Brazil is South America”s largest and most influential country and takes up almost half the continent. The economic giant is one of the world”s biggest democracies. It includes much of the world”s biggest rain forest around the Amazon, whose exploitation has become a major environmental worry. Roughly two-thirds of Brazil’s population live on or near the coast and well over half live in cities. Yet Brazil still thinks of itself as a frontier country, and certainly the deeper into the interior you go, the thinner the population. Brazilians understand Spanish but Spanish-speakers don’t understand Portuguese. They’re one of the most ethnically diverse peoples in the world. In the extreme south, there is much German and Italian influence. Sao Paulo has the world’s largest Japanese community outside Japan. There’s a large black population concentrated in Rio, Salvador and Sao Luis. Yet the Indian influence is most visible in the people of Amazonia and the Northeast interior.