Impressions of Brazil

1. clean: street cleaners everywhere; garage removal, even in fevalas; truck stops, hotels, restaurants are spotless; street food is covered.
2. orderly: road are well signed; taxis use meters; almost no bargaining in markets and on the streets; people line-up, waiting for their turn for everything (stores, buses, tickets); public buses have seated ticket takers in the back of the buses.
3. uniforms: every kind of public and private job has a different uniform (often only a T-shirt), from street cleaner, gasoline attendants, music store employees, and even free-lance guides.
4. petty crime:  in no other country do people alert you to the potential of petty crime: police, store customers, hotel staff, etc point out that your camera and other valuable things should hidden from view.
5. b: Brazil probably has more planned cities outside of the former Soviet block countries, most of them now engulfed by subsequent developments.
6. high-rise apartments: a higher percentage of Brazilians live in high-rise apartments than in any other country, which are occupied by the middle class; only the very wealthy can choice to live in detached houses; and the poor build their own houses of poured concrete and bricks in "undesirable" sites.
7. fevalas: although all Third World countries have shantytowns, Brazil's fevalas are famous because the poor live on hillsides next to well-to-do populations. The mountainous site of Rio de Janeiro is particularly striking for this topographic difference by class.
8. b: Brazil has a wide range of European, African, and home-grown religions. Store-front church, usually of Protestant denominations, are found throughout urban areas. For the middle class and wealth, churches provide social services such as schools and hospitals, leaving the government to provide minimal services to the poor.
9. African cultural influences: Brazil was the largest importer of slaves in the "New World:" about 40 percent or 11 million Africans. And the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery in 1888. By the middle of the seventeenth century, the slave population in Brazil was more numerous than the free population. The massive presence of Africans had profound influences in religion, music, martial arts, foods, and racial relations. Slaves were heavily concentrated on the sugar plantations of the Northeast around the bay of Salvador; where African-origin people and Afro-Brazilian culture are the best developed and practiced.
10. racial mixing: The Brazilian census reports that 55.3 percent of the population identifies itself as White, 39.3 percent as mulatto, 4.9 percent as Black, and 0.6 percent as Asian. Racial mixing, particularly White-Black, is striking in Brazil in the street, beach, and statistics. Although racial mixing also occurred in the United States, the term mulatto is not used; and until the 2000 Census, only one racial category could be selected. Class and race interface in Brazil as they do in the USA: except in the southern European settled areas, the poor are more Black than the wealthy Whites.