Democrats (Brazil)
The Democrats is a political party in Brazil. It was founded in 1985 under the name of Liberal Front Party from a dissidence of the defunct PDS, successor to the ARENA, the official party during the military dictatorship of 1964–1985, it changed to its current name in 2007. The original name reflected the party's support of free market policies, rather than the identification with international liberal parties. Instead, the party affiliated itself to the international federations of Christian democratic and conservative parties; the Democrats' identification number is 25 and its colors are green and white. On January 24, 1985, DEM's direct predecessor, the Liberal Front Party, was founded by a dissident faction of the Democratic Social Party, founded in 1980 as the successor of the National Renewal Alliance, the former ruling party during the time of military dictatorship. At the time, Brazil was under the effervescence. In the previous year, a series of rallies known as Diretas Já gathered thousands of peoples in the streets of major cities to demand the direct election of the next President, as envisaged in the Dante de Oliveira amendment, pending approval in the Congress.
On January 10, 1984, PDS rejected supporting this proposition, but a pro-Diretas Já faction emerged within the party a few days later. On April 25, 1984, the Congress, besieged by Army officials, voted the amendment, it did not reach the required quorum for approval, due to the absence of 112 deputies from PDS. After the attempts to have a direct election failed, discussions about the presidential succession turned to the National Congress, which would elect the President indirectly in the following year; the pro-Diretas Já faction of PDS formed the Liberal Front, decided to support PMDB's candidate Tancredo Neves against PDS's Paulo Maluf, the official candidate of the military regime. With the support of Aureliano Chaves, Marco Maciel, Antônio Carlos Magalhães, Jorge Bornhausen, among other major dissidents from PDS, the Liberal Front named José Sarney as Neves' running mate for the 1985 presidential election. On January 15, 1985, the Neves/Sarney presidential ticket got 480 of the 686 votes available in the Congress.
Nine days on January 24, 1985, the Liberal Front disbanded from PDS and formed the Liberal Front Party. With the death of Tancredo Neves on April 21, 1985, Sarney took office as President. Due to the same electoral law that forbade coalitions, Sarney was forced to join PMDB, of which he is still a member today. PFL, was a major ally of his government, his daughter, was a member of PFL until 2006, when she was expelled from the party for supporting Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In 1989, Aureliano Chaves was chosen as PFL's presidential candidate, but the weakness of his campaign made most leaders of the party to declare their support for National Reconstruction Party's candidate, Fernando Collor, himself a former member of ARENA, PDS, PMDB. PFL's Senators, had masterminded the candidacy of businessman and television presenter Silvio Santos, a maneuver, hampered by the Supreme Electoral Court. An ally of Collor in the runoff election against Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, PFL participated in his government, after his impeachment, it participated in the coalition that supported Itamar Franco's government.
From 1994 to 1998, PFL supported Fernando Henrique Cardoso and thus secured the post of vice-president with Marco Maciel. Prior to the 2002 election, an operation led by the Federal Police in Maranhão undermined the presidential candidacy of Roseana Sarney, leading to a rupture with the government. In the legislative elections, on October 6, 2002, the party won 84 out of 513 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 14 out of 54 seats in the Senate. After this election, which saw the rise of Lula of the PT as President, PFL became an opposition party for the first time since the 1964 coup; the party reorganized its alliance with Cardoso's PSDB in order to form the official opposition in the National Congress. In the following general elections, held on October 1, 2006, the party won 65 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 6 out of the 27 Senate seats up for election, making it the second largest party in the Senate; the party does not run presidential candidates, but does run gubernatorial candidates in several states.
In the 2006 elections, the party lost several state governorships, but won the governorship of the Federal District. However, this governorship was lost due to a corruption scandal in which Governor José Roberto Arruda was caught on tape receiving bribery from private companies. In 2007, the party was adopted its current name. In the 2010 elections, the party continued to suffer losses in the Parliament, losing 22 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, 7 seats in the Senate. DEM was able to elect only two Senators that year, for a total of 6, falling from the second largest party in the Senate to the fourth, its longest-serving member, former Vice President Maciel, first elected to the National Congress in 1966, was not re-elected. On the other hand, DEM won the governorships of the states of Rio Grande do Norte and Santa Catarina, expanding its presence in state administrations; the party lost over half of its votes when comparing the 2010 Senate elections. In 2006, it had 21.6 million votes for the upper house, while in 2010 it had just 10.2 million votes.
The decline was less sharp in the Chamber of Deputies elections, as it had 10.1 million votes in 2006
Bolivia
Bolivia the Plurinational State of Bolivia is a landlocked country located in western-central South America. The capital is Sucre; the largest city and principal industrial center is Santa Cruz de la Sierra, located on the Llanos Orientales a flat region in the east of Bolivia. The sovereign state of Bolivia is a constitutionally unitary state, divided into nine departments, its geography varies from the peaks of the Andes in the West, to the Eastern Lowlands, situated within the Amazon Basin. It is bordered to the north and east by Brazil, to the southeast by Paraguay, to the south by Argentina, to the southwest by Chile, to the northwest by Peru. One-third of the country is within the Andean mountain range. With 1,098,581 km2 of area, Bolivia is the fifth largest country in South America, the 27th largest in the world and the largest landlocked country in the Southern Hemisphere; the country's population, estimated at 11 million, is multiethnic, including Amerindians, Europeans and Africans.
The racial and social segregation that arose from Spanish colonialism has continued to the modern era. Spanish is the official and predominant language, although 36 indigenous languages have official status, of which the most spoken are Guarani and Quechua languages. Before Spanish colonization, the Andean region of Bolivia was part of the Inca Empire, while the northern and eastern lowlands were inhabited by independent tribes. Spanish conquistadors arriving from Cuzco and Asunción took control of the region in the 16th century. During the Spanish colonial period Bolivia was administered by the Royal Audiencia of Charcas. Spain built its empire in large part upon the silver, extracted from Bolivia's mines. After the first call for independence in 1809, 16 years of war followed before the establishment of the Republic, named for Simón Bolívar. Over the course of the 19th and early 20th century Bolivia lost control of several peripheral territories to neighboring countries including the seizure of its coastline by Chile in 1879.
Bolivia remained politically stable until 1971, when Hugo Banzer led a coup d'état which replaced the socialist government of Juan José Torres with a military dictatorship headed by Banzer. Banzer's regime cracked down on leftist and socialist opposition and other forms of dissent, resulting in the torture and deaths of a number of Bolivian citizens. Banzer was ousted in 1978 and returned as the democratically elected president of Bolivia from 1997 to 2001. Modern Bolivia is a charter member of the UN, IMF, NAM, OAS, ACTO, Bank of the South, ALBA and USAN. For over a decade Bolivia has had one of the highest economic growth rates in Latin America, it is a developing country, with a medium ranking in the Human Development Index, a poverty level of 38.6%, one of the lowest crime rates in Latin America. Its main economic activities include agriculture, fishing and manufacturing goods such as textiles, refined metals, refined petroleum. Bolivia is rich in minerals, including tin and lithium. Bolivia is named after Simón Bolívar, a Venezuelan leader in the Spanish American wars of independence.
The leader of Venezuela, Antonio José de Sucre, had been given the option by Bolívar to either unite Charcas with the newly formed Republic of Peru, to unite with the United Provinces of Rio de la Plata, or to formally declare its independence from Spain as a wholly independent state. Sucre opted to create a brand new state and on 6 August 1825, with local support, named it in honor of Simón Bolívar; the original name was Republic of Bolívar. Some days congressman Manuel Martín Cruz proposed: "If from Romulus comes Rome from Bolívar comes Bolivia"; the name was approved by the Republic on 3 October 1825. In 2009, a new constitution changed the country's official name to "Plurinational State of Bolivia" in recognition of the multi-ethnic nature of the country and the enhanced position of Bolivia's indigenous peoples under the new constitution; the region now known as Bolivia had been occupied for over 2,500 years. However, present-day Aymara associate themselves with the ancient civilization of the Tiwanaku culture which had its capital at Tiwanaku, in Western Bolivia.
The capital city of Tiwanaku dates from as early as 1500 BC when it was a small, agriculturally based village. The community grew to urban proportions between AD 600 and AD 800, becoming an important regional power in the southern Andes. According to early estimates, the city covered 6.5 square kilometers at its maximum extent and had between 15,000 and 30,000 inhabitants. In 1996 satellite imaging was used to map the extent of fossilized suka kollus across the three primary valleys of Tiwanaku, arriving at population-carrying capacity estimates of anywhere between 285,000 and 1,482,000 people. Around AD 400, Tiwanaku went from being a locally dominant force to a predatory state. Tiwanaku expanded its reaches into the Yungas and brought its culture and way of life to many other cultures in Peru and Chile. Tiwanaku was not a violent culture in many respects. In order to expand its reach, Tiwanaku exercised great political astuteness, creating colonies, fostering trade agree
Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais is a state in the north of Southeastern Brazil. It ranks as the second most populous, the third by gross domestic product, the fourth largest by area in the country; the state's capital and largest city, Belo Horizonte, is a major urban and finance center in Latin America, the sixth largest municipality in Brazil, after the cities of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and Fortaleza, but its metropolitan area is the third largest in Brazil with just over 5,500,000 inhabitants, after those of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Nine Brazilian presidents were born in the most of any state. With an area of 586,528 square kilometres —larger than Metropolitan France—it is the fourth most extensive state in Brazil; the main producer of coffee and milk in the country, Minas Gerais is known for its heritage of architecture and colonial art in historical cities such as São João del Rei, Ouro Preto, Diamantina and Mariana. In the south, the tourist points are the hydro mineral spas, such as Caxambu, Lambari, São Lourenço, Poços de Caldas, São Thomé das Letras, Monte Verde and the national parks of Caparaó and Canastra.
The landscape of the State is marked by mountains and large areas of fertile lands. In the Serra do Cipó, Sete Lagoas and Lagoa Santa, the caves and waterfalls are the attractions; some of Brazil's most famous caverns are located there. In recent years, the state has emerged as one of the largest economic forces of Brazil, exploring its great economic potential. Two interpretations are given for the origin of the name Minas Gerais, it comes from "Minas dos Matos Gerais", the former name of the colonial province. So a first and more common understanding affirms that the name means "General Mines", with the word Gerais serving as an adjective to the mines, which were themselves spread in several spots around a larger region. Another explanation is that this ignores the two large geographical spaces which conformed the state in its history: the region of the mines, the region of the Gerais; these corresponded to the areas of Sertão which were farther and hard to access from the mining spots. The confusion comes from the fact that the term "Gerais" is taken as an adjective to "Minas" in the first version, although according to this point of view it refers to the region called Gerais.
A further complication is that this is not a well-defined area on the map of the state, but rather a designation to these parts outside the mining spots, more related to the geography of Sertão, more isolated from the state's nucleus. Minas Gerais is in the north of the southeastern subdivision of Brazil, which contains the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Espírito Santo, it borders on Bahia, Goiás, Mato Grosso do Sul, the states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and the state of Espírito Santo. It shares a short boundary with the Distrito Federal. Minas Gerais is situated between 14°13'58" and 22°54'00" S latitude and between 39°51'32" and 51°02'35" W longitude, it is larger in area than Metropolitan Spain. Minas Gerais features some of the longest rivers in Brazil, most notably the São Francisco, the Paraná and to a lesser extent, the Rio Doce; the state holds many hydroelectric power plants, including Furnas. Some of the highest peaks in Brazil are in the mountain ranges in the southern part of the state, such as Serra da Mantiqueira and Serra do Cervo, that mark the border between Minas and its neighbors São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
The most notable one is the Pico da Bandeira, the third highest mountain in Brazil at 2890 m, standing on the border with Espírito Santo state. The state has huge reserves of iron and sizeable reserves of gold and gemstones, including emerald and aquamarine mines. Emeralds found in this location are comparable to the best Colombia-origin emeralds, are most a bluish-green color; each region of the state has a distinct character, geographically and to a certain extent culturally. The central and eastern area of the state is hilly and rocky, with little vegetation on the mountains. Around Lagoa Santa and Sete Lagoas a typical Karst topography with caves and lakes is found; some of the mountains are entirely iron ore, which led to extensive mining. Recent advances in environmental policy helped to put limits to mining. About 200 kilometres to the east of Belo Horizonte is the second Metropolitan Region of the state, Vale do Aço, which has iron and steel processing companies along the course of the Rio Doce and its tributaries.
Vale do Aço's largest cities are Coronel Fabriciano and Timóteo. Now that mining is restricted large areas of forest are being removed for timber, charcoal and to clear land for cattle ranching; the original forest cover of these inland hills is much fragmented. The city of Governador Valadares is in the limit of this region with the poorer North; the south of Minas Gerais is green, with coffee and milk production. This region is notably cooler than the rest of the state, some locations are subject to temperatures just below the freezing point during the winter; the region is famed for its mineral-water resorts, including the cities of Poços de Caldas, Lambari, São Lourenço and Caxambu. Many industries are located at Pouso Alegre; the southeast of the state, called Zona da Mata was the richest region unti
Tributary
A tributary or affluent is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drainage basin of its surface water and groundwater, leading the water out into an ocean. A confluence, where two or more bodies of water meet together refers to the joining of tributaries; the opposite to a tributary is a distributary, a river or stream that branches off from and flows away from the main stream. Distributaries are most found in river deltas. "Right tributary" and "left tributary" are terms stating the orientation of the tributary relative to the flow of the main stem river. These terms are defined from the perspective of looking downstream. In the United States, where tributaries sometimes have the same name as the river into which they feed, they are called forks; these are designated by compass direction. For example, the American River receives flow from its North and South forks.
The Chicago River's North Branch has the East and Middle Fork. Forks are sometimes left. Here, the "handedness" is from the point of view of an observer facing upstream. For instance, Steer Creek has a left tributary, called Right Fork Steer Creek. Tributaries are sometimes listed starting with those nearest to the source of the river and ending with those nearest to the mouth of the river; the Strahler Stream Order examines the arrangement of tributaries in a hierarchy of first, second and higher orders, with the first-order tributary being the least in size. For example, a second-order tributary would be the result of two or more first-order tributaries combining to form the second-order tributary. Another method is to list tributaries from mouth to source, in the form of a tree structure, stored as a tree data structure. A gallery of major river basins with tributaries Estuary
Paraguay River
The Paraguay River is a major river in south-central South America, running through Brazil, Bolivia and Argentina. It flows about 2,621 kilometres from its headwaters in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso to its confluence with the Paraná River north of Corrientes and Resistencia; the Paraguay's source is south of Diamantino in the Mato Grosso state of Brazil. It follows a southwesterly course, passing through the Brazilian city of Cáceres, it turns in a southward direction, flowing through the Pantanal wetlands, the city of Corumbá running close to the Brazil-Bolivia border for a short distance in the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul. From the city of Puerto Bahia Negra, the river forms the border between Paraguay and Brazil, flowing due south before the confluence with the Apa River; the Paraguay makes a long, gentle curve to the south-southeast before resuming a more south-southwesterly course, dividing the country of Paraguay into two distinct halves: the Gran Chaco region to the west, a uninhabited semi-arid region.
As such the river is considered the key geographical feature of the country with which it shares its name. Some 400 kilometres after flowing through the middle of Paraguay, at the confluence with the Pilcomayo River and passing the Paraguayan capital city, Asunción, the river forms the border with Argentina, flowing south-southwesterly for another 275 kilometres before it reaches its end, joining with the Paraná River; the Paraguay River is the second major river of the Rio de la Plata Basin, after the Paraná River. The Paraguay's drainage basin, about 1,095,000 square kilometres, covers a vast area that includes major portions of Argentina, southern Brazil, parts of Bolivia, most of the country of Paraguay. Unlike many of the other great rivers of the Rio de la Plata Basin, the Paraguay has not been dammed for hydroelectric power generation; this makes it an important shipping and trade corridor, providing a much-needed link to the Atlantic Ocean for the otherwise landlocked nations of Paraguay and Bolivia.
It serves such important cities as Concepción in Paraguay and Formosa in Argentina. The river is a source of commerce in the form of fishing, provides irrigation for agriculture along its route; as such it provides a way of life for a number of poor fishermen who live along its banks and make the majority of their income selling fish in local markets, as well as supplying a major source of sustenance for their families. This has created issues in large cities such as Asunción, where poverty-stricken farmers from the country's interior have populated the river's banks in search of an easier lifestyle. Seasonal flooding of the river's banks sometimes forces many thousands of displaced residents to seek temporary shelter until the waters recede from their homes; the Paraguayan military has been forced to dedicate land on one of its reserves in the capital to emergency housing for these displaced citizens. The river is a tourist attraction for its beauty; the Paraguay River is the primary waterway of the 147,629-square-kilometre Pantanal wetlands of southern Brazil, northern Paraguay and parts of Bolivia.
The Pantanal is the world's largest tropical wetland and is dependent upon waters provided by the Paraguay River. Owing to its importance as a navigable waterway serving Brazil and Paraguay, the river has been the focus of commercial and industrial development. In 1997 the governments of the nations of the La Plata Basin proposed a plan under the Hidrovia Inter-Governmental Commission agency to develop the rivers into an industrial waterway system to help reduce the costs of exporting goods from the area, in particular the soybean crop that the area has embraced; the plan entailed constructing more hydroelectric dams along some of the waterways, along with a massive effort to restructure the navigable waterways—most notably the Paraguay River—through dredging of the waterway, rock removal and channel restructuring. Studies indicated that the proposed river engineering of the Paraguay would have a devastating impact on the Pantanal wetlands. An effort by the Rios Vivos coalition to educate people on the effects of the project was successful in delaying the project, the nations involved agreed to reformulate their plan.
The final plan is still uncertain, along with the effect it will have on the Pantanal and the ecology of the entire Río de la Plata basin. The controversy over whether or not the project will have a disastrous effect on the local ecology, as well as the potential economic gains, continues to this day; the Paraguay River basin includes several distinctive habitats, ranging from clear waters such as Rio da Prata near Bonito in the upper part to the sediment-rich Bermejo River in the lower part. The suspended load of the Paraguay River is about 100 milligrams per litre before the inflow of Bermejo, but rises to about 600 milligrams per litre after. Directly after the inflow of Bermejo River, the pH of the Paraguay River may reach up to 8.2. The typical pH of the Paraguay River is 6.3 -- 7.9 in the lower part. The peak of the flood season in the Paraguay River is delayed 4—6 months compared to the peak of the rainy season due to t
River
A river is a natural flowing watercourse freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, lake or another river. In some cases a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of water. Small rivers can be referred to using names such as stream, brook and rill. There are no official definitions for the generic term river as applied to geographic features, although in some countries or communities a stream is defined by its size. Many names for small rivers are specific to geographic location. Sometimes a river is defined as being larger than a creek, but not always: the language is vague. Rivers are part of the hydrological cycle. Potamology is the scientific study of rivers, while limnology is the study of inland waters in general. Most of the major cities of the world are situated on the banks of rivers, as they are, or were, used as a source of water, for obtaining food, for transport, as borders, as a defensive measure, as a source of hydropower to drive machinery, for bathing, as a means of disposing of waste.
A river begins at a source, follows a path called a course, ends at a mouth or mouths. The water in a river is confined to a channel, made up of a stream bed between banks. In larger rivers there is also a wider floodplain shaped by flood-waters over-topping the channel. Floodplains may be wide in relation to the size of the river channel; this distinction between river channel and floodplain can be blurred in urban areas where the floodplain of a river channel can become developed by housing and industry. Rivers can flow down mountains, through valleys or along plains, can create canyons or gorges; the term upriver refers to the direction towards the source of the river, i.e. against the direction of flow. The term downriver describes the direction towards the mouth of the river, in which the current flows; the term left bank refers to the left bank in the direction of right bank to the right. The river channel contains a single stream of water, but some rivers flow as several interconnecting streams of water, producing a braided river.
Extensive braided rivers are now found in only a few regions worldwide, such as the South Island of New Zealand. They occur on peneplains and some of the larger river deltas. Anastamosing rivers are quite rare, they have multiple sinuous channels carrying large volumes of sediment. There are rare cases of river bifurcation in which a river divides and the resultant flows ending in different seas. An example is the bifurcation of Nerodime River in Kosovo. A river flowing in its channel is a source of energy which acts on the river channel to change its shape and form. In 1757, the German hydrologist Albert Brahms empirically observed that the submerged weight of objects that may be carried away by a river is proportional to the sixth power of the river flow speed; this formulation is sometimes called Airy's law. Thus, if the speed of flow is doubled, the flow would dislodge objects with 64 times as much submerged weight. In mountainous torrential zones this can be seen as erosion channels through hard rocks and the creation of sands and gravels from the destruction of larger rocks.
A river valley, created from a U-shaped glaciated valley, can easily be identified by the V-shaped channel that it has carved. In the middle reaches where a river flows over flatter land, meanders may form through erosion of the river banks and deposition on the inside of bends. Sometimes the river will cut off a loop, shortening the channel and forming an oxbow lake or billabong. Rivers that carry large amounts of sediment may develop conspicuous deltas at their mouths. Rivers whose mouths are in saline tidal waters may form estuaries. Throughout the course of the river, the total volume of water transported downstream will be a combination of the free water flow together with a substantial volume flowing through sub-surface rocks and gravels that underlie the river and its floodplain. For many rivers in large valleys, this unseen component of flow may exceed the visible flow. Most but not all rivers flow on the surface. Subterranean rivers flow underground in caverns; such rivers are found in regions with limestone geologic formations.
Subglacial streams are the braided rivers that flow at the beds of glaciers and ice sheets, permitting meltwater to be discharged at the front of the glacier. Because of the gradient in pressure due to the overlying weight of the glacier, such streams can flow uphill. An intermittent river only flows and can be dry for several years at a time; these rivers are found in regions with limited or variable rainfall, or can occur because of geologic conditions such as a permeable river bed. Some ephemeral rivers flow during the summer months but not in the winter; such rivers are fed from chalk aquifers which recharge from winter rainfall. In England these rivers are called bournes and give their name to places such as Bournemouth and Eastbourne. In humid regions, the location where flow begins in the smallest tributary streams moves upstream in response to precipitation and downstream in its absence or when active summer vegetation diverts water for evapotrans
Mato Grosso
Mato Grosso is one of the states of Brazil, the third-largest by area, located in the western part of the country. Neighboring states are Rondônia, Pará, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul; the nation of Bolivia is located to the southwest. A state with a flat landscape, alternating great chapadas and plain areas, Mato Grosso has three different ecosystems: Cerrado and the Amazon Rainforest; the vegetation of the open pasture covers 40% of the state. The Chapada dos Guimarães National Park, with caves, grottoes and waterfalls, is one of its tourist attractions. In the north is the Amazonian forest, with a biodiversity covering half of the state. Much of this has been disrupted and cleared for logging, agricultural purposes, pastures; the Xingu National Park and the Araguaia River are in Mato Grosso. Further south, the Pantanal, the world's largest wetland, is the habitat for nearly one thousand species of animals, many aquatic birds. Located in the Mato Grosso is the Chapada dos Guimarães, a unique environment of sandstone mountains that have eroded into amazingly varied terrain.
The terrain of the Mato Grosso is varied and includes cliffs and waterfalls. The biologically rich Pantanal, one of the world's largest wetland/prairie ecosystems, is located within this state. Much environmental degradation has occurred to the Pantanal since the late 20th century because of development, efforts to contain or slow it have had limited success; the Pantanal has a habitat similar to that of the Everglades in Florida in the United States, although the Pantanal is on a much larger scale. See also: History of Mato GrossoIn 1977, the state was split into two halves, with Mato Grosso do Sul being organized as a new state; the Bororo Indians live in the Mato Grosso area. As late as 1880, soldiers patrolled lands on the outskirts of Cuiabá, Mato Grosso's capital and largest city, to protect settlers from Bororo raids. By the end of the 19th century, although reduced by disease and by warfare with explorers, slave traders, prospectors and other indigenous groups, as many as five to ten thousand Bororo continued to occupy central and eastern Mato Grosso, as well as western Goiás.
The southwestern part of this state was ceded by Brazil to Bolivia in exchange for Acre, according to the Treaty of Petrópolis in 1903. This remote area attracted expeditions of exploration in the early 20th century that sought to find lost civilizations. A notable example were efforts by British Captain Percy Fawcett. In addition, theorists of Hollow Earth speculated that this region had sites of access to the interior of the earth and its settlements. Mato Grosso had a high rate of population growth in the 20th century due to timber and agricultural development; the state as a whole still has one of the lowest population densities of any Brazilian state. According to the IBGE of 2018, 3,441,998 people resided in the state; the population density was 3.8 inh./km². Urbanization: 76.6%. Ethnically, the state includes a high proportion of caboclos, as do other areas of interior Brazil; the last PNAD census revealed the following numbers: 1,532,000 Brown people. Agriculture is the largest component of GDP at 40.8%, followed by the service sector at 40.2%.
The industrial sector represents 19% of GDP. Mato Grosso exports: soybeans 83%, wood 5.6%, meats 4.8%, cotton 3.3%. The state's share of the Brazilian economy is 1.8%. Vehicles: 1,614,797. Portuguese is the official national language, as well as the primary language taught in schools; however and Spanish are part of the official high school curriculum. More than 58 universities are located in state of Mato Grosso. Cuiabá is home to the following universities: Federal University of Mato Grosso; the local culture is rich, due to the influences of and encounters with various cultures, such as indigenous peoples, colonial Spanish and other European settlers, Africans enslaved and transported there in the Atlantic slave trade by the Portuguese, other Europeans. Two long periods of isolation contributed to its developing along different lines than coastal areas of Brazil. Recent immigration has brought many urban influences to the state. Cuiabá has a rich cuisine influenced by natives, they have maintained traditional dances and music.
Dance and music were traditionally connected to the worship of Catholic saints and their festivals, Saint Benedict, being one of the favorite. The four-day period before Lent leading up to Ash Wednesday, known as Carnival is well celebrated; as with every state in Brazil, Mato Grosso celebrates this holiday in a typical fashion - including parades and dance - with wide participation. Fishing in the Teles Pires, São Benedito and Azul rivers is productive all year long. Bird watching: with the more than 570 species of catalogued birds and new species being discovered every year, the region of Alta Floresta and Azul River Basin receives constant visits from famous ornithologists and bird watchers; the largest sandstone cavern in Brazil, Aroe Jari, extends nearly 1,550 meters and several pr
Brazil
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