Sertão
The word sertão has no precise equivalent in any other language, but in English is approximated by "outback" or "backcountry". It is one of the four sub-regions of the Northeast Region of Brazil, its borders do not correspond to any modern Brazilian states. Like the South of the United States, it is a region, well-known in Brazilian culture, with a rich history and much folklore; the term referred to the vast hinterlands of Asia and South America that Portuguese explorers encountered. In Brazil, it referred to backlands away from the Atlantic coastal regions where the Portuguese first settled in South America in the early sixteenth century. A Brazilian historian once referred to colonial life in Brazil as a "civilization of crabs", as most settlers clung to the shoreline, with few trying to make inroads into the sertão. In modern terms, "sertão" refers to a semi-arid region in northeastern Brazil, comprising parts of the states of Alagoas, Pernambuco, Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte, Ceará, Maranhão, Piauí, Minas Gerais.
Geographically, the sertão consists of low uplands that form part of the Brazilian Highlands. Most parts of the sertão are between 200 meters and 500 meters above sea level, with higher elevations found on the eastern edge in the Planalto da Borborema, where it merges into a sub-humid region known as agreste, in the Serra da Ibiapaba in western Ceará and in the Serro do Periquito of central Pernambuco. In the north, the sertão extends to the northern coastal plains of Rio Grande do Norte state, while to the south it ends in the northern part of Minas Gerais. Two major rivers cross the sertão, the Jaguaribe and further east the Piranhas, the larger São Francisco River is in part in the sertão. Smaller rivers dry up after the end of the rainy season; the term sertão is used in Portuguese to refer to the Brazilian hinterland in general, regardless of region. It is this sense that corresponds to sertão music, música sertaneja "country music". To avoid ambiguity, the region in the northeast is sometimes called the sertão nordestino, while the Brazilian hinterland may be called the sertania, the land of sertões.
Because the sertão lies just south of the equator, temperatures are nearly uniform throughout the year and are tropical extremely hot in the west. However, the sertão is distinctive in its low rainfall compared to other areas of Brazil; because of the cool temperatures in the South Atlantic Ocean, the intertropical convergence zone remains north of the region for most of the year, so that most of the year is dry. Although annual rainfall averages between 500 millimetres and 800 millimetres over most of the sertão and 1,300 millimetres on the northern coast at Fortaleza, it is confined to a short rainy season; this season extends from January to April in the west, but in the eastern sertão it occurs from March to June. However, rainfall is erratic and in some years the rains are minimal, leading to catastrophic drought, while in others rains are heavy and floods occur; this variability has caused extreme famines among subsistence farmers in the region, exacerbated by the extreme imbalance of land ownership throughout the sertão.
The worst of these famines, between 1877 and 1879, was said to have killed over half the region's population. In its natural state, the sertão was covered by a distinctive scrubby caatinga vegetation, consisting of low thorny bushes adapted to the extreme climate. Several species of tree in the caatinga, such as the cashew, have become valuable horticultural plants. Most of the sertão vegetation is now degraded as a result of centuries of cattle ranching or clearing for cotton farming. Parts of the sertão are recognized as a biodiversity hot-spot because of its unique flora. Agreste Brazil Socio-Geographic Division Brazilian literature Caatinga Drought History of Brazil Os sertões, a classic book about the sertão. Tieta do Agreste, a Brazilian novel and film Nonfiction Fiction
Ceará
Ceará is one of the 27 states of Brazil, located in the northeastern part of the country, on the Atlantic coast. It is the eighth-largest Brazilian State by the 17th by area, it is one of the main tourist destinations in Brazil. The state capital is the city of the country's fourth most populous city; the name Ceará means "sings the jandaia". According to José de Alencar, one of the most important writers of Brazil and an authority in Tupi Guaraní, Ceará means turquoise or green waters. There are theories that the state name would derive from Siriará, a reference to the crabs from the seashore; the state is best known with 600 kilometers of sand. There are mountains and valleys producing tropical fruits. To the south, on the border of Paraíba, Pernambuco and Piauí, is the National Forest of Araripe. Ceará has an area of 148,016 square kilometres, it is bounded on the north by the Atlantic Ocean, on the east by the states of Rio Grande do Norte and Paraíba, on the south by Pernambuco state, on the west by Piauí.
Ceará lies upon the northeast slope of the Brazilian Highlands, upon the sandy coastal plain. Its surface is a succession of great terraces, facing north and northeast, formed by the denudation of the ancient sandstone plateau which once covered this part of the continent; the latter are the remains of the ancient plateau, capped with horizontal strata of sandstone, with a uniform altitude of 2,000 to 2,400 feet. The flat top of such a range is called a chapada or taboleira, its width in places is from 32 to 56 miles; the boundary line with Piauí follows one of these ranges, the Serra de Ibiapaba, which unites with another range on the southern boundary of the state, known as the Serra do Araripe. Another range, or escarpment, crosses the state from east to west, but is broken into two principal divisions, each having several local names; these ranges are not continuous, the breaking down of the ancient plateau having been irregular and uneven. The rivers of the state are small and, with one or two exceptions, become dry in the dry season.
The largest is the Jaguaribe, which flows across the state in a northeast direction. Ceará has a varied environment, with mangroves, jungle and tropical forest; the higher ranges intercept considerable moisture from the prevailing trade winds, their flanks and valleys are covered with a tropical forest, typical of the region, gathering species from tropical forests and cerrado. The less elevated areas of the plateaus are either thinly open campo. Most of the region at the lower altitudes is characterized by scrubby forests called caatingas, an endemic Brazilian vegetation; the sandy, coastal plain, with a width of 12 to 18 miles, is nearly bare of vegetation, although the coast has many enclaves of restingas and mangroves. The soil is, in general and porous and does not retain moisture; some areas in the higher ranges of Serra da Ibiapaba, Serra do Araripe and others are more appropriate for agriculture, as their soil and vegetation are less affected by the dry seasons. The beaches of the state is a major tourist attraction.
Ceará has several famous beaches such as Canoa Quebrada, Morro Branco, Taíba and Flexeiras. The beaches are divided into two groups: Sunrise Coast. Ceará lies in one of the few regions of the country. In 1980 an earthquake measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale struck near Quixeramobim in the center of the state, rattling the city of Fortaleza but causing no injuries. The climate of Ceará is hot all year; the temperature in the state varies from 22 to 36 °C. The coast is humid, tempered by the cool trade winds. In the higher ranges the temperatures are cooler and vary from about 14 to 18 °C; the record minimum temperature registered in Ceará was 8 °C, recorded in Jardim, a small city in Chapada do Araripe. The year is divided into a rainy and dry season, the rains beginning in January to March and lasting until June; the dry season, July to December, is sometimes broken by slight showers in September and October, but these are of slight importance. Sometimes the rains fail altogether, a drought ensues, causing famine and pestilence throughout the entire region.
The most destructive droughts recorded in the 18th and 19th centuries were those of 1711, 1723, 1777–1778, 1790, 1825, 1844–1845, 1877 to 1878, the last-mentioned destroying nearly all the livestock in the state, causing the death through starvation and pestilence of nearly half a million people, or over half the population. Because of the constant risk of droughts, many dams have been built throughout Ceará, the largest of them the Açude Castanhão; because of the dams, the Jaguaribe River no longer dries up completely. The t
Gravatá
Gravatá is a city in the state of Pernambuco, located about 75 km from the state's capital Recife. The population of Gravatá in 2009 was 75.229 inhabitants, according with IBGE. Gravatá is located at 08°12′04″S 35°33′53″W; the average altitude is 447 metres. The area of Gravatá is 491.53 km2. It is known for its charming houses with an Alpine architecture. Located in the rural district of the valley of Ipojuca, a transition area between the Forest and the Rural Area, in the region known the Borborema Plateau, nowadays called Serra das Russas. Being an important regional centre town, it is linked to Recife by a federal highway, which passes Vitória de Santo Antão and Jaboatão dos Guararapes; the characteristic vegetation in Gravatá are savannahs, natural pastures, swamp and forests. Administratively, the municipal district is composed of the district Gravatá itself and the municipals of Uruçu-Mirim, Russinhas, São Severino de Gravatá, Avencas and Ilha Energética; the municipal district of Gravatá had its origins in a farm, which in 1808, belonging to José Justino Carreiro de Miranda, served as a lodging place for travellers and sold sugar and beef.
Travelling along the river Ipojuca from Recife towards the inside of the country was difficult in those times. The merchants were forced to make strategic stops to avoid the cattle losing weight. One of those resting-places was known as "Crauatá", derived from the Tupi name "Karawata" for the place, due to the predominance of a plant belonging to the family of the bromélias called Caraguatá, Caroatá, Caróa and Gravatá, it was at the end of the 18th century, that José Justino Carreio de Miranda took ownership of the Fazenda Gravatá, which for a long time served as lodging for travelers. As a natural consequence, on the two sides of the river two populations developed. In 1810 the construction of the chapel Sant'Ana was started to be completed 12 years by João Félix Justiniano, the son of José Justino Carreiro de Miranda. Soon afterwards, the grounds were divided in 100 lots and sold to the residents, leading off the town of Gravatá, being a district of the municipal district Bezerros. In 1875, the freguesia was created, on May 30, 1881 Gravatá became a town due to the Law provincial no.
1.560, the former chapel was transformed to a mother church. On June 13, 1884, the main place of the municipal district was elevated to the category of a city. However, political emancipation only came to happen after the Proclamation the Republic. By the Organic Act of the Municipal district of March 15, 1893, when the city's municipality gained autonomy and elected its first mayor, Antonio Avelino do Rêgo Barros. In the end of the 19th century, with the inauguration of the Great Westerns Railways, linking Recife to the interior from Pernambuco, the city took considerable pulse and, little by little, vocation was defined for tourism, above all with the construction of the road BR-232, in the Mountains of Russians; the railroad between Recife and Gravatá was built in the years 1881 to 1894. The biggest problem in this project was the mountainous landscape around Gravatá, so that it was necessary to construct a lot of bridges and tunnels; the Grota Funda bridge e.g. has a height of 48 m. In the years 1945 to 1947 the railroad was reconditioned: the iron bridges were replaced by ferroconcrete bridges.
In 1986 the railroad was cited for the breathtaking landscape around. The importance of the railroad is caused by the development of the interior from Pernambuco: now it was possible to transfer goods and people in a reasonable time and in big quantities; this caused an economic upswing because of a strengthening of trade and tourism. Gravatá itself has 75,000 inhabitants, but in the weekends it occurs that population amounts to about 130,000 people: many tourists come to enjoy the cold and pleasant climate of the city. During the year, there are several events happening in the municipal district which lure growing numbers of tourists to the town. In January, on second Sunday, it promotes the traditional Festa de Reis. In February, blocks do the pré-carnival week. During the Easter-Week in April, Gravatá is one of the biggest centres of animation of the state, being included in the Itinerary of the Passion. In that period, local actors show. An estimade 300.000 people visit Gravatá during this time.
In the month may, there opens up space for the religious tourism, with Frei Damião's Festivities. A great walk leaves the church towards the Chapel Capela do Riacho do Mel, where Frei Damião had celebrated his first mass in Brazil. In June, São João, although only in existence since 2002 has become one of the largest and best of the country. In the first fortnight of the month the Community São João is accomplished, which means a caravan that leaves downtown, all the nights, bound for a neighborhood or district, with flags and balloons, trios and a lot typical food, total free. In the second fortnight, in the fairground, all over decorated with flags and balloons, gang contests are accomplished and shows of national artist
World War II
World War II known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries; the major participants threw their entire economic and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China, it included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, the only use of nuclear weapons in war. Japan, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with China by 1937, though neither side had declared war on the other. World War II is said to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and the United Kingdom.
From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Finland and the Baltic states. Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and East Africa, the fall of France in mid 1940, the war continued between the European Axis powers and the British Empire. War in the Balkans, the aerial Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the long Battle of the Atlantic followed. On 22 June 1941, the European Axis powers launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the largest land theatre of war in history; this Eastern Front trapped most crucially the German Wehrmacht, into a war of attrition. In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the United States as well as European colonies in the Pacific. Following an immediate U. S. declaration of war against Japan, supported by one from Great Britain, the European Axis powers declared war on the U.
S. in solidarity with their Japanese ally. Rapid Japanese conquests over much of the Western Pacific ensued, perceived by many in Asia as liberation from Western dominance and resulting in the support of several armies from defeated territories; the Axis advance in the Pacific halted in 1942. Key setbacks in 1943, which included a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy, Allied victories in the Pacific, cost the Axis its initiative and forced it into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained its territorial losses and turned toward Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in Central China, South China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key Western Pacific islands; the war in Europe concluded with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945.
Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945 and the refusal of Japan to surrender under its terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August respectively. With an invasion of the Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, the Soviet entry into the war against Japan and its invasion of Manchuria, Japan announced its intention to surrender on 15 August 1945, cementing total victory in Asia for the Allies. Tribunals were set up by fiat by the Allies and war crimes trials were conducted in the wake of the war both against the Germans and the Japanese. World War II changed the political social structure of the globe; the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The Soviet Union and United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the nearly half-century long Cold War. In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia.
Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic expansion. Political integration in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities and create a common identity; the start of the war in Europe is held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred and the two wars merged in 1941; this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935; the British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the fo
Sephardi Jews
Sephardi Jews known as Sephardic Jews or Sephardim from Sepharad, Spain, or the Iberian peninsula, are a Jewish ethnic division. They established communities throughout areas of modern Spain and Portugal, where they traditionally resided, evolving what would become their distinctive characteristics and diasporic identity, which they took with them in their exile from Iberia beginning in the late 15th century to North Africa, the Levant and Southern Europe, as well as the Americas, all other places of their exiled settlement, either alongside pre-existing co-religionists, or alone as the first Jews in new frontiers, their millennial residence as an open and organised Jewish community in Iberia began to decline with the Reconquista and was brought to an end starting with the Alhambra Decree by Spain's Catholic Monarchs in 1492, by the edict of expulsion of Jews and Muslims by Portuguese king Manuel I in 1496, which resulted in a combination of internal and external migrations, mass conversions and executions.
More broadly, the term Sephardim has today come sometimes to refer to traditionally Eastern Jewish communities of West Asia and beyond who, although not having genealogical roots in the Jewish communities of Iberia, have adopted a Sephardic style of liturgy and Sephardic law and customs imparted to them by the Iberian Jewish exiles over the course of the last few centuries. This article deals with Sephardim within the narrower ethnic definition; the vernacular languages of Sephardim and their descendants have been variants of either Spanish or Portuguese, though other tongues had been adopted and adapted throughout their history. The historical forms of Spanish or Portuguese that differing Sephardic communities spoke communally was determined by the date of their departure from Iberia, their condition of departure as Jews or New Christians. Judaeo-Spanish, sometimes called "Ladino Oriental", was a Romance language derived from Old Spanish, incorporating elements from all the old Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula and Aramaic, was spoken by what became the Eastern Sephardim, who settled in the Eastern Mediterranean, taken with them in the 15th century after the expulsion from Spain in 1492.
This dialect was further influenced by Ottoman Turkish, Levantine Arabic, Greek and Serbo-Croatian vocabulary in the differing lands of their exile. Haketia, an Arabic-influenced Judaeo-Spanish variety derived from Old Spanish, with numerous Hebrew and Aramaic terms was spoken by North African Sephardim, taken with them in the 15th century after the expulsion from Spain in 1492; the main feature of this dialect is the heavy influence of the Jebli Arabic dialect of northern Morocco. Early Modern Spanish and Early Modern Portuguese, including in a mixture of the two was traditionally spoken or used liturgically by the ex-converso Western Sephardim, taken with them during their migration out of Iberia between the 16th and 18th centuries as conversos, after which they reverted to Judaism. Modern Spanish and Modern Portuguese varieties, traditionally spoken by the Sephardic Bnei Anusim of Iberia and Ibero-America, including some recent returnees to Judaism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
In this latter case, these varieties have incorporated loanwords from the indigenous languages of the Americas introduced following the Spanish conquest. The name Sephardi means "Spanish" or "Hispanic", derived from a Biblical location; the location of the biblical Sepharad is disputed, but Sepharad was identified by Jews as Hispania, that is, the Iberian Peninsula. Sepharad still means "Spain" in modern Hebrew. In other languages and scripts, "Sephardi" may be translated as plural Hebrew: סְפָרַדִּים, Modern: Sfaraddim, Tiberian: Səp̄āraddîm. In the narrower ethnic definition, a Sephardi Jew is a Jew descended from the Jews who lived in the Iberian Peninsula in the late 15th century prior to the issuance of the Alhambra Decree of 1492 by order of the Catholic Monarchs in Spain, the decree of 1496 in Portugal by order of King Manuel I. In Hebrew, the term "Sephardim Tehorim", derived from a misunderstanding of the initials ס"ט "Samekh Tet" traditionally used with some proper names, has in recent times come to be used in some quarters to distinguish Sephardim proper "who trace their lineage back to the Iberian/Spanish population" from Sephardim in the broader religious sense.
This distinction has been made in reference to genetic findings in research on Sephardim proper in contrast to other communities of Jews today termed Sephardi more broadly The modern Israeli Hebrew definition of Sephardi is a much broader, religious based, definition that excludes ethnic considerations. In its most basic form, this broad religious definition of a Sephardi refers to any Jew, of any ethnic background, who follows the customs and traditions of Sepharad. For religious purposes, in modern Israel, "Sephardim" is most used in this wider sense which encompasses most non-Ashkenazi Jews
Guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that has six strings. It is played with both hands by strumming or plucking the strings with either a guitar pick or the finger/fingernails of one hand, while fretting with the fingers of the other hand; the sound of the vibrating strings is projected either acoustically, by means of the hollow chamber of the guitar, or through an electrical amplifier and a speaker. The guitar is a type of chordophone, traditionally constructed from wood and strung with either gut, nylon or steel strings and distinguished from other chordophones by its construction and tuning; the modern guitar was preceded by the gittern, the vihuela, the four-course Renaissance guitar, the five-course baroque guitar, all of which contributed to the development of the modern six-string instrument. There are three main types of modern acoustic guitar: the classical guitar, the steel-string acoustic guitar, the archtop guitar, sometimes called a "jazz guitar"; the tone of an acoustic guitar is produced by the strings' vibration, amplified by the hollow body of the guitar, which acts as a resonating chamber.
The classical guitar is played as a solo instrument using a comprehensive finger-picking technique where each string is plucked individually by the player's fingers, as opposed to being strummed. The term "finger-picking" can refer to a specific tradition of folk, blues and country guitar playing in the United States; the acoustic bass guitar is a low-pitched instrument, one octave below a regular guitar. Electric guitars, introduced in the 1930s, use an amplifier and a loudspeaker that both makes the sound of the instrument loud enough for the performers and audience to hear, given that it produces an electric signal when played, that can electronically manipulate and shape the tone using an equalizer and a huge variety of electronic effects units, the most used ones being distortion and reverb. Early amplified guitars employed a hollow body, but solid wood guitars began to dominate during the 1960s and 1970s, as they are less prone to unwanted acoustic feedback "howls"; as with acoustic guitars, there are a number of types of electric guitars, including hollowbody guitars, archtop guitars and solid-body guitars, which are used in rock music.
The loud, amplified sound and sonic power of the electric guitar played through a guitar amp has played a key role in the development of blues and rock music, both as an accompaniment instrument and performing guitar solos, in many rock subgenres, notably heavy metal music and punk rock. The electric guitar has had a major influence on popular culture; the guitar is used in a wide variety of musical genres worldwide. It is recognized as a primary instrument in genres such as blues, country, folk, jota, metal, reggae, rock and many forms of pop. Before the development of the electric guitar and the use of synthetic materials, a guitar was defined as being an instrument having "a long, fretted neck, flat wooden soundboard, a flat back, most with incurved sides." The term is used to refer to a number of chordophones that were developed and used across Europe, beginning in the 12th century and in the Americas. A 3,300-year-old stone carving of a Hittite bard playing a stringed instrument is the oldest iconographic representation of a chordophone and clay plaques from Babylonia show people playing an instrument that has a strong resemblance to the guitar, indicating a possible Babylonian origin for the guitar.
The modern word guitar, its antecedents, has been applied to a wide variety of chordophones since classical times and as such causes confusion. The English word guitar, the German Gitarre, the French guitare were all adopted from the Spanish guitarra, which comes from the Andalusian Arabic قيثارة and the Latin cithara, which in turn came from the Ancient Greek κιθάρα. Which comes from the Persian word "sihtar"; this pattern of naming is visible in setar and sitar. The word "tar" at the end of all of these words is a Persian word that means "string". Many influences are cited as antecedents to the modern guitar. Although the development of the earliest "guitars" is lost in the history of medieval Spain, two instruments are cited as their most influential predecessors, the European lute and its cousin, the four-string oud. At least two instruments called "guitars" were in use in Spain by 1200: the guitarra latina and the so-called guitarra morisca; the guitarra morisca had a rounded back, wide fingerboard, several sound holes.
The guitarra Latina had a narrower neck. By the 14th century the qualifiers "moresca" or "morisca" and "latina" had been dropped, these two cordophones were referred to as guitars; the Spanish vihuela, called in Italian the "viola da mano", a guitar-like instrument of the 15th and 16th centuries, is considered to have been the single most important influence in the development of the baroque guitar. It had six courses, lute-like tuning in fourths and a guitar-like body, although early representations reveal an instrument with a cut waist, it was larger than the contemporary four-course guitars. By the 16th century, the vihuela's construction had more in common with the modern guitar, with its curved one-piece ribs, than with the viols, more like a larger version of the contemporary four-course guita
Afro-Brazilians
Afro-Brazilians are Brazilians who have African ancestry. The term does not have widespread use in Brazil, where social constructs and classifications have been based on appearance. Many members of another group of people, multiracial Brazilians or pardos have a range of degree of African ancestry. Preto and pardo are among five color categories used by the Brazilian Census, along with branco and indígena. In 2010, 7.6% of the Brazilian population, some 15 million people, identified as preto, while 43% identified as pardo. Pretos tend to be predominantly African in ancestry, while pardos tend to have a lesser percentage of African ancestry. On average pardos are predominantly European, with Native American ancestries. Since the early 21st century, Brazilian government agencies such as the Special Secretariat for Policies to Promote Racial Equality and the Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada, have considered combining the categories preto and pardo, as a single category called negro, because both groups show socioeconomic indications of discrimination.
They suggest doing. This decision has caused much controversy because there is no consensus about it in Brazilian society. Brazilians use the American-style phrase "African Brazilian" as a term of ethnic identity and never in informal discourse: the IBGE's July 1998 PME shows that, of Black Brazilians, only about 10% identify as being of "African origin". In the July 1998 PME, the categories Afro-Brasileiro and Africano Brasileiro were not chosen at all. In the 1976 National Household Sample, none of these terms was used once. Brazilian geneticist Sérgio Pena has criticised American scholar Edward Telles for lumping pretos and pardos in the same category. According to him, "the autosomal genetic analysis that we have performed in non-related individuals from Rio de Janeiro shows that it does not make any sense to put pretos and pardos in the same category"; as many pardos are of European ancestry, Pena questioned studying them together with pretos, who are of African ancestry. For example, an autosomal genetic study of students in a school in the poor periphery of Rio de Janeiro found that the pardos among the students were found to be on average more than 80% European in ancestry.
Before testing, the students identified as 1/3 1/3 African and 1/3 Native American. According to Edward Telles, three different systems related to "racial classification" along the White-Black continuum are used in Brazil; the first is the Census System, which distinguishes three categories: branco and preto. The second is the popular social system that uses many different categories, including the ambiguous term moreno; the third is the Black movement, which distinguishes only two categories, summing up pardos and pretos as negros, putting all others as "whites". More the term afrodescendente has been adopted for use, but it is restricted to formal discourse, such as governmental or academic discussions, being viewed by some as a cultural imposition from the "politically correct speech" common in the United States; the first system referred by Telles is that of the Brazilian Institute of Statistics. In the Census, respondents may identify their ethnicity or color from five categories: branca, preta, amarela or indígena.
The term parda needs further explanation. In that census, people were asked for their "colour or race"; these slashes were summed up in the category pardo. In practice this means answers such as pardo, mulato, caboclo etc. all indicating mixed race. In the following censuses, pardo was added as a category on its own, included Amerindians; the latter were defined as a separate category only in 1991. It is a term for people of color who are lighter than blacks, does not imply a black-white mixture, as there are some indigenous persons. Telles' second system is that of popular classification. Two IBGE surveys made more than 20 years apart (the 1976 National Household Sample Survey and the July 1998 Monthly Employment Survey have been analyzed to assess how Brazilians think of themselves in racial terms; the IBGE thought. Data Folha has conducted research on this subject; the results of these surveys seem to coincide in some fundamental aspects. First, a great number of racial terms are in use in Brazil, indicating a flexibility in thinking about the topic.
The 1976 PNAD found that people responded with a total of 136 different terms to the question about race. However, most of these terms are used by small numbers of people. Telles notes that 95% of the population used one of 6 different terms for people of color and at le
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