Northeast Region, Brazil
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- For the Portuguese municipality in São Miguel Island, Azores see: Nordeste, Azores
The Nordeste (Northeastern Brazil) is composed of the states of Alagoas, Bahia, Ceará, Maranhão, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Piauí, Rio Grande do Norte and Sergipe. The biggest cities are Salvador, Fortaleza and Recife, which are the regional metropolitan areas of the Nordeste, all with a population above a million inhabitants. The people who live there, are from there, or have family in the Brazilian Northeast, are called nordestinos.
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[edit] General information
- Area: 1,561,177 km²
- Population: 47,700,000 inhabitants (30.55 per km²; 16%)
- GDP: ~48.1 billion US$ (~12%), per capita US $1,008
- HDI: ~0.725
- Largest cities (2005): Salvador (2,672,500); Fortaleza (2,374,900); Recife (1,501,000); São Luís (942,300); Maceió (901,200); Natal (778,000); Teresina (747,000); João Pessoa (660,800); Jaboatão dos Guararapes; (626,300); Aracaju (498,600); Feira de Santana (473,600); Olinda (376,800); Campina Grande (376,132)
[edit] History
The Northeast was primarily inhabited by indigenous peoples, mostly from the Tupi-Guarani family, who, before the colonial era, helped Europeans with the extraction of brazilwood from the coastal rainforest (or mata atlântica) in exchange for spices. But as colonization and commercial interest intensified in the region the number of Indians became drastically reduced due to the constant battles with the owners of the large sugar mills. Conflicts arose because the settlers had displaced the native inhabitants and then tried to enslave them as labor in the fields. The Portuguese colonials then considered the idea of importing black African slaves to use as manual labor. To this day culture in Northeast Brazil remains fully permeated by this African influence.
The Northeast was the first area of discovery in Brazil, roughly 1,500 Portuguese having arrived on April 22, 1500 under the command of Pedro Álvares Cabral at Porto Seguro, in the state of Bahia.
The coast of the Northeast was the stage for the first economic activity of the country, namely the extraction and export of pau Brasil, or brazilwood. Brazilwood was highly valued in Europe where it was used to make violin bows (especially the Pau de Pernambuco variety) and for the red dye it produced. Countries like France, who disagreed with the Treaty of Tordesillas, (a papal bull decreed by the Spanish-born Pope Alexander VI in 1493 which sought to divide the South American continent between the Spanish and the Portuguese), launched constant attacks against the coast with the objective of stealing the wood.
French colonists not only tried to settle in present-day Rio de Janeiro, from 1555 to 1567 (the so-called France Antarctique episode), but also in present-day São Luís, from 1612 to 1614 (the so-called France Equinoxiale). The Dutch, also opposed to the Treaty of Tordesillas, plundered the Northeast coast, sacked Bahia in 1604, and even temporarily captured Salvador. From 1630 to 1654 the Dutch set up more permanently in the Northeast and controlled a long stretch of coast that was most accessible to Europe without, however, penetrating the interior. But the colonists of the Dutch West India Company in Brazil were in a constant siege despite the presence in Recife of the great Maurice of Nassau as governor.
Slave resistance began during the colonial era, in the seventeenth century, and eventually led to the formation of quilombos, or settlements of runaway and free-born African slaves. The Quilombo dos Palmares, the largest and most well-known of these settlements, was founded around 1600 in the Serra da Barriga hills, in the present state of Alagoas. Palmares, at the height of its power, was an independent, self-sustaining republic, hosting a population of over 30,000 free African men, women and children. There were over 200 buildings in the community, a church, four smithies, and a council house. Although Palmares managed to defend itself from the Dutch military and the Portuguese colonials for several decades, it was finally taken and destroyed and its leader Zumbi dos Palmares was captured and beheaded. His head was then displayed in a public plaza in Recife.
Besides being Brazil’s main sea port, Brazil's center of the African slave trade, a center of the sugar industry, and the seat of the first Catholic bishop of Brazil (in 1552) the city of Salvador was also the first general seat of government in Brazil as it is strategically located in the center of the eastern coast of the country. The government in Salvador sought to centralize power in an effort to support the various captaincies, geographical subdivisions that preceded the present states of Brazil, which at this time were in a state of crisis. Salvador remained the colonial capital until 1763 when it was succeeded by Rio de Janeiro, the new economic power center of that era.
[edit] States & Capitals
- Alagoas - Maceió
- Bahia - Salvador
- Ceará - Fortaleza
- Maranhão - São Luís
- Paraíba - João Pessoa
- Pernambuco - Recife
- Piauí - Teresina
- Rio Grande do Norte - Natal
- Sergipe - Aracaju
[edit] Urban Areas x Rural Areas
Nordeste's major cities are almost all on the Atlantic coast. Some exceptions can be seen, however, like Petrolina, Pernambuco, which lies immediately south of the São Francisco River (one of the few rivers that crosses the sertão and doesn't dry in the arid periods of time which can be quite long). Another example is the city of Teresina in the state of Piauí, a city notorious for its sweltering heat.
Good rural areas are scarce and generally they are all near the coast, or in the west of Maranhão, and are mainly used for exportation products. In the semi-arid areas of the Northeast Region, rural areas do exist, but rain is scarce in the region; rural areas in the interior are generally based on subsistence agriculture. Fazendas (large farms) are common in the interior, where cattle-rasing and the cultivation of tropical fruit is often practiced. Also, in the areas where water is scarce local politicians often use the promise of irrigation projects as a bargaining chip to win elections.
[edit] Economy
The economy is based on tourism (in coastal or historical cities) or agriculture. The tourist industry is based largely on the numerous sandy beaches, numbering in the hundreds. These beautiful powder-white sandy beaches attract thousands of tourists per year, not only from other regions of Brazil but also many from Europe (especially Italy and Germany), the U.S.A., and Australia. Major industries (clothing, food, small machinery) are in the main metropolitan areas of Northeast.
[edit] Climate
Brazil's Northeast region can be characterized as arid for relatively long periods of time in the interior of the continent, with the coast and the southern areas having a more humid climate. Temperatures throughout the year are usually quite warm, with some cooling during the rainy seasons. The beginning and end of the different rainy seasons vary throughout the region but most last about four months.
[edit] Culture
Nordeste has a rich culture, with its unique constructions in the old centers of Salvador, Recife and Olinda, dance (frevo and maracatu), music (axé, forró) and unique cuisine. Dishes particular to the region include carne de sol, acarajé, vatapá, paçoca, canjica, moqueca capixaba, bolo de fubá cozido, sururu de capote and many others. Salvador was the first Brazilian capital. The festival of São João (Saint John), one of the festas juninas, is especially popular in the Northeast, particularly in Caruaru, in the state of Pernambuco and Campina Grande, in the state of Paraíba. The Bumba-Meu-Boi festival is also popular, especially in the state of Maranhão. During the Bumba-Meu-Bói festival in the city of São Luis do Maranhão and its environs there are many different groups, with elaborate costumes and different styles of music, which are called sotaques: sotaque de orquestra, as the names implies, uses an orchestra of saxophones, clarinets, flutes, banjos, drums, etc; sotaque de zabumba employs primarily very large drums; and sotaque de matraca, a percussion instrument made of two pieces of wood that you carry in your hands and hit against each other. Some matracas are very large and are carried around the neck. Most major cities in the Northeast also hold an off-season carnaval, such as the Carnatal in Natal or the Fortal in Fortaleza.
==Sertão Nordestino== (Hinterland Northeastern) People who live in these arid areas generally don't have enough water for their subsistence and need to walk long distances to obtain it. Many times these people, who are generally poor, give up and go to live in the city, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro being the main destinations. A well known case is that of the current Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who lived in Pernambuco, and moved early in childhood with the family to Santos, where he worked in the streets in his teens. A well-known Brazilian poet named João Cabral de Melo Neto, who was born in Recife, wrote poems such as Morte e Vida Severina, Cemitério Pernambucano, and A Educação Pela Pedra, that illustrate well the bleak living conditions of these arid backlands. kul
[edit] Urban Migration
In São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, as well as many other parts of the metropolitan areas of Brazil outside of the Northeast, nordestinos are often not well liked by people of the middle and upper classes, who claim that the nordestinos are responsible for many of the social problems of the city.
Generally, nordestinos in hope of a better life come without much money, and are rejected by most employers due to their low or nonexistent education. Quickly realizing that the big city is as bad or worse than the sertão, they end up in favelas (slums). Many of them then return to their former hometowns in the Northeast once they've collected sufficient money to do so. Conversely, many Brazilians who live outside the Northeast often go there to vacation on the beaches.
[edit] Social Problems
The Nordeste is the poorest region of Brazil, with the worst HDI rates of the country, mainly in the rural areas, which suffer from long periods without rain. This is somehwat ironic since the Northeast, during Brazil's colonial era when sugar production was higher, was the most prosperous region in all of South America. Education and health care are very bad when they exist, malnutrition is common in people living in these areas, illiteracy is about 75% and child labor is a concern, as is child prostitution in major cities. Prostitution in the major cities has become an enormous problem, caused largely by the low Brazilian minimum wage as well as sexual tourism. In contrast to the situation occurring in the other Brazilian regions where social problems are worse in bigger cities, social problems in the Northeast regions are worse in the rural and small communities of the interior, lessening in bigger cities near the coast. Some diseases are still common such as tuberculosis and yellow fever and there have been several recent outbreaks of widespread dengue fever especially along the eastern seaboard and otherwise near watery areas where the Aedes aegypti mosquito breeds. Brazil's Ministry of Health, with limited resources, has tried to combat these outbreaks.
