Do you know why your country is a real melting pot filled with in many different cultures?

For being such a huge country, Brazil has a very diverse culture. We are basically a confluence of several different roots and origins, starting with the Native Americans, then with the Portuguese colonizers, Black African Slaves and more recent European, Arab and Japanese Immigration in a bigger scale and Koreans, Chinese, Paraguayans and Bolivians in a smaller scale.

Before we start to talk about Diversity in our country it is important to tell you a little bit about your historic background. Our population was formed by the influx of Portuguese settlers and African Slaves that went to a territory inhabited by many indigenous tribal populations. When the Portuguese colonized Brazil, our country was composed by 2.5 million Amerindians. During the Portuguese colonial period in Brazil, the influx of any other Europeans in Brazil was forbidden and in consequence the Portuguese and their descendents were the majority of the white population in Brazil (although there were a small number of Dutch and Spanish settlers remained back then). It was only in the 19th century that the Immigration of non-Portuguese.

It was only in the 19th century that the Immigration of non-Portuguese was allowed in Brazil and after this period, its demographics highly changed with the arrival of Immigrants from Portugal and  Italy (about 1,500,000 each), Spain (690,000), Germany (250,000), Japan (170,000), Middle East (100,000, mostly people from what are now Syria and Lebanon arriving on Turkish passports), and Eastern Europeans (mostly Poles and Ukrainians arriving on Russian passports). The White proportion of the population increased rapidly between 1872 and 1940, mainly because of immigration, but also because the growth rate of the Black and parda population, which was very low during slavery.

Nowadays, the Southern part of Brazil has greater impact of the European immigration and has a large White majority, which contrasts with the Northern and Northeastern regions, which have a large Pardo (mixed-race) majority and The Southeastern region of Brazil had a more balanced ratio of European, African and Amerindian admixture. In the 19th century Brazilian Culture has started to promote racial integration and mixing, where the goal is to bring all the racial minorities into the majority culture in order to create equal opportunities for everybody!