Discovering South America: Brazil

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Brazil

The slave system finally began to crumble in the 1880s with the rise of an abolitionist movement and the increasing numbers of runaway slaves. Coffee and Independence The 1840s saw the beginning of large-scale coffee cultivation in Brazil. Like sugar, coffee was not native to the Americas. It had been brought there from the Mediterranean. Cultivation spread through the fertile valleys near Rio de Janeiro. During the 19th century, coffee replaced sugar as Brazil’s major export and provided a tremendous amount of revenue , spurring Brazil’s growth. At first the coffee plantations used slave labor, but with the abolition of slavery in 1888, thousands of European immigrants, mostly Italians, arrived each year to work on the coffee estates, called fazendas . Wealthy landowners dominated the country politically and economical- ly, while the majority of Brazilians—mostly former slaves, their descendants, and the mulatto population—lived in poverty as agricultural workers. In 1889, a military coup d’état, supported by the powerful coffee growers, top- pled the Brazilian monarchy. A constituent assembly convened, and in June 1890 it completed the drafting of a constitution, which was adopted in February 1891. Brazil’s constitution eliminated the monarchy and established a federal republic, officially called the United States of Brazil. For the next 40 years, Brazil was governed by a series of military and civilian presidents. Unbalanced Progress In 1929 the opposition Liberal Alliance was formed. The Liberal Alliance unit- ed many disaffected middle-class and urban groups, as well as most of the mil-