There are three basic racial sources for the
Brazilian people. To the original inhabitants
(Indians) were added successive waves of Europeans
(mainly Portuguese) and Africans (mostly from
the sub-Saharan west coast). In the 16th century,
the area which is now Brazil was inhabited by
several hundred Indigenous tribes who, while racially
similar, spoke different languages and had different
cultures. Groups speaking the Tupi and Guarani
languages lived along the coast and in the adjoining
hinterland and they established intermarriages
with the Portuguese settlers. Many tribes speaking
other languages (Gê, Arwak, and Karib), on the
other hand, lived in the interior and they took
longer to establish contact with the outsiders.
Today Brazil's native Indians number about 250,000.
They are divided into roughly 200 groups and they
speak some 180 different languages. The Indians
live in vast areas (328,185 sq. miles [850,000
sq. km]), equal to ten percent of Brazil's total
territory, which has been set aside from them
by the Federal Government. In these areas, which
total more than twice the size of the state of
California, the Indians are free to preserve their
life-style. Starting in the middle of the 16th
century, Africans belonging to the Bantu and to
the Sudanic ethnic groups (a large proportion
of the Sudanic group came from the Yoruba nation
from what is today Nigeria and Benin) were brought
to Brazil to work as slaves in the sugarcane,
and later, in the gold and diamond mines and the
coffee plantations. The integration process that
had begun between the Europeans and the Indians
rapidly spread to include the black slaves.
This racial mixing went on as Brazil began, at
the end of the 19th century, to receive increasing
numbers of immigrants from all over the world.
Portugal remained the single most important source
of migrants to Brazil, with Italy second, followed
by Lebanon. In the first half of the 20th Century,
as a consequence of war or economic pressures,
sizable contingents of immigrants came to Brazil
from parts of western, central, and eastern Europe.
In 1908, 640 immigrants came to Brazil from Japan.
Because of the welcoming social environment, a
Japanese migration trend was established. By 1969,
247,312 Japanese had emigrated to Brazil. Today
Brazilians of Japanese descent are the largest
such group outside Japan.
