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),
Uruguay Uruguay Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of the Uruguay (), is a country in the southeastern region of South America. It borders Argentina to its west and Brazil to its north and east, with the Río de la Plata (River of Silver) to the south and the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast. Uruguay is home to an estimated /1e6 round 2 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the metropolitan area of its capital and largest city, Montevideo. With an area of approximately , Uruguay is geographically the second-smallest nation in South America, after Suriname. Uruguay was