Brazil Brazil. However, the decentralized and unorganized tendencies of the captaincy colonies proved problematic, and in 1549 the Portuguese king restructured them into the Governorate General of Brazil, a single and centralized Portuguese colony in South America. In the first two centuries of colonization, Indigenous and European groups lived in constant war, establishing opportunistic alliances in order to gain advantages against each other. By the mid-16th century, cane sugar had become Brazil's most important export, and slaves purchased in Sub-Saharan Africa, in the slave market of Western Africa (not only those from Portuguese allies of their colonies in Angola and Mozambique),
Brazil–United States relations of 1971. The Geisel administration (1974–79) marked a definite cooling of Brazilian–American relations. As the United States began to apply high tariffs on Brazilian manufactured goods, Ernesto Geisel looked for new trade partners. These, he would seek mostly in other Third World nations (in Africa, for instance). But in contrast with Costa e Silva and Médici, Geisel commenced to reach out to Communist countries, too. In 1975, four years before the U.S., Brazil reestablished diplomatic ties with China. It promptly recognized the independence of fellow Portuguese-speaking Angola and Mozambique, two African countries whose independence from Portuguese rule had been brought