Real Estate in Brazil - Amazonas, Brazil

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Statistics
Capital:	Manaus
Area:	1 570 947 km² Ranked 1st
Inhabitants:	2 812 557 (2000) Ranked 17th
Pop. density:	1.8 inh./km² Ranked 26th
Timezone:	GMT-4
Governor:	Eduardo Braga
ISO 3166-2:	BR-AM
Map

Amazonas Amazonas (pronounced, "ama'zonas") is the largest state of Brazil in area, located in the northern part of the country. Neighboring states are (from north clockwise) Roraima, Pará, Mato Grosso, Rondônia, Acre. It also borders Peru, Colombia and Venezuela. This includes the department Amazonas in Colombia, as well as the Amazonas State, Venezuela (it does not border the Peruvian Amazonas Region). The prime feature of the Amazon is its immense forest. This is the largest Brazilian State in area, with 1.5 million square kilometers. From the capital, Manaus, tours take tourists to see the meeting of waters where the rivers Negro and Solimões run alongside without mixing their waters, and stay in the lodges in the forest, appreciated by foreign tourists. Although being far away from the ocean, Manaus is a port city. Among the many attractions of the capital, are the Teatro Amazonas, the Municipal Market, the Zoo, the Forest of Science and the Museum of the Indian. Outside the city of Manaus, beside the meeting of the waters, the main attractions are the tours of the largest biodiversity of the planet, with a fauna of more than 250 species of mammals, 2,000 types of fish and 1,100 types of birds is the largest state of Brazil, located in the northern part of the country.

Other cities include:

Barcelos

Contents

Geography

Amazonas has a territory covered mostly by jungle, covering a vast area of Amazon Rainforest. The state is named after the Amazon River.

Amazonas is home to the highest mountain in Brazil; Pico da Neblina which stands at 3,014 metres above sea level.

The state is almost entirely covered by the Amazon rainforest, and its relief is divided into three categories, viz:

igapos - permanently flooded land, roots of vegetation always submerged
varzeas - higher than igapos, land is only submerged when rivers are at their highest during the wet season
low plateaux - higher still, never submerged

This wide and varied terrain means that the Amazonas region attracts a large number of tourists.

Economy

The industrial sector is the largest component of GDP at 69.9%, followed by the service sector at 26.5%. Agriculture represents 3.6% of GDP (2004). Amazonas exports: mobile phones 48.7%, others eletronics 19.5%, motorcycles 7.7% (2002).

Share of the Brazilian economy: 1.6% (2005).

Amazonas' economy was once reliant almost entirely upon rubber; today it has wide and varied industries, including the farming of cassava, oranges, and other agricultural products.

The most recent change in the state's economy is the effort the Brazilian government is making to pursue the development of industries whose main focus will be the exporting of consumer goods. Due to its geographical proximity to the markets in the northern hemisphere and Amazon countries, like Venezuela, they believe this move will have a great economic impact not only in the north region of Brazil but in the entire country.

Over the last decades, a system of federal investments and tax incentives have turned the surrounding region into a major industrial center (the Zona Franca of Manaus). The mobile phone companies Nokia, Sagem, Gradiente and BenQ-Siemens run mobile phone manufacturing plants in Manaus. Also, many other major electronics manufacturers such as Sony and LG have plants there. The plastic lens manufacturer Essilor also has a plant here.

Vegetation

The Amazon represents over half of the planet's remaining rainforests and comprises the largest and most species-rich tract of tropical rainforest in the world. Wet tropical forests are the most species-rich biome, and tropical forests in the Americas are consistently more species rich than the wet forests in Africa and Asia.[3] As the largest tract of tropical rainforest in the Americas, the Amazonian rainforests have unparalleled biodiversity. More than 1/3 of all species in the world live in the Amazon Rainforest. The largest biodiversity of the planet is present across the State of Amazonas, generating great surprise in its visitors.

History

The name "Amazonias" was given to the Amazon River by early Spanish explorers, who fought skirmishes with female Amerindian warriors that they named after the fierce mounted female warriors in Greek mythology. Another, less common version states that the term Amazon comes from a local Amerindian word, amassunu, which means "sounds of the waters".

What is today Amazonas state was first taken control of after the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, which essentially divided the planet (excluding Europe) between the Spanish and the Portuguese, territories west of (approximately) 46° 37' W belonging to Spain, those east of that longitude, to Portugal.

Originally, most of South America (except for a small part of the east coast of modern Brazil) was ceded to Spain. However, the Portuguese controlled the area in practice, with numerous settlements and large numbers of Portuguese soldiers in the Brazil area. Spain officially handed over control of the region with the Treaty of Madrid in 1750.

The state of Amazonas was officially created by Dom Pedro II in 1850.

The state had an era of splendour in the 1850s, at the peak of the rubber boom. However, the economic gains were largely the result of great human suffering: untold thousands of enslaved Amerindian seringueiros (rubber tappers) died through disease and overwork.

By the late 1800s, the Brazilian rubber monopoly was slowly dying, as British and Dutch plantations in South-East Asia were producing cheaper, superior quality rubber, and by 1900 the Amazonas state had fallen into serious economic decline because of this. It was not until the 1950s that federal government policy rescued the state from complete financial ruin.

The state capital of Manaus had once been a rich city (it received street lighting and streetcars before London) but had largely fallen into disrepair after the end of the rubber boom. In 1967, the federal government implemented a plan to revive the city, and today the city is the financial centre of the region.

J. Verissimo, Pará e Amazonas, (Rio de Janeiro, 1899)

C. L. Temple, The State of Amazonas, (London, 1900)

Demographics

Manaus the capital.According to the IBGE of 2007, there were 3,351,000 people residing in the state. The population density was 2,1 inh./km².

Urbanization: 77.6% (2006); Population growth: 3.3% (1991-2000); Houses: 819,000 (2006).

The last PNAD (National Research for Sample of Domiciles) census revealed the following numbers: 2,489,000 Brown (mixed) people (74.3%), 703,000 White people (21.0%), 144,000 Black people (4.3%), 13,000 Asian or Amerindian people (0.4%).

Interesting facts:

Vehicles: 351,536 (March/2007); Mobile phones: 1.4 million (April/2007); Telephones: 457 thousand (April/2007); Cities: 143 (2007).

Flag

larger image

The flag was adopted by law No. 1513 of January 14, 1982. The 25 stars in the topleft corner represent the 25 municipalities which existed on August 4, 1897. The bigger star represents the capital Manaus. The two horizontal white bars represent hope, while the red bar in the middle represents the struggles overcome.

External links

Official homepage (http://www.am.gov.br) (Portuguese)
Brazilian Embassy in London's Amazonas page (http://www.brazil.org.uk/page.php?cid=353)

States of Brazil
Acre \| Alagoas \| Amapá \| Amazonas \| Bahia \| Ceará \| Federal District \| Espírito Santo \| Goiás \| Maranhão \| Mato Grosso \| Mato Grosso do Sul \| Minas Gerais \| Pará \| Paraíba \| Paraná \| Pernambuco \| Piauí \| Rio de Janeiro \| Rio Grande do Norte \| Rio Grande do Sul \| Rondônia \| Roraima \| Santa Catarina \| São Paulo \| Sergipe \| Tocantins

Amazonas, Brazil