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MAJOR NATIONS IN A GLOBAL WORLD: BRAZIL
If there is one iconic image of Rio de Janeiro, it is the Christ the Redeemer
statue, which looks down from the summit of Mount Corcovado. Created
by the French sculptor Paul Landowsky, the statue is 98 feet (30 m) tall, not
including its 26-foot (8 m) base. Its arms are 92 feet (28 m) wide.
A Catholic priest named Pedro Maria Boss came up with the idea of placing
a statue on Mount Corcovado in the 1850s. Boss wanted to honor Brazil’s Prin-
cess Isabel, the daughter of Emperor Pedro II. The project was never approved,
but in 1921, the Church proposed that a statue of Christ be placed on the
mountain. The statue was dedicated in 1931.
The luminous modern buildings and the landscaped avenues are not the
only features of Brazil’s cities. Favelas, or slums—shantytowns located at the
edges of the city—are a prominent feature in the urban landscape. It is here
that squatters occupy vacant land, building
ramshackle
homes out of any-
thing they can find. Often built into hillsides at the edges of Brazil’s major
cities, the favelas are densely populated.
They receive much attention during preparation for events such as the 2014
World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. In that city, the govern-
ment began moving some residents of the favelas some twenty-five miles or
so away to make way for roads, renovated stadiums, a village for athletes, and
other venues.
While the cities are central to life in Brazil, it is the mighty and mysterious Ama-
zon River, its basin and rain forest, that conjures the most mesmerizing images
of the vast country. The Amazon
is a place where beetles as big as
tea cups roam across the jungle
floor, and where hairy spiders have
7-inch (17.8 cm) legs.
Located in parts of nine South
American countries, the Amazon
River area was once an unspoiled
region of dense jungle far from
civilization. The only human
inhabitants were native tribes
A house on the Amazon River.