Introductions

For eight years, I worked at some of the most important Brazilian newspapers, writing business stories. Now, because of a scholarship from Instituto Ling to study a Master in Communication Course in IE School of Communication, in Madrid, I went back to being solely a reader of Brazil’s media.

Since I never liked to read the news without discussing, I decided to open up this blog, sharing some comments on what is on the main news in Brazil. I invite all visitors to join the conversation, post their comments and suggest themes for discussion on this page.

In this brief introduction, I would like to suggest some basic readings to understand Brazil in some depth. There are four classic books that explain the political, cultural and economic history of Brazil that I think give some basics about the country.

The first one of them would be "Roots of Brazil", from Sergio Buarque de Holanda, a Brazilian historian that happens to be the father of the famous Brazilian singer Chico Buarque de Holanda. Here you’ll find some important insights about the difference of the Portuguese and Spanish colonization in America, crucial to understand the differences in the region and also why Brazil has remained an united country while Spanish colonies divided into multiple countries. One of the reasons being the Portuguese directive of miscegenation, since the men were encouraged to marry Indians and their sons were recognized as Portuguese.

The other precious book to give some ground on Brazil is from Caio Prado Junior, called “Formation of contemporary Brazil”, with some more geographical analysis. The author explains, among other things, the difficulty of building ports on Brazil’s shallow shore and the determination of the gaucho culture on the south because of the wild cattle that started to appear there after the colonization, this book is crucial for those who are more interested in economic history.

From one of the most prominent Marxist authors in Brazil, Celso Furtado, we have the book called “The economic growth of Brazil”, another book with a big economic basis that has a great analysis of the importance of coffee production in the beginning of the 20th century. Finally, for those that would like to have some cultural background there is “The Brazilian People” from anthropologist, and a famous defender of the Indian population, Darcy Ribeiro.