Jump to content
Search

Brazilians

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Brazilians
Brasileiros
Total population
c. 203 million[1]
(2022 census)
Regions with significant populations
Brazilian diaspora:
c. 4.9 million (2023)[2]
United States2,085,000[2]
Portugal513,000[2]
Paraguay263,200[2]
United Kingdom230,000[2]
Japan210,471[2]
Germany170,400[2]
Spain161,944[2]
Italy159,000[2]
Canada143,500[2]
Argentina101,502[2]
France95,000[2]
 French Guiana92,493[2]
Ireland80,000[2]
Netherlands80,000[2]
Bolivia75,700[2]
Switzerland64,000[2]
Belgium50,000[2]
Australia48,180[2]
Mexico32,784[2]
Uruguay31,050[2]
Suriname30,000[2]
Angola25,000[2]
Languages
Brazilian Portuguese (Majority),[3] Indigenous Languages,[4] Brazilian Sign Language(LIBRAS),[5] other Languages of Brazil

Brazilians (Portuguese: brasileiros, pronounced [bɾaziˈle(j)ɾus]) are citizens and people associated with Brazil. This connection can be historic, cultural or legal. For most Brazilians several (or all) of these connections exist and are all sources of their Brazilian identity, sharing a common culture, language and in many cases history and/or ancestry.[6] Brazil is a multiethnic society, which means that it is home to people of many ethnic origins.

Being Brazilian is a civic and cultural phenomenon, rather than an ethnic one. As a result, the degree to which Brazilian citizens identify with their ancestral roots varies significantly depending on the individual, the region of the country, and the specific ethnic origins in question. Most often, however, the idea of ethnicity as it is understood in the anglophone world is not popular in the country.

After the colonization of Brazil by Portugal, most of the 16th century, the word "Brazilian" was given to the Portuguese merchants of the Brazilwood tree, designating exclusively the name of such profession, since the inhabitants of the land were, in most of them, indigenous, or Portuguese born in Portugal or in the territory now called Brazil.[7]

However, long before the independence of Brazil, in 1822, both in Brazil and in Portugal, it was already common to assign the Brazilian gentilic to a person, usually of clear Portuguese descent, resident or whose family resided in the State of Brazil (1530–1815), belonging to the Portuguese Empire. During the lifetime of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves (1815–1822), however, there was confusion about the nomenclature.

Definition

[edit]

According to the Constitution of Brazil, a Brazilian citizen is:

  • Anyone born in Brazil, even if to foreign born parents. However, if the foreign parents were at the service of a foreign State (such as foreign diplomats), the child is not Brazilian;
  • Anyone born abroad to a Brazilian father or a Brazilian mother, with registration of birth in a Brazilian Embassy or Consulate. Also, a person born abroad to a Brazilian father or a Brazilian mother who was not registered but who, after turning 18 years old, went to live in Brazil;[8]
  • A foreigner living in Brazil who applied for and was accepted as a Brazilian citizen.

According to the Constitution, all people who hold Brazilian citizenship are equal, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender or religion.

A foreigner can apply for Brazilian citizenship after living for four uninterrupted years in Brazil and being able to speak the Portuguese language. A native person from an official Portuguese language country (Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, and East Timor) can request the Brazilian nationality after only 1 uninterrupted year living in Brazil. A foreign born person who holds Brazilian citizenship has exactly the same rights and duties of the Brazilian citizen by birth, but cannot occupy some special public positions such as the Presidency of the Republic, Vice-presidency of the Republic, Minister (Secretary) of Defense, Presidency (Speaker) of the Senate, Presidency (Speaker) of the House of Representatives, Officer of the Armed Forces, and Diplomat.[8]

In 2021, the population in Brazil is 214 million people. The number is updated live by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE – Census).[1]

Ethnicities

[edit]
This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (August 2026)

Brazil's census categories are not based on genetics, but on self-identified social and culturally constructed race classifications. It uses five categories for race and color: Branca (White), Preta (Black), Amarela (Yellow, referring to East Asians), Parda (Brown, for mixed-race people), and Indígena (Indigenous), which date to the colonial period. Studies have shown that many Brazilians change their racial self-identification over time.[9][10]

In the 2010 census, 47.51% of Brazilians classified themselves as White, 43.42% as Brown, 7.52% as Black, 1.10% as Yellow, 0.43% as Indigenous and 0.02% did not answer.[11] The racial composition of Brazil varies significantly by region, with higher percentages of White Brazilians in the South and Southeast, and higher percentages of Brown and Indigenous populations in the North and Northeast.[12]

Brazilians are mostly descendants of Portuguese settlers, post-colonial immigrant groups, enslaved Africans, and Brazil's indigenous peoples. The main historic waves of immigration to Brazil have occurred from the 1820s well into the 1970s, most of the settlers were Portuguese, Italians, Germans, and Spaniards, with significant minorities of Japanese, Poles, Ukrainians, and Levantine Arabs.[13]

Ancestry of Brazilians

[edit]

The first inhabitants of what would become Brazil were people whose ancestry can be traced back to Asian populations that crossed the Bering Strait, passing from Siberia to the Americas.[14][15][16][17] There are indications of the presence of indigenous peoples in the current Brazilian territory dating from 16,000 BC in Lagoa Santa, from 14,200 BC in Rio Claro and from 12,770 BC in Ibicuí (Rio Grande do Sul). Estimates of the number of Native Americans that were living in present-day Brazil in 1500 vary between 1 and 5 million.[18][19][20] They were divided into two major language families: Macro-Jê and Macro-Tupi. With the arrival of the Portuguese in present-day Brazil, in 1500, a significant part of the indigenous population perished, mainly due to contamination by Eurasian diseases to which the Indians had no biological immunity, such as smallpox, measles, yellow fever or flu. In most cases, these contaminations were involuntary; however, there are also reports of intentional infection.[18] Despite this, millions of Brazilians have indigenous ancestry. In Brazilian history, the practice of "cunhadismo" was very common; it was an ancient indigenous practice of incorporating strangers into their community, through the delivery of indigenous girls as wives. In this context, many Portuguese settlers had relationships with indigenous women, whose descendants make up a large part of the current Brazilian population.[21][22]

The European ancestry of Brazilians is mainly Portuguese.[a] Between 1500 and 1822, Brazil was a Portuguese colony and the number of Portuguese who emigrated to Brazil, during this period, is estimated at between 500,000 and 700,000. According to the IBGE, 100,000 Portuguese emigrated to Brazil in the first two centuries of colonization.[23] Historians James Horn and Philip D. Morgan estimate this number to be much higher at 250,000.[24] At that time, Brazil was the largest producer of sugar in the world (specifically the northeastern captaincies of Pernambuco and Bahia), and this economic growth attracted many Portuguese immigrants.[25] However, it was in the 18th century that the greatest number of Portuguese arrived in colonial Brazil. According to the IBGE, 600,000 Portuguese emigrated to Brazil, between 1701 and 1760.[23] James Horn and Philip D. Morgan pointed to smaller numbers: 250,000 between 1700 and 1760 and 105,000 between 1760 and 1820.[24] Celso Furtado estimated, for the entire 18th century, that between 300,000 and 500,000 Portuguese arrived in Brazil.[26] Maria Luiza Marcilio pointed to an intermediate number: 400,000. Considering that Portugal only had 2 million inhabitants in 1700, it was a mass emigration.[27] The reason for this mass emigration lies in the discovery of gold in Minas Gerais, which led to a period of economic prosperity not only in the Minas Gerais region, but also on the Brazilian coast.[28]

As a result of the Atlantic slave trade, from the mid-16th century until 1855, approximately 5 million African slaves were brought to Brazil. 40% of all slaves brought to the Americas landed in Brazil. The African ancestors of Brazilians were brought mainly from West-Central Africa. Of the total, 3,396,910 were brought from this area. The region used to be known as Congo Angola, roughly corresponding to the territories of present-day Angola, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo and Gabon.[29][30] The second most important region was the Bight of Benin, from which 877,033 Africans came. This region corresponds to present-day southeastern Ghana, Togo, Benin, and southwestern Nigeria.[31][29]

Slave labor was the driving force behind the growth of the sugar economy in Brazil, and sugar was the colony's main export product, from 1600 to 1650. Gold and diamond deposits were discovered in Brazil from 1690 onwards, which generated an increase in the importation of slaves, to supply labor in mining. The demand for slaves did not suffer from the decline of the mining industry in the second half of the 18th century. Livestock and food production proliferated along with population growth, both heavily dependent on slave labor. The rise of coffee economy after the 1830s further expanded the Atlantic slave trade to Brazil.[21]

When Brazil was a Portuguese colony, the number of Africans who entered Brazil was much greater than that of Europeans. According to Historians James Horn and Philip D. Morgan, between 1500 and 1820, 605,000 Portuguese emigrated to Brazil, against 3.2 million Africans brought, a number 5 times greater.[24] However, this does not mean that over time the population of African origin remained greater than that of Portuguese origin in the same proportion, given the differences in birth rate. In Brazil, the mortality rate was much higher among slaves than among the free; the infant mortality of the children of slaves was very high, due to malnutrition and unhealthy conditions. During most of Brazil's history, the rate of natural increase of the slave population was negative, that is, there were more deaths than births.[32][33] [21][34][35]

Many Brazilians are also descendants of immigrants who arrived in the last two centuries. Brazil received more than 5 million immigrants after its independence from Portugal in 1822, most of whom arrived between 1880 and 1920. Latin Europeans accounted for 80% of arrivals (1.8 million Portuguese, 1.3 million Italians and 700,000 Spaniards). The other 20% came mainly from Germany, Eastern Europe, Japan and the Middle East.[36] In the Brazilian 1920 census, more than 90% of foreigners were concentrated in the states of the Southeast and South regions and more than 70% were in just two regions: São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.[37] A large part of this immigration was encouraged by the Brazilian government and was linked to the production of coffee. At the end of the 19th century, Brazil was the largest coffee producer in the world and a significant part of the financial health of the Brazilian government depended on coffee exports. After the abolition of slavery in the 1880s and fearing a shortage of workers in coffee cultivation, the state of São Paulo began to subsidize immigration for European workers. The Brazilian government paid for ship's passage for entire immigrant families to work on coffee plantations during a period of about five years, after which they were free to work elsewhere.[38][39][40][41]

Another model of immigration encouraged by the Brazilian government was aimed at agricultural colonization, mainly in the South of the country, where access to small rural properties for European immigrants was facilitated, mainly as a way of filling demographic voids and overcoming the constant threats of food shortages in Brazil.[42][43][44][39][41][40]

However, many of these immigrants arrived spontaneously, without any help from the Brazilian government, and were attracted by the increase in urban dynamism, mainly in the Southeast region, largely linked to the surplus of wealth produced by the coffee activity, giving rise to an incipient process of industrialization and expansion of trade and the service sector.[45][46][47]

From 1500 to 1972, of all people who entered Brazil, 58% came from Europe, 40% from Africa and 2% from Asia.[48] Most Brazilians have a mixed race ancestry. Genetic studies have shown that Brazilians, whether classified as "brown", "white" or "black", usually have all three ancestries (European, African and indigenous), varying only in degree.[49][50][48]

Portuguese immigrant couple in São José do Rio Preto (1887).
Typical dress of women from Bahia
Brazilians from Belém, Paraíba, with typical clothes.
A group of Brazilians during the FIFA World Cup 2014.

Present foreign-born population

[edit]

From 2011 to 2019, 1,085,673 immigrants came to Brazil, mostly from Venezuela (142,250), Paraguay (97,316), Bolivia (57,765), Haiti (54,182), and Colombia (32,562).[51]

According to the 2022 census, Brazil was home to over 1 million foreign-born people, representing 0.5% of the total Brazilian population of 203 million.[52] This showed an increase of 592,000 or 70.3% over the 2010 census. This was the highest number born abroad since 1980, when the census counted 1.1 million foreigners.[52] By region:

Refugees

In 2021, there were 60,011 people recognized as refugees in Brazil.[53]

Between 2011 and 2020, recognitions of refugee status in Brazil by the National Committee for Refugees (Conare) were mostly to Venezuelans (46,412 recognitions), Syrians (3,594) and Congolese (1,050).[54]

See also

[edit]

Notes

[edit]
  1. ↑ "In Brazil the predominant European sub-component matches mostly the Portugal/West-Spain reference group while in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Chile mostly Central/South-Spanish ancestry is inferred (Figures 1C and 2B). This differentiation matches the colonial history, Portuguese migration having concentrated in Eastern South America while the Spanish settled mainly in Central America and Western South America".[22]

References

[edit]
  1. 1 2 Araujo, Gabriel (28 June 2023). Grattan, Steven; Rumney, Emma (eds.). "Brazil census shows population growth at its slowest since 1872". Reuters.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 "Comunidade Brasileira no Exterior – Estimativas referentes ao ano de 2023" (PDF) (in Brazilian Portuguese). Ministry of External Relations. 1 July 2024. Retrieved 19 November 2024.
  3. ↑ "Brazil". Ethnologue. Archived from the original on 8 July 2015. Retrieved 21 July 2015.
  4. ↑ Pica, Pierre; Chomsky, Noam; Valeria (2 April 2019). "Proposta para a inclusão de línguas indígenas da Bacia Amazônica brasileira como parte integrante do patrimônio material e imaterial da humanidade". Le Monde Diplomatique Brasil (in Portuguese). Retrieved 27 February 2022.
  5. ↑ CARVALHO, Paulo Vaz de (2007). Breve História dos Surdos no Mundo. SurdUniverso. p. 172. ISBN 9789899525412.
  6. ↑ David Levinson (1998). Ethnic Groups Worldwide: A Ready Reference Handbook. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 325. ISBN 978-1-57356-019-1.
  7. ↑ Facioli, Valentim (25 February 2018). Um defunto estrambótico: análise e interpretação das Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas. EdUSP. ISBN 978-85-314-1083-3. Archived from the original on 18 January 2024. Retrieved 25 October 2020 – via Google Books.
  8. 1 2 Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil, Artigo 12, I.
  9. ↑ "Manual do Recenseador Parte 2" (PDF). censo2022.ibge.gov.br. Rio de Janeiro: IBGE. August 2019. Archived (PDF) from the original on 18 January 2024. Retrieved 5 May 2022.
  10. ↑ Adriano Souza Senkevics (2017). "De brancos para negros? Uma análise longitudinal da reclassificação racial no Enem 2010–2014" (PDF). São Luís, Maranhão: 38ª. Reunião Nacional da Anped. Retrieved 9 May 2022.
  11. ↑ "População Brasileira – 2010 (Censo IBGE)" (in Portuguese).
  12. ↑ "Censo Demográfico 2022: Características gerais da população". Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE). Retrieved 29 August 2025.
  13. ↑ Carvalho-Silva, DR; Santos, FR; Rocha, J; Pena, SD (January 2001). "The Phylogeography of Brazilian Y-Chromosome Lineages". Am. J. Hum. Genet. 68 (1): 281–6. doi:10.1086/316931. PMC 1234928. PMID 11090340.
  14. ↑ "Who Were the Ancestors of Native Americans? A Lost People in Siberia, Scientists Say". The New York Times. 5 June 2019. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 26 March 2023. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
  15. ↑ "O "elo perdido" entre os povos asiáticos e os índios das Américas". Super (in Brazilian Portuguese). Archived from the original on 26 March 2023. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
  16. ↑ "What the ancient DNA discovery tells us about Native American ancestry". The Guardian. 3 January 2018. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
  17. ↑ "All Native Americans Descended from One Ancestral Population". The Scientist Magazine. Archived from the original on 4 February 2023. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
  18. 1 2 "Índios – O Brasil antes do descobrimento". Archived from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 25 February 2023.
  19. ↑ "Brasil: 500 anos de povoamento – História indígena". Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE). Archived from the original on 30 January 2023. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
  20. ↑ "População indígena no Brasil: números e motivos da redução". Mundo Educação (in Brazilian Portuguese). Archived from the original on 27 January 2023. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
  21. 1 2 3 Ribeiro, Darcy. O Povo Brasileiro, Companhia de Bolso, fourth reprint, 2008 (2008)
  22. 1 2 "Latin Americans show wide-spread Converso ancestry and the imprint of local Native ancestry on physical appearance" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 14 November 2020. Retrieved 25 February 2023.
  23. 1 2 "Brasil: 500 anos de povoamento – Presença portuguesa: de colonizadores a imigrantes – imigração de transição (1701–1850)". Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE). Archived from the original on 26 February 2022. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
  24. 1 2 3 Horn, James, and Philip D. Morgan. "Settlers and Slaves: European and African Migrations to Early Modern British America." In The Creation of the British Atlantic World, edited by Elizabeth Manke and Carole Shammas. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.
  25. ↑ Altman, Ida, and James Horn, eds. "To Make America": European Emigration in the Early Modern Period. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
  26. ↑ Furtado, Celso. Formação econômica do Brasil. São Paulo: Editora Nacional, 1971.
  27. ↑ Marcílio, Maria Luiza. A população do Brasil Colonial. In: BETHELL, Leslie (Org.). História de América Latina: América Latina Colonial. São Paulo: Edusp; Brasília: Fundação Alexandre de Gusmão, 1999. p. 311-338. v. 2.
  28. ↑ "José Moya. Canada and the Atlantic World: Borderlands and Transnationalism in the United States and Canada". Archived from the original on 26 March 2023. Retrieved 25 February 2023.
  29. 1 2 "Assessing the Slave Trade: Estimates". The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. Archived from the original on 28 October 2023. Retrieved 23 February 2023.
  30. ↑ "Detalhes da imagem". Archived from the original on 8 February 2023. Retrieved 23 February 2023.
  31. ↑ "Bight of Benin". Archived from the original on 10 December 2023. Retrieved 23 February 2023.
  32. ↑ Schwarcz, Lilia Moritz. Starling, Heloisa Murgel. Brasil: Uma Biografia. Companhia das Letras; Edição: 1ª (27 de abril de 2015)
  33. ↑ Klein, Herbert S. (2012). "A experiência afro-americana numa perspectiva comparativa: a situação atual do debate sobre a escravidão nas Américas". Afro-Ásia (in Portuguese) (45): 95–121. doi:10.1590/S0002-05912012000100004. ISSN 0002-0591. Archived from the original on 10 December 2022. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
  34. ↑ "Expectativa de Vida e Mortalidade de Escravos". Archived from the original on 15 August 2020. Retrieved 25 February 2023.
  35. ↑ Pedro Carvalho de Mello. Estimativa da Longevidade de Escravos no Brasil na Segunda Metade do Seculo XIX
  36. ↑ Moya, Jose (2020). "Immigration and the Historical Formation of Brazil". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199366439.013.894. ISBN 978-0-19-936643-9. Archived from the original on 18 December 2021. Retrieved 24 December 2021.
  37. ↑ "População estrangeira e naturalizada em 1920". Archived from the original on 27 February 2009. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
  38. ↑ "Mediterraneo Economico. Procesos migratorios, economía y personas" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 February 2023. Retrieved 25 February 2023.
  39. 1 2 Balán, J. (1973) – Migrações e desenvolvimento capitalista no Brasil: ensaio de interpretação histórico-comparativa. Estudos Cebrap, São Paulo, (5).
  40. 1 2 França, Thiago de Novaes (4 June 2008). "A substituição da mão-de-obra escrava e a opção pela grande imigração no estado de São Paulo". Retrieved 10 December 2022. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)[permanent dead link]
  41. 1 2 Costa, Emília Viotti da. A Abolição. 9. ed. São Paulo. Editora Unesp, 2010
  42. ↑ "As políticas públicas de imigração européia não-portuguesa para o Brasil – de Pombal à República*". www.feth.ggf.br (8 ed.). 2005. ISSN 1677-650X. Archived from the original on 26 March 2023. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
  43. ↑ "Abasteciment Alimentar e Compras Públicas No Brasil: Um Resgate Histórico" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 25 February 2023.
  44. ↑ Diego Antonelli (2 December 2018). "O Paraná germânico". Revista Ideias. Archived from the original on 6 June 2020. Retrieved 12 May 2020.
  45. ↑ "Economia cafeeira e industrialização do Brasil". Brasil Escola (in Brazilian Portuguese). Archived from the original on 26 March 2023. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
  46. ↑ "O Rio de Janeiro da Primeira República e a imigração portuguesa: panorama histórico" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 26 March 2023. Retrieved 25 February 2023.
  47. ↑ "Soares, Carlos Eugénio Líbano. Dos fadistas e galegos: os portugueses na capoeira" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 27 March 2023. Retrieved 25 February 2023.
  48. 1 2 Souza, Aracele Maria de; Resende, Sarah Stela; Sousa, Taís Nóbrega de; Brito, Cristiana Ferreira Alves de (2019). "A systematic scoping review of the genetic ancestry of the Brazilian population". Genetics and Molecular Biology. 42 (3): 495–508. doi:10.1590/1678-4685-GMB-2018-0076. PMC 6905439. PMID 31188926.
  49. ↑ Reinaldo José Lopes (19 February 2011). "DNA de negros e pardos do Brasil é 60% a 80% europeu". ambientebrasil. Folha de S.Paulo. Archived from the original on 7 June 2022. Retrieved 6 May 2022.
  50. ↑ V. Bonifaz-Peña; A. V. Contreras; C. J. Struchiner; R. A. Roela; T. K. Furuya-Mazzotti; R. Chammas; et al. (2014). "Exploring the Distribution of Genetic Markers of Pharmacogenomics Relevance in Brazilian and Mexican Populations". PLOS ONE. 9 (11) e112640. Bibcode:2014PLoSO...9k2640B. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0112640. PMC 4242606. PMID 25419701.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  51. ↑ "Latino-americanos são maioria entre estrangeiros no Brasil nos últimos 10 anos". 27 August 2021. Archived from the original on 25 February 2023. Retrieved 25 February 2023.
  52. 1 2 3 "2022 Census: number of immigrants resumes growth for the first time since 1960". 27 June 2025. Retrieved 15 March 2026.
  53. ↑ "Dados sobre refúgio no Brasil". Archived from the original on 25 February 2023. Retrieved 25 February 2023.
  54. ↑ "Número de novos imigrantes cresce 24,4% no Brasil em dez anos". 7 December 2021. Archived from the original on 25 February 2023. Retrieved 25 February 2023.

Works cited

[edit]
[edit]
History
Geography
Politics
Economy
Transport
Society
Culture
Religion
Symbols
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brazilians&oldid=1372041875"
Brazilians
Add topic
Morty Proxy This is a proxified and sanitized view of the page, visit original site.