E/CN.4/1996/72/Add.1 page 5 I. A. OVERVIEW OF BRAZIL Historical, geographic, economic and social overview 10. Brazil is a federative republic comprising 25 states and one Federal District, Brasilia, divided into five major regions - North, North-east or Nordeste, Centre-west, South-east or Sudeste, and South (see Figure 1). 2/ It has a surface area of 8,511,966 km2, which makes it the fifth largest country in the world. 11. Brazil was colonized by the Portuguese from 1500 after the Tordesillas arbitration, 3/ and became independent in 1822. Its history is marked by three successive economic cycles which, without fully explaining the complexity of Brazil’s sociological, geopolitical and economic situation, provide us with analytical tools: the sugar cycle (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries); the gold cycle (eighteenth century); the rubber, cotton and coffee cycle (nineteenth century). These cycles have determined the settlement and organization of the country and have changed the regional balance according to the commercial importance of one or more crops and the economic emphasis at the time. From the sixteenth to the twentieth century, for example, the centre of the country moved from the North-east to the South-east and South whereas the North and Centre-west emerged as pioneer zones, a fact which had an impact on political and social relations and on the ethnic and racial geography of the country. The first cycle is particularly important to this study since it laid the bases for Brazilian society. 12. In the North, at the mouth of the Amazon, the first Portuguese encountered Indian peoples. Before subjecting and exploiting them, they cooperated with them in the trading of a redwood from the Amazon forest, the pau brasil, which was to give the country its name; it was not long before that product was supplanted by sugar. Sugar cane, which was introduced from the Indies, found the climate and soil in the North-east ideal, and it was in order to grow this crop, for which Indian labour was inadequate, that the Portuguese, in 1532, began the trade in African slaves from the Gulf of Guinea, Angola and Mozambique. 13. On the basis of sugar cane, which was the distinguishing feature of the first cycle, there arose an economic, social and geographic network that is still discernible in the structure of the North-east and influences the other regions of the country. This network supported an economic complex that grew up around the large sugar plantations, which were both agricultural and proto-industrial and took their name from the sugar mill (engenho) which was the hub of the plantation but was also linked to trade and the world market. The social structure, on the plantation itself, was also an unequal one, linking the casa grande, the master’s house, and the senzala, the slaves’ quarters, in a relationship of power, exploitation and patronage. One cannot