Latin American Urbanization

Greenfield, G. M. (Ed.). (1994). Brazil. Latin American urbanization: Historical profiles of major cities. (pp. 62-105). Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group.

• Most of Brazil’s population and major cities are found within the coast. This is due to its history and the geography.
• The southeast represents Brazil’s wealthiest, most modern and populous region.
• The country is marked by a regional imbalance and predominance of a coastal orientation. Within states, the capital city has the extreme primacy, and this is a pattern.
• During the colonial period, the power rested with the landowners and this reflected differences in the orientation of Portugal and Spain, as well as the distribution of the land in Brazil.

Discovery and Settlement

• When Portugal discovered Brazil, it emphasized in commerce instead of settlement. Portugal did not move quickly to explore the new territory. Within few years, started to explore pau-Brasil – a type of wood.
• Martin Afonso de Souza, the head of the first expedition, distributed land in very large lots along the coast. It was a pattern followed throughout Brazil’s colonial history.
• The coastal land was divided into sugar plantations (land grants known as sesmarias) and the interior for cattle ranches.
• “Brazil developed as a highly unequal society of great landowners and masses of landless, dependent workers. The onset of massive importation of Africans as slave labor to work the sugar plantations further contributed to set this pattern. From sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, an estimated 3.6 million black survived the Atlantic passage and arrived as slaves in Brazil” (pp. 67).

The Colonial Period

• From 1550 to 1700 Bahia and Pernambuco dominated the world’s production of sugar. The sugar-based export economy that dominated Brazil set an urban pattern specially in in a few port cities (mostly Recife, Salvador and Rio de Janeiro). The population was composed of a small wealthy elite and a large mass of enslaved, and the cities had few link with one another. So they failed to promote an urban development in the interior of the country.
• The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were marked by a gold boom (explored by the bandeirantes). Cities like Ouro Preto, Diamantina and Congonhas in Minas Gerais became the mining center.
• The major impact of the gold was to shift the focus of economy from NE and SE. RJ became the outlet for the gold from MG. The increased importance of this region made the crown to move the capital from Salvador to RJ.

Imperial Brazil

• After the independence declared by Pedro, Joao VI son, and after the boom of sugar and gold, RJ became the capital of Brazil, and SE received a boost from the rise of coffee. This sparked great agricultural development in that region. With the prosperity of coffee and the new railroad system, Sao Paulo became a central point and grew enormously.
• The coffee boom attracted migration from the NE, especially after the depressed sugar economy in that region. “While attracted initially by opportunities in agriculture, many became urban dwellers.” (pp. 70).
•  Southern Brazil also received a large contingent of Germans. The new phenomenon of foreign and internal immigration altered settlement patterns in the SE and S of Brazil during the second half of 19th century. Later, the rubber from Amazon gained increased economic importance. Both Manaus and Belem had a huge increase in population.

Twentieth-Century Development

• In the latter portion of the 19th century, the development patterns became visible in the SE. Its economy and demography accelerated, while NE became a problem, with slow growth and extreme poverty. SP passed RJ in population in 1960. The empire fell in 1889, and, under the republic, the states enjoyed power. MG and SP made the alliance of “coffee and milk”. With the coffee revenues, they invested in transportation infrastructure. Ouro Preto was the capital of the state, but with the relative inaccessibility, they replaced it with a “showpiece, modern capital”. “In 1900, its population totaled only some 12,000, but 20 years later it had more than quadrupled to reach 55,000, and by 1940 census it had become a city of over 200,000 people.” (pp. 74).
• Getulio Vargas assumed power in 1930 with an ambitious program of industrial development to the country. However, SE and S reaped the benefits, exacerbating regional imbalances.
• Juscelino Kubitschek, the following president that stressed development, moved to capital to Brasilia to “unite the whole nation”. There was an increase in population, a new system of roads was constructed linking the capital to the major cities, and there was a huge development in agricultural and industrial areas in center west.

Contemporary Patterns

• “Brazil’s contemporary urban situation continues to reflect long-term features of the society – especially pronounced regional imbalances and extreme inequality – complicated by financial crisis and political chaos.” (pp. 75).
• “The continued migration of poor people to Brazil’s cities […] in many respects represents simply a transfer of rural poverty to an urban setting, rather than offering hope to improved living conditions. In mostly all large Brazilian cities squatter settlements and extensive metropolitan zones of substandard housing with inadequate services are common.” (pp. 76).

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