Low rural incomes, limited landownership, and variable climatic conditions have continued to drive migration in Brazil; in addition, large-scale commercial agriculture in the South and Southeast has limited the number of jobs available to unskilled rural labourers, causing whole families of poor sertanejos (people from the sertão) to flee to frontier areas or cities. The North and Central-West regions have the highest net influx of population, especially in the Federal District and Rondônia. Parts of the Southeast and South have also received large numbers of migrants, particularly São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro states, which have also benefited from foreign immigration. Some rural families from the southeastern state of Minas Gerais and the southernmost states of Rio Grande do Sul and Paraná have moved to an agricultural frontier arching from Rondônia and northern Mato Grosso to western Bahia. Many other migrants to the frontier have come from the Northeast, particularly from the state of Piauí, in the heart of the drought region. Families in Maranhão have been leaving its eastern half, which is also in the drought quadrilateral, and moving into its western half, which is a zone of rainforests.

Urbanization

Brazil’s rural settlement patterns were largely defined by the mid-20th century, after which the nation began a headlong drive toward industrialization: this transformed Brazil from essentially rural to urban, led by the cities of the Southeast and South. By the turn of the 21st century, government statistics described more than four-fifths of the population as urban and less than one-fifth as rural; however, according to an alternative set of definitions, about three-fifths of the population could be described as urban, nearly one-third as rural, and about one-tenth as partly urban and partly rural. In 1940 less than one-third of a total population of 42 million lived in urban areas; by the end of the 20th century about 18 million lived in the São Paulo metropolitan area alone, which ranked as one of the world’s most populous cities. In addition, by that time the highly urbanized state of São Paulo had about one-third of Brazilian industry, a gross domestic product greater than that of many nations, and a population rivaling that of Argentina.

Rio de Janeiro has Brazil’s second largest metropolitan population. Other major urban areas include Belo Horizonte, Salvador, Porto Alegre, Fortaleza, Curitiba, and Recife—each with millions of residents. Slightly smaller are Brasília, Belém, Manaus, Goiânia, and Campinas. Rapid urban growth has produced a series of physical and social problems, while the demand for housing has raised urban land values to staggering heights. As a result, members of the middle class have been increasingly forced to live in minuscule apartments in densely packed high-rises, while the poor are confined in nearby favelas (“shantytowns”) or in residential areas that may be several hours away from their workplaces. Brasília and Curitiba, unlike most Brazilian cities, have benefited from large-scale urban planning.

Indians

The tropical forest peoples of Brazil adapted superbly to their environment prior to European contact, although they did not develop empires such as those of the Andes and Mesoamerica. They built dugout canoes and sailing rafts called jangadas (still used along the northeastern coast), slept in hammocks (which many people in Amazonia now use instead of beds), produced pottery and works of art, and cultivated tropical crops, corn (maize), and cassava. The indigenous peoples and the first Portuguese settlers generally benefited from trade and peaceful relations, but Europeans unwittingly introduced influenza, measles, smallpox, and other diseases that drastically reduced the Indian population. In addition, the colonizers began to enslave Indians and force them to live on plantations. Many Indians fled the coastal areas and took refuge in the most distant and inaccessible areas—in the forested regions of the Tocantins and Amazon basins or in the savannas of Mato Grosso. However, they were not completely sheltered in the interior: from the 16th to the 18th century, the Portuguese launched devastating, Indian-hunting bandeiras (slave raids or expeditions) from São Paulo and some northeastern towns. Over subsequent generations many Indian populations on the coast blended with their European or African counterparts, whereas native peoples in the interior carried on a protracted struggle against further encroachments.

Although Brazil’s Indians constitute a statistically marginal part of the national population, they form some 230 different cultural groups. Indians reside in each of the country’s five principal regions, but their numbers are greatest in the North, and roughly half now live in urban areas. The principal Indian peoples include the Yanomami in Roraima state, near the border with Venezuela, the Mundurukú in Pará and Amazonas, the Kayapó and Kayabí (Kaiabi) in Mato Grosso, the Guajajára and Fulnio in the Northeast, and the Kaingáng in the South and Southeast. All but the most isolated Amazonian groups have some regular contact with other Brazilians, such as personnel from the government’s National Indian Foundation.

More than 350 scattered Indian reservations have been demarcated since the promulgation of the 1988 constitution, which entitles Indian communities to territory that they historically occupied. Some of the reservations cover thousands of square miles, and their combined area is nearly as large as Bolivia—that is, more than one-tenth of Brazil’s land area. However, other Brazilians do not always respect the reservation boundaries: garimpeiros (transient miners) have trespassed in several locations, including the lands of the Yanomami, where particularly violent confrontations occurred in the 1980s and ’90s. The government subsequently issued new guidelines for demarcating Indian lands.

Africans

There are more people of mainly African descent in Brazil than in any other nation outside of Africa, and African music, dance, food, and religious practices have become an integral part of Brazilian culture. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, the slave trade brought to Brazil some four million Africans, mainly peoples from West Africa and Angola. Most were taken to the sugarcane plantations of the Northeast during the 16th and 17th centuries. From the 18th century onward, when the mining of gold and diamonds began, more slaves were sent to Minas Gerais. The majority worked as labourers and domestic servants, but some escaped and fled into the interior, where they established independent farming communities or mixed with Indian groups. After the abolition of slavery in 1888, a large proportion of Africans left the areas where they had been held captive and settled in other agricultural regions or in towns; however, the Northeast retained the heaviest concentration of Africans and mulattoes. From the 1860s to the 1920s, Brazilian manufacturers hired millions of European immigrants but largely avoided employing the descendants of slaves, who remained at the margin of Brazil’s economy. By the turn of the 21st century, an increasing number of individuals used education to attain upward mobility.

Europeans and other immigrants

People of European ancestry constitute the largest segment of the Brazilian population, owing to a steady influx of Portuguese immigrants as well as some four million other Europeans (mainly Italians) who migrated there in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; their arrivals during that relatively short period were equal to the total population of African slaves brought to Brazil during the previous three centuries.

Until the late 1800s, Lusitanian (i.e., Portuguese) immigrants were practically the only Europeans to enter Brazil. They were found in all classes of society and were anxious to obtain wealth quickly as plantation owners or as merchants. Immigrants of diverse origins joined the Portuguese only following the proclamation of independence in 1822. Italians, the most numerous of the non-Portuguese European groups, settled primarily in São Paulo and northern Rio Grande do Sul states. The Italians were culturally similar to the Portuguese and were easily assimilated. Less numerous Mediterranean immigrant groups, including those from Spain and Middle Eastern countries such as Syria and Lebanon, mainly arrived during the first quarter of the 20th century. Like the Italians, they adapted rapidly to their new homeland and began to contribute to Brazilian industry, finance, politics, and the arts.

German immigrants in the 19th and early 20th centuries and Japanese shortly before World War I further diversified the ethnic mix; however, those two groups remained culturally distinct for much longer than had earlier immigrants. This occurred largely for two reasons: first, the Germans and Japanese settled mainly in isolated rural areas and, second, they received teachers, textbooks in their native languages, and other assistance from their home governments. However, after World War II they were largely integrated into mainstream society. As a whole, Brazilians of Japanese descent now have a markedly higher level of education than the norm. Other immigrant groups have included Slavic peoples from eastern Europe and small but vital Jewish communities concentrated in major urban centres. Immigration had dwindled by the late 20th century, and less than 1 percent of Brazil’s population was foreign-born.