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Alex
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Brasil
Mar 1999 time: 02:32
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quote: Originally posted by Oerdin
Alex: I'm confussed. How does the colonization of two centuries ago effect current Brazilian economic conditions? |
Actually, that would be four centuries. 
A complete explanation would demand a lot of time, so I will give you the short answer: the Portuguese (who colonized Brazil) wanted, at first, only to extract the riches they could find here and return them to Portugal. They were not interested in forming a society here. This exploration model is one that still influences how things are managed here.
We had slaves, just like the USA, and no, Speer, they were not the "majority" of the population. But, while in the USA the more advanced model of industrial development (North) triumphed over the backward model of agriculture w/ slaves (South), in Brazil there never was an industrial development until 1940s-1950s. The exploration model found its way into collective consciousness, and infiltrated all kinds of public institutions, leading to massive corruption and a general disregard with anything that could be viewed as a "national project", or building up the nation for the future generations.
Of course, there are other reasons and branchings...
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