Genocide Of Indigenous Peoples In Brazil – World History – Free PDF Download

PORTUGUESE COLONIZATION OF THE AMERICAS

• Portugal was the leading country in the European exploration of the world in the 15th century.
• Portugal colonized parts of South America (Brazil, Colónia do Sacramento, Uruguay, Guanare, Venezuela), but also made some unsuccessful attempts to colonize North Americ and Nova Scotia in Canada

PEDRO ALVARES CABRAL

• Pedro Álvares Cabral(1467 or 1468 – c. 1520) was a Portuguese nobleman, military commander, navigator and explorer regarded as the European discoverer of Brazil.
• In 1500 Cabral conducted the first substantial exploration of the northeast coast of South America and claimed it for Portugal. He was appointed to head an expedition to India in 1500, following Vasco da Gama”s newly-opened route around Africa.
• His fleet of 13 ships sailed far into the western Atlantic Ocean, perhaps intentionally, and made landfall (April 1500) on what he initially assumed to be a large island. He explored the coast, realizing that the large land mass was probably a continent, and dispatched a ship to notify King Manuel I of the new territory. The continent was South America, and the land he had claimed for Portugal later came to be known as Brazil.

GENOCIDE

• The process that has been described as the genocide of indigenous peoples in Brazil began with the Portuguese colonization of the Americas, when Pedro Álvares Cabral made landfall in what is now the country of Brazil in 1500.
• This started the process that led to the depopulation of the indigenous peoples in Brazil, because of disease and violent treatment by European settlers, and their gradual replacement with colonists from Europe and Africa.
• This process has been described as a genocide, and continues into the modern era with the ongoing destruction of indigenous peoples of the Amazonian.

GENOCIDE

• Over eighty indigenous tribes were destroyed between 1900 and 1957, and the overall indigenous population declined by over eighty percent, from over one million to around two hundred thousand.
• The 1988 Brazilian Constitution recognises indigenous peoples’ right to pursue their traditional ways of life and to the permanent and exclusive possession of their “traditional lands”, which are demarcated as Indigenous Territories.
• In practice, however, Brazil’s indigenous people still face a number of external threats and challenges to their continued existence and cultural heritage.
• Several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been formed due to the ongoing persecution of the indigenous peoples in Brazil, The abuses have been described as genocide, ethnocide and cultural genocide.

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