Brazilian Demographic
Brazil is a massive country that covers a vast and diverse expanse of land. Thus, its population is equally diverse and encompasses many different cultural and ethnic groups. Generally, most Brazilians trace their origins to four main sources of migration: the Amerindians, the Europeans, the Africans, and the Asians. Since 1872, Brazil has conducted periodical population censuses. In 1940, they began carrying out this census decennially, and in 1960 they began making the information available online.
Historically, there is a great deal of ethnic and religious intermarriage in Brazil. Mutual assimilation of cultures has also taken place on a large scale. This intermarriage and assimilation accounts for the great diversity of cultures and beliefs in Brazil. Many religions have taken on new forms thanks to the influences of other local beliefs, and local practices have taken on a foreign flavor.
There are five main ethnic groups in Brazil, and they are the Aboriginal Brazilians, Black Brazilians, White Brazilians, Asian Brazilians, and Pardo Brazilians. However, as mentioned earlier, there is a great deal of intermarriage so it is difficult to confine the population to such specific ethnic groups.
The Amerindians or Aboriginal Brazilians make up about .4 percent of Brazil’s population which amounts to only about seven hundred thousand people. They are found throughout the different regions of Brazil, but the majority of them live on Indian reservations located in the North and Central-West regions. This group includes all those who descended from the earliest settlers of the country.
In 2006, there were nearly thirteen million blacks in Brazil’s population, which was about seven percent of the general population. Because slavery lasted for three hundred and fifty years in Brazil, the practice brought almost four million Africans to the country. Thus, millions are descended from these original slaves.
In the same 2006 census, there was just over nine hundred thousand Brazilians of East Asian descent in the country, which was only .5 percent of the general population. These Asian Brazilians are mostly concentrated in ethnic communities in the states of Sao Paulo and Parana. Brazil also has the largest Japanese population outside of Japan.
The ethnic group referred to as Pardo Brazilians include all of the mixed-race Brazilians. Their ethnic origins include European, Black, and Amerindian origins. This group makes up an astounding 43 percent of the population, which amounts to over seventy-nine thousand people. According to DNA resources, most Brazilians possess some kind of mixed-race background, but less than half of the country’s population classifies themselves as belonging to the group.
White Brazilians make up almost exactly half of Brazil’s population, a total of over ninety-three million people. Because whites found the entire territory of Brazil, there are a great deal of European immigrants and settlers in the region, and White Brazilians are all of their descendents. The ethnic backgrounds of members of this group include Arab, Dutch, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, and Ukrainian origins. This immense group makes up the majority of the population technically, but they are just as ethnically diverse as the rest of the nation.