Potted History

Having discovered Brazil in 1500, Portugal sent the first settlers in 1534 and soon discovered that the land and climate were ideal for growing sugar cane.

They solved the problem of labour by enslaving the Indian population. Once two to five million Indians populated Brazil.

Now, hit by European disease and displaced by decimation of the Amazon, there are fewer than 200,000 hidden in the jungles of the interior.

In the 1690s, gold was discovered in Minas Gerais and countless more slaves were brought from Africa to dig and to die in the mines.

Colonial rule lasted 300 years and was followed by alternating democracy and military rule.

Coffee, economic crisis and fear of infectious communism all played their part in snatching democracy from Brazil and replacing it with harsh military regimes.

The dance continued until, in the mid-1980s, after a period of intense subjugation and cruelty the military handed power back to a civilian government.

There followed corruption, inflation and intense land battles, which continue today and are now being treated as a national security issue.

Brazil continues to battle, this time with poverty.

According to a 1996 United Nations report, Brazil has the world's most unequal distribution of wealth and the plight of the street children and the thousands of homeless people have all made world headlines