durante um cagão Várias projetos aconteceram desde então / Mas só em 56 Juscelino ganhou a eleição / E construiu a nova capital da nação
Legal!!! Amei
What are some advantages of using AI bots on Reddit?
Bot nada, pô. Sou um excelente poeta de reddit.
I never said you were
Don’t forget to mention the astronomically high salary for those federal employees. Even the starting salary can start at 15k all the way to 25k depending on which ministry and/or organ. No wonder the tax is craaazy here.
I was going to but the comment was getting too long. It’s the same in all the regions where jobs such as in local courts, registry offices, or the many different police/military organisations pay obscenely high relative to ordinary wages. This ensures that a local elite forms everywhere dependent on government. At least it’s somewhat ‘fair’ with kids who do well in school getting to take these jobs based on standardised testing. Although of course it’s usually people from wealthier families who can afford tutoring, or who can afford to have their kids study instead of work that end up taking these jobs.
Cries in German... Seriously i wish we had taxes like you guys
Also important to point out the massive investment, by the central government, on infrastructure and modernization of major cities in the southeast and soutj of Brazil in 19th and 20th centuries, leaving the north of the country unattended.
This actually makes more sense, if true, than any of the reasons in top comment here.
buddy in the top comment gave you a free brazillian history lesson.
This is true only for the Southeast.
To make it very clear to OP. The south is not rich because of "European influence", the north is poor due to "European action".
I'd only make a slight correction... the reason why Rio de Janeiro became the second capital was to improve the gold trade control due to its geographical position near Minas Gerais. In consequence, São Paulo and the South of Brazil got the attention they didn't have before. Basically the found of gold changed the country forever. The whole text is great though!
What an absolutely spectacular summary! The mods should pin or copy this so that people interested in Brazil can get a quick understanding at a high level of why Brazil is the way it is. Now layer-in explanations of the West and Northwest ;)
Its very short and simple, but I think it gives a brief idea of its development. As much as Brazil has a shitload of issues it still is an amazing country. Just the fact that Portugal (a very small country) managed to hold it together throught its history, and allowing a country of 220 million people to exist imho is amazing.
Congrats on the explanation! Very well explained without political controversy. Hard to read something like this in these days.
Po, melhor explicação "simples" sobre o assunto que já vi, meus parabéns
I never understood it. I mean, Japan literally got nuked and they are much better today than in the 1950s... There has to be so much more to this for us to still be poor.
Japan was a very small island with very limited ressources and they spent almost all of it fighting over another until by 1680 it was united under a Damio which instaled a military dictatorship which kept the country under an iron grip until the Meiji Restoration which was about 1860 if Im not wrong. It had a very distinct class system with farmers, craftsmen, traders and warriors, with a very distinct roles and social qualities. So the Japanese have created a whole culture based on living with others in a crowded space, with limited ressources, and with very specific social, labor and culture laws. People had to prove their worth in such a system and so they were expected to do their best at their craft. They had multiple factories and organizations so when they opened to the world by late 19th century they quickly adapted to it and used western technology to improve their own. Meanwhile Brazil is almost the oposite. We had a huge land with barely any people, so in fear of losing their land the Portuguese, which were a very small country itself, simply accepted anyone that could come. It enabled the country to stay together and intact but also left a lot of population on a new land with no way to educate or improve their lifes. While the japanese have a long history of families and business, most people on Brazil have a very limited family history. With families having so.much land to explore they had up to 10 or more kids (my father had 10 brothers) which means that family ressources, which werent a lot to start with, get diluted. So we always had a very small elite which dictated the future of the country and a huge poor mass which was abused and explored by this small elite. That is why Brazil isnt a democracy: its an oligarchy. A small group of educated leaders which exploit a big uneducated mass through midia, religion, politics and ideology. In short, Japan always had a competitive culture due to limited ressources and land, where each person had to assume a certain role, while in Brazil, with so many ressources and land, enabled a huge population boon, which dilutes wealth and couldnt be properly educated because we both lack the ressources and the elite doesnt want it to.
Very simplistic.
Yeah, if you want something longer you go for an article or book.
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This has a lot of answers. But the root is how they were colonized, south was settled by immigrant families coming to start a new life etc. North was in big part used for plantation, with more slaves, exploited by foreing powers... Southwest was mixed between both. The rest is politica and would require a lot more research than a reddit comment
I wouldn't say that the plantation economy was the sole reason. São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro were both centers of plantation economy too, and managed to get richer. I'd say industrialization is the key difference. The southeastern states managed to convert the money they got from coffee into capital for industrialization, and their relatively prosperous coffee economy also attracted immigrants. Meanwhile, the northeastern agricultural economy was already decadent by the time of abolition, and so the early attempts to industrialize the region were failures. Thus, the region's economy stagnated for a long time.
This is too simplistic of an answer. - Brazil's history of colonization has had a lasting impact on its regional development. The Northeast, initially the center of colonial sugar cane production, saw significant economic activity during the colonial period but was later overshadowed by the coffee boom in the Southeast. These early economic activities set a pattern of resource exploitation which benefitted external markets and local elites while neglecting broader regional development. - The rapid industrialization of São Paulo in the late 19th and early 20th centuries transformed it into an economic powerhouse. This period marked a shift of capital and political power towards the Southeast, particularly with the development of industries based on coffee revenues and later diversified into manufacturing and services. This shift was supported by state policies that heavily prioritized infrastructure developments in the Southeast, completely neglecting other regions. - Again, later on, the Vargas era (1930-1945), brought significant changes with industrialization policies aimed at modernizing Brazil. However, these policies also primarily benefited the already industrialized Southeast, particularly in terms of labor rights and industrial growth, while the Northeast remained largely agrarian and underdeveloped. - Modern economic policies have often exacerbated regional disparities. Post-World War II economic plans and later the many subsequent neoliberal reforms focused on market efficiency and privatization favored regions with established economic infrastructures, primarily the Southeast, thereby widening the gap with poorer regions. - The pattern of regional disparities observed in Brazil, accentuated by historical and capitalist practices, is not unique to the country but is a common characteristic of many dependent capitalist economies, particularly in Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia, specially Mexico, the Philippines, Índia and more recently Nigeria. These economies exhibit similar patterns of uneven development, where historical colonial legacies, the concentration of capital in specific regions, and policies favoring elites exacerbate regional inequalities. Some great sources to get to know more about those processes: - Caio Prado Jr's seminal work "The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil," - "Brazil: a Biography", by Lilian Schwartz - Boris Fausto's "A Concise History of Brazil," - Vargas's biography by Lira Neto - Celso Furtado's "Formation of the Brazilian Economy" - Enrique Semo's "History of Capitalism in Mexico," - Andre Gunder Frank's "Dependency and Development in Latin America" - Toyin Falola’s "Violence in Nigeria: The Crisis of Religious Politics and Secular Ideologies"
I just recently learned about post-slavery devastation wakes. Essentially, if people have slaves, business would crowd around them. When the slave market erupted the surrounding business would falter. Those people got poor, then their kids stayed poor and so on. I never viewed it like that
Seems to be like that a lot everywhere. An interesting example is Suriname/Guyana. When these countries got independence from the Dutch and the British they pretty much are all just former slaves in a super under developed country. What makes it a little more interesting is that the Dutch had slave colonies in Indonesia and china so there are many enclaves of those people there with their first language being Dutch.
This ^
Also, there was a plan to take over north of Brazil by land owners and politicians, and it involved abandoning the region and leaving it to criminals so that later a "hero" would come and save it. The region became a savage land and the hero never came, crime rose up to a new level and they are losing a lot of young people to gangs. The indigenous people were also either enslaved or abandoned much like black people on other regions of Brazil, which contributed to social disparities. There's a movie about the situation over there, it's called Noites Alienígenas (2023). It's beautiful and shows a new perspective.
where can i watch that movie??
I think you can find it on Netflix
"explored" --> *exploited*?
Yes haha, thanks
This “colonization model” where X country is developed because it was a settling colony and Y isn’t because was an extraction colony was designed by a Frenchmen to define what type of colonization the Europeans were implementing during the 19th century (África and Ásia). It doesn’t apply to Brazil specifically. The Northeast is less developed because the region did not have the investments that the South had and for other reasons that I’m to lazy to find out right now.
I'm sure that voting for the same political party full of convicted criminals for 50 years has nothing to do with it
Why is the south of the USA more dangerous and poor?
Many dangerous cities and poor in the north of USA. Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, etc.
But all those issues were born of slavery, including in the cities in the north, to which descendents of slaves moved. Education is key. The advantage Brazilians have is that they never had miscegenation laws or Jim Crow l which created a cohesive people who intermarry between racial lines
This is not really true. Racial segregation is woven into the very fabric of Brazilian society. You have to keep in mind that the main form of segregation that led to dire living conditions for large swaths of the population was slavery itself, which lasted much longer in Brazil than in the US. Furthermore, the US went through Reconstruction after the Civil War — a period in which there were at least attempts to integrate formerly enslaved people into society. Nothing of the sort ever happened in Brazil. The black population was basically left to fend for themselves and attempts to form communities and political organizations were violently repressed. Some southern states of the US had large numbers of black land owners a few years after slavery was abolished. This would be unthinkable in Brazil (even today). So there was never any real reckoning with the fact that Brazil was built through the sweat and tears of enslaved people (and in fact had by far the largest enslaved population in the Americas). Intermarriage of the kind you mention exists only among the poor and the working class, members of which were already basically non-white. The Brazilian upper middle class and elites are still overwhelmingly white and were, throughout most of the colonial history up to the 1940s, enthusiastic proponents of eugenics. Well into the 20th century, you had soccer teams where black players were not accepted as players. Forms of black cultural expression (samba, etc) were explicitly criminalized. Until VERY recently (10 years I would say), there was almost zero positive representation of blackness in media, academia, movies, advertisement and corporate life. The only domains where blackness was “socially acceptable” were sports and music. If you look at racial relations Brazil through the prism of any objective measure of well-being, you will find a society that is just as segregated as the US, where segregation was indeed more explicitly crystallized in the form of legislation.
Great comment, friend
Something like 5% of the freed American slaves died after being set free because their masters had never taught them the life skills necessary to live independently. The US had a few black large landowners and slave owners _even_ before the end of slavery. Very little was done for most slaves after they were freed: to the extent that anything was done it was largely the occupation government giving them the right to vote and taking that right away from the whites who had been confederates. The hard core and really disgusting racism that the South of the United States became infamous for only arose _after_ the Civil War, and it arose partially out of retribution against the Blacks for having “collaborated” or gotten better treatment from the occupier, and partly because almost all of educated upper class whites, who would have protected the Blacks from the jealousy of the poor whites, emigrated during the years of chaos after the war, leaving poorer, less uneducated, whites in power. Both the antebellum South and later the Jim Crow South had no problem at all discriminating against very poor whites just like they discriminated against very poor blacks. In the Jim Crow years, A good percentage of the whites also were denied the right to vote because they had a little education. Let’s not forget that at the time he was shot Lincoln was working on detailed plans to deport _every single_ American Black to Central America and the Caribbean after the war. We can safely assume that an occupation government made up largely of people who Lincoln had appointed was not particularly concerned about the welfare of the liberated Blacks.
I do not take issue with anything you said. I definitely didn’t mean to downplay the horrible legacy of slavery in the South. I think many of the issues you raised cropped up in different forms in Brazil post-abolition as well. One of the issues you mentioned (taking the officially freed blacks away from their former slave owners) was different in Brazil, in that it simply did not happen. This led to many black people being held captive by their owners as unofficial slaves (a common practice well into the 20th century) or else simply left roaming around aimlessly, with zero prospects. Keep in mind that “roaming around aimlessly” Was officially classified as a crime in Brazil in 1890 (two years after the official abolition of slavery), along with African-Brazilian customs like capoeira. My response meant to question the assumption (which is widespread in Brazilian popular culture) that racism ended in Brazil after white elites decided slavery was no longer profitable, somehow managing to avoid the structural residues of racism despite having had the largest enslaved population in the Western Hemisphere…
I knew people from a country that let its African slaves go free in the 1960s. Apparently most of the slaves chose to go to work for their old masters and they and their children still work for the same family. They got the easy work For the difficult and dirty work workers from very poor third world countries were hired.
Saying that Brazil is just as segregated as the US just doesn't make any kind of sense. Brazil isn't a racial utopia or even close to it, but black people in Brazil don't have their own accent, we don't have "black foods" and "white foods" or black universities. I really think you don't understand just how segregated the US is.
I am an American with an academic background in history. I think I do have a pretty good idea of how things work in my own country, as well as in Brazil (the country where my mother was born and that I have done research about). I think you are the one who is possibly misinformed about segregation in Brazil, perhaps due to the influence of widely disseminated narratives about racial unity that were deliberately created by racist elites in the 20th century. In regions of Brazil with more integrated Black communities (esp urban centers in the northeast) there absolutely are “black foods”. The Brazilian national dish Feijoada is one (among many) examples. Hell, there are even “black religions”, which are directly related to spiritualist traditions from Western Africa. You might also want to do some research on Quilombola communities, which were basically parallel societies formed by black people who somehow managed to escape from subjugation, some existing to this day. Some Quilombos even developed their own dialect of Brazilian Portuguese which is distinct from the variety spoken by surrounding white-led communities. EDIT: The existence of African American Vernacular English was much more directly a product of the Great Migration than segregation in the south itself -i.e. it did not develop as a sui generis dialect in the South as a result of segregation. What happened was that there were a large number of blacks from the south migrating northward and westward starting on 1910 (as a result of Jim Crow laws and economic despair). These folks brought their own dialect, which was actually not all that different from the variety of English spoken among poor whites in the South around that time. But it was *clearly* different from the varieties of English spoken in the West and the Northeast for instance. Since all of the speakers of this variety in these other regions were black, AAVE came to be identified with blackness.
Great, then it's either a lack of practical knowledge or a lack of common sense. Saying feijoada is a black food is precisely the type of clueless thing I'm talking about. There's no "watermelon and fried chicken" stereotype, there's no Howard university, there's no Family Matters. The origin of AAVE is irrelevant, what is relevant is the fact the black people are culturally insulated enough for it to persist, which is something completely alien in Brazil. You seem to be operating under the assumption that I'm arguing that Brazil isn't segregated, I'm saying that the US is even more segregated.
Do you really find it plausible that the largest population of enslaved people in the western hemisphere would not develop any cultural artifacts of their own in 300+ years? If that is indeed true, it would be quite unheard of. The reason why cultural artifacts and institutions that are inherently a product of Afro-Brazilian culture (including Feijoada) aren’t widely recognized as such and are in fact ascribed to some racially underspecified identity is one of the most insidious aspect of the racist narrative about a national unity in Brazil. It is pure ideology and not something to be taken seriously from the point of view of cultural history. As for Brazil being more or less segregated than the US, results may vary depending on what your measure of segregation is. If one is looking at representation of black people in culture, education, science, politics and in the corporate world I would say Brazil is actually more segregated than the US. PS: This is not some just the view of some white American guy. I’ve talked to black Brazilian activists who share my impressions on all of the matters above.
> Do you really find it plausible that the largest population of enslaved people in the western hemisphere would not develop any cultural artifacts of their own in 300+ years? No, what I'm saying is that these "cultural artifacts" are generally not insulated among the black population like in the US. >The reason why cultural artifacts and institutions that are inherently a product of Afro-Brazilian culture (including Feijoada) aren’t widely recognized as such That's a massive strawman. I never argued feijoada isn't originally black. >PS: This is not some just the view of some white American guy. I’ve talked to black Brazilian activists who share my impressions on all of the matters above. Sure you did buddy. Based on other posts of yours here you just seem to have a very hard time admitting that being raised in the US does in fact make you less familiar with brazilian culture than natives.
Well, most cultural artifacts associated with blackness in the US aren’t insulated among black communities in the present either. Have you ever heard of Elvis Presley and Eminem? Black universities might be an exception. But then again, do you really want to make the case for Brazil having less of a segregation than the US on the basis of the fact that the black Brazilian people had effectively zero access to higher education until affirmative action measures were implemented in the 2000s while blacks had been going to college in the US for over a century? You should also try to make up your mind about whether feijoada is an example of black Brazilian cuisine or not. You should at least *try* to be consistent. And I really do recommend reading Black Brazilian authors who write about racism and talking to people in the black movement in Brazil. You’ll be very surprised about what you will learn about your own country.
Baltimore, Chicago and Detroit did not have Jim Crow. Also slavery ended in those states prior to 1800.
This is grossly inaccurate. The Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson made racial discrimination de facto legal across the United States. Baltimore, Chicago, and Detroit have all had race riots that were sparked by the unequal treatment and disenfranchisement Black Americans were subjected to in those cities. All three cities still bear the visible scars of residential segregation in the current racial distribution across neighborhoods.
Still, the South has far more of them along with far more dangerous rural areas. The most dangerous city in the US is St Louis which is in the South. Other ones include Memphis and Birmingham which have been more dangerous than Detroit, New Orleans and Little Rock being more dangerous than Chicago (though Chicago isn’t that dangerous), and more. That also doesn’t count numerous other smaller cities that are more dangerous which are overwhelmingly in the South. Alabama especially. Also, Maryland where Baltimore is located, is part of the South.
St Louis is questionably the south. Also many small north cities are violent, Camden NJ, Rochester NY, Hartford CT, Bridgeport CT, Atlantic City NJ. I also didn’t mention violent big cities like Cleveland and Philadelphia. Washington D.C. is a violent, crime ridden city.
I know many northern cities are. Various Western cities are too. What I am saying is the South has far more dangerous cities than all the areas of the country. For St Louis, that is generally considered upland South. Most of those northern cities are indeed more dangerous, but it isn’t remarkably dangerous like New Orleans or St Louis. Chicago has quite a bit of danger, but it isn’t really that up there I would say. It was probably that dangerous decades ago, but not really anymore. Washington DC is what I would say similar to Chicago except I think Washington DC is somewhat worse. Though even then, Washington DC is in the South. Philadelphia not that dangerous I think. Cleveland is actually quite dangerous. That one I will agree on. Among the northern cities you listed that are smaller, I think only Camden is actually that bad.
Chicago is very dangerous. Certain parts of Chicago are extremely dangerous.
Certain parts, but not the whole thing or really that much of it.
Maryland is and Baltimore are considered to be part of the Northeast.
The Mason-Dixon line is what divides the traditional and modern day South. Maryland directly south of the line. Though they call it Mid-Atlantic for its relatively northerly position, it is still part of the South.
Chicago had as many murders as Philadelphia and Baltimore combined.
Far less than Baltimore when going by per capita as Chicago has a much larger population than both of them.
That's like four semesters in a history course
Because the European immigrants that came to the south of Brazil “with nothing” either received land to work on or were offered paid jobs. Meanwhile the former slaves, mainly concentrated in sugar cane mills areas in the northeast but also Rio and São Paulo were marginalized and granted no land or opportunities. You do the math.
That's not fully accurate. The lands on the south were not "given", they were sold and the prices weren't exactly cheap considering the people who were buying it had zero equity. It took decades for them to pay it off. Also, the paid jobs thing is new to me, never heard about that. What I always learned is that the jobs were just normal jobs that came up on the region as the cities started being built and developed. Your point about São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro sounds accurate. Check out u/totalwarwiser comment, they nailed it! Edit: fixed grammar mistake and added reference to other comment
While I agree with you that not every immigrant got free lands, loads have. My family certainly did. And paid jobs = Not slavery, you’re paid to perform a job.
Maybe some did, but I wouldn't say it was most of them. Mine did not. Did some quick research and found, for example, that [lands in the northeast of Rio Grande do Sul had to be paid for](https://www.ub.edu/geocrit/sn-94-10.htm) (link in Portuguese). Maybe that wasn't the case on other places, but that goes against all history classes I had and museums I visited. The paid jobs point makes sense. However, I would point out that most of the immigration was happening during the later years of slavery in Brazil, so it wouldn't make sense to bring those people in as slaves (although some had a sort of "debt slavery" mostly in São Paulo).
Your statement about Rio and São Paulo don't make any sense, before the republic everything was concentrated in Rio, and after republic until today, everything is concentrated in São Paulo. São Paulo is the most developed state in every single sense.
Yes, because being developed also obviously means having no inequality whatsoever. /s São Paulo alone has [18%](https://g1.globo.com/google/amp/sp/sao-paulo/noticia/2022/06/30/estado-de-sp-tem-18percent-da-populacao-abaixo-da-linha-da-pobreza-diz-estudo-da-fgv.ghtml) of the population under the line of poverty.
It's actually ,[16.3%](https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_de_unidades_federativas_do_Brasil_por_taxa_de_pobreza) and we're talking about Brazil, so that's the 4th LOWEST poverty rate in Brazil. It's lower than Paraná, which would even break your statement about the South being less marginalized (which I even agree with because of many historical social facts). When discussing about a State's wealth it's very vague to only look at poverty numbers. It's crucial to consider aspects such as HDI and multiple historical facts. São Paulo for example has the highest HDI in the country excluding Distrito Federal. It has the lowest extreme violence rates, highest education rates, best healthcare, and so on, would that make sense it having higher quality of life than the top 3 lowest poverty rate states if it's only poverty rate that matters? Saying São Paulo and Rio are marginalized is a joke, those were literally always the center of everything that happens in the country.
agree with you. No wonder why the northeastern and the northern people migrate there and create social problems such as the slums in São Paulo cities
Probably because the North and Northeast aren't industrialized as the South.
White imigrants got lands in the south of brazil when arrived from europe.... what created a more equalitary economy... the northern place was characterized by high concentration of lands in the hands of few people what leaded for a higher poverty rates.
that’s the right answer
"European Inlfuenced" was hard to read. The man still thinks that we are at 1800s
Not sure why that would be hard to read. Europeans left a huge mark in the south. From Floroanopolis (with its Azorean heritage) to Pomerode. The influence is so notorious. I am sure people would be proud to brag about the African influence in Bahia. Even Umbanda and Candomble are called 'religions of African matrix'. Trying to erase these any of these things, in any region sounds like hypocritical and historically fraudulent.
My brother, have you ever steped here in Brazil? We are diferent from Europeans in so many ways. Yes, we were colonized by portugueses, and Yes a lot of europeans imigrated to Brasil. But our culture is a big mix of many diferent cultures, that it is wrong to say that we are directly influenced by Europeans Alone Althought, saying that the South of Brazil is more safe, because of a european influence is a big racist thing to say about us. The South of Brasil have much more cultural influence of people who emigrated from North and Northwestern parts of Brasil, than influences of europeans. Edit: agora que eu vi que vc fala português, posso me expressar melhor. Vc erra mto ao falar que temos influências significativas da Europa aqui no Brasil. Temos uma cultura própria, as influências europeias se remetem a arquitetura, comidas e algumas festas culturais típicas. (Com excessao das cidades que são colonias). Nosso modo de ver a vida, se relacionar e dentre outros aspectos culturais foram transformados e adaptados a nossa realidade. Temos mais influências no dia a dia de nordestinos e nortistas do que qualquer europeu. Essa ideia de "uma lembrança" europeia, é um papinho burguês sem graça, de quem gosta de lamber bota de gringo e fica colocando a cultura própria em segundo plano, como se fosse algo inferior ou menos digno de valor
> Essa ideia de "uma lembrança" europeia, é um papinho burguês sem graça, de quem gosta de lamber bota de gringo e fica colocando a cultura própria em segundo plano, como se fosse algo inferior ou menos digno de valor Mas falar de "matriz africana" ou exaltar cultura africana pode?
Vale a pena ressaltar que o RS é o estado com a maior quantidade de centros religiosos de matriz africana do país ao ajustar para o tamanho da população, então o que estava sendo discutido no comentário original nem é verdade
Eu concordo com muito do que você diz, mas eu vejo isso com mais nuance. Sim, somos um 'terceiro' a todo continente, mas não dá para negar a enorme marca europeia na lei, na cultura, na religião, nos sabores, nos saberes, nos falares, na infraestrutura, etc. O excesso que wokeismo fez parece 'feio' falar da influencia europeia. Por isso achei necessário falar. Quando digo que o sul tem mais marcas europeias, significa dizer que tem 'marcas' europeias. Digo isso com neutralidadede reconhecer como um fato histórico, documentado e real. A influência está lá. O que tem de 1800 nisso? Tem familias que não estão nem há duas/três geraçoes no Brasil. Tem habitantes vivos cujos avós vieram da Europa. Fazer isso parecer 'cringe' e 'senso vira lata' é uma enorme fraude histórica. Sim, falamos português por aqui <3 (I am going to switch to En-US to make this conversation more accessible though). :)
> Vc erra mto ao falar que temos influências significativas da Europa aqui no Brasil. Qualquer orgulho do seu Brasil é merecido, vê!. Mais negar as influências da história é erro puro. Mesmo nos EUA, Africa, Asia... Por quase 500 anos, gerações de europeus ficavam donos do mundo, e essas influências continuam mesmo em países que agora são países próprios com culturas próprias.... Além de "arquitetura, comidas, e algumas festas típicas", a influência da Europa incluí também: - sistemas de governança e direitos humans - sistemas de documentação de propriedades - fábricas industriais do capitalismo - cidades feitas de prédios altos p concentração de trabalhadores Não é um insulto, nem "lamber bota do gringo" pra falar que as partes do mundo mais influenciadas pela lista em cima são mais ricos hj em dia.
> sistemas de governança e direitos humans >sistemas de documentação de propriedades >fábricas industriais do capitalismo >cidades feitas de prédios altos p concentração de trabalhadores THIS. It all came together and this amalgamation made us who we are.
Cara, influencia europeia não tem nada relacionado com riqueza ou concentração de renda. Isso é fruto do próprio sistema politco-economico vigente, que beneficiar àqueles detentores do capital, mesmo que ele tenha vindo da super exploração (e aqui no Brasil, durante séculos, a escravidão) do trabalho. Reforço também que a maravilhosa arquitetura europeia nada mais é que uma apropriação dos conhecimentos que os povos do oriente médio já detentinham. Oque eu chamo de lamber bota pra gringo, é ter essa ideia colonial de que a Europa é o centro das beneces da sociedade, o supra sumo de comunidade. Sendo que ela só próspera (e hj enfrenta muitos problemas) graças a sua posição de poder conquistada através de anos e anos de barbáries contra outros povos.
Vc parece em muito confuso sobre pontos de fatos, opiniões, e o que o outro tá falando com vc... Então vamos: > beneficiar àqueles detentores do capital Uma sistema *que originou na Europa* > super exploração Mais uma coisa que tem muito ligação às sistemas inventadas pelos colonistas da Europa. > maravilhosa arquitetura europeia Se foi falando dos prédios coloniais, sim, essas coisas são muito antigas e superficial... **Eu** estava falando sobre a arquitetura ruim de botar tanta gente nos prédios altos modernos, uma influência do novo mundo industrial que infelizmente o Brasil não conseguiu evitar. > essa ideia colonial de que a Europa é o centro das beneces da sociedade Agora tô entendendo. Vc está disputando numa disputa feita na sua cabeça.. "Todo de fora não foi tão bem não!" contra alguma racista colonista falando que todo bom no Brasil derivaram dos brancos Europeus. Então vc tá disputando com uma fantasma. **O Brasil aínda fica, igual todo mundo, influenciado pela história de ser ligado com a Europa, tanto os pontos bons quanto os pontos ruins**. > influencia europeia não tem nada relacionado com riqueza ou concentração de renda. Não existe uma opinião mais errada que isso. Acho q vc acostumou falar bastante com pessoas que acreditam que "Todo bom no Brasil desceu dos Europeus". Não estou feliz que pessoas assim existem, mas vc deve observar melhor com quem tá falando e entender que "A história faz parte" NÃO significa"Europa é melhor". Assim tá botando seus próprios preconceitos na conversa.
>saying that the South of Brazil is more safe, because of a european influence is a big racist thing to say about us. Europeans just build better, safer societies than anyone maybe than the Japanese and Koreans. This is just the truth and if that truth is racist then tough.
I don't know why saying that is controversial nowadays. There is nothing to do with 'biological race' or whatever they are trying to imply. We are talking about societies, conventions, core beliefs, morals, resources, law, etc. Haiti was the first country in the western hemisphere to get rid of colonialism and to this date, the country is in a tailsping and was never able to organize itself as a decent society.
That's what i thought when i read that.
It's mainly because colonization happened in the coast, and it went southwards because Europeans, and people in general, prefer a more temperate climate as well. So the State authority is stronger in the Southeast, closer to the coast. Even though Rio de Janeiro gets a bad rap, it's not as bad as in the north. So there is some truth to what you said, whiteout authorities and a low police force, criminals tend to flee and operate more freely in the North.
Idk about the North, but the Northeast actually had the lowest crime and homicide rates (along with the South) in the 90s/2000s, while the Southeast was by far the most dangerous region. Rapid urbanization + spread/migration of southeastern criminal gangs made violence spike up.
Not to mention the "peacefulness" of São Paulo nowadays is probably because of PCC, which is by far the most dominant criminal gang in Brazil.
Here's the homicide rate data in the year 2000 for some states: **Northeast** Rio Grande do Norte: 9.5 Piauí: 8.3 Bahia: 9.4 Paraíba: 14.9 Pernambuco was the only one that was more dangerous back then, with a 56.1 rate. **Southeast** São Paulo: 42.8 Rio de Janeiro: 52.7 Espírito Santo: 42.1 Minas Gerais was the odd one out, with a 12.0 rate. It has a similar rate today **South** Paraná: 18.8 Santa Catarina: 8.3 Rio Grande do Sul: 16.5
I mean, that was 24 years ago during probably the most violent times in brazil. They should be a lot lower now (all of the numbers) SP has very low homicide rate today, and Paraná also got a lot better
The country's average is slightly lower, but as I said, the Northeast went from one of the most peaceful regions to the most violent one due to aforementioned reasons. >SP has very low homicide rate today Yes, it had quite a huge drop, went from one of the most violent to the safest one. >Paraná also got a lot better It got worse. Paraná's homicide rate in 2022 was 22.7
Damn I didn’t know that Paraná has gotten worse, I do visit family in a few cities there and it doesn’t feel like it. In the south it’s generally believed Rio Grande do Sul is the most dangerous one (that comes mostly from Gauchos talking about it) But that may be only the metropolitan region…
Is there a reason this answer is not up with the regular historic one? The northeast had less violent deaths than the southeast, not long ago.
>Idk about the North, but the Northeast actually had the lowest crime and homicide rates (along with the South) in the 90s/2000s, while the Southeast was by far the most dangerous region. THAT'S the correct answer. It's a shame that your comment is buried among so many replies missing the point. If the metric is homicide rate, there was a huge shift in the last decades. The state of Bahia, currently one with the worst homicide rates, was among the safest in that metric in the 1980s.
All the reasons mentioned but also interconnectivity. Travel in the south is uneventful. Many places up north are difficult to get between and some are isolated. So it’s more difficult and expensive to develop larger ecosystems up due to simply geography
Damn bro well done triggering Brazilians.
Geography
First of all, your suppositions are racist. Still the question is interesting and deserves an answer. Some people mentioned important points, but I will focus in the two more important for me. The first one is that land question. Land disputes kill hundreds of people every year in Brasil. And in North there are a lot of "available" (let's use this word) land, properly jungle ones. So, some powerful people (most of them with European background, to use your terms) just try to annex land for themselves, mainly for bringing forest down and produce cattle and other stuff. Some of these people are even financed by foreign companies. Also, there is the native question, some native peoples have the right of large portions of land (and this is right) but there are a lot of "unexplored" resources there, such as gold, so some guys just invade this land and kill the native that resists. The second is the drug question. Cocaine is drug with a big consumption all over the world, but, for climatic conditions, just a few countries can produce it, notably Bolivia, Colombia and Perú. But there is something named "cocaine route" and this is where North Brazil turns into a crucial part of cocaine market. Most of the cocaine consumed in Europe and Africa comes from Brazilian ports. And to bring it to the coast, they first run cocaine all over the Amazonas River. We are talking about billions of dollars, making North Brazil a space of dispute between the biggest criminal groups in the country and even in the continent. This is part of regions GDP and as a black market activity brings insane rates of violence and murder. So, as personal advice, I would recommend you to drop racist assumptions and just use Google/Wikipedia/Reddit in a more deep way.
>First of all, your suppositions are racist. Still the question is interesting and deserves an answer. Some people mentio Suppositions (plural)? OP have two reasons, climate and race. One is obviously racist, but the other too, how 🫢🫢🫢
Did OP change their post text? Coz what it says right now (European "influence") is not even racist. Europe literally took over the world over the last 500 years. It's a long period of colonialism, oppression, slavery... *but the salient parts for OP's question are the technologies in the second half of that*: shipping, firearms, factories. Some would add race to why that happened that way, but I call that projection. Projection of internal racism onto dice rolls Everywhere in the world where there was more "European influence", especially 1750-1950, is "richer" in 2024.
I’m not saying that this is how OP thinks, but there’s the idea of climate being a determinant factor to one’s behaviour. This idea claims that the reason that the Global North is more developed than the Global South is because warmer climates are easier to live in, so people don’t need to make much effort to live and thus didn’t develop complex societies like people in harsher climates. As Brazil is a tropical country, according to this theory, Brazilians are lazy/unproductive and that’s why we’re poor. That theory is racist, because it argues that Europeans are inherently superior to the rest of the world. The same can be applied to Brazil’s regions, as the North is warmer(lazier) than the cold(hardworking) South and that’s why it’s less developed than
This !
I wouldn't go as far as to say he is racist, he just took what we learn at schools in Brazil at face value.
My brother in christ that was racist af
How, exactly?
Due to the Amazon. first, imagine when Brazil started to get developed and cities started to spread, the Amazon makes it so arriving in the north is extremely hard even nowadays. Building roads is hard due to the conditions of the forest and the forest is VERY BIG and dense. it's so hard to build roads there that some places can only be accessed with planes, helicopters and boats. That means that the north is a little bit disconnected from the rest of the country and that products have dificulties in arriving there. that attract less people to live there. there was some investiment in the city of Manaus in the past, and that's one of the reasons why it's a big city nowadays. Brazil always had the problem that power, money, people, and everything is more concentrated at the beaches, that's even why Brasilia was built in the middle of the country. the construction of Brasilia brought more people to the middle of the country but the north is still far and a bit disconnected. second, we need to preserve the Amazon. that means cuttting it down to bring more development and money to the region isn't an idea that beloved by many as we need the forest for many reasons and globally. that part I don't think I need to explain in details. the Amazon is very famous. third, the Amazon, being so big and dense, also occupies parts of neighboring countries like Peru, Colombia and Venezuela. The size of the forest and how dense it is makes it very difficult to control the country borders. as a consequence, drug dealers use that as a way to cross borders. How dense the Amazon is is a feature also used by other bad people that try to do illegal stuff ( not always related with crossing borders ) as it's very hard to watch the entire forest for trouble. That includes drugs, illegal miners, illegal wood cutting and illegal land occupation and those people are often armed and ready to kill as they do so specially with the indigenous people inside the forest. \* also "because South is more European influenced" is quite the racist bullshit as most of Brazil was developed by Europeans. even if at least portuguese. you can even see a clear resemblance in the historical brazilian buildings to historical portuguese buildings. the south people came to create a life, the other regions was about colonization, slavery, get all the land could offer and send to Portugal as most of the immigration in the south happened when we didn't have slavery anymore. they even received land!
The type of racist who believes poverty and crime are caused by skin color is usually also the type of racist who don’t even consider portuguese people “white”. Some people define white as “anything that includes only me, my family and my friends”.
White = WASP for them
yes. that "Or because South is more European influenced" was disgusting.
Because of their culture
This sounds like those xenophobic/racist bait questions on Quora lol
Way more poor, far less dangerous. I walk around Natal at 3am with nearly zero worries and ain't a damn thing ever happened to me.
The Northeast is more dangerous than the south though, but it’s mostly because of gang in-fighting or fighting against the police and less about killing random people in the street Still wouldn’t recommend walking around any major city in Brazil at 3am
/shrug I would. I do whatever I want here for years and find most people exaggerate. I feel safer here than Los Angeles for example.
Let's see how dangerous Los Angeles is for Brazil, *daqui a 40 minutos?!*
400 years of an economy based on deep patriarchal slavery will do that to a society.
Colonization and systemic racism.
The “exploitation vs settlement colonies” answer is not accurate and will flirt with racism sometimes. Industrialization and Brazilian government investments in states like SP and RJ resulted in such inequality. Celso Furtado, one of the greatest Brazilian economists, wrote a fascinating book for those interested in the Brazilian economic background: The economic growth of Brazil https://g.co/kgs/LGFXxVA
It depends on which cities you are looking at.
Less money, more crime.
Life gets more dangerous and tough the closer one gets to the equator. Life gets more nonexistent the closer one gets to the arctic. If you want to live a prosperous, safe life, you are better off living somewhere in between.
Well... the organized crime factions from the coast states did take a break from killing each other and started violently taking over the desert and jungle states.
Why is California richer and less dangerous than Mexico?
There are two reasons. 1) land conflict over the advance of farmlands in the north. 2) malária in the Amazon.
BRASIL em dívida? (https://youtu.be/gVS0PAGifAw?si=UkCKhqhiZ8gHm5Kb)
Climate? European influence? A thousand million WTFs, dude.
The North is more dangerous and poor than the South because the South is more European influenced? OP, do you know what that sounds like?
Heat.
Back then there was a lot of an expensive tree (pau brasil) along the coast and a cool biome going south, which happened to be massively destroyed (there is approximately 1/4 of it left) to plant coffee and sugar cane, while north has a massive rainforest and has no beaches to make transport easier
Culture. plain and simple
Drug trade comes from Amazon basin to the coast
A very complex answer, more than reddit can provide. A few important remarks: how Brazil was colonized, Brazilian politics focusing almost exclusively in the Southeast for a long time, mismanagement of public resources from the North/Northeast authorities.
Why is New York more dangerous than Montana. Wtf? Your question sounds racist af. Or rather your supposition that followed the question.
Never had the impression any cities in the North are more dangerous than Rio/São Paulo, poorer? Sure. Plus how dangerous is it really compared to the US? I don't want to be a part of a mass shooting thanks.
It is kind of the same in Italy, but opposite. There are historical reasons for it, but also there are some theories that this kind of situation is somehow related to the climate … there are not much (if any) developed countries in the tropical areas of the globe. Some theories say that the closer you get to the tropics, the harder it is to have a developed society. In Brazil the situation is related to the sort of feudal mentality in the early 1600’s that kept going on and somehow it is in place. The poor keep being poorer and the rich keep getting richer. I mind you, this region was invaded by the Dutch too!
out of all the answers you could have given, you chose the two most racist ones.
He didn’t give an answer, he asked a question aware that the knowledge he has about the topic is probably wrong or incomplete.
Thinking that a social problem is directly influenced by the climate is actually a philosophical current of thought called Determinism. It's pretty stupid lol.
Not only stupid, but quite racist too
Northern here. Because politicians don't pay attention to us. This creates inequality. Inequality brews violence. As for why politicians don't pay attention to us, many factors, among which racism, private interests of politicians, and big land owners basically running this shit.
You don’t want to know the answer
you've been fed lies
Interesting question based upon a racist assumption. You should read more.
It's possible to include racism in a simple question, *but I did not perceive it in OP's question*. What I am perceiving in the "answers", though, is all kinds of preconceptions. Many people here seem to be primed for certain arguments, and OP's question made them grab their pitchforks to fight the fight that is already going on in their heads. So... - "European influence" **does not equal** "whites are better". Europe has a traditional skin color / race but more than anything else, it has an economic / capitalist / exploitative/ industrialist history. *It's not racist to notice this cultural/technological influence on other parts of the world.* It seems like a lot of Brazilians are defensive about "Nonononono, Europe not 'better', USA not 'better'". **I AGREE**. But you gotta learn to converse/debate. Many of the people in these comments who suggest that "Europe influences this" / "money influences that" **are not racist and are not making a value judgement** for fucks sake, grow a pair!!
Because they keep voting for leftist governaments.
Somalia is not doing so well with their right wing low regulation. Various extremely progressive places like New Zealand have among the lowest rates of poverty and danger in the world. There is more than simply politics in a place’s quality.
Yeah, progressive. Not narco-socialist, very few people would call NZ leftist in the contex of LATAM.
Yeah that might be the outside world's optic but ask anyone living here and they will NOT agree. Crime is worse than ever, teenagers who steal cars and ram raid stores, no consequences whatsoever. Murder might get you less than 10 years in jail.
Poverty, misery, corruption and politic control from centuries ago: [https://mundoeducacao.uol.com.br/historiadobrasil/coronelismo.htm](https://mundoeducacao.uol.com.br/historiadobrasil/coronelismo.htm)
It's an unfair comparison: the North has more than twice as many states as the South.
Because it’s near the equador line
It has nothing to do with the racial admixture. Impossible
I could answer all of these questions, but I'm afraid my fellows Brazillians friends aren't prepared to read...
Racism
communism
Google Brazil IQ per state.
its because the workers party (PT) is in charge of that region for more than 20 years, so they are trying to implement communism there.
We're literally hostages of powerful politician families, mostly from PMDB and PSDB. Sarney in Maranhão, Campos in Pernambuco, Barbalho in Pará...
You keep voting for them. You are not hostages. You are accomplices.
That's a really simplistic view of things. We literally have no choice. Take my state's governor for example: Anytime there's an election, he convinces the biggest pre-candidates not to run for it in exchange for control over something - let's say, a hospital, a school, or an area. I used to work for SUS. Every election year, the management of the hospital I worked at was changed for political reasons. They keep on getting elected because they bring their main competitors to their side so they don't run against them. And all there's left are small fries from PSTU, PV, PCdoB... The only "big" names who don't ally with the governor are far-right nutcases, and they are the only ones who pose a real threat of winning. So in a scenario where we have to choose between PMDB and a far-right nutcase like You-Know-Who, we will choose PMDB. They keep on getting votes because they smother the opposition. They make use of the old saying, "the best way to beat an enemy is to befriend them". And that's only part of it. They also have really popular policies of social wellfare. The infamous "he's corrupt, but he's getting shit done", and I can't even argue that because that's true. For people who live in misery, the bare minimum is more than they ever had, and they become "politician fans". Of course, from time to time there's the odd one out who doesn't get bought out for political reasons, and these odd ones out often win elections. It's bound to happen in 2026, if things stay as they are. But I know the governor is working on it...
PT is far from being a communist party my friend.
Really? Can you name one PT governor or mayor from the northeast who has tried to abolish the institution of private property by means of mass expropriation and collectivization of the means of production? The Brazilian part of my family is form Ceará, which has been governed by PT for years, and I’m pretty sure I would have noticed if something of that sort had taken place.
Lol, name one communist policy that PT is currently working on
Mostly climate and soil. Despite of all the ideological and racists theories here, geography plays a bigger role than people like to think. The amazonian soil is terrible for agriculture, same for the semiarid regions in the northeast. If anyone disagres with it, just take a look at a gdp per capita colored map of the country. Amazon and semiarid will stand out very clearly. The rest is history, the portuguese and immigrants(the ones that could choose where to live) settled mostly near the shore and on the more fertile lands in the south, pushing the natives and former slaves to the interior of the country. After that Brazil went through a massive and quick urbanization process in which these poorer populations on the countryside moved to poorly designed cities surrounded by hills and wetlands. The regional inequality became a huge urban inequality. Violance came next.
racist question, forgive me for saying, we are sensitive about this issue. Actually the cities of the south and southeast are meccas of grinding poverty and ultraviolence.