A black woman roasting coffee beans. The enormous wealth and prosperity of the engenhos were dependent on massive infusions of slave labor. The number of engenhos multiplied with increased European demand for sugar and African slaveswere gradually substituted for Indian labor. Although estimates...

Rubber tree. The sudden international demand for rubber beginning in the 1870s generated a great interest in the region. Large numbers of (people from northeastern Brazil) flocked to the Amazon Basin in search of new economic opportunities. The rubber boom concentrated around the city of Manaus...

Selling lottery tickets and advertising for photos at the Praça da Sé in São Paulo. The informal sector provides numerous forms of employment as well as such services as money lending. Some people manage to develop creative means of survival in cities short of jobs in industry and the service...

View of downtown Sao Paulo from the Santana district, with several factories in the foreground. Sao Paulo is the industrial capital of Brazil and is responsible for nearly 40% of the industrial output (over 50% on a state level). Brazilian industry has boomed since World War II, especially...