Part of the country series of articles.
TRAVEL ADVISORY: EXERCISE CAUTIONPARSTATE advises that conditions vary significantly between Brasil's urban centres and its interior regions. Travellers should exercise caution outside major cities and avoid travel near the Amazonas border zone without consulting Commonwealth consular services.
| Federal Republic of Brasil | |
|---|---|
| Federal Republic | |
 |
|
| Capital | Salvatoria |
| Languages | Spanish, Portuguese creoles, Italian, Japanese, Arabic, and many indigenous languages |
| Population | 98,400,000 |
The Federal Republic of Brasil is a large federal republic occupying most of the eastern South American landmass, the wealthiest and most populous country on the continent. It is Spanish in language and law, with historic Moorish and Andalusian inflections in its architecture, music and legal traditions, and an African cultural inheritance from centuries of slavery that shapes its cities as thoroughly as any European influence. Large waves of Southern European and Japanese immigration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries added more layers, particularly in the southern states where Italian surnames and Japanese agricultural communities are common. It is a diverse, complicated country.
Politics is dominated by a rotating set of dynastic families and regional cliques who have managed Brasil’s federal institutions since independence, interrupted periodically by military governments that reorganise the furniture without changing the house. Real power tends to reside in the relationship between the great landowning families, the industrial interests of the southern states and whichever general currently considers himself a patriot. Salvatoria, the planned federal capital built on the site of the old colonial city, was intended to break the grip of regional power on national politics and has not entirely succeeded.
Brasil’s northwestern frontier ends at Belem, beyond which lies Amazonas, an impoverished and largely isolated indigenous state that controls a substantial portion of the Amazon basin. The border is porous and small skirmishes between border guards take place on occasion. Brasil’s relationship with Amazonas oscillates between neglect, paternalism and opportunistic encroachment depending on which government is in office.