Hi, everyone! Welcome to my channel. My name is Débora. I'm a Brazilian history teacher. And today I'm going to teach you everything about Brazil. ♪ We'll try to cover more than 500 years of history in about 15 minutes, so be patient. If you want to learn more, I highly recommend watching the long version of this video. It is indeed very long, it is indeed a full lecture, and I can promise you that you will not be bored for a single second, okay? To give you a little bit of context before starting, my name is Débora, or Debra. I am 26 years old, I'm Brazilian, born and raised here, never lived elsewhere in the world. I am a history teacher for high schoolers, and my specialty is the Brazilian test to enter university. Teaching is not only my job, but my passion and life purpose. For more than 10 years, I've had this YouTube channel where I talk more about Brazilian history and post full lectures for free. If you want to keep up with my job, I would be very glad. These two videos about Brazilian history are the first that I'm doing in English. I'm also very passionate about languages, I'm fluent in five. I speak English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and French. And I really like it. The target audience of this video I'm doing right now is foreign people who have any interest in Brazil, want to visit Brazil, or people who want to learn more. If you have difficulties understanding my broken accent, yes, I have a very thick accent, I'm so sorry about that. This video will be subtitled by an English teacher, so if I'm making mistakes, the subtitles will not, okay? So you can turn on the captions and follow along, and I will be very glad. Let's start with two things you, as a foreigner, can do to be a little bit closer to us, to impress your Brazilian friends, and to not be hated by us. First, Brasil. Brasil is the name of our country, and Brasil is written with an "s". I understand that everyone has their accents, and I understand that for some people it is difficult to say "Brasil" just like we do. Repeat after me... -Brasil! But if you start writing Brazil with an "s", we will be already very glad, okay? Brazil is written with an "s" because we speak Portuguese. We do not speak Spanish, okay? It is a little bit offensive if people think that we speak Spanish only because we're in Latin America. But we speak Brazilian Portuguese, which is just like Portugal Portuguese but different because we had a lot of influence from African languages and indigenous languages, okay? Because our story, the story of Brazil, starts way, way, way before the 1500s, which is when white people stepped their feet here. When the Europeans arrived, Brazil already had a population of more than 5 million natives, and more than 1200 different languages were spoken throughout the country. Our native population was very culturally rich. They had their own religions, they had their own traditions, they believed to be one with nature. This conserved very much our biodiversity because, different from, for example, the Christian mindset of "God gave us the earth and the resources for us to use", they thought that they were one, they were part of the environment, so they had to keep it. They had a more respectful way towards nature. They also had egalitarian societies. Men and women had different tasks regarding hunting, fishing, agriculture, but they formed egalitarian societies. Many cultural habits that we have to this day came from our indigenous roots. For example, the Brazilian obsession with hygiene. I don't know if you ever lived with any Brazilian, we are very obsessed about being clean all the time. We take at least one or two showers a day, and also because we live in a tropical country, it is hot here. Many people don't know that the majority of foods that literally stopped Europe from starving for many centuries are native to South America. So, for example, corn, potatoes, manioc, tomatoes, even tobacco, all these things are native to South America. So many cultural habits that we still have today came from our native population. You may ask me: where are those indigenous people nowadays? Where do they live? Are they still there? The answer is yes, but kind of no. Because as I told you guys, when the Portuguese arrived, we had 5 million indigenous people living in Brazil, with more than 1.200 languages spoken. But they literally committed genocide against us. Our indigenous population was reduced from 5 million to approximately 800,000 people. Nowadays, we have more than a million and a half indigenous people living in Brazil. But out of the more than 1.200 languages that were spoken here, we have approximately 270 that have survived to this day. And they are still struggling because they had to be registered, documented, and everything. And to this day our indigenous population struggles a little bit because politics and everything, people want to steal their lands. So it is very sad, because we got genocided by the Portuguese, and they used three main tools to do this. That were weapons, because we did not have firearms. So when they arrived with gunpowder and everything, we had very little chance against the Europeans. Diseases, because we... remember, it's a time where vaccines and medicine were not a thing. So when they arrived bringing a lot of diseases, STDs, because a lot of women were raped. Yes, this happened. So a lot of people died from diseases. We have registries of literal tribes, complete tribes, ending completely, everyone dying in a matter of months because of diseases that our immune systems were not ready to bear. And cultural violence was also a weapon for the genocide because in the moment the Portuguese arrived, they literally enslaved the indigenous. The indigenous were prohibited by law, by Portuguese laws, they were prohibited, with penalties, they were prohibited to speak their own languages, to have their own religions. They were forced to convert to Catholicism. Remember that, at the time, Luther... yeah, the guy that made the Protestant Church, he was causing a lot of chaos in Europe. So the Catholics were very much threatened, so part of their plan to keep Catholicism as a powerful society as a powerful institution, was to send a lot of missionaries to the Americas to convert people. And Spain and Portugal, that are the main colonizers of Latin America, they were very Catholic, and they are still, to this day, very Catholic. So, a lot of missionaries were sent to Brazil and send to our neighbors here in South America. And that is why you can 100% affirm that the arrival of foreign people the arrival of the Europeans to Brazil, was completely catastrophic to us. So let's talk a little bit about economics, because as Brazil was colonized, it means that Brazil had wealth to be exploited by other nations. In this case, Portugal, and also England. We'll get to that, okay? And the thing that you must know is that Portugal found out about Brazil in the 1500s. They stepped their foot here and said that it was their land and started enslaving and killing the indigenous. But at that time, Portugal was making a lot of money in the Orient because, at the time, they had a lot of commercial trades and stuff with the Indias and spices and all of that. So Brazil was more like a side hustle for them. Because different from the Spanish that immediately found a lot of gold and silver in our neighbors, literally, Argentina is called Argentina because of argent, which is silver in the periodic table. Different from our neighbors in South America, Brazil's gold was only found in the very, very, very end of the 17th century. Brazil's gold was only found in 1692. So, in the beginning, Portugal was like, "I don't care about this land because I make a lot of money from spices commerce in India." But if the Portuguese were not caring about us, the Dutch and the French were very interested in Brazil. In the very first years of Brazil being found out, the French and the Dutch already started coming here and making illegal trade with us. Because, as Brazil was a colony, we could not make commerce with other countries. But France was pretty much interested in Brazilwood, which is the thing that gives the name to our country. It is this tree that is called pau-brasil, or Brazilwood. And this is where the name of the country comes from, because Brazil is an indigenous word that comes from Tupi language, and it means "red as amber." Because the Brazilwood, if you cut the tree in half, inside the tree it is red. So the Brazilwood is very precious, not only because it is a high-quality wood that can be used for boats and furniture and everything, but also because it can be used to make paint. So, from Brazilwood, a highly valuable paint for fabrics and stuff was made. So, Brazilwood was the first commercial good, I would say, that was taken from Brazil. The French made a lot of illegal trade and illegal commerce of Brazilwood. And the French also realized that the Portuguese were mistreating very harshly our natives. So the French aligned with a lot of indigenous tribes, and they made full kingdoms in Brazil. They literally conquered Rio de Janeiro, they literally made a city that exists to this day that is called São Luís, in homage to their King Louis. So, if you're French, I highly consider you going there. It's called São Luís, it is the capital of the state of Maranhão, and the city still has a lot of traits of the French colonization because it was created by the French. But not only the French, the Dutch. The Dutch made a very big occupation in Brazil. For very little, I'm not here speaking to you in French or in Dutch. Très chic! The Dutch stayed for many decades in Brazil. There was a full war to expel them from here. And if you're Dutch, I highly consider you going to the city called Recife, which is a very beautiful city where you can see a lot of streets named after Dutch people, a lot of monuments, a lot of remains of the Dutch occupation, and also the first-ever synagogue that was made in Brazil. Because at the time, a lot of people flying away, escaping religious persecution, came here. So you can see the first-ever synagogue to be made in our country. So, because of those international invasions that we suffered, Portugal became to be more harsh with us and to put ourselves out there. So let's talk a little bit about economy. What were the goods that Brazil had to be exploited? The first one ever was Brazilwood, that I already explained to you guys. We also had coffee, that to this day isa very important product for our economy. Sugar, that was also very, very big for many centuries, as sugar was very valuable in Europe. We also had cotton, rubber, and one of the most important: gold. So, the topic of gold is very dear to me because I didn't say this before, but I live in a region in a state in Brazil which is called Minas Gerais, that literally stands for General Mines. Because it was in my state that, for the first time, gold was found in Brazil. And my state was literally founded because of the exploitation of gold, silver, minerals in general. And to this day, my people are enslaved by our own wealth, because my state, to this day, is a state of mining. And I don't know if you ever researched about it or if you ever lived or knew anyone that works with mining. It's an activity that is very violent for human life. So, nowadays, I live in the capital of the state, which is called Belo Horizonte, which means "Beautiful Horizon" because we are a city built between mountains. The same mountains that make my state so beautiful are also very rich in iron and minerals. And ever since gold was found here, a disaster happened. This is because the first gold to be found here in Minas Gerais was gold that was in the rivers, and you could pick it hand by hand, without any material, without any employee. You, by yourself, could pick gold with your own hands. And quickly, the news spread that there was a place in Brazil where you could go with nothing, pick up a bunch of gold, put it in your pocket, go back to Europe, and make yourself a fortune. Literally, guys, in less than a century, the population of my state went from 300,000 people to 3 million people in less than 100 years. And this brought a lot of trouble. Portugal literally had to make laws to stop people from immigrating and from going to Brazil to find gold and fortune. People were fighting for land, and obviously, a lot of enslaved people were brought here to make wealth for other people. And mining is a very violent activity for the human body because you have to be inside a hole for the whole day, breathing toxic air. It is very damaging to humankind. And obviously, thousands of enslaved people were brought here, and they used literally gags on their mouths, like dogs, to stop them from swallowing, from eating the gold, and then trying to buy their own freedom. And this is very dear to me, because I came from a small city. Nowadays, I live in the capital of the state, but I came from a small city where more than 80% of the population lives by mining. So we cannot get rid of the mining because everyone lives, their wages, their salary, their home income comes from mining. But at the same time, this mining that makes us have a living and have a wage makes us die very slowly, because we have breathing problems, because a lot of incidents happen, a lot of accidents that the mining companies know might happen at any time, but they do nothing to stop it because they profit from it. So, a couple of years ago, it was very recent, we had a couple of incidents where the dams that they construct to put the waste mining creates, because mining is very, very harsh on nature, and it creates a lot of mud, a lot of residue, and they have to make dams to control it. So we have had more than one incident in which those dams exploded, and literally hundreds of people died, drowned in the mud. And the dam that is in my hometown is the biggest one. If it explodes, thousands of people would die, my grandma's house would literally be buried in mud. So this is why I say I speak from the heart. Because our wealth, our richness, our beautiful nature, our beautiful landscapes, our wealth is what enslaves us to this day. Because the richness, the iron, the gold that is made here in Brazil does not stay in Brazil. So, if you want a perspective, we don't have the exact numbers, of course, but it is estimated that, throughout the years, Portugal stole... Because if you have to tie someone and force them and take it away, you are stealing. So it is estimated that Portugal stole like 800,000 kilos, or 1,700,000 pounds, of gold from Brazil. Of course, the value is not the same now as it was in the 18th century, but nowadays, one kilo of gold is worth more than 90,000 dollars. So if you convert it to current values, Portugal stole from us the equivalent of more than 70 trillion US dollars, or 7 trillion euros. Portugal stole all of this money and still managed to go bankrupt. This gets me crazy, I'm sorry, guy. Because Portugal didn't understand that gold, everything that comes from nature, is not infinite. If you destroy it, if you wreck it, if you literally explode mountains, they stop existing. So they thought the gold would never end, and it quickly ended because 3 million people were here exploiting it at the same time. So Portugal wasted money in ways that were not very wise. If you go to Portugal, you will see. And here in Brazil, we also have a couple of churches that are completely made of gold, from ceiling to ground, to chandeliers, to everything. And also, Portugal was having financial trouble because they owed a lot of money to England. Keep in mind that, at the time, England was having its imperialism, and at the peak of England's imperialism, they had control, direct or indirect, over one-third of the whole planet. So England was very powerful. I talked a little bit about slavery, and now we'll get a bit deeper into this. I will bring you numbers so you can understand, okay? So slavery was, in the whole history of mankind, the biggest process of forced immigration that ever existed, okay? Because millions of people, in a span of a few centuries, millions were kidnapped, were stolen, and were trafficked. So, if human trafficking to this day is a very lucrative activity, imagine centuries ago when it was legalized. So Portugal, many times, earned more with the slave trade than with the activities that the enslaved people did themselves. And throughout the whole Brazilian history, we were always, always dependent on slave work, okay? All Brazilian richness, and consequently all Portuguese richness and all the European wealth, was built by black hands. And I say it to you without a glimpse, because it is the truth. Enslaved people, they were stolen, bought, or anything, from African countries and brought to America. And Brazil, alone, received more than half of all enslaved people that were sent to America. It is estimated that we received more than 4 million people throughout the years. And Brazil not only kept slavery for almost 400 years, because indigenous people were also being enslaved at the time, but Brazil was the last country on the whole American continent to abolish slavery. We only abolished slavery in 1888, there's not even 200 years. So, if you are still healing from a situationship that lasted for three months imagine how we are trying to heal from a slavery process that lasted for 388 years. Yeah, it is a triggering subject for all the Brazilian population because a lot of people try to deny the impact of slavery and how it is still visible in our racist society today. Because even though our population is mostly black, we are still very racist, okay? So this is very important to disclose. And our slavery process was so violent that it literally changed nature. And I say this because, as those enslaved people were brought to America, and the Atlantic crossing itself took three months on a boat, and those people were kept handcuffed, with their feet cuffed, without food, without proper water, without medicine, many times sat for three months in a very small space, it is estimated that over one-third of the people that were brought died on the way. And this led to many shark species that are not native to South America to start migrating because they knew that from those boats full of enslaved people, a lot of bodies were going to be thrown. So a lot of sharks started following those ships, and nowadays we have sharks here in South America that are not native to our coast. And, obviously, if you were a black person and you managed to survive the three-month trip, you would have to spend the rest of your life working effortlessly to create wealth for someone else and not for yourself. Because here in Brazil, even if an enslaved person got enough money to buy their own freedom, their master had to agree to give it to them. Because, legally, by our law, enslaved people were not people, they were objects. Objects that could be rented, sold, borrowed, raped... So this is brutal out there. And even after slavery ended, the government made a lot of efforts to "whiten" our population. Because for many years, Brazil had more enslaved people than actual citizens. So, when slavery ended, huge campaigns to incentivize people to migrate to Brazil from Europe started happening, especially because the Brazilian elite needed labor to work on the coffee fields. And they didn't want to hire the ex-enslaved people because they didn't want to pay for people that previously worked for them for free. And also because the government was very interested in whitening our population. So, at this time, the Brazilian government started making propaganda for Germans, Italians, and other European countries, encouraging them to come here and create colonies, villages, and cities. And to this day, if you go, especially to the south of Brazil, where the weather is colder and nicer for someone used to colder climates, like a European, If you go to the south of Brazil, you will see cities where German dialects are spoken. You will see cities where people mix Italian with Portuguese on a daily basis. So now that we talked about slavery and its impact, let's go a little bit back in time to understand how Brazil got its independence. To talk about our independence, we have to talk about the short king himself, Napoleon. Napoleon Bonaparte. You’ve probably heard of him before because he was a very important Frenchman who made a very big empire and created a lot of chaos in Europe. Because he conquered a lot of countries, and he was threatening to conquer Portugal, which led to the Portuguese royal family escaping to Brazil. "Let's run away to Brazil, we don't have a choice, let's go." So in 1808, the top 10,000 most important people of Portugal and I'm talking about all the royal family, the businessmen, the bankers, the public workers, everyone that was important in Portugal, everyone escaped to Brazil. And this changed everything forever because, previously to this, Brazil was a colony. So we couldn't trade with other countries. We were prohibited by law from having universities, schools, libraries, our own journals, or newspapers. Brazil was completely prohibited from having its freedom. We literally have letters from the 18th century of people saying: "Hey, the Brazilian population is over millions. We need to build medical schools because people are having diseases and dying, and we have to literally import doctors from other countries." And the Portuguese government’s response to this was, "First they ask for a medical school, and later they will ask for independence". Because they knew that an educated people does not accept being humiliated. And, yeah, they were right. So, in the moment that the Portuguese arrived, they needed to make space because, obviously, 10,000 important Portuguese are arriving, they’re not renting Airbnbs in the city, they’re not staying in hotels, they’re building palaces. So Rio de Janeiro was the capital and the most important city of Brazil at that time. And basically, they expelled everyone, especially the poor people that lived in the city center, to make space for building palaces, universities, the botanical garden, and a lot of things that you can visit. If you go to Rio de Janeiro and you go to the historical center, you will see all the Portuguese constructions that were made there. And those poor people that were literally expelled from their houses without compensation had to go to places where it was free to live, and those places were the hills. If you’ve ever been to Rio de Janeiro, you know Rio has a lot of hills; it is a city with ups and downs. And in those hills, a native flower that grows is a white flower called "favela". So this is where the first slums started to be created in Brazil. And even after Napoleon was defeated in Europe and the Portuguese could go back to Portugal, they literally preferred to stay in Brazil and continue living in Brazil for years. They only went back to Portugal because the Portuguese population made a rebellion, because they wanted their royal family back. And this started a void because the king of Portugal at the time, João, or John VI, went back to Portugal and left behind his son, Pedro, or Peter. So Pedro was left behind in Brazil to administrate the country, and his father went back to Portugal. And the rebellions were happening in Portugal. Pedro's father, João, was like... "Pedro, please come back to Portugal, let's make Brazil a colony again." And he was like, "Mmm, no. I identify with these people. I want their freedom, and I want to be their emperor." So, long story short, our independence declaration was signed by his wife, a woman called Leopoldina, and she became Brazil's first empress. And Pedro became Pedro I, or Peter the First, the first emperor of Brazil. Of course, the Portuguese did not accept this. We had wars here in Brazil to fight for our independence, and I will highlight a very important character of this fight, that is the Brazilian Mulan from real life. Because we had a woman that dressed up as a man to be able to join the army and fight for Brazil's independence. She is called Maria Quitéria. After she was found to be a woman, she was allowed to enter the Brazilian army. She fought for us, and to this day, she is the patron, the head symbol, of the Brazilian army. So this is very nice to mention. And after wars, conflict, and Brazil having to pay a huge compensation to Portugal, Brazilian independence was acknowledged and recognized by the whole world in 1822. So we became independent, and we became an empire. So we had two emperors: Pedro I and Pedro II, who was Pedro I's son. There's a lot of tea about both Pedros, okay? Because the first Pedro was not the best; he was not a very good administrator, and he had a little bit of a scandalous private life because he was literally sending letters with drawn nudes, he literally was drawing his parts to his mistress. And it was also gossip at the time that he committed domestic violence against his wife. So people didn’t like him. Another rebellion exploded in Portugal. So he gave up on the Brazilian throne to go back to Portugal and left Pedro II with only 3 years old. Then, Pedro II became our emperor at just 14 years old. And, contrary to what everyone might think, he was a good emperor, even though he was a literal teenager. But Brazil became a republic in the year 1889, basically because the royal family lost its support. Because the war that we had here was a very violent war, that we had with Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, called Guerra do Paraguai. It was a tough time. And also, when slavery ended, the Brazilian elite stopped supporting the royal family. So the military made a coup and installed a republic. They were the first presidents of this republic. And now we start the last era of Brazilian history, which is the Brazilian Republic that we still have to this day, but with a lot of coups, okay? Because the Brazilian military loves to make coups, okay? And this first republic ended with a coup, a military coup, that installed a dictatorship in Brazil called the Era Vargas, because the president was this guy named Getúlio Vargas. He was, for sure, the most important politician in all of Brazilian history because he governed Brazil for more than 15 years as a dictator. And while he literally complimented Hitler and Mussolini, prosecuted communists in Brazil, and killed a bunch of people, he also gave workers rights and created public education and a public health system in Brazil. So he was very controversial. And between his dictatorship and the next dictatorship that we had, Brazil had a brief moment of democracy in which we had five presidents one of them being Vargas, Getúlio Vargas, who made a very big comeback. But left the government after he committed suicide, and his suicide letter was so emotional that led people to literally set fire on newspaper buildings that had spoken badly about him in the past. And at this time, during the democratic period we had in Brazil, was also when our current capital was built. As you may know, I don't know if you know, the Brazilian capital is not São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro. The Brazilian capital is a city more in the interior of Brazil called Brasília. Brasília, okay? So this city was built in the 1960s during this democratic time, but it didn’t last long. Because in 1964, the Brazilian military, supported, financed, and trained by the CIA and the USA government, made a coup and installed a military dictatorship, that was supported, trained, and financed by the USA. And the USA installed, at this time, in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, many dictatorships throughout Latin America. So we’re speaking about Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua, Uruguay, many, many countries lived through very violent dictatorships founded by the USA. And if you want to know more about it, I’d highly recommend watching the Oscar-nominated Brazilian movie "I’m Still Here", which is a very big source of pride for us because it is a very beautiful movie that portrays a family of a politician who was persecuted, tortured, and killed by our dictatorship, and the fight his family had for justice for many decades. So I highly recommend it. And there are also many other nominated and awarded movies that portray other dictatorships that happened. So if you want to know more about it, I highly recommend researching it. And after the dictatorship ended in 1985, after many protests and many people literally dying for our freedom, now Brazil returned to being a democracy. And this is the moment where we still live to this day, because Brazil is currently a republican democracy. So even though currently in Brazil... I’m talking about 2025, okay? Even though we are currently very divided between people who are right-wing and left-wing, as many countries in the world are, we are still a democratic government. So we have elections, we have justice, we have workers rights, and we have public universal healthcare. And we have a lot of good things. This is because of our constitution, which was made right after the dictatorship ended. Our current constitution is internationally acknowledged as one of the longest and most complete constitutions ever to exist. It is very clear about women’s rights, Indigenous rights, Black people’s rights, and fights against racism and everything. So we try to correct the mistakes that we had in our past and the difficult times that we've been through. So this is basically where we stand, and that's basically it, guys. I'm so sorry for taking so long with this video. I said it was going to be brief, but I have a very difficult time summarizing what I have to say. And I hope that with this video you've learned something new. If you want to know more, I highly recommend watching my longer video about Brazilian history because I get into detail on everything that I spoke about in this video. We talk way, way, way more about the timeline, about presidents, and about the republic, and everything. I hope to have fulfilled my word that you wouldn’t be bored for a single moment. Brazilian history is very rich, very complete, and very beautiful. And if you like learning from me, please share the video with other people so they can understand more about Brazilian history and learn something new. Like this video, follow me on social media, and if you want to support my job, you can also buy my Brazilian history course. It’s in Portuguese, but it’s a very good course. The links will all be in the description. Thank you so much for showing interest in our culture. [in Portuguese] Thank you to all Brazilians sharing this video with foreigners you know out there. The purpose of the video is precisely that. If you watched the video until the end, leave a comment saying, “You took our time.” Leave this written, and I'll know that you made it to the end of the video, okay? And I hope to see you here on my channel in other opportunities, okay? Thank you! [in Portuguese] Kisses. ♪