Brazilian Flags
Brazil’s culture and history show the many different cultural influences that have acted upon the country since its birth. Brazil’s flag is a green field with a large yellow rhombus at its center, with its points pointing to the center of side of the field. Inside the rhombus is a deep blue circle, where white starts of five different sizes are scattered. A white, curved band crosses the circle, bearing the motto Ordem e Progresso (which means Order and Progress) in capital letters.
This flag is occasionally called Auriverde which literally means of gold and green. For example, the flag is referred to by this name in the second to last stanza of Castro Alves’ Navio Negreiro. This flag is the most modern Brazilian flag and was officially adopted on November 19 or 1889. Raimundo Teixeira Mendes designed the flag with the assistance of Miguel Lemos and Manuel Pereira Reis. Decio Vilares executed the design. That design is seen in the current national flag and ensign with only a few minor changes. The current twenty-seven star version of the flag was adopted on May 12 of 1992.
When the First Republic was first announced in Brazil’s history, Minister of Finances and Taxation Ruy Barbosa was one of the leading figures in the process. He proposed a design for a national flag that was used for only four days, beginning November 15, 1889. His design was strongly influenced by the flag of the United States of America. After four days of use the flag was vetoed by the acting president Deodoro da Fonseca, saying it was too much a copy of another country’s flag. He suggested that a new flag be designed to resemble the Imperial Flag. This decision was accepted but the decision was made to replace only the royal crest with a new image. The current flag was then conceived.
Currently the largest flag in the world to be hoisted is the Brazilian national flag that is flown in the Square of the Three Powers that is in the capital of Brasilia. The flag weighs nearly thirteen hundred pounds and has over seven thousand square meters.
The current flag was strongly inspired by the flag of the former Brazilian Empire. This imperial flag showed a yellow rhombus on a green field, with the imperial crest centered in the rhombus. It represented the Imperial House of Braganza of Pedro I who was the first Emperor of Brazil. The color yellow was chosen to represent the Habsburg Imperial Family of Empress Leopoldina who was Pedro I’s first wide. Thus the two colors used on the original flag represent the two founding families of the first imperial couple.
On the modern flag, the color green was chosen to represent the forests, the color yellow was chosen to represent the mineral wealth, and the blue circle is meant to depict the sky over Rio de Janeiro on November 15, 1889, the day the Republic of Brazil was declared. There are also twenty-seven stars to represent Brazil’s twenty-seven different states.