Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: Brasil or República Federativa do Brasil, listen (help·info)), is the largest and most populous country in Latin America, and the fifth largest in the world in both area and population. Its territory covers 8,514,876.599 km² between central South America and the Atlantic Ocean and it is the easternmost country of the Americas. It borders Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana and the département of French Guiana to the north, Uruguay to the south, Argentina and Paraguay to the southwest, Bolivia and Peru to the west, and Colombia to the northwest. The only South American countries not bordered by Brazil are Ecuador and Chile.

The Brazilian coastline covers 7,367 km to the east. Numerous archipelagos are part of the Brazilian territory, such as Penedos de São Pedro e São Paulo, Fernando de Noronha, Trindade e Martim Vaz and Atol das Rocas. Tropical climate is predominant. In the south of the country, subtropical climate prevails. Brazil is traversed by the Equator and Tropic of Capricorn lines. It is home to varied fauna and flora and extensive natural resources.

The Brazilian population tends to concentrate along the coastline in large urban centers. While Brazil has one of the largest populations in the world, population density is low and the inner continental land has large demographical empty spaces. It is a multiracial country composed of European, Amerindian, African and Asian elements, more often combined in the same individual than separated into different communities. The official language is Portuguese, and it is the only Portuguese-speaking country in all the Americas. Catholicism is the predominant religion, though Protestant communities have experienced significant growth in the last decades. Brazil has the largest Roman Catholic population in the world.

  

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Mário Raul de Morais Andrade (October 9, 1893 – February 25, 1945) was a Brazilian poet, novelist, musicologist, art historian and critic, and photographer. One of the founders of Brazilian modernism, he virtually created modern Brazilian poetry with the publication of his Paulicéia Desvairada (Hallucinated City) in 1922. He has had an enormous influence on Brazilian literature in the 20th and 21st centuries, and as a scholar and essayist—he was a pioneer of the field of ethnomusicology—his influence has reached far beyond Brazil.

Andrade was the central figure in the avant-garde movement of São Paulo for twenty years. Trained as a musician and best known as a poet and novelist, Andrade was personally involved in virtually every discipline that was connected with São Paulo modernism, and became Brazil's national polymath. He was the driving force behind the Week of Modern Art, the 1922 event that reshaped both literature and the visual arts in Brazil. After working as a music professor and newspaper columnist he published his great novel, Macunaíma, in 1928. At the end of his life, he became the founding director of São Paulo's Department of Culture, formalizing a role he had long held as the catalyst of the city's—and the nation's—entry into artistic modernity.

Andrade was born in São Paulo and lived there virtually all of his life. As a child, he was a piano prodigy, and he later studied at the Music and Drama Conservatory of São Paulo. His formal education was solely in music, but at the same time, as Albert T. Luper records, he pursued persistent and solitary studies in history, art, and particularly poetry. Andrade had a solid command of French, and read Rimbaud and the major Symbolists. Although he wrote poetry throughout his musical education, he did not think to do so professionally until the career as a professional pianist to which he aspired was no longer an option.

  

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The Rikbaktsa people, found in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil, are one of the country's many indigenous peoples. This photo shows the earlobe stretching which earned them the name Orelhas de Pau (Wooden Ears) in the region. Today, the Rikbaktsa no longer practice ritual ear-piercing, as they struggle to integrate their traditional culture into a post-contact society.

  

In the news

• February 16: The Brazilian feature film Tropa de Elite ("Elite Squad" in the English title) won the highest prize, the Golden Bear, at the Berlin International Film Festival, in Germany. The achievement comes exactly 10 years after Central Station received the award at the festival.
• February 12: The National Committee for Biosafety approved the use of two species of genetically altered corn in Brazilian agriculture. The decision, which had been postponed several times before, was settled in a vote involving 11 ministers of the Federal government, with the "yes" winning by the minimum margin of 6 votes against 5 in opposition. At least another 2 years should elpse until the genetically altered corn reaches supermarket shelves.
• November 25: Seven people were killed when a single-engine aircraft crashed into a house after take-off in Manaus, Amazonas. Weather conditions were not ideal, but early reports indicate that a mechanical malfunction was most likely the cause of the accident, which happens just 20 days after another plane crash killed off an entire family in São Paulo.
• November 25: Pope Benedict XVI appointed new Cardinals in the second Consistory of his papacy, including archbishop Odilo Scherer, of the São Paulo diocese.
• November 11: The Brazilian national beach soccer team won the 2007 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup, the 3^rd World Cup organized by FIFA and the country's second consecutive title (Brazil had won the 2006 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup). The event was also the third and last one organized in Brazil, at the Copacabana beach, in Rio de Janeiro, since the event now begins to travel the world, with the next installment taking place in Marseille, France.

  

Did you know...

...that the most visited museum in Brazil is the Imperial Museum, located in the town of Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro?

...that the name Rio de Janeiro means "river of January" and is an allusion to the fact that the Portuguese first entered the Guanabara Bay, where the city now is, on January 1, 1501 and thought that it was a river?

...that in Brazil (and other nations) Santos Dumont, not the Wright brothers, is regarded as the inventor of the modern airplane?

...that in the 18^th century Ouro Preto, in Minas Gerais was the largest city in all the American continent because of its diamond and gold trade?

...that Brazil was the first country in the world to have fully electronic elections?

...that, although Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world, its territory is larger than the continental United States (the fourth largest), and it remains so even if added the areas of Hawaii and 2/3 of the state of Alaska?

...that the city of São Paulo is the only city in the world to have a control tower exclusively dedicated to monitoring helicopter traffic?