Talk:Brazil

Brazilian Federation an other issues - please edit!

I tried to edit, but i`m not allowed. So here comes the suggestions:

The brazilian federation is formed by the union, the states and the municipalities. The federal district is just a special "blend" of state and municipality. Could someone please change that? What the article says is plain wrong.

Also, i would say the part about Brazil capturing land from the french in the 16th century is overemphasized, and leads to the idea that they founded both Rio and Sao Luis. The portuguese made war against (and together with) the indians mainly. Maybe the tupinambas should be quoted instead of the french, who played a relatively small part on the formation of brazil. The dutch colonization is far more important.

Since i`m writing, let me also point out that most historians now put much less emphasis on the "sugar cycle". The sugar production actually rose throughout the 18th century. The gold rush actually became possible because of the infrastructure already in place for the supply of the sugar plantations.

Ok, let me also say that explaining the proclamation of the republic based on the personality of the emperor and resentment is by far the worst explanation i`ve ever read. Why not just say that the slave owners were the political and economical backbone of the empire or something like that? I also find the whole historical section that goes after that too centered on the personalities of presidents, specially vargas.

Continuing... this whole thing about concentration camps for germans, italians and the japanese is very new to me, and i`ve read about that stuff, besides talking to germans and italians that were in brazil during WW II. The most important thing about that period is the prohibition of german and italian classes in school. The magazine cited, historia viva, is a bad source by the way.

Plano real = real plan, not royal plan. The idea was that the new currency was real, not that it was noble or something like that. The highly successful status of the plan is disputed, since we had a major economic crisis in 98, when we finally decided we couldn`t define the value of the currency. I would say it was successful, not highly.

PRB is a major political party in terms of seats in congress and should be cited. The infamous democrats are no longer as powerful as before and shouldn`t be compared with PT PSDB and PMDB. I think it would be nice to point out that PMDB comes from the official opposition during the dictatorship, MDB; that PP comes from the regime official party, Arena. That the democrats was also part of the Arena, but that they aligned with MDB during the re-democratization. That PSDB was formed inside PMDB during the making of the new constitution, as a result of the right-leaning direction PMDB was taking. And that PT was formed by trade unionists, leftist catholic church community leaders and intellectuals.

The whole part on air carriers is out of place, i think. About our foreign relations policy, it has been based for almost a century on respect for international treaties, peaceful resolution of conflicts and national self-determination. That is our doctrine, in a nutshell. Deviations from this core are not particularly common.

Caboclos do not form the majority of the population on the cetral west and northeastern regions! That is plan wrong. Comparing the immigration from portugal, spain and italy with germany, japan and lebanon is misleading in terms of magnitude.

Maybe it should be pointed out that the number of protestants now are above 20%? Although we don`t have the new census data yet, no one disputes that this is a fact. The question is how much above 20%.

The numbers on crime are relevant, but the existence of a whole section with one sentence is weird. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Marco.natalino (talk • contribs) 01:42, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from Manuelmsd, 7 June 2010

{{editsemiprotected}} while others were enslaved or exterminated in long wars or by old world diseases to which they had no immunity.[22][23]

Manuelmsd (talk) 03:59, 7 June 2010 (UTC) while others were enslaved or exterminated in long wars or by European diseases to which they had no immunity.[22][23]

 Question: Why? {{Sonia|ping|enlist}} 08:16, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

 Not done: Nothing wrong with current wording. Perhaps undue weight on European. SpigotMap 14:59, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I suppose the problem lies in "old world" (both "worlds", of course, have the same age). But it is an accepted phrase, and "European" disregards the fact that some of these diseases were in fact brought from Africa, together with enslaved workers. Ninguém (talk) 15:15, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

"Comparison" of dictatorships

There's a line at "Military regime and contemporary era" that says the following: "The repression of the dictatorship's opponents, including urban guerrillas, was harsh, but not as brutal as in other Latin American countries". It is referenced, but that's not the problem: the problem is that whenever a dictatorship was more or less brutal than another is someone's opinion, not a matter of fact. A reference grants this is the opinion of some author, and not the opinion of the article writer, but that's not enough. There is no system to "measure" the brutatily of governments and state if if this or that one is more brutal or are kept at equal levels. An opinion does not turn into a fact by having a footnote.

There are 3 alternatives to manage this sentence

• Replace it with some other fact that is measurable.
• Attribute the opinion to someone else, within the prose (not just with a footnote). "Someone says" that X government was more or less brutal than Y. But it should be someone noteworthy to make opinions in this, a mere book author may not be enough, even if reliable. It should be some international body, or someone from the UN, or someone like that.
• Remove the comparison completely.

I would suggest doing it the easiest way, removing the comparison completely. To give more detail to it would turn off-topic, and it isn't anyway a noteworthy opinion in the topic described. As far as I know, the level of brutality achieved by those dictatorships was influenced by either local reasons or higher level international reasons (Cold war, anticommunism and related topics); it wasn't part of their agendas to do things more or less harsh than neighbours. MBelgrano (talk) 16:33, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

The source is American historian Thomas Skidmore, one of the most respected experts in the field nowadays. The claim is not based on opinion, but on numbers:

Deaths caused by repression in Latin American dictatorships:

Brazil - 380 dead. (1970 population est.: c.90,000,000)

Chile - 3,000 dead. (1970 population est.: c.9,000,000)

Cuba - 7,038 dead. (1970 population est.: c.8,000,000)

Argentina - 30,000 dead. (1970 population est.: c.20,000,000)

The numbers speak for themselves. --Lecen (talk) 18:14, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

It's still an opinion, as described at WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV. You can replace Skidmore's opinion with the facts he cites to justify his opinion (the number of dead people), but it doesn't answer yet the other point I raised: why is it important to make such a comparison? How did the 1970 political contexts of Argentina, Chile or Cuba actually influenced the Brazilian one? Had they done it at all? MBelgrano (talk) 18:32, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

It is is not an opinion, it is a fact. Brazilian historian Boris Fausto and Argentine historian Fernando J. Devoto algo expressed the same thought in their book "Brazil e Argentina: Um ensaio de história comparada (1850-2002)". If in Brazil only 380 died (in a popuplation of 90 million inhabitants) and in Argentina 20,000 died (in a population of 20,000,000) that is not an opinion, but math. Just make the count. --Lecen (talk) 18:37, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

P.S.: The Brazilian military regime lasted from 1864 to 1985. The Argentine lasted from 1976 to 1982. In 21 years 380 were killed and in 6 years 20,000 were killed. Math. --Lecen (talk) 18:40, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

It's an opinion in the way Wikipedia sets apart facts and opinions, as described in Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. As described in the policy, verifiability and neutral point of view do not replace each other but work in conjuction. By citing many authors who share the opinion you don't turn into a fact, you merely state it to be a verifiable opinion, which I haven't denied it to be.

To cite an example from the policy, "That The Beatles were the greatest band in history is an opinion". Even so, we can easily find reliable sources that state so, or even provide reasons to justify it; but no, it wouldn't be accepted anyway. Notice, however, that avoiding to state that "The Beatles were the greatest band in history" does not mean taking the position that they were not.

And I notice you haven't answered the other question. MBelgrano (talk) 19:05, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Belgrano asked: "How did the 1970 political contexts of Argentina, Chile or Cuba actually influenced the Brazilian one? Had they done it at all?"

Answer: Operation Condor. 'nuff said. --Lecen (talk) 19:22, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Very well, that's better. Replace the useless comparison with an overview of the Brazilian involvement in the Operation Condor, and we're done MBelgrano (talk) 20:29, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

No, I won't. Unless you bring figures that says that more people died in Brazil than in Argentina, Cuba, Chile, etc... there is no reason to chance a single word. And please, I know you love dictators and all that. If you plan on saying that in Argentina only 80 were killed, spare me, ok? --Lecen (talk) 23:36, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

So soon resorting to falacies? Very well, I will do it myself later. By the way, the number of deaths is not the only way to "measure" dictatorships, it may be done from other angles and reach different conclusions (such as, for example... time length). But as pointed, it's not like comparing distances or sizes, so it would be better to simply avoid it. We may point that the Brazilian dictatorship caused less deaths than those of Argentina or Chile, we may point as well that it was longer than the ones of its neighbours... but in the end, such comparisons only serve to feed national rivalries and provide little real context for the reader, if compared with something more specific as it would be an explanation of which cooperation or common goals (or lack thereof) was there between the dictatorships.

And if you despise "dictator love", you should have a closer look to this article, which is the one we talk about. Less deaths than in other latin american dictatorships, extraordinary economic growth, peak of popularity, re-democratization process... everything sounds so nice and positive. Even the "Fifth Institutional Act" is mentioned but without saying what was it about, for the non-Brazilian reader (and perhaps even for the young or uninformed brazilians) it would read simply as a meaningless name. Even if the comparison stays, was it really all so positive, isn't there any negative thing worth mentioning about the Brazilian dictatorship? MBelgrano (talk) 01:35, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

The name "dictatorship" by itself already has a very negative connotation. I can't, however, write in an article that the dictatorship was "evil" or something similar. The years between 1968 and 1974 were certainly the most brutal in the military dictatorship. Quite interesting, it were also the years when the country developed and grew economicaly in a way never seen before (or after). Those were also the years when the regime acchieved its peak of popularity among Brazilians. Weird? Yep. But Perón in Argentina also had a brutal dictatorship and was a very popular man (in fact, politicians to this day call themselves "peronistas").

I should warn you that the present version of the history section was long debated and supoorted by several editors. Just chek the archives. If you want to change something in it, you should first ask their opinions.

And one last and important thing: the history section is small for a good reason: because it has to. Very important historical characters, such as Princess Isabel, José Bonifácio, Honório Hermeto Carneiro Leão, Baron of Rio Branco, Tancredo Neves and many, many others were not mentioned in it. Many important historical moments, such were also not mentioned. They can be found in more appropriate and focused articles. The Operation Condor is hardly one of the key moments in the Brazilian dictatorship and being mentioned in here makes no sense.

What I could support, at most, is to change the sentence from "less harsh than other Latin American dictatorships" to "less deaths by repression than in other Latin American dictatorships". Unlike in the Platine War article, where I made the grave mistake of removing very important information to please your will, this time I will not let you ruin another article. You want to change the text? Start bringing sources, text, etc... Debate the matter. But remember that I am very, very, very good in Brazilian history. --Lecen (talk) 02:07, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

New version

I apologize for my bad English. But I think it's absurd to keep a tiny and incomplete version of an article about a complex country such as Brazil. All other Wikipedias are larger versions and more complete and well illustrated that the English version, in addition, 138 kb not leave the article slowly. I await the opinion of other editors on the subject. Here are the two versions (my and the current version). Heitor C. Jorge (talk) 01:01, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

User Heitor C. Jorge has added content that has been long removed or shortened back to the article. That was a matter debated over and over in this very talk page (I believe it can be found in archives). The article was gigantic and too slow and heavy. It was shortened so it could be easier to read it. And this is certainly not the first time he does that. Once and a while he appears and add deleted content and change pictures as he please not caring at least to tell why. Once they are reverted he disappears for a few months until he reappears to do it all over again.

Once more: the changes were debated over and over. The article is now over 118 KB. He wants to add content that will raise it to 138 KB. --Lecen (talk) 01:02, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

It is ridiculous you attack my edits to keep your perspective. Your version is very bad in many respects, there is nothing to justify. Yours attacks against me should be of the block. Heitor C. Jorge (talk) 01:09, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

You should be more polite. Assume good faith. That is not my version. I do not own this article. The present version (although it has suffered some changes as time passed) was debated by several editors who believed that a shorter version was better for readability. --Lecen (talk) 01:15, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

I am polite with who is polite to me. Of course you do not own the article, community work is the essence of the project (I think that you can understand). However, despite this knowledge, you behave as absolute owner of the page, giving no chance to edit any other user, even if that issue is just a replacement image. I'm glad you do not edit Lusophone Wikipedia any more, the last thing we need there is user like you. Heitor C. Jorge (talk) 01:40, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for being kind. Anyway, are you saying that Grafen, L Kensington, Twsx, Silivrenion, SamEV, Dynamicknowledge28 and Zap Rowsdower - to name a few of the editors that have edited this article as seen in the history log - all own it? Or just me? Anyway, until you keep continuing attacking me for no reason witout discussing something, I won't bother to be in here. --Lecen (talk) 02:26, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

It would indeed be absurd to keep a tiny article about Brazil. At the end of December last year, the article was fastidiously cleared of bloat to a point where the result had shrunk to ... well over a hundred kilobytes. This is not tiny. The revisions were discussed in Talk:Brazil/Archive 11.

Your version, writes Heitor C. Jorge to Lecen, is very bad in many respects[.] I am sorry to read this. Please specify the most salient two or three of these respects.

Yours attacks against me, he continues, should be of the block. Do you mean that Lecen has committed some block-worthy offense? If so, please describe this at "WP:AN/I", and somebody will block Lecen. Perhaps I'll even do so myself.

According to Heitor C. Jorge, Lecen behave[s] as absolute owner of the page, giving no chance to edit any other user, even if that issue is just a replacement image. Rubbish. Or anyway I hope so. Would you like to replace an image? If so, please make your proposal in a fresh section below. -- Hoary (talk) 03:13, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Apparently you are all made of the same mass. All are partial, accomplices, and covered with a kind of mutual ignorance. Unfortunately, the article of Brazil in the Anglophone version of Wikipedia is still steeped in mediocrity of his editors. I quit! Victory of authoritarianism! Heitor C. Jorge (talk) 04:38, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

As Hoary said: if you believe that something is wrong, just create a section and debate the matter. So far all you've done was be very rude with us, if you haven't notice it. --Lecen (talk) 10:48, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

One of the changes within Heitor C. Jorge's blind reversal is the suppression of the IPA pronunciations of the word "Brazil" both in English and in Portuguese. Why would anyone remove the IPA pronunciations? Don't you know what IPA is, and what is it for? And then you accuse others of 'mutual ignorance'? And what authoritarianism, Heitor? You made an unexplained reversal, which was in turn reversed. You made it again a few other times, including one without being logged in. Nobody blocked you, nobody reported you in AN/I, nobody called you a vandal. Exactly the opposite of what happened when the article was effectively owned, a few months ago, when no good faith edits could be made without stupid accusations of 'vandalism', 'ignorance', 'sockpuppetry', etc. Ninguém (talk) 13:11, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Links

Uh, where did the links go under the flag and coat of arms to their respective articles?????? Fry1989 (talk) 04:52, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Vandalism

The word "vandalism" has been overused hereabouts, but this time I mean it. Consider this. Some IP changed clearly sourced figures to very different figures, without changing the cited source.

I've warned him, but IPs tend to change IP number. Please keep a watch on this article. (Meanwhile, I'm sleepy.) And please think thrice before using the term "vandalism" for edits that, unlike this, are merely retrograde. -- Hoary (talk) 13:32, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Brazilian literature

Heitor C. Jorge adds this to the section on Brazilian culture:

Brazilian literature dates back to the 16th century, to the writings of the first Portuguese explorers in Brazil, such as Pêro Vaz de Caminha, filled with descriptions of fauna, flora and natives that amazed Europeans that arrived in Brazil.^[242] Brazil produced significant works in Romanticism — novelists like Joaquim Manuel de Macedo and José de Alencar wrote novels about love and pain. Alencar, in his long career, also treated Indigenous people as heroes in the Indigenist novels O Guarany, Iracema, Ubirajara.^[243]

I would agree that it is odd that the section on culture makes no reference to Brazilian literature. However, the above paragraph is excedingly poor, even to Wikipedia standards. First of all, it cites two sources; one is the Encarta online encyclopaedia (source 243 above), which was discontinued, and, as such, no longer available online (by the way, it is the main source for the whole culture section). I have flagged all citations of Encarta in this section as "citation broken", and I hope these flags aren't removed, and especially that I am not (again) called a vandal for questioning obviously inadequate sourcing.

Then we have the content. It starts by saying that Caminha's letter is actually Brazilian literature. But Caminha was not Brazilian, nor was Brazil even called by such name (it would be Ilha de Vera Cruz) when he wrote his letter. His contact with Brazil lasted about ten days. Half of the paragraph purported to describe Brazilian literature is wasted in such way, talking about "literature" (in fact non-fictional reports) about Brazil produced at a time where no Brazilian identity even existed, by Portuguese explorers (why not the French, such as Thevet or Léry? Why not the Dutch, such as Caspar Barlaeus?).

After that we jump directly into Romantism - i.e., to the 19th century (again we have this strange aversion to the 17th and 18th century - to some editors, it is like they never existed in Brazil). In such way, the first buds of Brazilian literature (as opposed to Portuguese, or otherwise European, literature), in the Baroque, are ommitted. Among them the remarkable satyrical and religious poet Gregório de Mattos. The first actually Brazilian literature - the Neoclassic school in Minas Gerais, Cláudio Manuel da Costa, Tomás Antônio Gonzaga, etc - is also ignored, though at least Gonzaga was a poet of actual talent. This can't even be blamed on the source, that expands considerably on these subjects.

Besides what the paragraph ignores, there are problems with what it says. It mentions only novelists Joaquim Manuel de Macedo and José de Alencar as Romantic writers. This fails to address the most important Brazilian Romantic contributions, which were in the field of poetry, not prose. At least two outstanding poets (Gonçalves Dias and Castro Alves), and arguably others (for instance, Álvares de Azevedo, Casimiro de Abreu) are thus ignored.

Then the whole Symbolist, Parnasian, and Realist/Naturalist movements are ignored, and with them poets such as Cruz e Souza (remarkable Symbolist poet), Olavo Bilac (Parnasian poet of great fame), Augusto dos Anjos (idiossincratic and, in his own way, extraordinary naturalist poet); but the astonishing ommission is of Brazil's undisputed greatest writer of all times, Machado de Assis, whose picture illustrates the section but doesn't deserve a line in the text.

And finally there is no mention at all of Modernist and Pre-Modernist Brazilian literature. Where are Monteiro Lobato, greatest writer of literature for children, Cecília Meireles, Carlos Drummond de Andrade or João Cabral de Melo Neto, outstanding poets, Nelson Rodrigues, arguably Brazilian greatest playwright, famous novelists Jorge Amado or Érico Veríssimo, Clarice Lispector, Guimarães Rosa? Where are Oswald de Andrade and Mário de Andrade? Lima Barreto, Manuel Bandeira, Graciliano Ramos?

All these missing writers are by far more important than Joaquim Manuel de Macedo, and most of them are at least arguably more important than José de Alencar. It is better not to have a paragraph on Brazilian literature than a paragraph that only cites non-Brazilians and two writers reported as Romantics, one of them clearly minor.

But what do I know? I'm just a vandal, isn't it? Ninguém (talk) 16:51, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

The relation between modern Brazil and the portuguese colonies in South America may be compared, in broad terms, with the Thirteen Colonies and the United States. For topics related with history or politics it's important to make the distinction, but with others like culture (little or no affected by the political changes) it would be acceptable to consider it all as Brazilian, same as nobody really rejects such things from the Thirteen Colonies to be treated as part of the cultural heritage of the United States. MBelgrano (talk) 18:55, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

The culture section is a true fruit salad. In other words: a mess. I don't approve the way it is written now (and I am not only talking about the recent edits), since it wants to talk a little about everything but in the end, does not tell anything useful. Taking a look at other articles about countries which are featured, their culture section does not lose time with a paragraph for cinema, arts, literature, etc... It just gives a general view on the country's subject. What I do recommend is someone to take a look at google books and find books about it. I can help on anything related to history, but I would never dare to do something for real on anything else. Regards to all, --Lecen (talk) 19:04, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

But Ninguém, your talk above refers to this addition of one short paragraph, removal of one photo, and addition of one photo. It came with a polite edit summary. It does not imply to me any "strange aversion to the 17th and 18th century" (etc), merely an omission. If you don't like it, improve it. Or better here, replace it with something entirely different. Until it's been improved, yes, you are entitled to splatter it with warning flags (about the nonexistence of Encarta, etc), but I wonder if even this is likely to help. Really, you could have made significant improvements to it in less time than you spent lamenting it above. And of course replacing a recently added paragraph with another whose content is entirely different always brings a risk of a tiresome dispute in a talk page; with this subject, where tiresome Wikipedia disputes are the norm, lamenting the alleged awfulness of a paragraph before essaying a superior replacement is a sure-fire way to stir up resentment and yet more tiresome conflict.

Can there be a better section on the culture of Brazil? Probably. So write one, or at least help create an atmosphere conducive to writing one.

Incidentally, I like Lecen's suggestion. Having short paragraphs that drop the names of cultural stars reminds me of the "culture" parts of introductions to mindless guidebooks, in which the editors feel obliged to pay lip-service to culture, industry, agriculture and so forth before getting down to the serious business of explaining how to pay less for more fawning service, how to irradiate your skin without being interrupted by the naturally dark-skinned inhabitants, and how to go shopping. -- Hoary (talk) 00:03, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Not me. I'm done with this. Wikipedia can do well without me, and I can do even better without Wikipedia. Enough. Ninguém (talk) 01:52, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Ninguém doesn't like to contribute for Wikipedia. He likes to complain about other people contributions, because he wants to manipulate articles according to his personal points of view, so he attacks anybody else who is trying to improve articles. What a troublemaker. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.196.47.10 (talk) 17:28, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Noticed that Ninguém tried to ruin that article named Portuguese Brazilian, but it seems a serious user appeared and stopped him. I hope other users come out and stop this person. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.196.47.10 (talk) 17:31, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from Sqweezer, 20 September 2010

{{edit semi-protected}} please let me I am an english teacher at kings house school

Sqweezer (talk) 18:20, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

You should explain exactly what do you want to modify in the article. Point where does the article says something, and you consider it should say something else; then your request will be considered.

By the way, if you are an English teacher you should know about commas, capital letters, or the point at the end of a sentence. MBelgrano (talk) 18:30, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

And after this edit, I seriously doubt you are a teacher or are requesting to make a productive edit. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 18:54, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

wrong

but —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.150.46.20 (talk) 05:57, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

? yes —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.150.46.20 (talk) 16:57, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

? hi —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.150.46.20 (talk) 00:24, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

ok