Shipping of Brazil

Brazilian coastal shipping was, for many years, in no better condition than its railways. After the federal government launched a shipbuilding program in the 1960s, however, cargo tonnage increased markedly, and, more significantly, ships began to carry a larger percentage of high-value goods as the frequency and reliability of services improved. Three-fourths of Brazil’s ships are involved in coastal trade, with the largest proportion of oceangoing vessels owned by Petrobrás.

Brazil has also upgraded its specialized bulk terminals, including one on Sepetiba Bay, west of Rio de Janeiro, and the Itaqui ore terminal, just south of São Luís, as well as the iron-ore terminal at Tubarão, near Vitória, and the oil terminal at São Sebastião, on the São Paulo coast. Traffic through São Sebastião accounts for about half of the export value of São Paulo state, and much of the rest is handled through the port of Santos, which is the country’s busiest port. Other significant ports include Rio de Janeiro, Paranaguá, Salvador, and Recife. Brazil’s major port facilities, historically known for their high costs and low efficiency, were significantly improved in the late 1990s, mainly through privatization.

The extensive Brazilian river system has a total navigability of some 31,000 miles (50,000 km). Navigable waterways are the principal means of transportation in the North, where the principal ports are Belém, at the mouth of the Pará River (an effluent of the Tocantins), and the Amazon port of Manaus, some 1,000 miles (1,600 km) inland. Smaller boats ply the Amazon River system as far west as Pôrto Velho, on the Madeira River in Rondônia state, and the Peruvian port of Iquitos. The Paraguay-Paraná-Plata river system is little suited for long-distance navigation, although certain stretches were used for local transport in the early days of settlement. Barge traffic is increasing, however, and shallow-draft vessels can use the system to access the Atlantic through the Río de la Plata estuary. In the late 1990s the government began to improve navigation on the Tocantins, Araguaia, and Tietê rivers.

The São Francisco River is navigable in two separate sections: for 1,000 miles (1,600 km) northward from Pirapora to the hydroelectric dam at Petrolina and Juàzeiro, and for about 170 miles (270 km) eastward from the Paulo Afonso Falls to the sea. Few of the shorter rivers flowing to the Atlantic are navigable; only the Paranaíba in the far north and the Jacuí in Rio Grande do Sul carry significant shallow-draft and barge traffic.

Aerospace

Brazilians were among the pioneers in flying, and they have long claimed that their countryman Alberto Santos-Dumont, not the Wright brothers, flew the first successful airplane. Numerous airlines flourished in Brazil at one time or another, but they have been consolidated into three major companies that compete nationwide: VARIG, which since the late 1920s has been a largely employee-owned airline; the now privately owned São Paulo State Airline (VASP), which handles mainly domestic flights; and Transbrasil.

Every capital and major city in Brazil has an airport, and some 1,500 smaller cities and towns have airstrips. São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, and Brasília are all linked by air shuttle services, although the overall frequency of flights and the size of terminals are much smaller than those of comparable centres in western Europe and North America. This is due to the relatively high cost of air fares and competition from inexpensive intercity bus services. Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, which each have two international airports, handle most international air traffic.

Brazil is second only to French Guiana as a Latin American leader in space exploration. It began testing rockets in the 1960s and created the first wholly Brazilian-made satellite in the early 1990s. Satellites are launched from a base at Alcântara, on the Maranhão coast just south of the Equator, because rockets launched into orbit from equatorial regions require significantly less fuel than do those launched from higher latitudes. The Brazilian space industry, long under military control, was placed under civilian leadership in 1994. Several Brazilian companies cooperate to design and build launch vehicles and satellites.

Constitutional framework

Brazil is a federal republic divided into 26 states and the Federal District (Distrito Federal), the latter including the capital city, Brasília. Since 1934 the nation has had universal suffrage. In 1988 Brazil promulgated a new constitution—the eighth since the country’s independence in 1822—that abolished many traces of the military regime (1964–85), defined civil rights, and outlined the functions of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. It restricted the president’s power to legislate, proscribed government censorship of the arts, condemned the use of torture, prohibited extradition for political crimes, set the minimum voting age at 16 years, and allowed the federal government to intervene in state and local affairs. The constitution has been amended several times since its promulgation, but some of the changes have been temporary, with specifically designated timespans.