Information you haven't learned about Brazil

By: Ashley Freeman

Portugal discovered Brazil in some year. I don't remember. Brazil is the only non-Spanish speaking country in South America. These facts about Brazil are pretty much the only two I can recall because countless history teachers drilled them into my head. I'm willing to bet that if you asked the average teenager that is what they would answer as well.

Obviously I had to do a little research about Brazil so I could write about it on this website. Not to my surprise, I found out that Pedro Cabral is credited with bumping into Brazil. I say bumping because he didn't mean to find it. Also, I found out that the first immigrants from Portugal were ex-convicts, and eventually the Portugal royal family moved to live in Rio de Janeiro. There is more boring information to tell that I am sure if you read you will just click on the "Back" button to go to a different website. 

After looking at pictures of Brazil, I called my parents and asked them if we could vacation in Rio de Janeiro. Beautiful beaches, affordable living, a large city—definitely meets my vacation requirements. Surprisingly though, they were like absolutely not. In fact, their exact words were: No way. Brazil is dirty and very corrupt. Okay,  if it is, how come none of the books, websites etc. resources I consulted for information told me that.

It kind of angers me that companies and websites, trying to promote travel to Brazil, are too embarrassed to put statistics describing the poverty that exists in the country— if poverty is a part of Brazil then you might as well talk about it. What if someone really wanted to know about Brazil—someone really wanted to just take a step inside society and see what it was like. Sorry—not possible.

That is kind of why we chose the picture we did. In this single picture you learn about one type of burial tradition in Brazil that we consider important and interesting (who cares that some stupid Portugal sailor ran into Brazil). When I saw this picture, I wanted to find out what happened to the baby. What were the circumstances of her death? How did her family feel? How did Brazil's economic, political, and social status effect this family? This baby? Sadly enough, I couldn't find any of these answers- even generalized statistics about how many people in Brazil live in poverty. So I say, screw pretty pictures of Rio de Janeiro, and travel brochures. When will businesses realize that truth sells and is just plain more interesting?

For more information and pictures about Rio de Janeiro visit this website:http://www.brazil.com/.

For more information and cool pictures about Brazil visit these websites:
www.theodora.com/maps and http://www.brazil-brasil.com/