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),
Bahá'í Faith in Mozambique who returned to Portugal also had contact with the Bahá'í Faith. In 1977 Swaziland elected their own national assembly and Angola and Mozambique continued with a shared assembly. From 1978 to 1992 Angola and Mozambique shared a regional national assembly. In 1985 the Bahá'ís of Mozambique elected their first National Spiritual Assembly, witnessed by Continental Counselor Shidan Fat'he-Aazam. Since its inception the religion has had involvement in socio-economic development beginning by giving greater freedom to women, promulgating the promotion of female education as a priority concern, and that involvement was given practical expression by creating schools, agricultural coops, and clinics.