Category Archives: Brazil

On March 12 the Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC held a conference on U.S.-Brazil Relations on the Eve of President Dilma Rousseff’s First Visit to Washington D.C.  The conference was divided into … Continue reading →

Decades ago, the government of Rio de Janeiro used to do a pretty good job of suppressing mosquitoes, but in recent years they have cut back funding for these efforts.  As a result, mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever have … Continue reading →

A twenty-storey building collapsed at night in downtown Rio de Janeiro, near Cinelândia and the Municipal Theater.  The collapsing building also caused two of its neighbors to fall.  Because the collapse occurred at night, the buildings were mostly empty.  At … Continue reading →

A Reuters article reports some good news for Brazil:  Foxconn, a Taiwanese company, the world’s largest maker of electronic components and printed circuit boards, is opening a plant at Jundiai, about 30 miles northwest of São Paulo.  The plant will … Continue reading →

According to an article in The Washington Post, Google has sent a team to the tiny, remote Brazilian village of Tumbira in the Amazon jungle to take street-level pictures.  I have used Google’s street-level pictures of Rio frequently for the … Continue reading →

São Paulo is notorious for its bad traffic and incoherent urban design.  The Washington Post has an interesting article about a heavily trafficked two-mile-long elevated highway, Via Elevada Presidente Artur da Costa E Silva, that has damaged urban neighborhoods.  City planners … Continue reading →

A team of Brazilian scientists have reported the discovery of an underground “river,” 6000 km. long and as much as 400 km. wide, flowing very slowly 4 km. beneath the Amazon.  This vast groundwater flow seems to drain the same … Continue reading →