Brazil: the troubled rise of a global power 

"Brazil is not for beginners." This phrase exactly sums up the Brazil lore all the time.

Brazil will do everything it can to ensure Brazil doesn't.

I lived and worked in Brazil for a couple of years. The country has so much promise, but it gets wasted due to corruption. They have everything they need, including a lot of sun and wind that could turn the country into a renewable energy heaven. I hope all the best to the Brazilian people, not to just turn into another superpower, but into a real country of the future.

"Brazil is the country of the future, and always will be" This quote dates back to at least the 80s, and the sentiment to the 50s.

As a Brazilian, I say that the country always had the potential, it has the ingredients. But let's face it, it will never happen.

Brazil is a rare phenomenon in the history of humanity. From north to south, no matter how many racial and ethnic differences there may be, all peoples have the same patriotic identity, speak the same language, share the same history and have a series of common characteristics that make up a nation. This is very difficult to happen in big countries.

If there is one thing history has taught me, it is that land mass size alone does not define a superpower.

It's not gonna be easy It's gonna be Brazil level of difficulty

Putting aside the issue of the Amazon rainforest, which I covered in my prior remark, I would like to add that the regionalism that you have mentioned is absolutely normal everywhere, not only in Brazil. To illustrate this point, there is an old German joke. A German couple living in Bavaria wanted to have a child but the woman could not bear a child, then they decided to adopt a baby and they went to an adoption center to ask for a baby, but they made a demand: they insisted that the baby had to be black. And the officials at the adoption center reasoned that the couple was white, typically German, so, why on Earth they wanted to have a black baby? And the German replied: "just to make sure he isn't Prussian!". There is regionalism in the USA, and certainly there is regionalism in all Andean countries. You take the example of Bolivia. The Bolivian part which is in one side (west) of the Andes is completely different from the Bolivian part which is in the other (east) of the country. So, regionalism is not a problem per se and most certainly is not a problem in Brazil. You have mentioned that Brazil is an exporter of commodities and you give me the impression that this is a negative thing, i.e., that it is not a good thing to be an exporter of commodities, something which is, say, typical of third world and poor countries. This is far from true. The richest country on Earth, the US, is a great commodities exporter. Canada is a great commodities exporter. The most important export product of Finland is wood (a commodity). And Australia owes its very rich economy exclusively, solely, based on the exports of commodities. So, there is nothing wrong in being an exporter of raw materials, minerals, food, and animal protein. Much to the contrary. And you have not realized, or detected, and I think so far most observers outside Brazil have equally failed to note the really tsunamic changes that are happening in Brazil right now, which are indeed game changers. These really tsunamic changes which are happening right now are as follows: (A) The Brazilian northeastern semi-arid region. This area is equivalent to 1,6 million square kilometers, representing 18,25% of Brazil's total area, and it harbors 57 million inhabitants, or 27% of Brazil's total population. This huge area, equivalent to say, three Texas, is by far the poorest area of Brazil with truly African sub-Saharan standards. And this area have always been the poorest area of Brazil due to two factors: the first one is the terrible slavery heritage. All the slaves that the Portuguese introduced into Brazil during 3 centuries, went to that region, and despite the fact that Brazil abolished slavery in 1888, understandably the bulk of the Brazilian northeastern population, descending from those African slaves, are the least educated portion of the Brazilian society (and this has nothing to do with some sort of racial prejudice. They have very poor education because they are many millions and because good education is a very expensive commodity which demands a very slow return, that is, you have to invest a lot of money first to start harvesting results only two or three generations later. But Brazil is slowly tackling this huge challenge as well, it is just a matter of time and that education inequality will disappear). But the other reason for the extreme poverty of the Brazilian northeastern region was the permanent draught of the area, which prevented an adequate use of the land to produce riches. We have already solved this multisecular problem. Brazil has just finished building a set of canals bringing in the waters of a big river named São Francisco, in a huge engineering work, building more than 1000 km of canals, and creating huge artificial lakes where before you only had draught-stricken and unproductive land. And we have built small hydroelectric plants in such lakes to provide the power to the boosters that have to overcome differences in altitude to take the waters of the São Francisco river to those lakes, and then to provide energy to the neighboring cities, and we have populated those artificial lakes with fish, and that fish will become an extra cheap and nutritious food source for that population. And now, for the first time in centuries, that huge area will no longer suffer from lack of water, and so, those 18,25% of the Brazilian territory will begin to produce more grain, more food, and they most certainly will increase the overall volume of Brazilian food exports. This is a real game-changer. (B) The Brazilian northeastern semi-arid region (which will no longer be semi-arid) will have a net of railway serving that area. This is the "Ferrovia Transnordestina", which is being built, and more than 50% of it has already been finished, which will link the hinterland of the northeastern region to the Atlantic ports, providing cheap, competitive transportation. This railway is not yet finished, but more than 50% of it has been finished and it is just a matter of time and the other 50% will be finished. And that will be another game changer. (C) The Ferrovia Norte-Sul. That railway has already been completed. It is a railway linking the Northeastern states down to the Southeastern states, crossing the whole Brazilian territory from North to South (hence its name), with 5.500 km of extension, and this railway is already exercising a huge impact in the Brazilian logistics, because it is reducing transportation costs and that will produce a very favorable impact in the overall Brazilian economy. Again: this is a real game changer. (D) There are 5 other big railways which are being built and I am not going to mention them all because it will be too long to do so, but these 5 other big railways will also be game-changers. (E) We are building two TRANSPACIFIC roads simultaneously. One of them will link Brazil directly to 3 Peruvian Pacific ports (and this road is nearly completed already) and another one linking Brazil to 3 Chilean ports (this is also in an advanced stage of construction). These two Transpacific roads will completely change the game, because the Brazilian Midwest (which is possibly the biggest granary of the planet) is much closer to the Pacific than it is to the Atlantic, so when these two Transpacific roads are finished (and they will soon be finished), most of the grain and animal protein produced in the Brazilian midwest will be exported by the Pacific, which will cut prices down and will reduce the total lead time to China by 15 days. So, in the next 10 years, most likely than not, Brazil will double its current GDP and it will keep growing.

Countries of the world, fear not. We Brazilians will never let this happen.

To understand Brazil you only need to look at two men: Thomas Jefferson and José Bonifácio de Andrade Both were instrumental in their respective countries independence, both were renowned scholars with multiple skills. The key difference is that Jefferson was educated in the colony of Virginia whereas Bonifácio had to go to Europe to receive a proper education. Brazil had its first printing press 400 years after it was invented and its first college 200 years after Yale and Harvard were founded and 300 years after the University of Mexico was chartered, while the world was discovering enlightened ideas, we bought smuggled books from the british. We were the last western country to outlaw slavery, and since the portuguese forbid manufacturing when we were a colony, and later our empire created a system of licences where you had to ask for permission of the central government to create a company by 1889 we only had 630 factories. The republican government separated state and church, and removed restrictions on the creation of companies, but also exacerbated regionalism and political turmoil to the point where we are in our seventh republican constituition, amidst oligarchies, dictatorships and corrupt democracies. Our current problem is a polarized society with a total lack of leadership and a chronically corrupt government, but there is always hope, we are fighters above everything else.

As a Brazilian who is obsessed with early Brazilian history (before the 19th century, including pre-colonial times), my reading is that geography is definetely the main culprit for Brazil's problems. Much more than any other issue. There is corruption, social inequality and political problems? Certainly, but even many of these can very easily be traced back to geographical problems. Reading old historical documents and archeological studies makes this very clear. 1) The tremendous dificulty with which the colonizers conquered the interior of the country is a great demonstration of that. It took a very long time to transpose the grand encarpment (the mountains in our coast) and reach the interior. It's important to note that this is not just some mountains, that can be traversed by a valley. This is a steep elevation in the terrain by about 800-1000 meters, covered in thick tropical jungle. Not only terribly hard to physicaly transpose and build roads, but also very defensible by native peoples; 2) Tropical diseases also inflicted a tremendous death toll. Old documents can often feel like horror stories, and the Portuguese didn't know why so many maladies were afflicting them, and theorized that demonic forces were at play in the land. Literaly, at some point, jesuits started believing that after the conquest of Europe by christianity the Devil had fled across the ocean to Brazil. So we were literaly the last stronghold of the Devil. Some native tribes practicing canibalism helped to contribute to this theory; 3) The infertility of the soil, even in coastal areas, made it very hard to increase the population size of the settlements. The only things that could be grown well were sugarcane and cotton, but you don't feed a society with those. They also require huge amount of labour, which was the reason for importing so many slaves. You could feed them poorly and work them to death. The fact that Portugal had a much smaller population than other colonial powers also made it hard to export a lot of settlers. 4) The same difficulties can be seen in pre-colonial times. Most indigenous peoples in Brazil belong to one of two linguistic groups: tupi-guarani or jê. Jê tribes had an older settlement in the country, and at one point dominated almost all of the Brazilian territory. Tupi-guarani tribes originated from the Southern Amazon, and at some point in history started migrating. They followed two direction: one South, following the Paraguay river, going to the Southern coast of Brazil (actually they reached very near Buenos Aires, in Argentina), and then going up the coast; the others migrated North through the Amazon river, then went all the way around Brazil, following the coastline. The two migrations eventually met around a region in the South of the state of São Paulo. As they migrated, they fought the Jê tribes, winning and pushing them out of the coast, and into the Brazilian highlands. But except for some exceptions, they mostly didn't go up the highlands themselves. It was also very hard for them to transpose the grand encarpment, mainly when there were other peoples trying to defend and push them back. Most of the exceptions are tribes that came from the migration that went South, through the Paraguay river, and entered the highlands from behind, thus not having to transpose the grand encarpment. Also, because of the poor soil, none of these tribes could ever increase their population density by much, unlike Andean civilizations; 5) To compound of that, the Northeastern region of Brazil is a semi-arid environment, prone to periodic droughts. While it is not in the drought period, it is habitable, even if still a very harsh environment. Since the droughts tend to take a considerable time to happen, people end up settling there. When the drought comes, there was always a humanitarian catastrophe. There is literally documents from the very begining of the colonization of Brazil documenting native tribes fleeing the drought en masse, all severely undernourished and dehydrated. If the region was an actual desert, people just wouldn't go there. But as it was habitable is a cyclical pattern, it always ended up attracting people, just to trap them. 6) All these difficulties in settling made Portugal give way too much power to some colonizers who were crazy enough to undertake the task. These led to huge concentration of land and political power, which obviously led to nepotism and corruption. Now, despite all that, I think it's import to note other things. Much is said in geopolitical circles about how crappy Brazil's geography is. And I definetely don't dispute that. But I think the reading tends to be incomplete. First, most geographical analyses of Brazil by geopolitical analysts tend to completely ignore the geography of the North of Brazil, except for mentioning the Amazon forest. This is problably because most geopolical analysts problably look at tropical forest regions and automatically thing they are completely useless and just don't bother to look into more detail. Also, they seem to think the La Plata river basin is the only thing that matters in Brazil. And while the La Plata river basin was definetely the most important during most of history, by not looking at the details of the geography of Brazil they are missing a lot of things that can be complete gamechangers. I tend to use a game analogy to say that Brazil is a terrible early and middle game civilization. It's just terrible to kickstart it due to the enourmous geographical problems. But it can actually be a fantastic late game civilization, after some of the investments and research results start to kick in. Let me make my case: 1) Due to Brazil's infertile lands, for most of our history we were net food importers. Now, we are one of the biggest players in agribusiness, and growing. What changed? In the middle of the last century our government, completely angered by the fact that we had so much land, but it was almost useless, took the right decision. They made up a team of specialists and told them to devise a long term strategic plan for the development of agriculture in Brazil. And so they did. The plan resulted in the creation of a state company called Embrapa, which is basically an agricultural science research institution. It basically coordinated the whole agricultural development process of Brazil, in partnership with universities and industries. The results were the creation of several terraforming techniques for Brazilian soil, several biotechnological techniques, and several artifically selected and transgenic crops adapted to our environment. As a result, after the results of these investments and research paid off, we quickly became one of the worlds biggest players in agribusiness. Some people counter saying that our agriculture has high costs because it needs terraforming. Well, that's not entirely true. Terraforming certainly adds to the costs, but other things detract from it. First, because of our climate, we have year round harvest. We are not limited by winter. Second, some of this agricultural research led to the creation of low cost techniques that greatly improve the productivity of our farms. Third, constant improvement of crops through scientific research is permanently increasing yields. Last time I checked a cost comparison for our agriculture with the USA, our cost were actually lower, despite more fertilizer use and transport costs. To add to that, despite our lands being naturally bad, we do have the largest amount of potentially arable land in the world. So our potential for expansion is no where near it's limit. 2) Our rivers flow inward...true, for the La Plata river, which is all most people care about. The São Francisco river flows to the coast, and is the main river in the Northeast of Brazil. The Araguaia and Tocantins rivers also flow to the coast, to the North of Brazil, in a huge natural harbor, in the city of Belém. The is also a lot of minor but very significant rivers. Now, for most of our history, the economic potential of these rivers were very small, since the São Francisco river goes through the semi-arid regions in the Northeast, and the Araguaia and Tocantins rivers go through the cerrado. Since these two lands were basically barren, the fact that they flowed to the coast had little importance, so we ended up making dams to generate hydro power. But now the cerrado is an agricultural powerhouse, and growing constantly. Locks are being built to transpose the dams we put in these rivers in the past. We also need to destroy some rock formations at one point, that block navigation. Once everything is done, most of our agribusiness will be able to export through navigable rivers to the coast, to a huge natural harbour. It will be like the mississipi river for us. There is no grand encarpment in the North of Brazil. The coast there is perfectly flat, and with lost of natural harbours. It just wasn't economically viable in the past. But it has become so after we learned to terraform our country. About the São Francisco river...(CONTINUES IN THE COMMENTS)

The trade agreement between Mercosur and EU had a lot more in depth than the Amazonian situation. It's widely spoken about Macron's protectionism of the French agribusiness playing a much bigger role and being considered the major reason for the deal being broken

The Amazon rainforest preservation is even more important for Brazil because of the rain cycle. Deforestation there drops the rain levels in central-southern regions, leading to economic loss in agriculture and a collapse in urban water supply.

Props to Brazil from Colombia 🇨🇴 🇧🇷 we are a nation filled with every natural resource imaginable. Only one problem. It is full of Colombians 😅

Brazil is a global power in destroying my Geoguessr streaks

The joke about Brazil, told to me by a Brazilian: God and the angels are creating creating Brazil. God says: "I'll put most of the mineral resources there, the forests, the water power, the gold, everything, into Brazil". An angel: "isn't that too much to put into one country?". God: "Don't worry. Wait until you see the people I put there...".

A lot of brazilians citizens disapointed saying bad things about their own country, but i have a different opinion: If doing everything wrong we are the 12th economy in the world (in the last 100 yrs we were always among the 20 average), and in a recent past we were 6th, imagine if we decide to do the right thing just once? We have everything we need right here, patience is the key!

Actually, afrobrazilians account for just arround 10% of brazilian population. This 50% figure include a big array of admixture including indigenous population

Brazil is the epitome of burnout gifted kid in country form All we will always have is "potential" But our upbringing, circunstmaces and environment held us back hard And now we're stuck in quarter life crisis forever

Brazil is the only country in the world which has a legislation mandating land owners to preserve a percentage of their area. This preservation percentage varies from 80% in Amazonia region to 20% at other biomas. Brazil is by far the country which more preserves land in the world. The second, far away is USA. Just to state a fact, countries like Germany have only 6% of their original forests. We feed 1.5 billion people in the wold using only 13% of our territory. Brazil is indeed a preservation power, other countries should learn from us. We have an area equivalent of the sum of countries like Germany and France, etc. just for natives and forests preservations, land untouched.

As a Brazilian forest engineer that follows Shirvan for a while now, lives in the Amazon and works with carbon projects and climate change, I'm very happy to see Brazil here in the channel! You should do more content focusing on the geopolitics of the Global South

Northern Brazil has some of the most beautiful coastlines in the world, I hope to visit there one day.

As a Brazilian, I am impressed by the good quality of the summary of our economic history. Keep up the good work!

"Eles não estão preocupados com o bem da amazonia, eles estão preocupados com os BENS da amazonia"

Brazil is like an arm without a shoulder, thinking to be the whole body: South America currently is the most sidelined continent in the world, because it never was able to generate the economical gravity to attract business from outside and contribute to a self sustaining South American market. Brazil cannot do anything without merging economically with Argentina, Chile and Peru, as it cannot develop everything to be competitive on everything. Argentina has the large plain, Brazil has the Amazon rain forest and mineral deposit, Peru and Chile has the mountains with metal deposits and access to the Pacific while Colombia and, eventually, Venezuela have large oil reserves and access to the Caribbean sea. Unlike Africa, South America is not fragmented into a miriad of unstable states and has been independent for centuries, often more then some European countries. If they just could cooperate like some sort of CEE and coordinate their infrastructures and social development, South America could finally "ignite" a self sustaining economy inside the continent, that would eventually appear on the radar of the world's Business centres. Otherway, all that south America will ever be is a "pick up" continent for cheap goods, cheap to buy but expensive to trade due to distances. The Geographical area is just too far away and with an internal GDP too small and too pyramidal to bother to seriously trade with.

My friend, what happened in 2016 was not a coup, it was a legal impeachment, voted on both houses and celebrated throughout the country.

I was suprised to learn that you need to pay taxes to transfer goods between states in Brazil. There's also extremely high import taxes for almost everything. Brazil's economic policy is full of local protectionism. It's policy makers lacked vision and planning, ignored the trend of globalization, failed to position Brazil as a manufacturing and export based economy. As a result Brazil deindustrialized over time and ended up finding itself exporting agriculture produces and resources in the global value chain. Brazil doesn't lack potential. I feel like Brazil has a lot to learn from other newly industrialed economies, especially the ones in East/South East Asia and Eastern Europe. There are a lot of good economic policies that Brazil can adopt.

Brazil is a giant with feet of clay

It saddens me that our young in Brazil are so pessimistic with our future. From the comments that I read, pessimism is confused with realism, believe me I understand and I am frustrated also with the development of Brazil, specially because it has so much potential. But we must remember that cultural development rarely happens in decades, that is why we call the development of Japan, China and Europe as miracles. We have the tools, we have the resources, we now need the hard work and it will be hard going, it will be frustrating, but nothing worth doing is easy-going.

"Brazil is not for beginners" - I understood that reference. You are are cool dude Caspian. Thanks for all the videos and insight

Love Brazil from Mexico.

I’m Brazilian and I remain optimistic. The country has many problems but I have faith that one day it *will* become the global superpower it was always meant to be…when that day is though, I don’t know.

Half of population of Brazil is white and the other half has mixed ancestry. White mixed with Indigenous, Asians, middle easterns.... not just africans.

Brazil will always be the Nation of the future

As a brazilian myself, i like to check 2 points: 1) Every video with a foreign trying to explain Brazil says that our acid soil is a big deal problem, but we already solved this decades ago. Nowadays our agrobusiness fed more than 1 billion people, and not only quantity, we have quality too. 2) Dilma doesn't suffers a coup, but a impeachment. The process was entirely legal, the coup is just a narrative media.

This video is making me so nostalgic for Brazil. Such a beautiful country and people. I miss it so much.

At this point doing anything significant without circlejerking BRICS has become a challenge for Brazil.

Everyone’s keeps saying that Brazil is the country of the future and it always will. But the fact is that Brazil economic growth has been slow but consistent, turning the country into one of the biggest economic powerhouses in the world. There is a lot of industry in Brazil already, and there is plenty of space for more. Don’t think Brazil as the economic of the the future. Think of Brazil as one of the most growing economies in the world, slow but consistent!

Brazil needs to take care of two massive issues, one the Recieta Federal and its insane tax rates, as well as double down and build rail in every corner. Would solve a lot of problems.

Brazil is a superpower of the future. And always will be.

Brazil is definitely destined to become a superpower, but it may take time. It was a SUPERPOWER when it was Portugal, but as Brazil it needs to mature. It may not be in our lifetime but it will happen!

I feel like Brazil repeatedly fails to tap into the European Latin world. Especially Italy, Italians love Brazil.

Brazil don’t need to be a superpower. We just need to be the best friend of a superpower that valorizes Brazil’s strategic importance. And your video lacks the reality that Brazil is the country that feeds the world today, the biggest producer of food in the world, and it will ever be.

It is highly debated if Dilma's case was a coup or not. Most people here say it's not, I don't know how that is internationally

4:45 "quantity has a quality of its own" is one of the most accurate sentences said in history

Brazil, since 1500 a global leader in research, development and creative management techniques on how to destroy ''order'' and explode ''progress''. **Fun fact: Brazilians love it.

"Tension between ecological order and economic progress" That was a masterful writing

I love that country. Even we have thousands of kilometers distance. Hello from Türkiye

The quality of your research is very impressive. Normally foreign videos about Brazil fail miserably to understand some aspects of our very contradictory and unique history. You, sir, are definitely not a beginner. Subscribed.

As always, great work! I just want to point out that the Amazon forest is more important for Brazil than anyone else since the rainfall in the center-west, southeast and south regions depend on the humidity it puts out. Hugs from Brazil!

Came here to say ”ummm, no”. At least not this century.

"They are not worried with the health of the Amazon. They are worried with the *WEALTHS* of the Amazon." This can be interpreted in many ways ...

The level of details on the animation is superb. The coat of arms of the states instead of the flag. Props to you guys

The fact that Turkey is placed in Europe (bc it has ~3% of it's land mass on the European continent) and not in Asia proves the validity of some of these videos

They destroyed their forests and now are telling us what to do with ours.

"I am a BRAZILIAN, and I NEVER give up!!!" This motto will drive me forever, despite all of our problems, we're already huge, one day we'll get there, guys!

@CaspianReport: Lula is not neutral regarding the war between Ucraine and Russia, yesterday he was accused by both the USA and the European Union for spreading russian and chinese propaganda. Apart from that I enjoyed your video, as always!

They're stuck in the resource extraction trap. It didn't help that Chinese manufacturing gutted most of their industry. The problem with Brazil's geography is that it's like a slanted table so there's a high price on transportation. Although it's funny that Argentina has a better geography but their leaders squandered it.

As a Brazilian I can sum up the problem over there : - uninformed population - corrupt politicians lead a corrupt population who keep electing corrupt politicians - flawed justice system We will never get anywhere ! It’s a lost country , sadly !!!!

For those whom don't know "Brazil isn't for beginners" is an phrase said by Tom Jobim

That ending line of "Brazil seems the country of the future, and always will be" shook me. Great video!

Brazil is the most beautiful country in the world and the one with the greatest potential. It also has the most amazing people. I am Portuguese and have been and have worked in many different places. Appreciate what you have “esse incrível país grandao “ there is no better place on Earth. You have paradise, just do not know it.

Brazil is againg. While other Western countries are also again, unlike other Western countries, no high quality immigrants are lining up to immigrate to Brazil.

Hell yeah, dude! You did a pretty good job! Love from BRASIL! 👍🏽

Really awesome video! Brazil has so much potential, but so many problems. Just loved how you tackle the main points so accurately. Greetings from Brazil!

The problem with Lula is that no matter how you look at it he is on his way out. You talk about a candidate that left office with supposedly 80% of approval that barely won this current election with a 1% advantage and that with the highest amount of reals ever spent in Brazilian political history in a political campaign and with the whole media and academia on his side since they are also leftist. He is barely 4 months in and he already has disappointed a large part of his voting base by giving meager increases in minimum wage and social programs and he has already blown the budget. Brazilian economy is already slowing down and businesses of all sizes are closing already due to his policies. These are going to be 4 difficult years for Brazil. I really don't think he will have the support to win the next election given many of his voters are already turning against him mind you he is barely 4 months in!!!!! Brazil has a current congress and senate that is packed with Bolsonaro supporters and appointees and we have some governors as well that were heads of department for Bolsonaro administration. Any one of them is a good candidate for the 2026 election even if Bolsonaro becomes becomes inegilable.

Beautiful country, wonderful people, never going to happen. Geography has a lot to do with this. The interior of Brazil is difficult terrain and the coasts are not blessed with a lot of great harbors. The major rivers do not knit the country together and the huge Amazon is not in an area that is great for agriculture. Much of this could be overcome by a culture that emphasizes development and enterprise, but that is not Brazil’s inheritance. They have a centralized government that puts many impediments in place for business and is more easily corrupted as the power is concentrated in a few hands. Brazil is a great place, it will always have many advantages, but the geography and the culture will never allow its full potential to be realized.

Brazil as a colony had indeed a hard start, it is always good this channel focus on geography, that usually gets so little attention. It is like Portugal needed to do something with this hard land just to prevent the Spanish from taking it. Main later centers of development such as São Paulo or Minas Gerais were inland , and required immense effort in an age when everything was transported on the back of a mule. The northeast prospered early, but later was stuck in colonial plantation structures. It is a bit similar to the south of the US. São Paulo was incredibly poorer and because of this they launched raids capturing native slaves or looking for gold. This 'get rich quick' scheme failed, and they were forced to slowly build up the economy. Their migration is one reason why the country is not as fragmented as you say - we mostly derive from the same colonial centers from São Paulo, Bahia and a few others. Later São Paulo hit gold, dominating 80% of global coffee markets and moving away from the slave planation model. They adopted a mass migration similar to the US, and with industrialization launched Brazil into the modern era. But then, as you say, coffee crashed and Getulio arrived... To this day, and following the legacy of Getulio, the country has a tradition of centralized, heavy-handed government.

Brazilian here and you've done a great job identifying our problems, of geography, regionalism and enviromental economics. The most crucial one however is corruption, in the 60s and 70s the military dictatorship sponsored 10% gdp growth levels, but also created huge companies that in the present times are the protagonists of massive corruption scandals that involved pretty much every party in Brazil and went from town halls to the president's office.

I must say, this is a comprehensive and accurate take on Brazil. Over the decades, I watch/ed the country underperform while many go between Left and Right talking points, half-baked ideas, and outright bad ideas.

Come on guys!!! We have a lot to improve, but if you look closer, we are still a very young country, and the identity of Brazil as a nation is recent, give us some more time and we will get fixed, nations much older than us are in a worst situation.

I am surprised they haven't but given a whole slew of problem like geography, political and economic gaps, lack of infrastructure, being under-industrialized, lack of a cultural hegemony, etc that Brazil has yet to become a global power. It's the same problems the First Brazilian Republic suffered from and makes one see why the US manages to be a Great Power... Edit: I remember reading in a Brazil-centric YT video of a certain joke how a certain Brazilian Federal state that covers the Amazon is so remote nobody outside it has ever been inside it, not even the elected governor who rules over it...

I just love your channel so much. You are almost the only one i could find talking about geopolitics, but also keeping it simple for "normal" people like me that just want to know what is going on between individual countries.

Great job on the video, as it's quite politically on point. Brazil has the ability to emerge as one of the world's most prominent economies, but this potential has consistently been hampered by the USA. "We won't allow another Japan in the South Equator" - a remark made back in the 1970s by the American Secretary of State at the time, Henry Kissinger.

Brazil's negative national identity is the biggest obstacle to our progress. Self-deprecation, defeatism, and excessive self-criticism have created a pervasive sense of low self-esteem, making us vulnerable to exploitation by other countries. To overcome this challenge, we must rebuild our identity with constructive awareness of our problem but mainly of our potential.

When I was a kid, I was taught that Brazil was the country of the future, 30 years later I’m still waiting the future.

Brazil will not improve as long as it remains just the world's farm. It needs industrialization and technological investment.

Raw size and population do not equate to power. They'll need a stable government, strong education system, focus on skilled labor, and most of all a complete overhaul to the current agrarian situation (more mechanized farming, focus on the actual fertile regions instead of just burning the Amazon, and making good use of fertilizer). They have some things going for them, but at the same time so much has been so mismanaged for so long that a long period of catch up will be necessary.

There's a lot of BS here. The "common currency" was pretty much a show, it's actually impossible to do that with Argentina, and considering the production matrix of both countries it'd be a mess rather than a solution. Also, Brasil already has access to the "Río de la Plata" basin through the Paraná river is has free-navigation for Brasil, Paraguay and Argentina.

Most of Brazils debt comes from the dissatiation of gold and dollar, followed by a exponential increase in international leases, the government took that leases (the military government) and the in a crysis the interest got inflated more than 10x the previous amount, the government could not keep up and then inflation exploded. Also, it's important to note most of the semi-developed world suffered from it, but Brazil got saved by REAL in the early 90's, that was a common effort of a politycal alliance post Collor de Melo when Itamar Franco was president. Brazil got caught on a auterity trap once again, not shifting from austerity to development when it should (the commoditie cycle) and now suffers from low commoditie prices and a underdeveloped industry (Corruption from Politics and Top Business men are to blame).

As a Portuguese - born citizen of Earth, current living in Germany, I totally believe Brasil. Brasil has literally everything to make it a big economical power. Much Love to Brasil and to all my fellow humans 👽 ❤️🙏☀️

I'm Brazilian, but I hate the politics and some of the people.. these country never is going to change. What a shame.

Shirvan, I've been following you for years now. You are the geopolitics youtuber I respect the most. I've always had very good impressions of the quality of your work. But when you touch subjects or regions I'm familiar with, thats when I am certain of your qualities. Your video was spot on, as always. You are even respectful down to making an effort of the correct pronunciation on a language I figure is not even close to your primary one. Aside native youtubers your pronunciation is the best one out there. Many thanks again for you videos. You are amazing!

The key to greatness is simple: The less you hinder the individual’s pursuit of prosperity and the better you keep ethical laws, the greater your country will be.

In 1976 as a kiwi passing through first felt the warmth of embrace of Brasil & her people like a big momma Now living in the Blue Mtns in Australia almost 50yrs have gone by but still can’t forget that embrace

We will rise up. Our time is coming! 🇧🇷

I lived in Brazil for 5 years. It is quite expensive to live there, if it's not food then you can forget about buying it. Infrastructure is variable and unorganized. Stepping over 5 differently constructed sidewalks for starters. That being said, they have an abundance of natural resources. But they don't have a strong industry for manufactured goods in the same way Europe has. Brazil has it, but it's quite weak. Volkswagen and Fiat dominates the Brazilian car market.

It's great to see content contextualizing Brazil's history to strangers. Thank you for that, it was very precise to what we learn from here inside, however a little summarized.

Lula is not neutral on Ukraine war. He increased trade with Russia, it means that he is financing the war.

Whether it becomes a future superpower or not Brazil will always be based Love them Brazilians 🇬🇧❤🇧🇷

Rouseff’s impeachment wasn’t a coup. I would’ve thought Shirvan would be more informed on that.

"Land of the future". This is a phrase that people used to say a lot in the 80s so I see you did your homework. Nice video!

An addition, Brazil and its "provinces" did not have a monoculture like the Anglo-Dutch colonies, in 1800, on the eve of the departure of the royal family to the new world, the port of Salvador (capital of Bahia) was already exporting 300 items to Portugal, there is a lot of confusion and on purpose about the models "colonies" of the Iberians are very different from the Anglo-Dutch, the colony example of "exploration" and "population" and "plantation" does not exactly apply in Brazil, and as Jared Diamond wrote in the book "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" and other scientific articles the vast majority of indigenous peoples who died from diseases and did not have immunity due to geographic isolation, about slavery, the Portuguese population was very low compared to its empire and both Brazil and Portugal had an average of 3 million inhabitants on each side of the Atlantic and, 1800 and needed labor and the slave system in Africa came into contact expanding the "trade" of enslaved people on the continent, I understand that it is very complex and difficult to explain both in video and in short comments on these subjects and I appreciate the video on Brazil.

1 problem only: We don't have freedom to do what we want with our property. Government always try to dificult things with everything, the amount of hours we have to deal to be OK with the burocracies is insane. The taxes too... 😢

If a country wants to become a big country, it must first be independent! Independent diplomacy, independent national defense, independent economic system. If it can't, it can never be strong (Similarly, when a once great country loses these autonomy, it is not far from becoming a secondary power.)

It seems that Brazil is stuck in a cycle that prevents it from becoming a global power, but it doesn't have to be. Brazil does possess some significant influence on the global stage.

The Problem of Brazil is the lack of freedom, and HUGE government followed by unbearable Taxes!

Having natural resources in abundance is almost an ingredient NOT to become a democratic global power.

O estado do Brasil é gigantesco. Políticos recebem bilhões de reais. Tirando a corrupção. Aqui os políticos compram os votos com políticas a curto prazo. Ninguém aqui pensa em longo prazo ninguém investe no futuro. Não tem projetos. Não investem em ferrovias etc.