Brazil is the 5th largest and 6th most populous country in the world, home to over 212 million
people in an area larger than the continental United States.
And like any sufficiently well-known country, it has a lot of common misconceptions, namely
that they speak Spanish, their capital is Rio de Janeiro, and it’s pronounced Rio
“day” Janeiro.
But turns out it’s actually pronounced more like Rio “jay” Janeiro (because of the
dialect of Portuguese they speak) and it is not the capital of Brazil, and neither is
the even bigger nearby city of Sāo Paulo, the capital is actually the smaller inland
city of Brasilia, but the capital used to be Rio de Janeiro, so what exactly is going
on here?
Did Brazil just want to confuse us, or was there a reason for Brazil to move its capital
to essentially the middle of nowhere?
Although this part of South America of course had plenty of history before European colonization,
the history Brazil as we would recognize it in a sense began before it was even discovered
by Europeans.
To resolve and prevent future disputes between Spain and Portugal over the newly discovered
lands across the Atlantic, the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed between the two kingdoms in 1494.
The treaty established a meridian 370 leagues (about 2,055 km) west of the Cape Verde islands,
lands to the east of which Portugal could claim, and to the west of which Spain could
claim.
Now obviously this didn’t imply that Spain and Portugal *owned* each hemisphere, just
that they were only allowed to colonize lands and pursue ventures in their given hemispheres.
As this was only two years after Columbus’ first voyage, the New World had only barely
been explored (or even been established as not being Asia) and in the late 15th century
Portugal was actually more interested in accessing the Indian Ocean by going around Africa.
In 1500 however, a new land in this New World was officially discovered by a fleet led by
Pedro Álvares Cabal, named after the brazilwood tree, and discovered to be east of the meridian,
meaning Portugal could claim it (as opposed to an earlier Spanish-led party who actually
discovered it but realized they couldn’t claim it).
As Brazil grew into a larger and larger colony, its first capital was the city of São Salvador
(now just Salvador) in the state of Bahia, both the city and the Governorate-General
of Brazil being founded in 1549.
In 1763 however the capital of the State of Brazil, now a state of the Portuguese Empire,
was moved to Rio de Janeiro in the south.
Barely a half century later, Rio briefly served as the capital of what was now called the
United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves, with the capital and royal family
moving from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro in order to avoid Napoleon.
In a story you can learn a lot more about on my friend Jack Rackam’s channel, Brazil
ended up fighting for its independence not long after, and in 1822 while Portugal was
now safe from Napoleon, Brazil had declared its independence as the Empire of Brazil,
with its capital still in Rio, as it remained through the First Brazilian Republic, the
Vargas Era, and into the Fourth Brazilian Republic (must’ve misplaced the second and
third republics then I guess), or as it was officially called, the United States of Brazil.
Okay, so Rio is still the capital, right?
Well at least that was the case up until 1960, when it was moved to Brasília.
Why?
Okay, let’s switch this video from history-mode to geography-mode for a bit so we can get
a better understanding.
Here look at this map, this is a map of Brazil’s population density.
As you can see, while most of Brazil’s population lives near the coast, the population is nonetheless
still quite spread out throughout the country’s coastline, meaning having the capital in the
southern city of Rio de Janeiro was seen as effectively favoring the south over the north.
In addition, while the capital was located in its own special Federal District within
Rio, the city had also grown far too crowded for the capital.
With all this in mind, articles 2 and 3 of the constitution of the First Brazilian Republic,
signed all the way back in 1891, established two things: [1]
Each of the old Provinces will form a State and the old Neutral Municipality will constitute
the Federal District, continuing to be the Capital of the Union, until the provisions
of the following article are implemented.
An area of ​​14,400 square kilometers belongs to the Union, in the central plateau
of the Republic, which will be demarcated in due time to establish the future Federal
Capital.
Basically, translating Google Translate here, the provinces are now states and the old district
within Rio would remain the Federal District until a new one near the center of the country
could be established.
In the 1955 Presidential election, Juscelino Kubitschek was elected on a platform based
on rapid economic development, epitomized by his slogan “fifty years in five” [2]
(certainly living up to part of the country’s motto there), namely in two initiatives, the
Plano de Metas (Plan of Goals) aiming to open up and modernize the Brazilian economy, including
through the other initiative, finally moving the capital.
As previously established in 1922, the new capital would be located in a special federal
district carved out from the state of Goiás in Brazil’s Center West region, located
in a previously underdeveloped region known as the Cerrado.
The Cerrado, named after the word for “closed”, had been essentially an agricultural dead
zone, mostly limited to beef production.
Although the area has since become an agricultural powerhouse thanks to a mixture of phosphorus
and lime [3], moving the country’s capital to the Cerrado attracted many to the region,
with the surrounding state of Goiás alone growing nearly threefold from 1950 to 1980
[4].
Brasilia, like America’s Washington DC or Australia’s Canberra, was a planned capital
city created virtually from scratch.
With an ideal location already selected, a public contest was held in 1957 for various
Brazilian architects and city planners to put forth designs for how the city would be
planned.
The international jury eventually selected Lúcio Costa’s plan for the city, with the
main avenues forming a sort of irregular cross shape, resembling that of an airplane or a
dragonfly, with the residential areas along the wings and the commercial and government
buildings-- many of which designed by Oscar Niemeyer-- along the body.
Many also found symbolism in the design, which could be said to resemble either the bows
and arrows used by Brazil’s native inhabitants, the cross of the Portuguese who colonized
the area, or the shape of the airplanes connecting Brazil’s cities to each-other and the rest
of the modern world.
The idea of moving the capital to a newly-built, ultra-modern city in what was basically the
middle of nowhere however had mixed reactions.
While supporters praised the construction of Brasilia as a symbol of Brazil’s coming
of age [5], in contrast to the older colonial cities along the coast, its critics saw the
construction of this new capital as little more than savvy political maneuvering which
would not solve more pressing issues like poverty and corruption.
Nonetheless, construction of the city, or at least the first phase of it, only took
around three years, completing in April 1960 with the completion of Costa’s plans for
the city… and temporary construction camps the workers basically refused to tear down,
which now provide a means of cheap housing just outside the city center.
Brasilia was intended to be a modern city, and as such the city was very clearly built
for the car, with many today feeling as if it were not meant for a human scale [6], and
to this day many prefer to have fun in Rio or São Paulo, as many criticize the city
as not really feeling like a city.
Today, the Federal District that houses Brasilia is the third largest metro area in Brazil,
with a population of 4.2 million, only beaten by the absolute titans that are Rio de Janeiro
and São Paulo.
The city has experienced growing pains with both the issues mentioned earlier, and being
said to have been “too successful” with the population having grown extremely rapidly.
Perhaps only time will truly tell how Brasilia will continue to form as a city.